Rosie Broadley

Career summary

I studied History of Art at the University of Bristol and before my appointment as Assistant Curator at the National Portrait Gallery in 2005 I worked as museum assistant at the Wallace Collection and documentation officer at the Holburne Museum in Bath. In 2007, whilst working at the Gallery, I undertook a part-time masters degree in English Literature: Life-Writing at King’s College, focussing on the relationship between forms of biography/autobiography and portraiture.

Areas of interest / research

I continue to be fascinated between the relationship between written life-stories and visual portraits. Recent projects include researching  the history of some of the Gallery’s commissioned portraits, using the artists’ sketchbooks and written  accounts of the making of a portrait.

I am currently researching for a forthcoming exhibition of portraits by Dame Laura Knight, which opens in 2013, and drawing on Knight’s own writing in two autobiographies.

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

An introduction in Humphrey Ocean: A handbook of modern life, Lecturis, 2012.

Laura Knight Portraits, exhibition catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, 2013.