Dr Thomas Cogan, 1803 (pastel on grey paper)

A framed colour drawing on grey paper, showing: a half-length portrait of Dr Thomas Cogan (1736-1818), physician and dissenting minister; he was also the co-founder of the Royal Humane Society in 1774, and the Bath Humane Society in 1805; early in his life, he took a temporary post in Rotterdam as a preacher; he decided to move there in 1780 on a longer term basis; however, because of the French revolutionary army's invasion of the Netherlands, he returned to England and lived in Bath from 1795, where he probably met the Sharples family for the first time; this work dates to late-1803; from Ellen Sharples's diary, for November & December, 1803, "Read Dr Cogan's Philosophical Treatise of the Passions, deriving very great pleasure from the perusal. [...] Dr Cogan sat to Mr S.[harples] for his picture, breakfasted with us one morning..."