On Tuesday afternoon, Year 12 art historians visited the National Portrait Gallery to complement our study of the ‘Identities’ A Level unit, which mainly comprises an investigation of portraiture across the ages. We first studied closely Marc Quinn’s notorious and gruesome blood head, a self-portrait bust made from 10 pints of the artist’s own blood (drained from his person under medical supervision and at safe time intervals!). We then moved on to see a series of painted portraits from the beginning of the 20th century, including works by the Bloomsbury Group as well as Dame Laura Knight, who was the first woman since 1769 elected to full membership of the Royal Academy. While these paintings might appear to be more conventional in their appearance and medium to a gallery visitor today, in their time they were no less inventive than Quinn’s sculpture thanks to their expressive handling of colour or radical subject matter. We were inspired to learn about Dame Laura Knight, in particular, whose self-portrait boldly shows her in the process of painting a nude, a taboo subject for female artists in the 1910s, whose access to live models as part of artistic training was restricted. We look forward to continuing our investigation of these early 20th century portraits back at school!

Mrs Faircliff, Head of History of Art