[BITList] Sir Joseph Banks

[John Feltham]

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Banks, Sir  Joseph, baronet  (1743-1820), naturalist and patron of science, was born on 13 February 1743 at 30 Argyll Street, London, the first child and only son of William Banks (1719-1761), gentleman, of Revesby Abbey, Lincolnshire, previously named William Banks Hodgkinson, of Overton, Derbyshire, as heir to his maternal grandfather, William Hodgkinson  (1661/2-1731), merchant and landowner. Joseph's mother was Sarah (1709-1804), eldest daughter of William Bate and his wife, Arabella.

Education

Banks was educated in a manner appropriate to his status as the heir to a landed fortune, being sent first to Harrow School (1752-6) and then to Eton College (1756-60). At Eton he was a fairly indifferent student as regards the traditional classical curriculum but, largely thanks to his own efforts, he there began his lifelong preoccupation with botany. His mother may also have played a part in his developing botanical interests: he was encouraged by a copy of Gerard's Herbal which he found in her dressing-room. At Oxford, where he matriculated at Christ Church as a gentleman commoner in 1760, he largely devoted himself to natural history rather than the predominantly classical course of studies. Such was his determination to receive botanical instruction that, at his own expense, he brought the Cambridge botanist Israel Lyons to give a set of lectures at Oxford in 1764, thereby filling the vacuum created by the reluctance of Oxford's professor of botany, Dr Sibthorp, to teach. Though there was little in the formal curriculum at Oxford which bore on his natural history interests, his time as an undergraduate helped to consolidate his love of the study of nature. He found other students who shared his enthusiasm and participated in informal societies devoted to such pursuits as botanizing and the study of geology.

After his father died in 1761, leaving him the Revesby estate in Lincolnshire, Banks had the financial means to follow any calling he chose and so devoted himself to the pursuit of natural history. Increasingly he divided his time between Oxford and London, where his mother's new house at 22 Paradise Row, Chelsea, gave him ready access to the Chelsea Physic Garden of the Society of Apothecaries, then the most important centre of botanical activity in the country. 1764, the year in which he came of age, was the last year he spent any length of time at Oxford which, like many of his social class, he left without taking a degree. Thereafter he immersed himself in the cultural world of the London elite, becoming both a fellow of the Royal Society and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1766 (he had previously become a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in 1761). He also spent a great deal of time at the British Museum and there he came to know his close collaborator, Daniel Solander, who held the post of assistant librarian from 1765 until his death in 1788. Solander had trained under the great Linnaeus and, after coming to Britain in 1760, helped to disseminate his classificatory system. Through his friendship with Solander, which was cemented by their time together on the Endeavour, Banks was, then, indirectly a disciple of Linnaeus, with whom he exchanged cordial correspondence.

Expeditions

Banks served his apprenticeship as a scientifically trained Linnaean naturalist-as opposed to an undiscriminating virtuoso gentleman collector-by accompanying his old Etonian friend, the naval officer and future MP and lord of the Admiralty, Constantine Phipps, on an expedition in 1766 to Labrador and Newfoundland. Though Banks was the sole naturalist on board, Solander assisted him in his choice of equipment and reference works, and later helped put his specimens from this voyage (now in the Natural History Museum, London) in order. Banks's journal (ed. A. M. Lysaght, 1971) indicates the close attention he paid to the full Linnaean domain of natural history which embraced not only the flora, fauna and minerals of an area but also its human population.

This expedition served as a virtual rehearsal for the great Endeavour voyage of 1768 to 1771 which lifted Banks from the ranks of gentlemen naturalists to become a figure of international scientific significance. He owed his position as a self-funded member of the Endeavour expedition to Lord Sandwich, first lord of the Admiralty and his close friend. Both were enthusiastic London clubmen as well as being fellow devotees of a free-living demi-monde. Thus, for example, David Hume reported the two fishing near Newbury in the company of 'two or three ladies of pleasure'  (Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 1988, 152).

The Endeavour expedition made it possible for Banks to explore a whole portion of the globe hitherto largely unexposed to European gaze. In doing so, he was ably assisted by the scientific party he had brought with him at his own expense. Along with Solander, there was another Swede, Herman Sporing, who served as secretary, together with two draughtsmen, Alexander Buchan, who specialized in landscapes, and Sydney Parkinson, who concentrated on natural history specimens. The chief goal of the voyage was to observe the transit of Venus at Tahiti where the Endeavour anchored on 13 April 1769; it remained there for three months, during which time Buchan died.

This lengthy stay gave Banks ample opportunity to study the flora and fauna of the island as well as to observe the character of its human society. He learned Tahitian and was fascinated by points of contrast with English society, being ready on occasions to admit the superiority of some aspects of Tahitian society, and that Europeans could benefit from a knowledge of some of the islanders' practical skills. He participated enthusiastically in local customs, even to the point of undergoing the painful operation of being tattooed. Like many of his shipmates, too, he formed liaisons with the Tahitian women and, in Enlightenment fashion, he later discoursed on the way in which Tahitian society was less oppressed by sexual taboos than was Europe. When the Tahitian Omai was brought to England in 1774, Banks became his patron, introducing him to the court and to elite society more generally.

Following his sealed Admiralty orders, Cook, captain of the Endeavour, next turned south to explore the largely unknown territories which earlier Dutch explorers had termed New Zealand and New Holland. Though six months were spent in circumnavigating and charting New Zealand, Banks had only limited opportunities to investigate its natural history since there were few landfalls. This was partly because of the warlike nature of the Maori people, whose cannibalism Banks regarded as undermining the proper position of man in the great chain of being. Australia offered more possibilities for natural history-as Cook's choice of the name Botany Bay for the area near the future city of Sydney indicates. However, Banks was disappointed not to have made more contact with the native peoples, and used the few opportunities that presented themselves (such as the enforced sojourn for repairs following the Endeavour's encounter with the Great Barrier Reef in June 1770) to compile some record of their customs and languages. His lack of any conception of racial superiority is evident in his remarks about the Australian Aborigines in his Endeavour journal.

Because of the need for a thorough overhaul following the Endeavour's near fatal grounding on the Great Barrier Reef, Cook called at Batavia on 9 October 1770. There his proud record of keeping his men safe from disease (and especially scurvy, the traditional scourge of long ocean voyages) was broken when thirty men died as a result of the Java fevers-among them Banks's associates, Parkinson and Sporing. Banks and Solander survived their own illness largely by leaving Batavia for the Javanese countryside. After a stay of over three months the depleted ship left Batavia and made its way back to Britain, landing at Deal on 12 June 1771.

Back in England, Banks received a rapturous welcome which overshadowed that of Cook himself. He was introduced to George III, beginning a long association which saw him become a close friend and the king's adviser on matters related to science or agriculture. The success of Cook's first great Pacific voyage prompted the organization of another in 1772, which Banks enthusiastically supported. This time he planned to take a much larger entourage including, it would seem, a valet who appears to have been a mistress in disguise. But the adulation that he had received on his return from the Endeavour expedition had blinded him to the limitations of his influence with the navy and his attempts to reorganize the expedition to accommodate this large party led to his former patron, Lord Sandwich, turning against him. Thus thwarted, Banks withdrew from the Resolution voyage in high dudgeon and employed the scientific party he had formed on a shorter voyage in 1772 to explore the geology and natural history of Iceland. This was the beginning of a lifelong association with that island and its people which led to his intervening on their behalf with the British government in 1810 to lessen the effects of the naval blockade of the island-a blockade which was really directed at Denmark, Iceland's ruler, which was then an ally of Napoleon.

President of the Royal Society, 1778-1820

The voyage to Iceland marked the end of Banks's overseas travel (apart from a short trip to the Netherlands in 1773). More and more he devoted his always considerable energies to furthering the cause of science. In 1773 his close association with the king led to his appointment as the virtual director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, an institution he transformed from a royal pleasure garden to a major scientific centre devoted to fostering botanical exchange around the globe-especially if such an exchange benefited England's larger imperial purposes. In the following year he served for the first time on the council of the Royal Society, thus beginning his steady rise within that body which culminated in his election as president in 1778.

Another indication of Banks's increasingly single-minded sense of purpose was his move in 1777 from bachelor quarters at New Burlington Street to a much larger establishment at 32 Soho Square which became a virtual research institute. He employed a series of naturalists (Solander, Dryander, and Robert Brown) to keep his ever-increasing collections in order. The transition from the youthful man about town to the gentleman assuming his social responsibilities was also marked by his marriage in 1779 to Dorothea Hugessen (1758-1828), a well-acred heiress. Marriage meant parting from his long-established mistress, Sarah Wells, but the leave-taking appears to have been a civilized one with, no doubt, a suitable financial arrangement. An earlier association with Harriet Blosset dated from just before he left on the Endeavour but though, according to the naturalist Daines Barrington, Banks admitted he gave Blosset 'the strongest reason to expect he would return her husband'  (Barrington to Pennant, 24 Aug 1771, NL NZ, Turnbull L.), he broke off the connection on his return, paying some £5000 in compensation.

Banks's election as president of the Royal Society, followed by his marriage, marked the end of his life as a free-living youthful adventurer and his elevation to the position of a statesman of science. However, he took some time to establish his authority, despite the king's bestowal of a baronetcy in 1781, since he was seen by some in the society, and especially those who regarded themselves as custodians of the mathematical Newtonian tradition, as a gentleman virtuoso without respectable scientific credentials except in the less prestigious area of natural history. This, together with his cavalier manner in dealing with some of the office-bearers, especially his ousting of Charles Hutton as the society's foreign secretary, helps account for the disputes within the organization over his presidency in 1783-4. He survived these assaults, which were led chiefly by Bishop Samuel Horsley, editor of Newton's works, and thereafter he established an unprecedented sway within the society as its longest serving president, continually re-elected until his death.

During his long tenure Banks greatly strengthened the links between the Royal Society and the political establishment, helping to make science part of the natural concerns of the British state. The price for this was a reluctance on his part to elect low-born fellows or those suspected of political radicalism. Election depended very much on Banks's favour. However his continual re-election as president is an indication that the generally independent-minded fellows did not regard his firm hold on affairs as oppressive. Throughout his presidency he remained fiercely protective of the society: thus he opposed the foundation of the Geological Society in 1809 and the Astronomical Society in 1820, since he regarded the foundation of such new bodies as a challenge to its traditional dominance of the scientific estate.

His position was the hub around which Banks's ever-mounting scientific and political responsibilities revolved. As president of the Royal Society he was an ex officio member of the governing boards of the few institutions established by the British government to deal specifically with scientific affairs: the Royal Observatory, the board of longitude, and (from 1793) the board of agriculture. Moreover he considerably broadened the scope of his activities in order to link the possibilities of science more closely with the apparatus of the British state. The main bureaucratic agency through which he worked was the privy council committee on trade. There he had a firm ally in Charles Jenkinson (from 1786 to 1796 known as Lord Hawkesbury and then as the first earl of Liverpool) who was appointed the committee's first president in 1786. Like Banks, Jenkinson was something of a neo-mercantilist committed to ensuring as great as possible economic and strategic independence for Britain, and so greatly valued Banks's advice on the ways in which it might be possible to transfer economically valuable crops such as cotton and tea to areas of the globe under the British flag. Banks's work with the committee on trade and on coin ultimately led, in 1797, to his elevation to privy councillor.

Together with the privy council committee on trade, Banks provided scientific advice through a number of other bureaucratic channels including the Board of Control (for India), the Home Office, and the Admiralty. At the last he benefited from his association with that scientifically minded administrator, Sir Evan Nepean, with whom he closely worked when organizing expeditions such as the ill-fated Bounty expedition of 1787-9 and Flinders's circumnavigation of Australia on the Investigator expedition of 1801-3-expeditions which merged scientific purposes with Britain's larger imperial designs. The Bounty venture was well in accord with Banks's mercantilist goal of increasing Britain's economic self-sufficiency through the application of science to imperial policy, for its object was to transfer breadfruit from Tahiti to provide a cheap source of food for the slaves in the British West Indies. Banks's close supervision of the expedition extended to the appointment of his client, William Bligh, as captain both of the eventful Bounty expedition and of its successor, the Providence, which successfully brought the breadfruit to the West Indies in 1793. The focus for such ventures in imperial botany was the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, which, thanks to Banks's efforts, became the centre of a worldwide network of colonial botanical gardens often staffed by Kew-trained collectors.

Alongside his position as what his close friend, William Eden, Lord Auckland, facetiously described as HM minister of philosophic affairs, that is, a virtual minister for science, Banks also acted as an adviser to government on other imperial issues. In 1779 he strongly urged the House of Commons to consider establishing a penal settlement at Botany Bay using his own firsthand knowledge to argue that it could support a convict population. Thereafter he remained closely involved with Australian affairs, advising the British government on suitable appointments as governors and doing what he could to represent the infant colony's interest at a time when British politicians were preoccupied with the French wars.

Along with his promotion of Australian interests Banks was actively involved in promoting greater British involvement in the exploration of Africa. He was one of the founders of the African Society, which was established in 1788 with the goal of sponsoring expeditions to Africa and, in particular, charting the course of the Niger. The most celebrated of these were those led by the Scot Mungo Park (in 1795-9 and 1805-6), the German Friedrich Hornemann (1797-1801), and the Swiss Johann Burckhardt (1809-17). The last two owed their appointments to Banks's connections with the University of Gottingen which, as part of Hanover, was linked with the British crown.

Banks's associations with Gottingen are a reminder that, along with his determination to use science, wherever possible, to promote the interests of the British empire, he also retained an allegiance to a larger and cosmopolitan republic of letters. His attempt to keep open the channels of scientific communication with France led him to use his influence to recover for the French Republic a large natural history collection captured by the British navy in the course of the war with revolutionary France in 1795. This had been assembled by La Billardiere, the botanist on the D'Entrecasteaux expedition sent in search of the lost expedition led by La Perouse. It was partly in recognition of this service that Banks was chosen as a member of the National Institute of France in 1802 and his enthusiastic public letter acknowledging this honour and describing the French Institute as 'the first Literary Society in the World' led to accusations that he was unpatriotic and had slighted his own Royal Society and with it the king.

Last years

With the descent into madness of his chief patron, George III, and the political eclipse of his close ally the earl of Liverpool, who resigned his last public office in 1802, Banks's role in public affairs declined in his last two decades. He did, however, continue to give advice on behalf of the Royal Society for such scientific expeditions as the 1818 Arctic expedition commanded by John Ross. Such activities, together with his own example in combining naval and scientific purposes, helped to forge the tradition of scientific exploration which, in the nineteenth century, produced such notable voyages as those undertaken by the Beagle, Rattlesnake, and Commander. Banks was also able to increase the sway of the Royal Society through securing, in 1818, a bill for changing the composition of the board of longitude to include more representation from the Royal Society.

In 1818 Banks was involved in a carriage accident which led to the death of his beloved sister, Sarah Banks, who had lived with him most of his life and shared his love of collecting. Both, in their different ways, were examples of that cultural type, the virtuoso, who amassed large collections of the rare and the curious. But while Sarah built up a huge and miscellaneous collection of everything from coins to visiting cards, Banks brought to his collecting activities greater system and purpose, using the Linnaean and, subsequently, other systems of classification (notably that of Antoine de Jussieu) to give his private museum-which after his death became the core of the British Museum's natural history division (now the Natural History Museum, London)-a scientific purpose. His house-cum-research institute at Soho Square was open to serious naturalists of all nationalities and it also provided the setting for his celebrated scientific soirees which helped bring together major figures from the worlds of science and politics. The rather brash but eager young man who withdrew in pique from the second Cook voyage gave way to a more courteous but, none the less, determined advocate of science-a transformation captured in the contrast between his two best-known portraits, that by Joshua Reynolds painted in 1771-2 soon after his return from the Endeavour expedition (now in the National Portrait Gallery) and that painted by Thomas Phillips in 1815 as his official portrait as president of the Royal Society (still in the Royal Society). He was more at home in male than female company, and was, the painter, Joseph Farington, noted, 'rather coarse and heavy'  (Farington Diary, ed. Greig, 1.136). Lord Glenbervie described him more fully as 'awkward in his person, but extremely well-bred, in the best mode of English breeding ... one of the many instances to prove that the personal graces are far from essential to politeness'  (Diaries of Sylvester Douglas (Lord Glenbervie), ed. F. Bickley, 1928, 2.206).

Along with his position at the centre of scientific and political affairs in London, Banks also maintained close ties with his family seat at Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire. Thence he returned every summer to supervise the improvement of his estates and to renew his ties with his fellow squires. In county politics he worked, where possible, to prevent political division but his fundamental conservatism is apparent in his hostility to any would-be Lincolnshire politician connected with the cause of reform. He also took the view that it was incumbent on him, as president of the Royal Society and as a loyal servant of the king, to be seen to be above the noisy din of party politics. Thus he would accept the honour of being made a knight in the Order of the Bath in 1795 only when it was apparent that it was a direct gift from the king rather than a recognition for service to any party. None the less, he would intervene-as unobtrusively as possible-in the political process when he felt the welfare of what he termed the country interest was at stake. Thus he played an important but discreet role in organizing the opposition to the Wool Bill of 1788 which favoured manufacturers at the expense of growers, and he was a spirited defender of the need for a system of corn laws. Indeed, his sympathies on the latter issue were widely enough known for his London house to be attacked during the corn laws riots of 1815.

Though a determined defender of the constitutional order in church and state-particularly when it came under threat in the age of the French revolution-Banks's own religious views hovered between an enlightened Christianity and deism. As an improving landlord he was hostile to the system of clerical tithes, and to clerical privilege more generally. Theological discussion he regarded as largely fruitless and he had an aversion to ritual forms of religion. Though prepared to encourage missionary activity to promote larger imperial designs he was doubtful of its worth: in his words he was 'little inclined to Conversions. The will of God will, no doubt, put + keep all mankind on the right way; + his mercy will most assuredly despise all Ceremonial and all mistaken Faith'  (Gascoigne, Joseph Banks, 42). He was animated by a strong sense of public duty, which complemented his strictly hierarchical view of society. Hence the choice of the lizard for his seal, 'an animal said to be Endowed by nature with an instinctive love of mankind'. He hoped the choice would serve

as a Perpetual Remembrance that man is never so well employd, as when he is Laboring for the advantage of the Public; without the Expectation, the hope or Even a wish to Derive advantage of any kind, from the Result of his Exertions. (ibid., 18)

Banks remained active to the end of his life despite increasingly severe gout. He died on Monday 19 June 1820 and was buried (at his own request) without any monument at the parish church of Heston near his Middlesex country house, Spring Grove in the village of Spring Grove, the site of a number of his botanical and horticultural experiments. When he died he had achieved a European-wide reputation as one who had fruitfully brought together the worlds of government and science. As the great French naturalist, Georges Cuvier, generously acknowledged in his eloge before the French Academie des Sciences, Banks's publications were few but his role as a statesman of science meant that 'his name will shine with lustre in the history of the sciences'  (Cuvier, 3.49). However, Banks's fame soon faded since he was regarded as the embodiment of a scientific old regime which was being transformed by the reforms of the nineteenth century. Moreover, accident and the sheer mass and eventual scattering of his papers prevented the appearance of the massive biography which was his due. Not until the late twentieth century has his importance again been properly acknowledged as his papers have been reassembled by H. B. Carter and the historiography of science has become more sympathetic to the patrons as well as the practitioners of science.

John Gascoigne 

Sources  H. B. Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, 1743-1820 (1988) + J. Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment (1994) + H. B. Carter, Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820): a guide to biographical and bibliographical sources, St Paul's Bibliographies (1987) + J. Gascoigne, 'The scientist as patron and patriotic symbol: the changing reputation of Sir Joseph Banks', Studies in scientific biography, ed. M. Shortland and R. Yeo (1996), 243-65 + P. O'Brian, Joseph Banks: a life (1987) + The Endeavour journal of Joseph Banks, 1768-1771, ed. J. C. Beaglehole, 2 vols. (1962) + The Farington diary, ed. J. Greig, 8 vols. (1922-8) + G. Cuvier, 'Eloge historique de Sir Joseph Banks, lu le 2 Avril 1821', Recueil des eloges historiques: lus dans les seances de l'Institut Royal de France, 3 (1827), 49-92 + Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766: his diary, manuscripts and collections, ed. A. M. Lysaght (1971) + R. A. Rauschenberg, 'The journals of Joseph Banks's voyage up Great Britain's west coast to Iceland and to the Orkney isles, July to October, 1772', Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 117 (1973), 186-226 + Sir Joseph Banks: a global perspective [London 1993], ed. R. E. R. Banks and others (1994) + D. Mackay, In the wake of Cook: exploration, science and empire, 1780-1801 (1985) + H. C. Cameron, Sir Joseph Banks, KB, PRS: the autocrat of the philosophers (1952) + H. B. Carter, His majesty's Spanish flock: Sir Joseph Banks and the merinos of George III of England (1964) + H. B. Carter, The sheep and wool correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1781-1820 (1979) + The Banks letters, ed. W. R. Dawson (1958) + J. Gascoigne, Science in the service of empire: Joseph Banks, the British state and the uses of science in the age of revolution (1998) + P. Fona, 'Presidential portraits: Joseph Banks in the National Library', National Library of Australia News, 9/3 (1998), 7-10 + will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/1634, sig. 510
Archives American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, corresp. + Auckland Public Library, notes on Cook's voyages + BL, corresp. and papers, Add. MSS 8094-8100, 8967-8968, 33977-33982, 43837, 52281 + BL, corresp. and papers relating to Lincolnshire estates, Add. MS 43837 + BL, corresp., notebook, and papers, Add. MSS 56297-56302 + California State Library, San Francisco, corresp. and papers + CKS, corresp., diaries, and papers + CUL, journals + Derby Local Studies, journal + FM Cam., corresp., minutes, and memoranda relating to the British Museum + ICL, corresp. relating to Derby's lead mining + Lincs. Arch., corresp., estate corresp., and papers; family and estate corresp. and papers; agricultural and estate papers; corresp. and papers relating to Lincolnshire militia + McGill University, Montreal, Blacker-Wood Library of Biology, journal and papers + Mitchell L., NSW, corresp. and papers + NHM, corresp., journal extracts, and papers + NL Aus., corresp. + NL NZ, Turnbull L., papers + NMM, journal of dockyard visitations + RBG Kew, corresp. and papers + Royal Geographical Society of Australia, Adelaide, journal, notes on Iceland [on deposit in State Library of South Australia] + RS, corresp. and papers + RSA, corresp. + RSA, corresp. + SOAS, papers relating to Pacific languages + State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Dixson Wing, journal and papers + U. Reading L., corresp. and papers + University of Wisconsin, Madison, corresp. relating to Iceland + Wellcome L., corresp., journal, and papers + Yale U., Sterling Memorial Library, corresp. and papers + Yale U., Beinecke L., corresp. and papers | Birm. CA, corresp. with Matthew Boulton and M. R. Boulton + BL, letters to George Chalmers, etc., Add. MSS 22549, 22900-22901, 23669, 24727, 27937, 28545, 42072, 62114; Egerton MSS 2137, 2180 + BL, corresp. with R. F. Greville, Add. MS 42072 + BL, corresp. with William Hamilton, Add. MSS 34048; Egerton MS 2641 + BL, letter to Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin, Add. MS 62114 + BL, letters to earls of Liverpool, loan 72 + CBS, letters to duke and duchess of Somerset + Derbys. RO, letters to William Philip Perrin + Herefs. RO, corresp. with T. A. Knight + Hollandsche Maatschapij der Wetenschappen, letters to Martin Van Marum + Lincs. Arch., letters to Lord Brownlow + Lincs. Arch., letters to Sir Henry Hawley + Linn. Soc., corresp. with Sir James Smith + NA Scot., letters to Hope family + NL Scot., corresp. mainly with Sir John Leslie + NL Wales, letters to John Lloyd + NMM, letters to Matthew Flinders and his wife + RAS, corresp. with Sir William Herschel + Rothamsted Experimental Station Library, Harpenden, corresp. with Sir John Sinclair, Lord Liverpool, etc. + Selkirk Library, corresp. with Mungo Park + TNA: PRO, Pitt MSS, letters to William Pitt, PRO 30/8
Likenesses  J. Reynolds, oils, 1771-3, NPG [see illus.] · B. West, oils, c.1772, repro. in Carter, Sir Joseph Banks, frontispiece; priv. coll. · J. R. Smith, mezzotint, pubd 1773 (after B. West), BM · W. Parry, group portrait, oils, 1776 (with Omani and Dr Daniel Solander), Parham Park, West Sussex · J. Reynolds, group portrait, oils, 1777-9 (The Society of Dilettanti), Society of Dilettanti, Brooks's Club, London · A. S. Damer, bust, 1795, BM · J. Gillray, caricature, etching, pubd 1795, NPG · T. Lawrence, oils, 1806, NPG · T. Lawrence, oils, exh. RA 1806, BM · T. Phillips, oils, 1810, NPG · P. Turnerelli, marble bust, c.1814, RCP Lond. · T. Phillips, oils, 1815, RS · W. Wyon junior, bronze medal, 1816, Royal Mint, Tower Hill, London · F. Chantrey, bust, 1818, National Gallery, Melbourne, Australia · F. L. Chantrey, bust, 1818, RS · T. Phillips, oils, 1820, Royal Horticultural Society, London · F. Chantrey, bust, 1822, Linn. Soc. · F. Chantrey, marble statue, 1826, BM · attrib. J. Flaxman, medallions, Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston, Staffordshire · T. Hearne, pencil drawing, BM · T. Lawrence, pencil drawing, NPG · T. Philips, oils, Guildhall, Boston, Lincolnshire · J. Sharples, pastel drawing, Bristol City Art Gallery · oils, repro. in Lysaght, ed., Joseph Banks; priv. coll.
Wealth at death  under £40,000



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