Alexander Hunter (Madras surgeon)

As a town ward councillor, Richard recommended the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh awarded on 30 August 1842 to his friend from Calcutta days, Dwarkanath Tagore.

He was nominated in November 1842 for an assistant surgeon post in Madras by EIC director and banker Martin Tucker Smith.

[2] Hunter had received some training in art at the Trustees Academy in Edinburgh alongside his medical education which he followed up with studies in Paris.

[3] Hunter founded the Madras School of Art on May 1, 1850, as a private institution with the stated aim of "... improving the taste of the native public as regards beauty of form and finish in the articles in daily use among them."

[4] He travelled, mainly in peninsular India, and examined a wide range of materials including wood, fibre, bamboo,[5] and clay.

[11] Cleghorn employed two Madras School of Art students, Mooregasan Moodeliar and T. Rungasawmy, for copying botanical illustrations for his publications from August 1852.

[19] In 1855, Hunter was involved in the organization of the Madras Exhibition as part of an eight-member committee was headed by Lord Harris.

He was in-charge of arrangement and was also on a subcommittee on machinery, manufactures sculpture, models and "plastic art" and jury for several classes of exhibits.

[21] In 1852 he had Frederick Fiebig who was visiting to talk to his students about the Talbot-type process and hired the services of Linnaeus Tripe in 1856[22] while also founding the Madras Photographic Society.

[25] They had three daughters and four sons-Jane Mary (1844-1899), Richard born in 1846 in Bellary (died 1867, Mercara), Margaret Selina (1849), John Robert (1851-1902), Isabella Harriet (b.