Etching of Mendeléeff (Mendeleyev). Etching of Mendeléeff (Mendeleyev). Portrait depicting Dimitri Ivanovitsch Mendeleyev at a desk with pen in hand, looking to the left, half-length seated. The image is framed in wood and glass, within which is a gilded wooden slipframe.
The engraving is one of around 20 made. The original engraving was gifted by the Royal Chemical Society to the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1990 with a note attached overleaf declaring that the original was gifted to the Society by the chemist himself, and explained that of 20, 6 copies remained in England while the rest where spread to France, Germany and Russia respectively. "The `remarque' represents Lomonosoff a forerunner of Mendeleeff. T E Thorpe'."
Indeed, the portrait of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov appears, as if drawn on a piece of paper, on the bottom right of the image.
This engraving was allegidly gifted to Ramsay at the request of Mendeleyev himself, in 1900. Mendeleyev had visited Ramsay c1897.
The image is signed on the bottom left by hand, but the name is illegible.
Probably based on photographs of Mendeleev at his study/annotating his diary, for example in the 1904 depiction of Mendeleev in his study in the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection, Department of Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania Library
On the reverse of the image (bottom left, also top left) is a sticker that identifies the image as "T10", perhaps a previous accession number for a different collection or an auction number. The letters "ILH" are written in chalk on the reverse too.
