Local luminaries meet art-world twins

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This article was published 24/01/2018 (3161 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It turns out I am the spitting image of Hermanus Boerhaave, the famed Dutch botanist, chemist and physician of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Yes, I am the modern-day twin of some goofy-looking guy with a receding hairline who is regarded as the founder of the modern academic hospital and is sometimes referred to as “the father of physiology.”

I don’t wish to brag, but good old Hermanus was also the first person to isolate the chemical urea from urine.

Who knew?

I discovered that Hermanus and I are lookalikes earlier this week when I downloaded Google’s insanely popular Arts & Culture App, which is threatening to break the internet.

The app actually came out in 2016, but its newest component just became available in Canada this week — Google’s museum selfie feature, which allows you to upload a photo and then scan the databases of thousands of museums to see whether you have a lookalike hanging on a wall somewhere.

All you have to do is download the app, which is available for free to iPhone and Android users, then scroll down to the part where it says “Search with your selfie,” and hit the “Get Started” button, which will prompt the app to scour thousands of classic artworks in search of the painted faces that most closely resemble yours.

Within seconds, thanks to a fancy algorithm, it will present your face juxtaposed beside the five closest art-world matches, along with a percentage stating how closely your mugshot resembles the supposed fine-art doppelganger in the painting.

As far as I can tell, no one in the world has been able to do any productive work since the museum-selfie feature became available this week. Everyone who is anyone has been posting photos of themselves alongside their museum lookalikes.

You can imagine how excited I was to discover that Google believes I am a 59 per cent match to Hermanus Boerhaave, whose portrait hangs in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum and who is not going to be mistaken any time soon for a hunk of burning love, if you catch my subtle classical art drift.

So, yes, as I stared at my iPhone, comparing my mugshot to the painted visage of the first physician to put the thermometer to clinical use, I was not entirely flattered.

With sincere apologies to Hermanus, my initial reaction was this: “Blech!”

When I showed the match to my beloved spouse, She Who Must Not Be Named, she said, and I will quote her directly: “Ha ha ha! It’s funny! Ha ha ha. He’s very green looking. It’s because of the hairline that they picked him to be one of your doppelgangers. And your eyes.”

Then, after glancing at my crestfallen face, she quickly added: “Yes, dear, you are much more handsome than he is, although you have one nostril that looks bigger than the other.”

Which is when, in the spirit of art appreciation, I forced my spouse to upload her own selfie and compare her face with famous works of art.

She was reasonably happy to discover that her No. 1 match was some 15th-century painting of a flame-haired woman entitled Girl With Cherries, but I was able to laugh a cruel little laugh when we discovered her No. 5 match (56 per cent) was a portrait of a guy — none other than King Louis XIV, the legendary pouffy-haired Sun King who ruled France from 1643 to 1715.

“Well, at least I’m a king,” is what my wife muttered as I quickly stifled a laugh.

When I tried to upload photos of my dogs, however, Google wouldn’t play along, even though I am sure there are many famously artistic dogs hanging in museums around the globe.

In a sincere effort to waste time, I parked myself beside Free Press photo editor Mike Aporius (a striking 69 per cent match to an old-school portrait of Charles Calverley), and we uploaded photos of several prominent Manitobans into the app to find the masterpieces that matched their mugs.

For what it’s worth, our premier, Brian Pallister, is a 67 per cent match for some extremely mustachioed fellow named Henry Sturgis Drinker, who was featured holding a cat in an 1898 portrait entitled Man with the Cat that hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Other than similar hairstyles, I’m not really seeing the resemblance, but then what do I know about art?

Google was also convinced that Winnipeg Jets superstar forward Patrik Laine is a close (72 per cent) match for an 1888 painting of the famed Danish writer and poet Otto Benzon that hangs in the Skagens Museum. I’m sure Otto was fine with a rhyme, but he does not look like he could strap skates and battle in the corners with Jonathan Toews.

When we fed a photo of Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon into the system, it spat out a portrait of a lovely royal person named Amalia Van Solms, who, from what I have just read, was princess consort of Orange by marriage to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, back in the 17th century.

Other social media users have amused themselves by punching in a veritable who’s who of recognizable Canadian faces into Google’s free app, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who Google thinks resembles Henry Raeburn’s Ritratto, or Caspar Netscher’s Trimming bales of hay, and/or a 1943 self-portrait of Soviet painter Viktor Ivanov.

The National Post found famed hockey commentator Don Cherry is a close match for a portrait of Phillip II of Spain, whereas Justin Bieber is apparently the modern reincarnation of a 1969 portrait of Elvis Presley.

With apologies to Google, I personally have famously been mistaken by actual humans for two great Manitoba personages, namely 1) Former NDP MP and MLA Bill Blaikie, who even my spouse believes is my slightly taller doppelganger; and 2) former Guess Who lead guitarist Randy Bachman, at least back when he was carrying a few more pounds.

The point is, you should all drop whatever you are doing and download this (bad word) free app right now, then we can get together and compare our much-more-famous art-world lookalikes.

You won’t have any trouble finding me — I’ll be the good-looking guy hanging around in a museum.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca