13 March, 2019

At the core of the collection are the legacies of two great Victorian collectors: the entrepreneur Thomas Holloway and the artist Christiana Herringham. Scholars of the history of collecting will be well acquainted with the College founder Thomas Holloway’s splendid collection of Victorian paintings, perhaps the first British collection formed for a female audience. These ‘fine specimens of modern art’, as Queen Victoria described them in her diary, were amassed in just 2 years and they are still hung in the Grade I listed Picture Gallery.

The current exhibition Christiana Herringham: artist campaigner collector [Jan-Mar 2019] brings together highlights from Herringham’s collection of Indian miniatures, Japanese prints, Chinese textiles and works by contemporary women artists, which were dispersed between Bedford College, Newnham College and the family. The exhibition presents Herringham’s collections alongside her own paintings in tempera and watercolour studies made on her travels.

Members of The Society for the History of Collecting are invited to take part in a special guided visit to the Royal Holloway art collections. Beginning with a special tour of the Thomas Holloway collection in the Picture Gallery from assistant curator and SocHistColl steering committee member Dr Imogen Tedbury, members will also visit the Herringham exhibition with co-curators Dr Laura MacCulloch and Michaela Jones, whose doctoral research has informed the exhibition’s conception.

Trains leave Waterloo every half hour, £12.70 day return. The Royal Holloway campus is a 20-minute walk or a £5 taxi ride from the station. We will meet in the entrance to the Founder’s building, outside the entrance to the chapel.

Proposed schedule:

10.50 train from Waterloo arriving at Egham at 11.27am.

11.45am arrival and introductions

12pm Picture Gallery. Tour and time to explore.

1pm Archives visit: material related to history of Holloway and Herringham collections

1.30pm lunch in the SCR

2.30pm exhibition curators’ tour and time to explore

3.30pm Art store study room to see other Herringham collection items and treasures

4pm departure

4.23 train from Egham arriving at Waterloo at 5.04pm.

 

See here for further details

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