RCVS portrait pictures join national collection online

Thirty-one paintings owned by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) can now be viewed online by the public, as photographs of them have been added to the ‘Your Paintings’ national website.

The majority of the RCVS collection features past-Presidents and Secretaries of the College, including the first President, Thomas Turner (1844 – 51), pictured, and George Fleming, who financed the 1881 Veterinary Surgeons Act.

These paintings can now more easily be seen by veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses (VNs), as well as the wider public.

Members of the public are asked to help catalogue the ‘Your Paintings’ collection by ‘tagging’ the photographs on the website to add information on the subjects featured, and to submit information about the pictures in the collection.

“We hope that veterinary surgeons and VNs, as well as other people associated with these professions, will enjoy seeing these pictures online, and that they will tag them with information about the people portrayed,” said RCVS Charitable Trust Librarian Clare Boulton.

“This information can be useful to veterinary historians – and also adds another dimension of interest for general browsers of the collection.” 

There are 211,861 pictures on the ‘Your Paintings’ website, which is an initiative of the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and the BBC.

The project was launched in June 2011, and includes paintings held in institutions ranging from traditional galleries to universities, local councils and even the Zoological Society of London.

View the photographs of the RCVS paintings