Getting away from the office…studying portraits is a real treat by Kate Jordan

Charlotte Walpole, Countess of Dysart (1738-1789) by Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (1723-1792) Ham House, Surrey © National Trust Images/John Hammond

Charlotte Walpole, Countess of Dysart (1738-1789) by Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (1723-1792) Ham House, Surrey © National Trust Images/John Hammond

Marketing staff based at Heelis (National Trust’s head office) are mostly preoccupied with attracting and retaining members, fundraising campaigns and looking after the NT brand. So I am delighted and privileged to be awarded one of the Understanding British Portraits network’s NT staff bursaries this year, and will be sharing my findings with marketing colleagues at Heelis and beyond.

But how does an enthusiastic beginner delve into the NT’s 13,000 portraits? With ideas that are accessible to her. In early twenty first-century Britain, mention the notion that our society is obsessed with image and celebrity and you are guaranteed a lively debate. It’s also a notion that marketing professionals grapple with all the time; for if it’s true, do we have to use image and celebrity to get people’s attention – to achieve cut through in marketing parlance – in a world crowded with constant, ubiquitous demands on people’s attention?

Susanna Trevelyan, Mrs John Hudson (1736-1779) by Thomas Gainsborough RA, 1761. National Trust, Wallington, Northumberland ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

Susanna Trevelyan, Mrs John Hudson (1736-1779) by Thomas Gainsborough RA, 1761. National Trust, Wallington, Northumberland
© National Trust Images/John Hammond

A museum colleague once described Sir Joshua Reynolds to me as the Mario Testino of his day, saying that anybody who was anybody in eighteenth-century society sat for him. This, and the many important Reynolds portraits within the Trust’s collections, made his work an obvious place to start. An enthusiastic beginner also needs something that catches the eye and fires the imagination. At Ham House in Surrey last October I saw that Reynolds’ portrait of Charlotte Walpole, Countess of Dysart, had a visitor: a portrait of Miss Susannah Trevelyan, Mrs Hudson, which usually lives at Wallington in Northumberland (right). The ladies were being shown side by side at Ham because they appear to be wearing the same dress, or at least, two very similar dresses. Conservation colleagues have established that the portrait of Suky, as Miss Trevelyan is affectionately known at Wallington, was painted by Thomas Gainsborough and probably altered by Reynolds at a later date.

How intriguing. Would Reynolds have knowingly painted an esteemed sitter in the same dress as another? Do his alterations challenge Gainsborough as the ‘original’ artist of the portrait? My aim is to assess the valuable work done by colleagues in conservation, in regions and properties, to shed light on this, and consider what we in marketing can learn from it.

Last month I was fortunate to attend a UBP seminar in Bristol, Copy, Version and Multiple: the replication and distribution of portrait imagery. All papers were fascinating, though I was particularly struck by Catharine MacLeod’s, Curator of Seventeenth-Century Portraits at the NPG, on the artist Sir Peter Lely. The paper examined the organisation and practices of Lely’s studio and offered me much-needed information for my questions about more than one artist contributing to portraits, notions of originality, artistic copyright and so on. I am investigating further – update soon…

Comments

  • Bruce Trewin
    April 15, 2014 | Permalink | Reply to this comment

    As fabrics and costume painting was often farmed out to third party studios, the attributions could be correct, with the costumes painted by a common specialist. Sounds like a fascinating study opportunity.

  • Catherine Pearce
    November 13, 2022 | Permalink | Reply to this comment

    The Reynolds painting is discussed in Aileen Ribeiro’s book The Art Of Dress, on page 193. She comments on the C18 fashion for dressing in historical costume and thinks that this dress may be an interpretation of Henry IV style. It is fascinating that (what appears to be) the same dress appears in the Gainsborough portrait. I hope the conservation work has revealed more.

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