Artware Fineart has dated this 18th Century Portrait Painting to the 18th Century.
Portrait of Jedidiah Buxton 1707–1772, Mathematician & English mental calculator
Jedidiah Buxton
Signed/Inscribed:
Though the son of a schoolmaster and grandson of a clergyman he could neither read nor write. His mental powers were astonishing that in the midst of the most confused noise he would reply with accuracy to the most difficult questions. He was accidental asked by a stranger how many cubic eighths of an inch there were in a body whose three sides were 23,578 yards and though surrounded by a hundred labourers he in five hours gave a correct answer to the astonished stranger."
oil on canvas
35 x 25 cm. (14 x 10 in.)
Buxton, Jedidiah (1707–1772), mental arithmetician, was born on 20 March 1707 at Elmton, Derbyshire, the eldest of four surviving children of William Buxton (1672–1739), originally from Chelmorton, but then a farmer and schoolmaster of Elmton, and his wife, Sarah (1677–1760), daughter of John Short of Elmton. His paternal grandmother, Ann, was married to John Davenport, vicar of Elmton. Buxton married Alice Eastwood (d. 1753) on 4 February 1733 at Kirton, Nottinghamshire; they had at least two children. Although his father was schoolmaster of Elmton, and his grandfather had been the vicar, he could not write; and his knowledge, except of numbers, was extremely limited. How he came to understand the relative proportions of numbers, and their progressive denominations, he did not remember. However this was his interest. He frequently took no notice of objects, and when he did, it was only with reference to their numbers. After hearing a sermon he knew nothing about its content other than that it contained a certain number of words which he had counted during its delivery.
Despite his father's profession Buxton never learned to write and throughout his life was employed as a farm labourer. His inability to acquire the rudiments of education seems to have been caused by his absorbing passion for mental calculations, which occupied his mind to the exclusion of all else, and in which he attained a degree of skill that made him the wonder of the neighbourhood. He was first brought into more general notice by a letter in the Gentleman's Magazine for February 1751, by George Saxe, a gardener employed by the duke of Kingston, which was shortly followed by further communications in August 1751 and November 1753 from a Mr Holliday, of Haughton Park, Nottinghamshire. Among the many examples of Buxton's arithmetical feats which are given in these letters may be mentioned his calculation of the product of a farthing doubled 139 times. The result, expressed in pounds, extends to thirty-nine figures, and can be verified by the use of a computer. Buxton afterwards multiplied this enormous number by itself. It appears that he had invented an original nomenclature for large numbers, a 'tribe' being the cube of a million, and a 'cramp' a thousand 'tribes of tribes'. In April 1754 he walked to London, where he was entertained by Edward Cave, editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, at St John's Gate. He was introduced to the Royal Society, before whom he gave some illustrations of his calculating powers. He was also taken to see Garrick in Richard III, but paid no attention to the performance except to count the words spoken by the actors. A memoir of Buxton, with an uncredited portrait in Gentleman's Magazine, June 1754, gives his age as forty-nine, which does not agree with the date of his birth in Elmton parish register at the time of his baptism.
He measured the lands of Elmton, consisting of some thousand acres (4 km2), simply by striding over it. He gave the area not only in acres, roods and perches, but even in square in
Artware Fineart has dated this 18th Century Portrait Painting to the 18th Century.
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English School 18th, Century portrait of Jedidiah Buxton 1707–1772, Mathematician & English Mental Calculator
