This online Research Spotlight provides a new resource on the portrait of the politician Richard Cobden by the artist Emma Aloysia Novello. Painted in Paris in 1861, the portrait materialises the alliance between Cobden and the Novello family that contributed to the Paper Duty Repeal Bill; part of the ultimately successful campaign against ‘Taxes on Knowledge’. […]
A workshop taking place in September 2024 and hosted by the Centre for Museum Cultures at Birkbeck and the National Portrait Gallery will facilitate critical engagement with the topic of empire and the art gallery. The workshop will address how to publicly communicate imperial legacies within art galleries, bringing together people working across the sector to […]
Fruit of Friendship: Portraits by Mary Beale opened at Philip Mould & Company in London on Thursday 25 April 2024. Mary Beale (1633-1699) was one of Britain’s first professional woman artists. This exhibition will feature twenty-five of her works from public and private collections. The exhibition will span her entire career and include self-portraits, portraits of […]
This year’s Association of Dress Historians International Conference will take place at the National Portrait Gallery on 7-8 October 2024. Exploring the theme of Dress and Painting: Clothing and Textiles in Art, the conference aims to bring together scholars, professionals, and practitioners to explore and examine the wide range of interconnections between dress, textiles and […]
Every edition of the Understanding British Portraits Annual Seminar provides an energising environment for exchanging ideas on the latest research into portraiture, and the 2023 seminar proved to be an especially revitalising occasion. This was the first annual seminar that I had been able to attend since the pandemic and I was deeply impressed by […]
The National Portrait Gallery has recently launched a project to identify, and find the identities of, sitters from the global majority in historic British portraiture using the Gallery’s Heinz Archive and Library. This relates to all sitters who were racialized as ‘other than White’ by the society they lived in (particularly those of African and […]
We are excited to announce that the Understanding British Portraits network will be producing its very own Podcast! Aimed at the museum/gallery/heritage sector and wider listenership in the UK, the Podcast series is intended to support debate and enquiry around portrait interpretation, display, curation, research and audience engagement, reflecting current museological concerns and adding fresh voices […]
Friday 24 February, 14:00-18:00. Opal22 Arts and Entertainment have organised the panel discussion Casta, Caste and Classification, which will discuss the historical significance of Casta paintings. Tara Munroe, the director of Opal 22, discovered Leicester Museums & Art Gallery’s significant Casta collection 12 years ago, after they were discarded for […]
Wednesday 8th February 2023, 19:00-20:00. Richer Histories is an in-person panel discussion about the presence and diverse experiences of Black people in Georgian Britain, organised by and held at the Foundling Museum in London. By the late eighteenth century, it is estimated over 15,000 Black people lived in Britain – the result of free and forced […]
Making Modernism is the first major UK exhibition devoted to pioneering women working in Germany in the early 1900s: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kӓthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin. Celebrated in their native homelands, this exhibition will introduce their innovative paintings and works on paper, alongside key pictures by Erma Bossi, Ottilie Reylaender and Jacoba van […]
