The Honolulu Academy of Arts recently acquired an “imaginary portrait” of a young Father Damien de Veuster, which is now on display in the museum’s John Dominis and Patches Damon Holt Gallery.

The “Portrait of Joseph Damien de Veuster (Father Damien),” done by British artist Edward Clifford around 1889, appears to be derived from a painting he did of the priest from life.

Clifford had an interest in leprosy, known today as Hansen’s disease, and the attempts to find a cure for it. He traveled to Hawaii in December 1888 to visit Father Damien after reading about his work.

While he was on Molokai, Clifford made a portrait of Damien, showing the 49-year-old priest in profile, with a beard and wearing a straw hat and glasses. Damien, who died only a few months later, was shown clearly disfigured from the effects of Hansen’s disease.

Clifford in an 1889 memoir, “Father Damien: A Journey from Cashmere to His Home in Hawaii,” wrote of his impression of Damien, “His countenance must have been handsome, with a full, well-curved mouth and a short, straight nose; but he is now a good deal disfigured by leprosy, though not so badly as to make it anything but a pleasure to look at his bright, sensible face.”

“Some of my happiest times at Molokai were spent in this little balcony, sketching him and listening to what he said,” he wrote.

He added that upon showing Damien the portrait, “He looked mournfully at my work. ‘What an ugly face!’ he said; ‘I did not know the disease had made such progress.’”

Soon after he left Molokai, Clifford created more sketches of Father Damien in the same profile and clerical garb, but as he might have looked in his twenties.

The Honolulu Academy of Arts’ portrait of this young Father Damien was probably an earlier version of a similar portrait that appeared in Clifford’s memoir, according to Michael Rooks, the museum’s former curator of European and American Art, who wrote about the acquisition in the Honolulu Academy of Arts January/February “Calendar News.”

“The published drawing gives the impression of youthful innocence, with his lips slightly parted and eyebrows raised tranquilly,” Rooks wrote. “In contrast, in the Academy drawing, Damien appears to stare forward as if in a state of concentration.”

He said that differences between the memoir’s and the Academy’s drawings suggest “that modifications were made to soften the demeanor of the subject, underscoring both his youthful and worldly innocence.”