![Silvia Constance Myers and Leopold Hamilton Myers by Eveleen Myers (née Tennant) [the sitters' mother], platinum print, c.1890 © National Portrait Gallery, London](https://www.britishportraits.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/mw150347.jpg)
Judy Oberhausen first met Eveleen Myers (née Tennant, 1856-1937) many years ago at the Delaware Art Museum when she was a young intern working with the Bancroft Collection of Pre-Raphaelite Art. George Frederic Watts’s portrait of Myers as the fresh-faced Jessamine is still there in a gallery filled with other famous Pre-Raphaelite beauties – although […]
It is over forty-five years on since the last major museum retrospective of the work of Leon Underwood in 1969. Although Underwood (1890-1975) has been described as ‘the precursor of modern sculpture in Britain’ he is an overlooked figure in the history of Modern Art. Between the 1920s and 1950s he created an innovative body […]
For three consecutive years I have attended the Annual Seminar to expose myself to research, ideas, movement and collections that I might otherwise not interact with. In a sense the UBP annual gathering reassures me that I am not being naive or narrow minded about what I research or curate. I always walk away with […]
With so little known about many of the nineteenth and early twentieth century portraits in the Russell-Cotes collection, the Understanding British Portraits Bursary presented the perfect opportunity to discover more, with the aim of creating a primary school offer focused on portraits as a result of this research. We were aware, for example, of two […]
From 2010, The Courtauld Gallery took part in the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad programme Stories of the World. This was the biggest youth engagement project ever undertaken by UK museums across the nation and during that time, the Courtauld worked closely with a group of 20 young people aged between 16 and 19, from Widening […]
I started the day with high hopes. I had recently put together an exhibition of some of the best of the portraits in oil in the Reading Museum collection and felt sure that there would be much of relevance amongst the papers. In addition there would be people to meet and a chance to pop […]
Harriet Jordan (left) might well be seated in her sitting room interrupting her sewing to look up at the camera. In reality, she was photographed when a patient at Bethlem Royal Hospital. This photograph and others like it could, at least on first viewing, have been plucked from a family album, so far removed […]
Last month I attended the excellent Portrait Network seminar Copy, Version and Multiple: the replication and distribution of portrait imagery. I was particularly interested in the papers on Lely’s studio practice and Victorian carte-de-visite portrait photographs but the last talk of the day by video artist Marty St James resonated unexpectedly with another area […]
Alexander Sturgis’ riveting talk ‘Presenting Presence: showing portrait sculpture’ was my personal highlight of this year’s Annual Seminar. Not only for its lively and engaging presentation – always appreciated at the end of a long and full day – but also for opening my eyes to an often overlooked form of portraiture. Alexander’s tour de […]
