| Description | Portrait of Joseph Priestley within an oval frame. He is facing slightly towards his right and is shown wearing a dark jacket and a short wig. The frame is shown to be held by a large eagle, presented against a clouded sky. Priestley’s likeness is based on a painted portrait by John Opie, now in Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford.
Lavoisier is shown below, within an oval frame surmounted by a laurel wreath. He is shown in a dark jacket and white cravat. Lavoisier is shown to be looking up and to his right, his likeness based on a detail from Jacques-Louis David's Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his Wife (1788) now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In the original painting Lavoisier is seated and looking up towards his wife and collaborator, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier. |
| InscriptionContent | Inscribed above: ‘Chemical Philosophers of the present Day.’ Inscribed: ‘DR. PRIESTLEY.’ ‘LAVOISIER.’ Inscribed below: ‘Opie and David pinxt.’ ‘Caldwall sculpt.’ ‘London, Published May 1. 1801, by Dr Thornton.’ |