Simon Schama's portraits of a nation

Simon Schama has joined forces with the National Portrait Gallery and the BBC to explore the history and development of British portraiture. Here, using the themes of love, people, fame, self and power, Simon selects some of the most significant photographs, paintings and caricatures of the past 800 years...

This article was first published in the October 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine
Friday 2nd October 2015
Submitted by: Charlotte Hodgman
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A young photographer captured this iconic image of prime minister Winston Churchill in 1941. (Credit: National Portrait Gallery, London/Karsh-Camera Press)
Love

Alice Liddell by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), 1860 and 1870

Charles Dodgson, better known by his pen name of Lewis Carroll, met the Liddell family in 1856. Dodgson would entertain Alice and her siblings with his stories, and they in turn became the subjects of another of his passions: photography. Alice – pictured below left when she was eight – was a particular favourite of the aspiring writer, becoming the inspiration for the high-spirited Alice in his 1865 children’s classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

(Credit: Oxford Film and Television Ltd/National Portrait Gallery, London/National Media Museum)

“Like many Victorian image-makers, Dodgson loved to capture pictures of children – particularly girls – during their ‘age of innocence’, before the awkwardness of adolescence set in,” says Simon Schama. “The frank, composed stare of the young, fresh-faced Alice in contrast to the passive-aggressive pose of her 20-year-old self suggests a dramatic change in the sitter during the 10-year period between the two sittings.”

Dodgson had, in fact, cut contact with the Liddells at some point between the two sittings. Some speculated that Alice’s mother had grown uncomfortable with his attentions towards her daughter, or that his infatuation with Alice had even to led to a proposal of marriage.



King George IV by Richard Cosway, c1780–82

Designed to be kept on, or about, the body like a piece of jewellery, miniature portraits – mainly of loved ones, and often boasting accompanying locks of hair – peaked in popularity during the 18th century.

The future George IV – a hopeless romantic – was a particular fan of the genre, and almost always sent the object of his devotion a miniature of himself. The image below, which may have been painted as a gift for actress Mary Robinson, sees George painted against a cloudy sky, and was designed to show off his features to their best advantage.

(Credit: Oxford Film and Television Ltd/National Portrait Gallery, London/National Media Museum)

“Richard Cosway, who became painter to the Prince of Wales in 1785, was soon painting two or three miniatures a year – the prince’s amorous turnover being high,” says Schama. “Ironically, it was his mother, Queen Charlotte, who inspired his love of the medium. She habitually wore a miniature of her husband, given to her as a wedding present, over her heart as a public expression of her devotion.”

People

Surveillance photograph of militant suffragettes by Criminal Record Office, 1914

After labelling the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) a terror organisation, in 1912, the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office began compiling a photo dossier – the first such security surveillance file – of imprisoned suffragettes. The images were taken using the first long-distance lens made in Britain, and usually showed women exercising in prison yards. They were then distributed to institutions deemed to be under threat of attack by suffragettes, including the National Gallery, which had seen suffragette Mary Richardson attack a Velázquez masterpiece – the Rokeby Venus – with a meat cleaver in March 1914.

(Credit: National Portrait Gallery, London)

Says Schama: “One photograph – of suffragette Evelyn Manesta (no 10) – was even doctored so that the policeman’s arm that gripped her neck in the original version subsequently resembled a harmless scarf!”



Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (Job ben Solomon)

Pictured in the costume of the Fulbe people of his native Senegambia, west Africa, Diallo – a slave-owner – was himself taken into slavery in 1731, on his return from a slave-selling mission. Diallo was sent to work on a plantation, but eventually found himself in London, where he was celebrated for, among other things, his skills as a translator of Arabic. His is the first known portrait to honour an African subject as an individual and equal.
Diallo shown with one of the three Qur’ans he wrote from memory, as a symbol of his Muslim piety.