This portrait of Clement Stephenson was commissioned from local artist John Charlton in 1816, two years before the subject's death.

In 1860, Stephenson was a young newly qualified vet at his father's practice in Scotch Arms Yard (off Newcastle's Bigg Market), when he built a Turkish bath for horses, probably the first in England to open for public use.

He became one of the country's first local authority Veterinary Inspectors, helped gain real expertise in the control of animal disease, and was an innovative breeder of Aberdeen Angus Cattle.

He was made an honorary Doctor of Science by Durham University and, at his death, donated £10,000 to establish a chair there in comparative pathology and bacteriology, and to pay half the costs of setting up a research department in Newcastle. The latter later became Newcastle University School of Agriculture whose main lecture theatre is named after him.