AUTUMN 2019 ISSUE 4

Men, Women & Things: New Displays at The Portland Gallery

Men, Women & Things ©The Portland Collection

In September 2019 the new displays at The Port- family or gifted to them and were used to furnish land Collection gallery on the Welbeck Estate their homes. They reflect centuries of changing opened to the public. The exhibition, Men, Women taste, enthusiasms and ideas of the many genera- and Things, takes its title from the 6th Duke of tions who lived at Welbeck. Portland’s memoirs and aptly describes the con- A large section of the gallery is devoted to tents of the gallery which showcases nearly 600 items associated with Margaret Cavendish- objects from The Portland Collection. Bentinck, 2nd Duchess of Portland. Margaret was The paintings, furniture, ceramics, plate, one of many women in Welbeck’s history who portrait miniatures, books and manuscripts on had interests and roles independent from their display all form part of a fine and decorative arts husbands and followed paths that were pioneer- collection which has been assembled over 400 ing for women at the time. She was best known years by one extended family, descending from for developing one of the most celebrated natural Bess of Hardwick. Prior to the opening of the history collections in the eighteenth century. gallery, many of the works have been at Welbeck Margaret also collected fine and decorative arts Abbey or in storage and, as a result, have not including a painting attributed to Rembrandt, the been on display to the public for decades. These famous Portland Vase and various Stuart relics. objects were bought and commissioned by the Perhaps most impressive is the 178-piece silver and beautiful pieces from the eighteenth century. gilt dessert service commissioned by Margaret, The Portland Collection gallery is located Duchess of Portland and decorated with flora and in North Nottinghamshire and first opened in fauna. The ser- 2016. It is Welbeck’s vice took over biggest building ten years to project in over 150 complete. years and was built Also on on the site of the dis- display are items used nineteenth-cen- commissioned tury indoor gallops. by and connect- The external walls of ed to the 4th the original building Duke of Port- remain intact and land, a progres- have been incorpo- sive landlord rated into the gallery, who supported blending the old and advances in en- new. gineering and The Portland technology. Por- Collection Gallery is traits of family Technicians installing the John Singer Sergant portrait of open daily from members by Winifred, Duchess of Portland ©The Portland Collection 11am-4pm and entry , Francis is free. More details Grant and Thomas can be found at Lawrence are exhibited alongside exemplary www.harleygallery.co.uk. pieces of Regency furniture. Throughout the galleries are various ex- Dr Sophie Littlewood (SS ’19) amples of French porcelain, including some rare Curator, The Portland Collection

Gowers at 70: Call for Papers

Historic Houses and University of Oxford - with • The role of country houses in popular culture generous support from the Historic Houses and the collective imagination after the War Foundation - will be running a one-day sympo- The symposium will culminate in a sium on 24 June 2020, to mark the 70th anniver- roundtable discussion on the future of historic sary of the publication of the Gowers Report on house conservation, reflecting on what a Gowers the future of Britain’s buildings of ‘outstanding Report for the twenty-first century might consid- historic or architectural interest’ (1950). This er to be the main issues facing historic houses conference will consider the report’s legacy for today. the conservation and use of historic houses, both Paper proposals should include a 300- independently owned and owned by organisa- word abstract and a 100-word biography, and tions including the and English should be emailed to gowersat70@historichous- Heritage, seventy years on. es.org by 17 February 2020. For any questions Our call for papers invites researchers and about this call for papers and/or the symposium, heritage professionals to contribute 20-minute please contact Elena Porter (University of Oxford papers that address, but are not limited to, the & Historic Houses DPhil researcher) or Emma following themes: Robinson (Director of Policy & Public Affairs at Historic Houses) via gowersat70@historichous- • The post-war landscape of built heritage preser- es.org. vation • How government policy towards country house Dr Oliver Cox (SP ’18) preservation has changed since 1950 Heritage Engagement Fellow • How country houses have fared in relation to TORCH, University of Oxford other types of heritage asset, such as churches, monuments, and industrial buildings Emma Robinson (SP ’18) • International comparisons to built heritage Director of Policy and Campaigns preservation policy in Britain Historic Houses • EXHIBITIONS

36 x Rembrandt at The Royal Castle in Warsaw

Wawel Castle Musuem in Cracow, whereas two paintings by Rembrandt along with some other Dutch paintings (by Adriaen van Ostade, Philips Wouwerman etc.) should go to the Royal Castle in Warsaw. As a result, in 2019 our museum cele- brated not only the 350th anniversary of Rem- brandt’s death but also the 25th anniversary of this magnificent donation. It is worth remembering that there are only three paintings by Rembrandt in Poland. That is why the Royal Castle in Warsaw is so proud to possess two of them. Rembrandt creat- ed these paintings at the time when he was ex- tensively exploring ways of presenting illusionism. The Girl is depicted in the moment when she places her hands on the picture frame, which is also a part of the painting. Thus the Girl seems to This year the whole world is celebrating the protrude from the painting and cross the border 350th anniversary of Rembrandt’s death. For this between the world of art and world of us. There reason The Royal Castle in Warsaw presented the is also an interesting fact, that Rembrandt used exhibition 36 x Rembrandt, which featured 36 poplar panels as a support for these paintings, original works by Rembrandt: 2 paintings, 3 draw- while he is noted for using poplar panels only ings and 31 prints. three times more. Apart from that, the research The main goal of the exhibition was to has revealed that there is an unfinished portrait attract public attention to the fact that The Roy- of a woman in a millstone ruff under the effigy of al Castle in Warsaw holds in its collection two the Girl. paintings by Rembrandt: Girl in a Picture Frame The paintings were presented in one (1641) and Scholar at his Writing Table (1641). room along with their copies made in 18th and The history of their provenance was told 19th centuries by painters and printmakers. It was in the first room of the exhibition. In the past the first time in history it was possible to see both paintings belonged to the collection of them reunited. Stanislaus Augustus (1732–1798), the last king of Another room was filled with drawings Poland. Sold after his death, they were purchased and prints by Rembrandt loaned from other Pol- by Count Kazimierz Rzewuski (1751–1820), a for- ish collections. They were divided into five mer courtier of the king. The descendants of groups: women, self-portraits, Rembrandt’s ac- Rzewuski took paintings to Vienna, and included quaintances, scholars and old bearded men. The them in a large collection of artworks in their aim was to provide the context for the paintings possession. In 1903 count Karol Lanckoroński and enhance understanding of Rembrandt’s cre- (1848–1933), who was the owner of the collection ative process. by then, made it accessible to the public. Works The exhibition was opened on 4th Octo- of art were presented in the Lanckoroński Palace ber and closed on 3rd November. We have pub- built purposely to house the collection. During lished a booklet containing two essays in Polish the Second World War the Nazis looted the (summaries in English) and the catalogue of all palace. Fortunately, the children of count Karol the objects which were presented at the exhibi- Lanckoroński managed to retrieve their collec- tion (in Polish and English). The curators of the tion and decided to hide it in Switzerland. In exhibition were Alicja Jakubowska and Magdale- 1994 Professor Karolina Lanckorońska (1898– na Królikiewicz. 2002), the last living member of the Lanckorońs- ki family, donated her collection to the Polish Alicja Jakubowska (RCS ’16) state museums. She decided that works by Italian Curator of Paintings, The Royal Castle in Warsaw masters should be placed in the collection of the Treasures from the Bronze Age and Beyond: The Hallwyl Museum’s Collection of Small Chinese and Korean Bronzes

Hallwyl House, a historic house museum located collector and engineer Orvar Karlbeck. On in central Stockholm, is closely associated with Google Arts & Culture you may visit the online its visionary founder, Countess Wilhelmina von exhibition on the bronzes and take a close look at Hallwyl (1844-1930). The visitor to the museum the highlighted objects. enters an exclusive time-capsule from the turn of The digital publication and online exhibi- the twentieth century. The Countess, a passion- tion is the result of a collaboration between The ate collector, deliberately transformed her home Hallwyl Museum (The National Historical Muse- into a museum. Her collections illuminate the ums) and The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities importance of a private collection for scholarly (The National Museums of World Culture). The research in the early 1900s. online exhibition and publication sheds new light The Hallwyl Museum’s collection of small on the character of the collection as well as how Chinese bronzes was among the first collections it was built. of its kind to reach Europe. Wilhelmina von There are spectacular bronze mirrors in Hallwyl would begin to collect East Asian Ceram- the collection, but the significance of the Hallwyl ics in the 1870s. Her collection of Chinese Collection of small bronzes is to be found in how bronzes is, to the greater part, that of another it was shaped as a study collection. The majority collector. The Swedish Engineer and collector of the small bronzes in the Hallwyl Museum’s col- Orvar Karlbeck (1879-1967) sold his collection to lection come from the late Bronze Age and re- the Countess in 1922. Karlbeck would acquire flects the time of the breakdown of the feudal these objects by purchase during his years in system in China. The large ceremonial vessels are China. The Korean bronze mirrors in the collec- noticeably absent from the collection. As the col- tions were purchased by the Countess from Ya- lection represents small, often personal, bronzes, manaka & Company, a famous dealer in Oriental it is natural that it reflects the story of the later art during the first half of the 20th Century. Chinese Bronze Age. The digital publication gives context to the Hall- wyl Collection of small Chinese and Korean Annika Williams (SS ’19) bronzes. The publication highlights the objects in Curator, The Hallwyl Collection the collection and introduces Countess Wil- The National Historical Museums, Sweden helmina von Hallwyl as well as the Swedish

Guido Reni’s ‘The Death of Lucretia’ at The Bowes Museum

‘The Power and the Virtue: Guido Reni’s The castle, and the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. Death Of Lucretia’ is dedicated to the Italian Thus, the exhibition will shed fresh new light Baroque master Guido Reni, his female heroines into 17th-century art making and present the and the representation of female beauty. Bowes’ work ‘in conversation’ with outstanding Guido Reni (1575 – 1642), a leading artist paintings by the master from UK collections, representative of the 17th-century classicism cre- brought together for the first time to the atten- ated paintings renowned for their sublime beauty tion of the wider public. and refinement. This exhibition presents unique Guido Reni’s depictions of devotional and works from prestigious public and private collec- legendary heroines allows to explore the theme of tions, including the , , female beauty in Reni’s painting The lyrical de- and the Trust. For the first time pictions of prominent female characters is an visitors will experience the mastery and the aes- element of Guido Reni’s art for which he was thetic quality of this outstanding artist and his renowned in his own lifetime and there is no oth- works. er artist in Western art who painted as many Taking place in the main temporary exhi- “femmes fortes” of the literary and sacred tradi- bition gallery, this exhibition will feature The tion as Reni: from Cleopatra and Porzia, to Eu- Death of Lucretia a painting which had been part ropa, Judith, Mary Magdalene, Deianira and Lu- of the Bowes’ collection since 1840s, and it is at- cretia. tributed to Guido Reni. This work has been the “Guido Reni,” said Bernadette Petti, ex- focus of a multidisciplinary investigation in col- hibition curator, “was not just considered the laboration with Northumbria University, New- most talented of the pupils in the school of the Carracci, but he was the painter who successfully In celebration of this great master, gallery managed to revise Raphael’s manner by using a talks, lectures, a film screening, dance graceful and delicate brushwork that revealed a workshops , concerts and a special display of cos- careful technical mastery both in fresco and tumes inspired by the exhibition created by the painting, and the profound study of the pictorial Northern School of Art, Middlesbrough, will tradition and imagery to achieve a formal perfec- accompany the exhibition, including debates and tion. The fame of the artist and his popularity ‘in conversation’ events with associations of went well beyond Italy and it is not surprising women and the art-based education and training that Henrietta Maria of France (1609 – 1669), company ‘Changing Relations’, based in County Queen Consort of King Charles I of England, Durham. These events will offer a unique oppor- demonstrated an avid admiration for him.” tunity to engage with the themes explored in the A catalogue with a collection of essays exhibition and stimulate a wider response to will accompany the exhibition exploring four Guido Reni’s work from the wide public, special- main themes: Guido Reni “Il Divino”; Britain’s ists, university students and non-specialists alike. Discovery of the Master; The Power and the Virtue; Lucretia Romana: a series and its recep- Bernadette Petti (RCS ‘18) tion. Assistant Curator of Fine Art, The Bowes Museum

Thomas Gainsborough at The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow

In December 2019 the Pushkin Museum of Fine Gainsborough’s style developed over the time Arts in Moscow opens an exhibition of works by when British art was going through a genuine (1727-1788), an outstand- Renaissance that affected the theatre, music, lit- ing British painter, erature, and, of one of the key fig- course, fine arts. ures in the London Over the years, art scene of the sec- Thomas Gainsbor- ond half of the 18th ough has been century. This is not closely associated the first British Art with distinguished exhibition for figures in British Pushkin Museum. culture. His cus- Over the past 12 tomers included years it hosted a actors and musi- series of exhibitions cians, prominent totally dedicated to politicians, and British art including members of the the impressive dis- royal family. A tal- plays of works by ented amateur mu- William Turner, sician, he was well William Blake, Pre- Extensive Wooded Upland Landscape, c.1786, acquainted with Raphaelites, the Gainsborough’s House Collection famous composers London School, as and leading per- well as projects ded- formers. This was icated to Aubrey Beardsley and Benjamin Britten. one of the reasons to coincide with the Gains- The exhibitions of this kind are of high borough exhibition the December Museum importance not only as a symbol of cultural col- Nights Music Festival, which this year is a part of laboration between countries. Russian museums, the Year of Music of Great Britain in Russia. This except for State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, year its program is dedicated to the time of have very small collections of British art. This Gainsborough and his contemporary composers. situation is better with applied art, but as for It will feature many British and Russian soloists painting, Russian collectors preferred French, and ensembles that will perform music in the en- Dutch and Italian masters. That is why Pushkin vironment of portraits of Karl Friedrich Abel, Museum’s exhibitions of British art are the only Ms. Ann chance to see the art of Great Britain in Russia. Ford, Samuel Linley, Louisa Skrine, Lady Clarges These exhibitions have tremendous success at and other contemporaries of the artist related to the public in Moscow, and are highly visited. music. Despite the fact that Gainsborough al- most never travelled abroad, his style was in- spired with the artist’s acquaintance with the art of European Old Masters. The exhibition in Moscow includes paintings by Nicolas Lancret, Jacob van Ruisdael, Anthony Van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens from the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the State Hermitage Museum, which influenced on Gains- borough’s style at different stages. The work of British contemporaries and followers of Gains- borough, included in the exhibition, will demon- strate the place of Gainsborough in the context of the British culture. The exhibition of Thomas Gainsborough will be an important event in the long-standing friendship and collaboration of the Pushkin Mu- seum with British museums. The list of exhibi- tion in Moscow includes about 100 works from the collection of 11 museums and collections from the UK as well as Pushkin Museum, the State Hermitage, and the Russian private collec- tions. In addition to the largest London collec- Mrs Elizabeth Moody with her sons Samuel and tions, long-standing partners of Pushkin Muse- Thomas. c.1779-85 um, the new participants will be the Gainsbor- ough House Museum, Holburne Museum in Bath, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Ashmolean Muse- Dulwich Picture Gallery, The market cart from um, National Galleries of Scotland and one paint- National Gallery, The Byam Family from The ing provided by National Trust. Holburne Museum, Pomeranian Bitch and Puppy The most significant block of Thomas from Gallery and large scale landscape paint- Gainsborough’s early works was contributed by ings from the National Galleries of Scotland and the Sudbury House Museum - the main partner the . Another very special of the Pushkin Museum in this exhibition. In ex- highlight of exhibition are two paintings on glass change, the Moscow Museum intends to arrange provided by the Victoria and Albert Museum. in the Gainsborough House a large exhibition of I would like to express my deep gratitude 19th-century French landscape. One of the pur- to our Russian and British colleagues for the in- poses of the project was to show the late Gains- valuable help and support that in this controver- borough works of large format, that form the ap- sial time allows us to have friendly and profes- pearance of the permanent rooms of all the mu- sional connections between museums. seums. Thanks to the generosity of our partners, several late masterpieces of the master will be Anna Poznanskaya (SS ‘07; LHC ‘14) displayed. Curator of English Painting, These are Portrait Mrs Elizabeth Moody with her The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts sons Samuel and Thomas from

Portraying Pregnancy: From Holbein to Social Media at The Foundling Museum

The Foundling Museum is proud to present the ing (whether visibly so or not). Through paint- first major exhibition to explore representations ings, prints, photographs, objects and clothing of the pregnant female body through portraits from the fifteenth century to the present day, from the past 500 years, ‘Portraying Pregnancy: Portraying Pregnancy explores the different ways From Holbein to Social Media’ which opens on in which pregnancy was, or was not, represented; 24 January 2020. how shifting social attitudes have impacted on Until the twentieth century, many women depictions of pregnant women; how the possibili- spent most of their adult years pregnant. Despite ty of death in childbirth brought additional ten- this, pregnancies are seldom made apparent in sion to such representations; and how more re- surviving portraits. This exhibition brings to- cent images, which often reflect increased female gether images of women – mainly British - who agency and empowerment, still remain highly were depicted at a time when they were expect- charged. This exhibition is the first of its kind and erfully represented by George Dawe’s 1817 por- provides an exceptional opportunity to situate trait of the pregnant Princess Charlotte, the heir contemporary issues of women’s equality and au- to the British throne, wearing a fashionable loose tonomy in a 500- ‘sarafan’ dress, as well as by year context. the actual surviving gar- The earliest ment, lent by Her Majesty portrait featured in The Queen from the Royal the exhibition - and Collection, which will be a major highlight - displayed alongside it. is Hans Holbein II’s Charlotte died in child- beautiful drawing of birth, in November that Sir Thomas More’s year. daughter, Cicely While Christianity played Heron, made in a central role in everyday 1526-7, lent by Her life, conceiving a baby (or Majesty The Queen not), was seen as a gift from from the Royal Col- God. Historically, the New lection. Sketched Testament story of The from life, it is a rare, Visitation – the meeting of clear-eyed, observa- the pregnant Virgin Mary tion of a pregnant and her cousin, Elizabeth – woman. In many was a particularly inspiring pre-twentieth-cen- and comforting one for tury works in the Portrait of a Woman in Red, Marcus Gheeraerts II, 1620 pregnant women. Images of exhibition, however, Tate Gallery it had been widespread in the sitter’s pregnan- England prior to the six- cy has been edited teenth- century Ref- out. The mezzotint made after Sir Joshua ormation, and reappeared in the late nineteenth Reynolds’s full-length portrait of Theresa Parker, and early twentieth centuries. The Pre-Raphaelite for example, shows no visible sign of her preg- artists’ doctrine of absolute realism saw them nancy, in line with conventions of the time, de- model their depictions of it on pregnant women spite rich documentary evidence that by her sec- among their own social circle. ond sitting in February 1772, Theresa was heavily Augustus John’s c.1901 full-length portrait pregnant. of his wife, Ida, must have seemed astonishingly Today, women with access to birth con- transgressive to viewers at the time, as it clearly trol can expect to plan if, or when, they become depicts her as pregnant. It was not until the later pregnant. Prior to the 1960s, many women would twentieth century that pregnancy stopped being have experienced, between marriage and ‘airbrushed out’ of portraits. In 1984, the British menopause, a number of pregnancies – and their painter, Ghislaine Howard, produced a powerful daily lives might alter little for most of the gesta- self-portrait of herself as heavily pregnant. tion period. This is exemplified in a portrait of However, the watershed moment occurred inter- the celebrated eighteenth-century actress, Sarah nationally in August 1991, when Annie Leibovitz’s Siddons, shown in the role of Lady Macbeth, photographic portrait of the actress, Demi which she famously played up until the final Moore, naked and seven months pregnant, ap- weeks of pregnancy. peared on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. This Fear of dying in childbirth was very real, image was considered so shocking that some re- and often justified. Until the early twentieth cen- tailers refused to stock the issue. Nevertheless, it tury, most births took place at home, often at- marked a culture shift and initiated the trend for tended by family members, and consequently more visible celebrations of pregnant bodies – many women witnessed death in childbirth. Eliz- especially nude ones. In 2017, Leibovitz returned abethan and Jacobean portraits of visibly preg- to the theme, photographing the pregnant tennis nant women, such as Marcus Gheeraerts II’s por- champion, Serena Williams, naked, for Vanity trait of a heavily-pregnant Unknown Woman, Fair’s August cover. dated 1620, appeared in the same era as the The final photograph in the exhibition, ‘mother’s legacy’ text – in which a woman wrote a by Awol Erizku, was commissioned by the singer, ‘letter’ for the benefit of her unborn child, in case Beyoncé Knowles, who posted it on Instagram on she should not survive her confinement. An ex- 1 February 2017. Erizku’s iconographically com- ample is the manuscript that the well-educated plex portrait of Beyoncé, pregnant with twins, Elizabeth Joscelin wrote in 1622 for the child that veiled and kneeling in front of a screen of flowers, she was carrying. Maternal mortality is also pow- became the most liked Instagram post of that year. Beyoncé’s image powerfully demonstrates autonomy in a 500-year context; it forms part of how some women have succeeded in taking own- the Foundling Museum’s ongoing programme of ership not just of representations of their preg- exhibiting art that reflects its mission to cele- nant bodies, but also the distribution of their brate the power of individuals and the arts to portraits. change lives. This exhibition is the first of its kind and provides an exceptional opportunity to situate Professor Karen Hearn (RCS ‘97; SP ‘96) contemporary issues of women’s equality and Exhibition Curator and previously curator of 16th and 17th Century British Art at

• PUBLICATIONS

Imago Urbis: The Spanish Cities seen by the Travellers (XVI-XIX)

An important research project A selection of these works had on the image of the Spanish been exhibited later at the cities from the early modern pe- Palacete del Embarcadero, in riod to the development of pho- Santander (4-27 October 2019). tography has recently culminated The catalogue of the ex- with an exceptional exhibition, hibition, Imago Urbis. Las ciudades Imago Urbis. The Spanish Cities seen españolas vistas por los viajeros-siglos by the Travelers (XVI-XIX) (25 XVI-XIX, edited by the Museum April-23 June 2019), organised by of Fine Arts of Asturias and Edi- the Museum of Fine Arts of As- ciones Trea, is both a relevant turias, Oviedo and curated by the compilation of works dealing scholars Luis Sazatornil, from with the representation of the the University of Cantabria, and Spanish cities and a conscien- Vidal de la Madrid, from the tious research monograph coor- University of Oviedo. Visitors dinated by Luis Sazatornil and have had the opportunity of con- Vidal de la Madrid. This an im- templating closely an important portant contribution to the art The Cathedral of Oviedo, General Pérez number of illustrated travel Villaamil, 1837, Watercolour, Museo historiography, as the essays and books, prints, drawings, paint- de Bellas Artes de Asturias the catalogue revise thoroughly ings and photographs, not easy to the historical sources and exis- see altogether. Among many oth- tent bibliography, giving, in many ers, the exhibition included works by E.H. Lock- cases, a new perspective on this topic. er, J. F. Lewis, George Vivian, David Roberts, Gi- rault de Prangey, Gustave Doré, Pérez Villaamil, Isabel M. Rodriguez Marco (SS ‘06) Urrabieta Vierge, Jean Laurent or Charles Clif- Curator, Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, ford. Madrid

Review Fringe, Frog and Tassel by Annabel Westman

As the opening lines of Annabel Westman’s book evokes a world in which the variety and complex- attest ‘Sumptuous fringes, tassels, cords, gimp ity of the costly trimmings acted ‘as a strategic and woven lace (braid) were once in constant de- status symbol’ emphasising the taste and wealth mand to create glamorous and sculptural effects of owners and showcasing the skill of the ‘lace- in a rich interior. Such items were seen as provid- man’. Known collectively as lacemen from the ing colour, texture, richness and style to an elabo- 1660s onwards, trimming makers possessed a rate ensemble, as well as lending an essential bal- broad range of distinct skills and produced indi- ance, proportion and the occasional touch of ec- vidual products for ceremonial costume, liveries centricity’. With great verve and in glorious de- and dress as well as for furnishings. Amongst tail, Annabel charts the fascinating history of the others, we learn of the Orrice-Weaver, the Wire- design and application of furnishing trimmings Drawer, the Gold and Silver Lace Man and the from the early 1300s to the 1970s and brilliantly predominantly female Fringe, Frog and Tassel- Makers whose deft handiwork was well-recom- pensed so long as they were ‘not initiated into the contemporary paintings, engravings and illumi- Mystery of Gin-Drinking’ as a lively 18th century nated manuscripts which serve to illustrate key account of the trade warns. points and reveal early exam- This book is an ency- ples and intricate details. clopaedic study of the laceman’s Throughout the book, the myriad work enriching State reader’s attention is drawn to beds, upholstered furniture, wall the striking colours, textures hangings, curtains and cushions and strong contrasts original- in domestic interiors from royal ly employed and the subdued palaces to country houses and as appearance of the many now fashions filtered down through faded schemes or those that society, well-appointed middle have been lost as a conse- class drawing rooms of the 19th quence of time and changing and 20th centuries. Superb surviv- tastes. Annabel argues that ing examples, including the while ‘examples still survive King’s bed at Knole c.1673, with of detailed workmanship and hangings of silk enriched with design that even the best de- gold thread and trimmed with scription cannot convey with buttons and loops and tufted accuracy. They are … being fringe of gold and silver thread rapidly retired and put into and coral silk; the Privy Chamber store, ravaged by light degra- throne canopy at Hampton dation. Out of sight they will Court Palace, 1699, with a ‘deep soon be forgotten. The aim valance’ fringe and broad and narrow gold thread of this book, therefore, is to record the rich trea- woven laces; the Melville state bed, c.1698, with sury of surviving examples, before they complete- hangings of crimson velvet trimmed with eight ly disappear from public view, and create a deeper tufted fringes of different lengths; William Kent’s understanding of the immense variety, extensive state bed and suite of chairs in the Green Velvet use and the sums spent on what was once such a Bedchamber at Houghton Hall, 1732, with gold visual feast in the royal and domestic interior.’ thread trimmings; and the bed and window cur- Fringe, Frog & Tassel more than fulfils this ambi- tains with gold-coloured woven lace, ‘double Scrol tious aim. It is a perfectly judged combination of gimp head’ fringe and tassels, c.1820 at Castle Annabel’s pre-eminent scholarship and inimitable Coole, Co. Fermanagh, are vividly described with enthusiasm for her subject. detailed explanations of each individual element, a precise lexicon and an invaluable glossary of Tessa Wild (SS ’00; SP ’12; LHC ’14) terms. The richness of the subject matter is re- Director, Attingham Summer School flected in the stunning photographs commis- sioned for the book and an engrossing array of

Glorious Goodwood: A Biography of England’s Greatest Sporting Estate

James Peill (RCS ’11) Hardcover | 336 pages 9781472128232 £25 Little Brown

Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect

Annette Carruthers (SS ’90), Mary Greensted and Barley Rosoce Hardback | 368 pages 320 colour and black and white images 9780300246261 £50 Yale University Press • OBITUARIES

Peter Boughton

Peter Boughton (SS ‘90) spent his curatorial ca- His travels in this country were equally challeng- reer at the Grosvenor Art Gallery, Chester and ing – thirteen exhibitions before August, from his early death in September 2019 has deprived Dior and John Ruskin to contemporary installa- the city of one of its most dynamic advocates for tions in multi-media in cities throughout Britain. the arts. Peter was always a frail figure but his His dapper figure, always in a suit, saw everything energy and commitment were unequalled. Those and appreciated everything, from ballet and of us who received his annual reports by email opera to Mary Poppins Returns. It was not sur- could only marvel at his enthusiasm. Even the last prising, although entirely fitting, that in August of these, sent out with great positivity in August he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctors of this year, and ending with an announcement of Letters (DLItt) by the University of Chester in his rapidly failing health, included multiple and honour of his contribution to the visual arts in varied acquisitions for the museum, the curator- Chester over nearly thirty-six years. ship of a temporary exhibition and service on a variety of advisory committees. He also recorded Sarah Medlam his travels, this year to Italy, with a commentary Trustee of The Attingham Trust on his itinerary worthy of an Attingham report.

Gil Darby

Gil Darby's (RCS ‘01) expert knowledge of ceram- for her subject or the ability to communicate it ics and country houses, her passion for teaching, generously to others. and her brilliant (and sometimes irreverent) sense Her warmth, her passion for her subject, of humour formed a winning combination. Like her courage, not to mention her incredible style so many of us Attingham alumni who were fortu- will be sadly missed by all who knew her. nate to have had her as a colleague or friend, or She regarded her time teaching on the Summer to have learned from her, we shall miss her way of School and attending Royal Collection Studies in bringing the country house, its collections and its 2001 as highlights in her career and enormous denizens to life with subtlety and intelligence. gratitude goes to her husband, Martin Williams, From her early career with the V&A, first for enabling an Attingham scholarship in her in the Ceramics department and then as a name to support future country house scholars. founder member of the Far Eastern department, before moving to Christie’s Education as tutor Rebecca Lyons and course director, Gil never lost her enthusiasm Director, Royal Collection Studies

Registered as an Education Charitable Trust: no. 262819 www.attinghamtrust.org