William Osler and Seymour Thomas, "the boy artist of Texas"

Critics consider the 1908-1909 portrait of William Osler by S. Seymour Thomas the best of six oil-on-canvas portraits of Osler done from life, including those by the more acclaimed US artists John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase. Osler called it "the best pictorial diagnosis I have ever seen" and told Thomas "I am at your service." A reappraisal of Seymour Thomas explains why his portrait makes us feel much as the artist did in Osler's presence, which is the original English-language definition of "empathy." Thomas told his subject that "I feel that you can look clear through me and see the wall on the other side." The intensity of Osler's gaze affects us similarly. The portrait satisfied Osler, but his wife, Grace Revere Osler, never warmed to it, perhaps because it depicts so clearly a highly focused, agenda-driven man. Helen Thomas used the portrait to promote her husband's business, and, after a tortuous history, the portrait eventually returned to Oxford University, where it now hangs inconspicuously in the Radcliffe Science Library.