Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar: Vivien Gaston

Johann Zoffany, ‘Elizabeth Farren as Hermione in The Winter’s Tale'(c. 1780). National Gallery of Victoria, Everard Studley Miller Bequest.

Vivien Gaston, ‘Staying Alive: Johann Zoffany’s Portrait of Elizabeth Farren as Hermione in Shakespeare’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’, c. 1780’.

Johan Zoffany’s portrait of Elizabeth Farren as Hermione in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale represents one of the most striking, controversial and memorable scenes in all of Shakespeare’s plays. It is also a portrait of an actress whose private and public lives were equally intriguing, one of a few highly successful women whose celebrity status enabled their radical upward mobility.

Portrait News

Georges Seurat, ‘Young woman powdering herself’, 1889-90. Courtauld Gallery, London.

A hidden self-portrait by Seurat rediscovered

An article by Aviva Burnstock (Head of the Department of Conservation & Technology, Courtauld Institute, London) and Karen Serres (Schroder Foundation Curator of Paintings, Courtauld Institute) in the April edition of The Burlington Magazine reveals a hidden self-portrait by Georges Seurat (1859-91) in his painting Young woman powdering herself of 1889-90.