Lawyers have always been a prime subject for visual representation. From the popular illustrated biographical encyclopedias of the early modem period to the commissioned oil paintings and engraved portraits of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and on into the age of photography, lawyer portraits have been with us almost as long as the art of portraiture itself. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, technological progress in the graphic arts meant that
visual art could be produced for the masses. Portraiture, both formal and satirical, came to play a role in such diverse media as single sheet engravings, advertising trade cards, illustrated newspapers and magazines, and even cigar box labels. In all of these media, lawyer portraits abounded.
Over the centuries, there emerged certain conventions about how to portray lawyers. In part, these derived from literary portraits of lawyers, from works such as John Earle's Microcosmographia, and from popular folklore (often negative) about lawyers. By the end of the eighteenth century, one of the most fixed of these conventions, evidenced in both formal oil portraits and satirical engravings, was the lawyer surrounded by the tools of the profession: books, legal documents, pens, and ink.
In this paper, I will explore the development of this convention of portraiture and analyze the significance of the use of various "props "-books, documents, and the like-in popular images of lawyers and the legal profession. I will also discuss the ways in which portraits may be used to understand and write the history of the material culture of law practice as it has developed in Britain and the United States during the past two centuries. The talk will be illustrated by examples of legal portraits drawn from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from various genres and media.