A lecture at the Hunterian anatomy school, Great Windmill Street, London

William and John Hunter were Scottish brothers who came to London in the 1740s and established an anatomy school in Covent Garden. In the 1760s William Hunter moved to a larger building in Great Windmill Street in Westminster. There he constructed a purpose-built anatomy theatre, library and museum. After his death in 1783 the anatomy theatre remained in use for teaching, but William Hunter's library and museum went to Glasgow University, to which he had bequeathed it. From 1832 to 1842 the London anatomy theatre was run by the surgeon John Gregory Smith, and it was at that time that the present watercolour was made by Robert Blemmel Schnebbelie. The students paid to attend, and they included art students as well as medical students and other interested persons.

The big heating pipe in the centre was essential as the anatomy lessons took place in the winter, when the corpses would survive longer without putrefying, and much of the heat would disappear through the big skylight which was needed to provide light for viewing. Big watercolours of anatomical processes are pinned to the back wall, fulfilling the function later carried out by slides and Powerpoint projectors.