IV - George Dyer and “Dyer's Frend”

Summary

The portrait of George Dyer (oil painting, 24″ × 20″) reproduced here has this interesting record written on the back of the canvas in three different handwritings:

This portrait of Lamb's George Dyer by [John] Jackson R.A. was presented by Dyer to his most intimate friend William Frend of Jesus College Cambridge M.A. and S.W. Celebrated in his day and now 1891 belongs to his son Henry Tyrwhitt Frend Barrister at law and now to W. W. Frend 1896.

It went to National Portrait Exhibition as Portrait of George Dyer (Jackson) lent by H. T. Frend, Garden Court Temple.

When good Americans come to Cambridge they visit Emmanuel College, as being the college of Harvard. The best of these visitors will ask for memorials of George Dyer and these notes may enable them to climb “Parnassus” and discover his old rooms.

At Christ's Hospital, which he entered in 1762 at the age of seven, Dyer came under the influence of Dr Anthony Askew, who had taken his degree of M.B. at Emmanuel in 1745 and combined the practice of medicine in Cambridge with much European travel, and a passion for classical scholarship.