F. A. Hayek, “Portraits of J. S. Mill”

F. A. Hayek’s “Portraits of J. S. Mill” is a published letter to the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, originally dated November 11, 1949, and reproduced in the supplied 2022 version with editorial notes. Its purpose is practical and historical: to locate two early portraits of Mill, particularly a medaillon needed for Hayek’s forthcoming edition of the correspondence between Mill and Harriet Taylor. The letter moves from identifying the images and their documentary traces to reconstructing their possible ownership, then appeals to readers for help. Its central concern is the preservation of evidence that could supplement the familiar visual record of Mill’s old age.

Sir,—John Stuart Mill’s appearance is generally known only from portraits taken very late in his life.

This opening establishes why the search matters. Hayek identifies only two known early portraits: a Daguerreotype and a cameo or medaillon, both reproduced in H. S. R. Elliot’s 1910 edition of Mill’s letters. Published reproductions preserve access to the images, but do not establish where the originals are. Hayek’s inquiry therefore distinguishes knowledge of a portrait from knowledge of the surviving object and its provenance.

The medaillon receives particular attention. Hayek considers it undoubtedly the earlier image and almost certainly identical with, or derived from, a portrait made by an artist named Cunningham at Falmouth in April 1840, when Mill was in his thirty-fourth year. The distinction between identity and derivation is important: Hayek proposes a strong connection without claiming that the reproduced medaillon must be Cunningham’s original work. He supports that connection through two contemporary references, Caroline Fox’s Memories of Old Friends and an unpublished letter from John Sterling to Mill. Sterling’s use of the term medaillon helps link the written evidence to the reproduced image.

The present whereabouts of the originals of both these portraits are unknown.

The second paragraph turns from identification to the portraits’ possible passage through private ownership. Hayek believes they were almost certainly held by Mary Taylor, Mrs. Mill’s granddaughter, who died in 1918. Yet he cannot trace any portrait explicitly identified as Mill among the effects sold after her death. His account retains the uncertainty of the evidence: probable possession is not an established chain of custody, and failure to find a sale description does not prove that the objects were destroyed.

It is to be feared that they were not recognised as portraits of Mill, and are lost, but it may not yet be too late to recover them for some national collection where they clearly belong.

Here the letter connects a specific archival problem with a claim about public preservation. An unidentified portrait might survive while effectively disappearing from the historical record. Hayek fears precisely this loss through misrecognition, but leaves recovery open. His proposed destination—a national collection—would secure the images as accessible historical evidence. The immediate editorial need to reproduce the medaillon thus sits within a broader concern for the portraits’ preservation.

The concluding appeal asks readers both to help trace the medaillon and to identify Cunningham. These are related but distinct tasks: locating an object would not necessarily settle its attribution. The supplied editorial notes place the inquiry in the subsequent publication history of Hayek’s Mill scholarship. They identify the correspondence edition as the book published in 1951 and report a reproduction of the medallion in Hayek on Mill. They also clarify the locations of the two images in Elliot’s edition and provide further information about Fox and Sterling. Those annotations extend the documentary context, but do not establish that Hayek’s appeal recovered either original. The letter’s significance remains its compact demonstration of historical research proceeding through reproductions, testimony, uncertain provenance, and a public request for missing evidence.