1857 was an annus mirabilis for both George Scharf (1820-1895) and the cultural life of the United Kingdom due to his crucial role in two watershed events: the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery and the staging of the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition. A new database devoted to Scharf’s activities during this period has now […]
As a decorative art specialist, I have been taking my first tentative steps into fine art since being appointed as curator at Temple Newsam House two years ago. Earlier this year, I was very excited to acquire a John Russell (1745-1806) portrait of Savile Green, Senior (1743-1805; Fig. 1).¹ Green was a key figure in […]
The Geffrye Museum of the Home has recently purchased a beautiful, large-scale watercolour portrait of two young sisters in a domestic interior by the late Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Robert Hughes. Today Hughes is best-known for his ‘blue’ paintings – a series of spectacular, highly finished watercolours on literary and mystical themes, featuring winged allegorical figures […]
The Grosvenor Museum’s greatest acquisition in 2015 was a portrait of Richard Crewe-Milnes, Earl of Madeley, the three-year-old son of the 1st Marquess of Crewe, painted in 1914 by Philip de László, one of the most celebrated portrait painters of his age. This masterly oil sketch exemplifies the artist’s painterly panache and retains its original […]
Early in 2016, following a successful fundraising campaign, the Holburne Museum in Bath purchased Thomas Lawrence’s preparatory oil sketch for one of his most celebrated paintings, Arthur Atherley (left). This is the first oil painting by the great Royal Academician to enter the Holburne’s important collection of British eighteenth-century portraits. Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) lived […]
My co-curator, Rachel Dickson, and I were delighted when, in the summer of 2015, just as we were preparing to celebrate Ben Uri’s centenary with a major collection exhibition, Out of Chaos, at Somerset House, this early oil by Clare Winsten (1892–1984) came to light. A portrait of one European Jewish émigré to London by […]
This year Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance purchased a portrait of an elder from the Penzance Jewish Community by John Opie (1761–1807), A Portrait of an Old Jew from c.1779 from a private collection. Painted in the style of Rembrandt, an artist whom Opie admired, the portrait stares directly at us out of […]
