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There are only a few portraits of Newton from his own lifetime, and all were done, understandably, after he had become famous. This is the earliest portrait, painted by Kneller in 1689, when Newton was 46 and the Principia had been out for a couple of years. The fact that Newton had his portrait done by Kneller, who painted royalty and aristocrats, says something about his status already.
Newton also had his portrait done in 1702 by Kneller again. This painting hangs in Britain's National Portrait Gallery.
Near the end of his life, Newton had a few portraits done. This is by Enoch Seeman in 1726. And a slightly more haggard image from the same time:
Also in 1726, John Vanderbank painted this portrait. It was owned by Caltech, most recently, but was stolen in 1979.
In 1766, the English painter Joseph Wright of Derby painted "A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a lamp is put in place of the sun" -- the "Philosopher" [the dominating figure in the middle of the painting] appears to be figured after Newton [the Vanderbank image flipped]:
Notice the popularity of Newtonian studies depicted in this image -- even instructive for the children.
After his death, Newton's contemporaries lauded and honored him. This is a 1727 painting by Pittoni of an "allegorical monument" to Newton, showing something in its grandiose nature of the honor that seemed to be Newton's due:
A famous engraving, "Apotheosis of Sir Isaac Newton", was done by Bickham 5 years after his death. For more on the imagery of Newton's impact and fame, with some wonderful picture [including these in fine detail] see John Fauvel et al. (eds.), Let Newton Be!, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Poets, too, honored Newton, with the most famous lines probably being Alexander Pope's --
Nature, and Nature's Laws lay hid in Night.
God said, Let Newton be! and all was Light.
[from his Epitaphs, 1730]
and William Wordsworth's --
And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
[from Prelude, Book 3, lines 58-63; the "statue" refers to the one in Trinity College, where the poet was also a student.]
Newton's monument/tomb is in Westminster Abbey, erected in 1731. It shows Newton with prism, telescope, furnace, coins, sun and planets, Halley's comet, and books on divinity, chronology, optics, and, of course, the mathematical principles. The inscription reads (translated from the Latin), "LET MORTALS REJOICE THAT THERE HAS EXISTED SUCH AND SO GREAT AN ORNAMENT TO THE HUMAN RACE."
It was at this time of commemoration and celebration that Newton became the iconic figure of "genius". Indeed, it appears that most of the traits that we still identify with scientific genius derived from the Newton legend:
abilities beyond ordinary mortals
prodigy, especially in mathematical ability
odd personality and asocial (or socially inept)
impractical and absent-minded (or functionally inept at ordinary life)
Here's the bust of Newton, made after his death, now at Trinity College, Cambridge. Note the design, more like a classical hero than the man the paintings depict.
For some modern instances of honor, here's the £1 British banknote issued in the 1980s, and a postage stamp from Germany.
Here you see that Newton's birthplace, Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, England, has become a National Trust site and a tourist attraction with thousands of visitors per year. The famous story of Newton sitting in the orchard and a falling apple leading him to hypothesize gravitational attraction continues to be appealing as an image of inspiration. The original tree toppled in a storm in 1820 -- and cuttings were saved and planted at several universities. That twisted apple tree in the photo is, according to York University physicist Richard Keesing, a rerooting of a part of the original trunk. Milo Keynes of Cambridge University calls the manor site "almost a place of pilgrimage," as the National Trust invites visitors to "pay homage to Isaac Newton's apple tree and its legendary role in the discovery of the law of gravity."
And finally, just to show you the image that persists in pop culture, here's a good silly one from an ad. Yet another lesson not to believe everything you see on the interweb -- you know that apple never hit his head; nor was he bald in 1666.
Although one might take the contemporary ubiquity of a cartoonish image of the apple bonking Newton on the head as a depressing reflection of our culture's lack of respect, the image actually has its origins in the nineteenth century. Perhaps scientific "geniuses" have always been figures of awe and fascination but also ripe for caricature. A writer for the London satirical magazine Punch, Gilbert Abbott À Beckett, wrote the very popular The Comic History of England in 1848. It was intended, as the author said,“to blend amusement with instruction by serving up, in as palatable a shape as he could, the facts of English History" [Preface, p. 5]. The artist John Leech produced the illustrations, including this one. Lest one think it too irreverent, À Beckett acknowledged that those "who have been accustomed to look at History as a pageant, may think it a desecration to present it in a homely shape, divested of its gorgeous accessories. Such persons as these will doubtless feel offended at finding; the romance of history irreverently demolished, for the sake of mere reality." And yet, his "reality" had to live with the pun-filled, nineteenth century schoolboy humor of the text: thus the irresistable bonking on the head. Nonetheless, note that the Victorian writer did at least reject a story of the singular moment of discovery:
and while sitting in an orchard, "his custom sometimes of an afternoon," an apple fell upon his head with considerable violence. Beginning to reason from this "argumentum ad hominem," he asked himself why every other object did not at once fall to the earth; and he even speculated on the possibility of the moon alighting heavily, and leaving him in a literally moon-struck condition. It was some time before he discovered the laws of gravitation by which the apple had been carried to his head; and it is not true, as is commonly believed, that he was struck all of a heap with the great truths that he has given to posterity. [p. 273]
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