William Rimmer: Final Years

"Flight and Pursuit" by William Rimmer

"When the School of Drawing and Painting was opened in the autumn of 1876, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Dr. William Rimmer was engaged to take charge of the instruction in anatomy. He began his first course of lectures in January, 1877, in one of the rooms of the Institute of Technology, as those in the Museum were not read, and closed in the month of June.

The course consisted of two lectures a week, of an hour each, for which he received one thousand dollars. On the first day's lecture the doctor drew exercises on the blackboard; and the second the same exercises were drawn by the students, and were criticized by him and them. 

During the third school year, Dr. Rimmer added to his duties as a lecturer, that of instruction in anatomical modelling, to which he gave two mornings of each week, but he found it somewhat difficult to quickly fall into the plans of the school directors. At his age, and after his experience of independent action, conforming to the regulations of others was both onerous and annoying. 

Towards the end of the spring of 1879, his strength seemed suddenly to fail, and he at last reluctantly abandoned his classes six or eight weeks before the conclusion of his course. He thought that rest would soon rid him of the overpowering fatigue, but he never found strength again. His extreme nervous prostration continued to increase, accompanied by great physical distress, until the night of the 20th of August, he passed quietly away. His remains were laid in a little cemetery in East Milton."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)