Dawn Webster

Memberships (professional bodies)

Museums Association.

Decorative Arts Network for Yorkshire Art Fund.

Career summary

1987/8 MA Museum Studies – Univ of London.

1988-90 Assistant Curator – Museum of Richmond (Surrey).

Assistant Curator Surrey Heath Museum, Camberley, Surrey.

1991-2000 Curator for Rushmoor (Hampshire County Museums Service).

Senior Keeper of Human History, Tullie House Museum, Carlisle.

Curator, The Priest’s House Museum, Wimborne Minster, Dorset.

2000-present Curator, Kiplin Hall near Richmond, North Yorkshire (built 1620s, with family collections dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries, including many portraits.

Areas of interest / research

The families (and their extended families) who have owned Kiplin Hall since 1620 – the Calverts, Crowes, Carpenters and Talbots, particularly the 19th century Talbot family relating to the 18th Earl of Shrewsbury – their links to the Arts & Crafts Movement, G.F. Watts etc. This includes Constance, Marchioness of Lothian; Gertrude, Countess of Pembroke; Adelaide, Countess Brownlow; and their husbands and siblings. We have portraits of many of them and I am building up information as to where other portraits are held. Louisa, Lady Waterford – we have many watercolours by her at Kiplin Hall.

The Arts & Crafts movement, particularly the Home Arts & Industries Association, with whom many family members were linked.

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

A pamphlet G.F. Watts and the Kiplin Hall Families, on sale in our shop.