Carol Blackett-Ord
Researcher (Later Victorian Catalogue), National Portrait Gallery
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place
London WC2H 0HE.
cblackettord[at]npg.org.uk
Period: 19th – century portraiture
Medium: Painting, Prints, Sculpture
Theme: Collectors & Collections
Career summary
My first job at the National Portrait Gallery was as a museum assistant in 1980. I had studied at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris (Diploma 1973) and at University College London (French and History of Art, BA Hons, 1977). In the 1980s I contributed as a researcher to the National Portrait Gallery exhibitions including Handel, 1985 and FX Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe, 1987. During the 1990s I worked on the Brinsley Ford Archive at the Paul Mellon Centre; this led to assisting with research on the exhibition Vases and Volcanoes at the British Museum in 1996. I returned to the Gallery in 1996, employed as a picture researcher for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Since then I have worked on 17th Century print publishers and early mezzotints, funded by the NPG and a Mellon Research Grant, and taken an MA in History of Art at UCL.
Areas of interest / research
My dissertations for UCL in 1977 and 2008 were both about the reception and interpretation of art from earlier periods in nineteenth century France and England. I am presently researching the life of M. H. Spielmann critic, editor and Gallery benefactor; and I retain a personal interest in prints and printmaking.
Details of books/publications relating to your work on British portraiture
C Blackett-Ord and S Turner, ‘Early mezzotints: prints published by Richard Thompson and Alexander Browne’, Walpole Society LXX, 2008.
C Blackett-Ord, F Pollak, L Wrapson, Print Quarterly: an index 1994-2003, London 2009.