DORSET COUNTY MUSEUM



DORSET Press Release

COUNTY

MUSEUM

Georgian Faces: Portrait of a County

A new exhibition at Dorset County Museum

15 January to 30 April 2011

The Dorset County Museum is proud to announce an important forthcoming exhibition, Georgian Faces: Portrait of a County. Due to open on 15 January 2011, it will include over sixty, mostly previously unseen, portraits of the people who shaped Dorset during the eighteenth century.

The catalyst for the exhibition was provided by the Museum’s recent acquisition of George Romney’s portrait of the Reverend Thomas Rackett as a young boy; a purchase made possible by the generosity of the Art Fund, HLF South West and local support.

For the past year, curator Gwen Yarker (formerly of the National Maritime Museum) has been selecting portraits for the exhibition from all over Dorset and further afield. Some paintings are coming on loan from national institutions, but the majority will come from private collections.

• The exhibition will show portraits by many of the important portrait artists of the eighteenth century, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, George Romney, Thomas Gainsborough and Allan Ramsay. The exhibition will also throw a spotlight on Thomas Beach, who was born at Milton Abbas, Dorset, trained with Reynolds and worked as a portrait painted in London, Bath and the West Country.

• The exhibition will provide the first opportunity for William Hogarth’s portrait of Thomas Coombes, a Dorset boatman aged 108 to be exhibited for over 100 years. Hogarth’s father-in-law, the famous decorative painter Sir James Thornhill, was a native of the county who retired to Dorset in the 1720s.

• George III visited Weymouth for his health following his first attack of porphyria. From 1789 to 1805 he regularly stayed in the town essentially requiring the court to relocate to the Dorset coast every year. From the 1790s the threat of invasion meant a local volunteer force was created. Portraits of several of its officers painted by Dorset-born Thomas Beach, will feature in the exhibition.

• Portraits of Poole’s merchant princes will reveal the riches gained from cod fishing and fur trading with Newfoundland. A highlight will be Thomas Frye’s unpublished portrait of rich Poole merchant Sir Peter Thompson, now in Poole Museum. Thompson’s portrait came to light when Gwen Yarker was cataloguing in Dorset for the Public Catalogue Foundation.

• The exhibition will show that Dorset was not an isolated rural county, but that many of its residents, especially the Reverend Thomas Rackett and his circle, brought the latest thinking, ideas and intellectual developments in London to rural centres such as Blandford. They in turn returned to the capital with their local discourses in natural philosophy, antiquarianism and archaeology.

• Georgian Faces will also include a series of cut-out silhouettes produced by George III’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, during her friendship with local diarist and botanist Mary Frampton.

Quotations

A lender observes :

“it is instructive to see our pictures among their contemporary Dorset friends and neighbours”.

Exhibition curator Gwen Yarker comments :

“ This is a wonderfully collaborative project incorporating so many people including local and national museums, private lenders, sponsors, local businesses and a huge army of enthusiastic volunteers.”

“The little known portrait of Dorset boatman, Thomas Coombes, aged 108 painted by William Hogarth in 1742 powerfully contrasts with those of the aristocrats, landowners and merchants in the exhibition.”

“With a budget of only £1000 we are enormously indebted to our sponsors Axa Art Insurance Limited, Duke’s of Dorchester, Fine Art Auctioneers, Farrow & Ball, R. K. Harrison Group Limited, Humphries Kirk, as well as trusts. Without their support this remarkable exhibition would not have been possible.”

“With an emphasis on the importance of the sitters the exhibition offers a wonderful variety of portrait loans from local museums, national institutions with over 40, many previously unseen, from private collections, all telling the story of Dorset in the eighteenth century.”

The exhibition is being generously supported by local businesses including R.K.Harrison in partnership with AXA Art, HY Duke & Sons of Dorchester, Humphries Kirk and Farrow & Ball, several trusts and private donors. NADFAS is also generously supporting the exhibition, through both the Wessex region and the local Dorset County association based in Dorchester. Its team of volunteers who look after the museum’s art collection are all very much involved in researching, designing and many other aspects of the exhibition.

A fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition written by exhibition curator, Gwen Yarker, is available with a foreword by HRH The Duchess of Cornwall and funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Studies in Art.

EXHIBITION DETAILS

Georgian Faces: Portrait of a County

15 January to 30 April 2011

Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, Dorset

Tickets £6.50, Concessions £5.00



Tel 01305 262735

For further information please contact: Rachel Cole on 01305 262735 or email rachel@.

Alternate contact (Thursdays and Fridays): Elita Kirby on 01305 262735 or email Secretary@

For a list of places to stay in and around Dorchester please contact:

Dorchester Tourist Information Centre on 01305 267992 or email Dorchester.tic@westdorset-.uk

Dorset County Museum is supported by Dorset County Council

Dorset County Museum High West Street Dorchester Dorset DT1 1XA Tel: 01305 262735



Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Company registered in England No. 3362107. Registered Charity No. 1062400

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Thomas Beach (1738-1806),

Rebecca Steward (1766-1859), 1783, Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society.

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