The 1844 portrait found in the former home of Bertha’s Mussels restaurant is thought to be the oldest surviving portrait of the School of Medicine founder.
Photo: Meg Fielding, director of the history of Maryland medicine at MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, holds an 1844 portrait of Dr. John Davidge, founder and first dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. (Photo courtesy of Meg Fielding)
It could be called a finding of fate: the recent discovery of a more than 180-year-old painting of John Beale Davidge, MD, the founder of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The portrait had been stashed in a storage closet at the former Bertha’s Mussels restaurant in Baltimore’s Fells Point neighborhood.
At one time, it hung on Bertha’s walls, but no one took much interest in the historic surgeon who rose to local fame after a severe yellow fever epidemic struck Baltimore in 1797. Davidge went on to teach private courses in medicine until he joined two other physicians to obtain a charter in 1807 for the College of Medicine in Maryland, which would soon become the University of Maryland. He held the chair of anatomy and surgery from 1807 until his death in 1829, and during some of those years, he also served as dean.
Eponymous Davidge Hall, the oldest continuously used medical education building in the Western Hemisphere, is currently undergoing extensive renovations to replace dated utilities, aging walls, and a crumbling facade. It once housed an original black-and-white portrait of Dr. Davidge dating back to the early 1800s, but that was stolen during the 1990s and replaced by a replica portrait a decade later.
This portrait was commissioned by the Medical Alumni Association (MAA) of the University of Maryland to mark the 2007 bicentennial celebration. The 1844 portrait found in Bertha’s is thought to be the oldest surviving portrait of Davidge, according to Larry Pitrof, executive director of MAA.
“We were devastated back in the late 1990s when the only rendering we had of Dr. Davidge was stolen from the first floor,” Pitrof said. “We commissioned a painting of our founder in time for our bicentennial celebration in 2007.”
Now he plans to display the historic portrait of Davidge in the newly restored Davidge Hall once renovations are completed by late 2026. “We’ll stage a grand opening to show off the building as well as the MAA’s Akiko K. Bowers Museum of Medical Artifacts,” he said.
He has Meg Fielding, director of the history of Maryland medicine at MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society, to thank for the finding and donation. She said her heart stopped when she got a text from a friend who was helping to clean out the shuttered restaurant.
“My first thought was, how come no one knows about this painting? But this is such a Baltimore story — these finds are more common than people know,” Fielding said, especially in the 1- and 2-century-old establishments scattered throughout the city.
She recently purchased a 200-year-old medical ledger that once belonged to a physician in Libertytown, Md., who was one of the original founders of MedChi, which was established in 1799. “It was found in someone’s house as they were packing to move,” Fielding said. “People often have no idea what they have.”