Fotoreproductie van een schilderij, voorstellende een portret van John Spreull before 1868

Thomas Annan made this photogravure reproduction of a painted portrait of John Spreull sometime in the second half of the 19th century. It’s an intriguing example of the public role of images. Spreull was an apothecary and a Covenanter, a member of the 17th-century Scottish Presbyterian movement that resisted the imposition of Episcopacy by the British crown. Annan's print is found in a biographical dictionary. The image, by then, served as an aide-memoire for a particular kind of Scottish Protestant identity. By the Victorian era, Spreull was celebrated as a martyr. The dictionary and its portraits represent a fascinating, if obscure, example of the 19th century’s fascination with its past. Historians can study such books, looking at who was included and excluded, whose images were reproduced, and how those images were then consumed. The images are revealing of the culture that made them.