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Face to Face AUTUMN/WINTER 2011 My Favourite Portrait by Erin O’Connor The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 Comedians: From the 1940s to Now COVER DETAIL AND BELOW Frances Abington as Prue in Love for Love by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1771 © Yale Center for British Art. Paul Mellon Collection This portrait will feature in the exhibition The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons from 20 October 2011 until 8 January 2012 in the Wolfson Gallery Face to Face Issue 37 Communications & Development Director and Deputy Director Pim Baxter Communications Officer Helen Corcoran Editor Elisabeth Ingles Designer Annabel Dalziel All images National Portrait Gallery, London and © National Portrait Gallery, London, unless stated www.npg.org.uk Recorded Information Line 020 7312 2463 FROM THE DIRECTOR THIS OCTOBER the Gallery presents The First we preview Scott of the Antarctic, a select Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons, the display of rarely seen photographs of the ill- first exhibition to explore art and theatre in fated expedition. Arriving at the Gallery after eighteenth-century England through portraiture. a national tour, Comedians: From the 1940s A major exhibition featuring portraits of to Now will be on show from September; learn actresses such as Nell Gwyn, Elizabeth Farren, more about this photographic display, and its Lavinia Fenton and Sarah Siddons by artists origins, on pages 14–15. 2011 marks the third including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth year of Chasing Mirrors, a partnership project and Gillray, it will include major loans from between the National Portrait Gallery and other museums, alongside works from private young people involved with community collections on show to the public for the first organisations in Brent, Barnet and Ealing, time. Exhibition curator Professor Gill Perry supported by the John Lyon’s Charity. This explores the stories behind this outstanding year’s display will see work produced by these show on pages 4–7. The First Actresses is young people in conjunction with British-Iraqi complemented by The Actress Now, which artist Athier Mousawi, on show in the Studio features portraits of contemporary actresses Gallery from October. from the Gallery’s Collection; read more about this free Gallery display on page 8. Beyond the Gallery, on display at the National Trust’s Beningbrough Hall, ‘Rule, Britannia!’ The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Frederick, Prince of Wales and Music in the Prize 2011 opens at the Gallery in November. 18th Century explores the musical tastes, On pages 10 and 11 we look at the legacy of ambitions and intrigue of this remarkable previous Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Hanoverian prince. Read more about this Prize exhibitions, with a focus on the most Regional Partner display on page 13. Lastly, recent Godfrey Argent Award commission and iconic portraits from the Collection and the Gallery’s on-going Friday Evening Music selected National Trust properties feature collaboration with students from the Royal together in A Guide to Victorian & Edwardian College of Music. Portraits. This fascinating new publication, which includes familiar faces from Charles The autumn season sees a number of new Dickens to Oscar Wilde, is introduced on displays throughout the Gallery. The latest page 9. display of works examined as part of Making Art in Tudor Britain, one of the Gallery’s research programmes, Picturing History: A Portrait Set of Early Kings and Queens, Sandy Nairne is highlighted on page 3, while on page 12 DIRECTOR 1 MY FAVOURITE PORTRAIT BELOW Queen Elizabeth I r by Erin O’Connor (‘The Ditchley portrait’) o n n o by Marcus Gheeraerts the C Model ’ O Younger, c.1592 n i r E On display in Room 2 y s e t r u o c e g a m I I REMEMBER SEEING a portrait of Queen There she is wearing this gorgeous robe, Elizabeth I in a huge volume my parents had encrusted with jewels, and somehow it’s like on royal history and thinking, ‘Who’s that?!’ a suit of armour. But I wonder how fragile She’s just so thrilling, the first feminist. My Elizabeth felt – a woman who had to forsake sister and I spent hours sketching the perfect her femininity to rule her people. It’s as ‘Queen Dresses’ based on her image, and even though the elaborate costume is a protective copied her remarkable signature – I don’t fortress: she’s untouchable. know how many years I signed off like that! It’s obviously an awkwardly posed picture. In this portrait Elizabeth models her own You can imagine how long it must have taken myth: the ‘Virgin Queen’ literally on top of to be painted in that way, and I know what it the world. The sheer scale of the painting is feels like to wear corsets! She must have been overwhelming. You look at the dark foreboding exhausted, especially given all the other things skies, and then you see her, Elizabeth as a she had going on in her life. vision of hope, almost a goddess. The story behind the making of the painting is Elizabeth I was such an accomplished and intoxicating, a relationship between a queen determined woman, so conscious of her duties and her courtier fraught with passion. But that she practically ended her life on her feet. I don’t feel I need to ‘understand’ the She seems to have always been so poised: portrait – it’s just such a powerful image. the painted skin, the wigs, the dresses, the way she created a living image of herself and embodied it to her dying day. She was the instigator of all the things that drive the modern world, so looking at this painting can’t just be about exploring the historical context and content. What a great queen she makes, and a thoroughly modern woman – still relevant today. A hugely successful international model, Erin O’Connor has written for publications including The Times,the Guardian and Vogue, and is a Trustee of the V&A. She recently co-founded All Walks Beyond the Catwalk, a charity devoted to broadening the range of body types represented in fashion. Jean Paul Gaultier said of Erin, ‘She isn’t only a model. She is quite like art. She is like theatre. She is an extraordinary inspiration.’ 2 PICTURING HISTORY: Picturing History: BELOW A Portrait Set of Early King William I A PORTRAIT SET OF EARLY Kings and Queens (‘The Conqueror’) KINGS AND QUEENS until 4 December 2011 by an unknown artist, by Charlotte Bolland Room 1 c.1618–20 Admission free © The Trustees of Dulwich Project Curator (Making Art in Tudor Britain) Picture Gallery AS PART OF THE Making Art in Tudor Britain on display at Montacute House in Somerset, project a remarkable set of portraits of early one of the Gallery’s Regional Partners. English kings and queens has recently been analysed by research conservators at the Sets of portraits became popular in England Gallery. This set of sixteen portraits is usually in the second half of the sixteenth century. The portraits of the early kings were often based on established patterns derived from woodcuts and engravings, which could be easily sourced and then shared by artists. The lack of surviving portraits taken from life for the early kings meant that the ‘likeness’ of many of these monarchs was not firmly established. The result is that while some monarchs, such as Henry VIII, can be easily identified, others could be depicted in different ways in different sets. The loan of a portrait of William the Conqueror (from the set in the collection of Dulwich Picture Gallery) allows two competing versions of a true ‘likeness’ of William I to be seen together. This lively and amusing group shows kings with crooked or cross eyes wearing golden crowns and armour. They would probably have been hung high up, presenting an impressive display of English history. The technical analysis on this group has provided fascinating insights into how portrait sets were produced. The pictures have all been tree-ring-dated, which indicates that they were produced around the same time, in the 1590s or early 1600s, and may have LEFT been produced as a group. However, King William I photomicroscopy has revealed that a number (‘The Conqueror’) by an unknown artist, of different artists must have produced the set, c.1590–1610 some of whom worked in the same studio. 3 WOMEN CENTRE STAGE: BELOW FROM TOP Eleanor (‘Nell’) Gwyn THE FIRST ACTRESSES by Simon Verelst, c.1680 by Professor Gill Perry An Actress at Her Toilet or Exhibition Curator Miss Brazen Just Breecht after John Collett, c.1770 © The Trustees of the British Museum THE FIRST ACTRESSES: NELL GWYN TO SARAH SIDDONS is the first exhibition to use feminine portraiture to explore the vibrant relationship between eighteenth-century art and theatre. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries women made a remarkable and unprecedented entrance on to the stage in England. They were first allowed to act in public theatres after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Before this the nation’s theatre had been famously transvestite, with men and boys playing female parts. Women performers were increasingly in demand by the early eighteenth century, feeding a growing market for portraits, biographies and gossip, all essential ingredients of what we now describe as ‘celebrity culture’. While they were excluded from political office, suffrage, property rights and universities, the theatre was one of the few public spaces in which women could pursue a professional career and achieve earning power. Cross-dressed or ‘breeches’ roles for women were especially popular, but they also generated heated debate about the sexual availability and ‘brazenness’ of female players, widely seen to belong to the social sphere of the prostitute or courtesan.

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