Anne French

Career summary

Assistant and later Deputy Curator, Kenwood House, 1979-89.

Keeper of Fine Art, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1994-2000 (job-share).

Curator ‘Below Stairs: 400 years of Servants’ Portraits’, National Portrait Gallery/Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 2003-4 (with Giles Waterfield).

Former regional Committee Member for The Art Fund.

Former Editor ‘Bewick Journal’ (for The Bewick Society).

Areas of interest / research

The Grand Tour.

Regional British Portraiture (North East England).

Portraits of British Servants.

British 17th and 18th century portraiture.

Details of books/publications relating to your work on British portraiture

John Joseph Merlin, ‘The Ingenious Meckanick’, The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, 1985.

The Earl and Countess Howe by Gainsborough: A Bicentenary Exhibition, The Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, 1988.

Below Stairs, 400 Years of Servants’ Portraits (with Giles Waterfield), National Portrait Gallery, 2003.

Art Treasures the North: Northern Families on the Grand Tour (Unicorn Press, 2009); includes discussion of Grand Tour portraits from the Northern Region.