Alfred Russel Wallace

Dr George Beccaloni has just published a comprehensive catalogue of the contemporary portraits of Wallace, which includes several never before published. Dr. Beccaloni is the Project Director of the Wallace Correspondence Project. It is the go-to site for all things Alfred Russel Wallace, together with Dr. Charles Smith’s The Alfred Russel Wallace Page. At Darwin Online, we also have a sister site, Wallace Online.

Wallace first came to Singapore on 18 April 1854 and one of the photographs in the catalogue was taken here. In 2019, the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum honored Wallace and his Malay assistant Ali with a life-size bronze statue with Wallace pointing at a sculpture of the Standardwing.

Darwin and Wallace maintained a warm friendship and their correspondence which began in 1857 spanned over twenty years.

In 2010, I discovered the first caricature of Wallace made in his lifetime and published: Some original sketches of Alfred Russel Wallace in contemporary newspapers.