In 2016 we were very fortunate to be awarded funding from the Understanding British Portraits Professional Partnership Fellowship to research The Twins by John Everett Millais and create a learning resource for young people. We hoped that our project would help to reveal more about the role of women in the Victorian age, whose stories have for many years only been told […]
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 Baring Archive is one of the finest archives of a financial institution in the world and tells the story of Barings Bank, the merchant house established in 1762. Barings was acquired by ING in 1995 and in 2008 the collections were loaned to The Baring Archive Limited, a charitable trust that seeks to preserve […]
In 2000 Rugby Art Gallery and Museum acquired a collection from Reddings, a local photographer’s studio, containing around 25,000 glass plate and cellulose acetate negatives dating from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. Predominately studio portraits, the collection also contains negatives of local businesses, product shots, local events and weddings. Largely due to lack of resource […]
Sixteenth and seventeenth century portraits are a wonderful resource for lace historians. Two types of lace evolved during the sixteenth century: needle lace and bobbin lace. Needle lace, as the name suggests, is a form of free embroidery, worked with a needle and a single thread, while bobbin lace is a combination of plaiting and […]
In 2016 a portrait, identified as Elizabeth Fanshawe (1609-1668), née Cockayne, came up for sale at a well-known auction house (left). This portrait bore an uncanny resemblance to the female sitter in a small double portrait of Sir Thomas Fanshawe and his second wife Elizabeth, née Fanshawe at Valence House (below). A visit to Melbourne […]
When I saw the title of the SSN Joint Conference was to be Why Exhibitions? I was immediately intrigued and my first thought was ‘Why not exhibitions?’ I was keen to hear what other museum professionals were experiencing that made them consider not having a temporary exhibition programme. The Mining Art Gallery is the first […]
‘Exhibition’ seems to be a rather slippery term these days. In the context of national museums and galleries it might conjure thoughts of huge blockbuster shows, often bringing together an impressive array of loans from across the globe. If I told you I was going to an ‘exhibition’ in London, this is probably the kind […]
A thin, black thread wound around the wrist of Anne Fanshawe in her 1628 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger drew me to the study day at Valence House Museum, Dagenham, organised by the Understanding British Portraits network- but more of that later. As a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, I have researched […]
This collaborative workshop between the Understanding British Portraits professional network and the School of Historical Dress was led by two of the School’s teachers, Professor Jenny Tiramani and Vanessa Hopkins and took place their newly opened headquarters in Lambeth. The day commenced in the extremely well-stocked library, where Jenny and Vanessa provided a brief introduction […]
