The National Portrait Gallery

An ongoing teaching collaboration between the University of Bristol, the National Portrait, Gallery, London (NPG) and the National Trust, has resulted in a series of public exhibitions curated by teams of MA students under the supervision of Bristol faculty and curatorial staff at NPG.

• 'On the Nature of Women': Tudor and Jacobean Portraits of Women (Montacute House, Somerset, 2008–9)
• Imagined Lives: Mystery Portraits 1520–1640 (Montacute House; The National Portrait Gallery, London, 2010–12) , restaged at MShed, Bristol as Real and Imagined Lives (2012–13)
• Pictured and Seen (Montacute House, Somerset, 2013–14)

On the Nature of Women

Portraits of women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the focus of this exhibition, which explored contemporary ideas about female character and moral behaviour, and shifts in fashion and standards of beauty. It was the first display to have been curated by university students in partnership with NPG and the National Trust.  Research by students at Bristol uncovered new information about women's roles in public and private life, including their involvement in politics and in life at the royal court.

Bristol graduate Catherine Hunt shares her experiences of working on the project:

'This provided excellent experience, including a visit to the NPG conservation studio, training in using the NPG archives, guidance on the practical implications of the hanging process, and, for those who wanted to, giving a gallery talk. Between us we wrote the captions, text panel and further information for visitors, and I was involved in producing family and educational materials. It was a great opportunity to see an exhibition through from beginning to end, with hands-on experience of practical and research skills, and a chance to meet and work with a range of professionals outside the University of Bristol History of Art Department.'

Catherine achieved a distinction in her MA, and went on to do a PhD at Bristol on the 'The Depiction of Gloves in Western Art, 1400-1660.' She now teaches part-time at the university.

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: 'The creative partnership between the National Portrait Gallery and the National Trust provides a wonderful basis for this new collaboration with the University of Bristol. I am delighted that the new display offers so many fascinating insights into portraits of Tudor women.'

Tania String, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, University of Bristol, says: 'This has been an extraordinary learning experience for our postgraduate students - the opportunity to work so closely with art objects has been foundational for this next generation of art historians.'

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The exhibition poster picturing Sir Robert Dudley

Imagined Lives

This exhibition examined portraits of unknown sitters dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. New research by students at Bristol investigated previous assumptions about who the sitters might be, and in some cases suggested other possible identities. For example, research by MA student Pippa Stephenson established that the portrait of an unknown man used on the exhibition poster (pictured here) is probably Sir Robert Dudley, suitor to Queen Elizabeth I. As NPG curator Tarnya Cooper observed: 'facially it looks like him and the provenance is absolutely right. It is thought to have been painted in 1590. That was the year that Sir Robert was introduced to court so he would have been likely to commission a portrait of himself at that time.' Stephenson's findings were discussed in a review published by the Telegraph (17 March 2010). Eight celebrated authors (including John Banville, Tracy Chevalier and Joanna Trollope) wrote fictional lives to accompany the portraits. Their stories were performed as gallery talks and have been published on the NPG website as podcasts, and as a book.The exhibition proved successful enough to transfer from the National Trust’s Montacute House (2010–2011) to NPG itself (2011–2012), and then to M Shed in Bristol as Real and Imagined Lives (2012–2013), where a new layer was added with the introduction of contemporary photographic portraits of famous Bristolians.

Pictured and Seen (Montacute House, Somerset, 2013–14)

Led by Dr Alexandra Hoare (University of Bristol) and Dr Jane Eade (NPG), this curatorial MA unit will examine portraits from the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the National Trust that contain depictions of objects. The paintings will be displayed alongside the objects themselves, some of which will be lent by the University of Bristol Special Collections.

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