{"id":9926,"date":"2015-10-06T15:44:27","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.britishportraits.org.uk\/?p=9926"},"modified":"2018-04-23T10:46:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T10:46:26","slug":"from-the-queens-bodyguard-and-medical-luminaries-to-humble-domestic-servants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.britishportraits.org.uk\/blog\/from-the-queens-bodyguard-and-medical-luminaries-to-humble-domestic-servants\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Queen\u2019s Bodyguard and medical luminaries to humble domestic servants – portraiture in Edinburgh and Erddig by Susanne Gronnow"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Portrait Collections in Edinburgh<\/a><\/span> event in September 2015 gave me a rare opportunity to meet up with portrait specialists, learn about some of the astonishing collections in Edinburgh, and also learn about the breadth of study taking place in other institutions across the country.<\/p>\n Reflecting on the event, there seemed to be some common themes that were raised at each collection and each venue we visited: the question of male and female gender representation in collections be it as sitters or artists; the notion of conflict that is sometimes reflected in the display of portraits (or lack of it); and the accessibility of collections through physical and online access. Judging by some of the institutions that the group visited, such as the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) and the Royal Company of Archers, perhaps it is unsurprising that the number of women sitters, or women artists, in the historic collections was so few.<\/p>\n All of the above common themes have made me reflect on the collection I care for at Erddig<\/a><\/span> in north Wales. Erddig is unique, in that for nearly two hundred years, much-loved servants were recorded in portraits, photographs and verses. Nothing of such breadth and complexity survives anywhere else in the world (1).<\/p>\n The portraits were commissioned by the Yorke family, an unambitious gentry family, who had rather fortuitously inherited Erddig from a childless, rich uncle called John Meller (d.1733). The tradition of recording servants was started in 1791 by Philip Yorke I (1743-1804) who commissioned a set of six portraits from John Walters of Denbigh (1721-97). Out of the six portraits, only one is of a woman, Jane Ebbrell, housemaid and spider-brusher.<\/p>\n