List of Illustrations

Figure 0.1 – Salvador Dalí: Homage to Newton (1969). This striking bronze Newton, standing 132 cms tall, is one of three similar Newtons made by Dalí.

Figure 1.1 – Colin Cole: Design for Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven’s coat of arms (1994). The central shield shows the traditional patriotic emblem of English lions rampant, while the Admiral of the Fleet symbolizes Britain’s engagement in the Falklands war under Thatcher’s leadership.

Figure 1.2 – Eduardo Paolozzi: Isaac Newton (1997). Paolozzi’s twelve-foot high bronze statue at the British Library deliberately echoes William Blake’s complex picture (Figure 6.1).

Figure 1.3 – John A. Houston: Newton investigating light (1870).

Figure 1.4 – Joseph Wright of Derby: A Philosopher Giving a Lecture on the Orrery (1766). Many of Wright’s paintings illustrate the growing enthusiasm for natural philosophy during the eighteenth century, when orreries became a familiar symbol of Newtonian cosmology and the hierarchical Georgian social order.

Figure 1.5 – Frontispiece of the first English translation of Newton’s Principia by Andrew Motte (1729). It quotes a version of some lines from Halley’s long poem to Newton, especially composed for the Principia: ‘The hidden secrets of heaven and the immobile order of things lie open, with Mathematics pushing the cloud away. Now the keenness of a sublime Intellect has allowed us to penetrate the dwellings of the Gods and to scale the heights of Heaven.’

Figure 1.6 – Frontispiece of Voltaire’s Elémens de la philosophie de Newton (1738). Divine light is transmitted by Newton to be reflected from Truth’s mirror, here held by Mme du Châtelet, down on to the Enlightenment’s most distinguished scribe, Voltaire.

Figure 2.1 – Godfrey Kneller: Isaac Newton (1689). Kneller painted two versions of the 1689 picture. The half-length from which this engraving was made (via a photograph) belonged to Newton and was inherited by the Earl of Portsmouth; the other version, a three-quarter length, was probably owned by Caroline of Ansbach, and it shows a Greek book of Daniel, a reference to Newton’s preoccupation with biblical prophecy.

Figure 2.2 – Isaac Newton (1702). The half-length from which this engraving was made (via a photograph) belonged to Newton and was inherited by the Earl of Portsmouth; the other version, a three-quarter length, was probably owned by Caroline of Ansbach, and it shows a Greek book of Daniel, a reference to Newton’s preoccupation with biblical prophecy.

Figure 2.3 – John Vanderbank: Isaac Newton (1725).

Figure 2.4 – Engraving of Newton based on Godfrey Kneller’s 1720 portrait.

Figure 2.5 – William Stukeley: pen and wash drawing of Newton, c.1720. Reflecting his own antiquarian interests, Stukeley has drawn Newton in profile, as though he were a Roman emperor on a medal.

Figure 2.6 – George Bickham: Isaac Newton (1787). This engraving was first published in 1732, and then reissued in 1787 by Bickham’s son with accompanying verses from a Stowe estate poem.

Figure 2.7 – William Hogarth: A Performance of ‘The Indian Emperor or The Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards’ (1732).

Figure 2.8 – Anthony Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson: Entrance into the Choir of Westminster Abbey (1812). Newton’s monument, designed by William Kent and sculpted by Michael Rysbrack, lies to the left of the entrance, and Lord Stanhope’s monument lies to the right. This picture conveys a good impression of how these statues appeared when they were first installed.

Figure 2.9 – Louis François Roubiliac: Newton’s statue at Trinity College, Cambridge (1755).

Figure 2.10 – Giovanni Battista Pittoni, with Domenico and Giuseppe Valeriani: An Allegorical Monument to Sir Isaac Newton (1727–30). There were two versions of this picture, but only this one was engraved. The other one shows Newton’s monument in Westminster Abbey, probably thanks to Conduitt’s influence.

Figure 2.11 – Jakob Houbraken after Kneller: allegorical portrait of Newton.

Figure 2.12 – R. Page: engraving of Newton in the 1818 edition of the London Encyclopaedia.

Figure 3.1 – Frontispiece of John Colson’s The method of fluxions and infinite series (1736). In this idyllic scene of rural England, the precision of Newtonian techniques and English gun manufacture have surpassed the calculations of Greek philosophers, here shown anachronistically wielding quill pens. The Greek motto at the bottom means ‘the common things in an unusual way, the unusual things in a common way.’

Figure 3.2 – William Hogarth: frontispiece of John Clubbe’s Physiognomy (1963). Hogarth probably intended John Clubbe himself to be the horizontal man of good sense.

Figure 4.1 – William Hogarth: Frontis-Piss (1763). Hogarth designed this image as the punning frontispiece for a book about the use of points in written Hebrew.

Figure 5.1 – Newton in Senegal: illustration from “Drame Raisonnable” by Jean Delisle des Sales (1777). Newton eavesdrops on the conversation between a merman and an oyster that is desperately reasoning for its life.

Figure 5.2 – Maurice Quentin de la Tour: Mlle Ferrand méditante sur la philosophie de Newton (1753).

Figure 5.3 – Étienne-Louis Boullée: first design for Newton’s cenotaph (1784). The coloured aquarelle original shows the mysterious light flooding out from the central armillary sphere. A sense of scale is conveyed by the cypress trees and the tiny figure of Zoroaster at the internal altar, praying with his head upturned in adoration.

Figure 6.1 – William Blake: Newton. Conflicting evidence makes it impossible to decide whether this rare but well-known colour print was produced in 1794–5 or 1804–5.

Figure 6.2 – George Romney: Newton Making Experiments with the Prism (1796).

Figure 6.3 – ‘The Genius of the Times’ (1812). The men floundering in the waters of Lethe include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth and Robert Southey.

Figure 7.1 – John Leech: Discovery of the Laws of Gravitation by Isaac Newton (1848).

Figure 7.2 – George Cruikshank: Sir Isaac Newton's Courtship (1838).

Figure 7.3 – Newton as a child with his windmill and other mechanical devices (1838). Tom Telescope praised Newton’s ingenuity by describing his windmill, copied from a real one being built nearby, which was put on top of the house where Newton lodged in Grantham while he went to school.

Figure 7.4 – Engraving in the Illustrated London News of the first six statues in the Oxford University Museum (1869).

Figure 7.5 – Mizuno Toshikata: Isaac Newton (c.1900).

Figure 7.6 – Engraving after Frederick Newenham (1859). Isaac Newton, at the Age of Twelve.

Figure 8.1 – Newton’s three sites of inspiration (1836). Charles Smith published his series of illustrations and facsimile manuscipts as a book of Historical and literary curiosities. Other English heroes who he treated in similar style included the artist William Hogarth, the essayist Joseph Addison, and the penal reformer John Howard. Newton’s letter about double vision was first published in 1850, and David Brewster later discussed its significance at length.

Figure 8.2 – J. C. Barrow: Newton’s Cottage at Woolsthorpe (1797). This preparatory drawing for one of Barrow’s attractive water colours shows the delapidated state of the cottage at the end of the eighteenth century.

Figure 8.3 – William Theed: bronze statue of Newton. The Grantham Newton is almost thirteen feet high and weighs over two tons.