Birkbeck painting collection published by the BBC
A collection of oil paintings owned by, or on loan to, Birkbeck has been published on the BBC’s Your Paintings website.
A collection of oil paintings owned by, or on loan to, Birkbeck, University of London has today been published on the BBC’s Your Paintings website.
The College’s collection of 26 oil paintings includes works by artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, who were part of the famous Bloomsbury Set of artists and writers, several of whom lived in the buildings on Gordon Square that now house Birkbeck’s School of Arts.
Other paintings in the collection include portraits of former Presidents, Chairmen and Masters of Birkbeck, such as H Gordon Jackson, who was Master of the College from 1943-1950 and carried out fire watch duties during the Second World War. There is also a portrait of Birkbeck’s first female professor, Dame Helen Charlotte Isabella Gwynne Vaughan, CBE DSC, who was a prominent botanist and mycologist, as well as serving as Controller of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in France and commandant of the Women’s Royal Air Force during the First World War.
The collection includes two portraits of George Birkbeck (1776-1841), who in 1823 founded The Mechanics Institute, which later became Birkbeck College, to make education available to working Londoners.
The publication of Birkbeck’s paintings, along with approximately 40,000 other paintings held in public collections, on the Your Paintings website takes the total number on the site to 212,000. The UK is now the only country in the world with its entire public collection of oil paintings online.
Chris Terrey, Archivist at Birkbeck, who has been working with the Public Catalogue Foundation to support the digitisation of Birkbeck’s paintings said: “Today is the culmination of years of work to ensure that Birkbeck’s paintings are included in this important catalogue of publically owned paintings. The paintings all add to the narrative of the College’s history, whether it be by depicting key events or individuals in the development of the College, or through the shared history of the buildings in which we now house our teaching and research. We are very pleased to be able to share them more widely via the Your Paintings website.”
Your Paintings is a joint initiative between the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation (a registered charity set up to create a complete record of the United Kingdom's national collection of oil, tempera and acrylic paintings and make this accessible to the public) and participating collections and museums from across the UK.
Further information
- Read about Birkbeck’s history
- Find out about our History of Art courses