Hopkins' Top Wranglers, 1829–1854

The portrait album, mentioned in the Preface as residing in Trinity College’s Wren Library, was little known for many years. It is a very large, well-bound volume, with each portrait mounted on its own stout page. (Henceforth, it is referred to as the “Wren Library album”.) The portraits are the midnineteenth century equivalents of modern-day graduation photographs: each subject wears an academic gown and holds a mortar board. All fi gures are shown three-quarters length, seated. Though the bodies and backgrounds are freely and rapidly sketched, in rather conventional poses, the heads are drawn with great skill and finesse.

There are forty-one numbered portraits, all of William Hopkins’ pupils: forty of them are of students who obtained fi rst, second or third place in the Mathematical Tripos examinations. The remaining portrait is of a fourth wrangler (A. Barry), who won the second Smith’s Prize and also gained First Class honours in the Classical Tripos. Five more portraits, all of graduates of Trinity College, are added at the back of the album: four duplicate other portraits and one is of a further second wrangler. An accurate list of contents states that the fi ve additions were made in 1931. The portraits are of varying sizes, the largest being 13.75″×10.5″ (height×width in inches) and the smallest 9″×7″. Most within a rectangular border are signed and dated by Thomas Charles Wageman, whereas the smaller ones are usually octagonal and unsigned. The latter may possibly be by another artist, but are in similar style. Many portraits were made in the subject’s year of graduation as B.A., but some are from later: the longest delayed are those of Colenso, fourteen years later, and G. Budd, fi fteen years later. The portraits are bound in partial chronological order, haphazardly at fi rst, but by year of graduation from 1844 onwards.