Call for Papers | Conference: ‘Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits, 1700-1914’

Inspired by the outstanding collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, this interdisciplinary conference will be the largest gathering of international and Australian scholars to focus on portraits. It will provide a unique opportunity to explore both British and Australian portraits through a dynamic interchange between academics and curators.

September 8-11 2016, University of Melbourne and National Gallery of Victoria

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.

Allan Ramsay portrait of ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ discovered

The Guardian reports on the recent discovery of a portrait by Scottish artist Allan Ramsay of the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart. The portrait was painted in Edinburgh in 1745, the year of the unsuccessful Jacobite rebellion that was ruthlessly crushed the following year at the Battle of Culloden. The discovery was made by Bendor Grosvenor, a director of the Philip Mould Gallery in London and well known from the BBC’s Fake or Fortune? and from his own blog Art History News.

Portraiture and Politics

The London Evening Standard reports that British MPs have spent £250,000 of public money on official portraits of their colleagues. The response, deliberately framed within the context of Britain’s current regime of financial austerity, has been unsurprisingly—and rather unimaginatively—critical. Jonathan Isaby, chief executive of the campaign group Taxpayers’ Alliance, for instance, has described the expenditure as “an expensive vanity project” and the Evening Standard dubs it a spending ‘spree’ in which MPs ‘splurged’ taxpayers’ money.

New book | Placing Faces: The portrait and the English country house in the long eighteenth century

A new book from Manchester University Press explores the relationship between English country houses and the portraits that adorn their walls. Edited by Gill Perry, Kate Retford and Jordan Vibert, the book contains essays by Desmond Shawe Taylor, Harriet Guest, Emma Barker, Susie West, Alison Yarrington and Ruth Kenny.

Joseph Wright of Derby’s self-portrait in the NGV | Vivien Gaston

Joseph Wright of Derby, Self-portrait (1765-68). Oil on canvas on canvas, 69.8 x 58 cm (image) 70.2 x 58.7 cm (canvas). National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Gift of Alina Cade in memory of her husband Joseph Wright Cade, 2009.

In late 2009 curator Laurie Benson answered a telephone call informing him of two portraits in a Melbourne home that might be of interest to the National Gallery of Victoria. After undertaking preliminary research, Benson set off for the caller’s home with great curiosity. On arrival he found, hanging above the fireplace in its original frame, a long-lost self-portrait by one of Britain’s greatest artists, Joseph Wright of Derby.