William Morris is all around me; drying-up cloths, his Willow Bough pattern on a sofa, the William Morris Academy round the corner, a pub in Hammersmith and …
William Morris lived in Hammersmith towards the end of his life – in Kelmscott House on the Thames in Chiswick. The carriage house is now home to the William Morris Society which is open on Thursday and Saturday afternoons. I went to see an exhibition of “paintings, drawings and film inspired by female muses and their forgotten role as authors or artists”, by Kirsty Buchanan and Clara Drummond.
I’d love to tell you all about it but as I arrived the last pieces were being bubble-wrapped and packed. The young woman doing this was apologetic but said that I could see it in November in Aldeburgh. She is Clara Drummond and I congratulated her on winning First Prize at the BP Portrait Award 2016. The entries are on display at the National Portrait Gallery and I wrote a little about this yesterday in Portraits.
She was pleased to have won especially since it was the fifth time she has entered. She told me that the judges, who also choose the entries that are hung, shape the exhibition and that it varies quite markedly year on year. I reminded her that it used to be for artists under forty and that would have been no obstacle to her success. She told me something I had not realised – as well as the age restriction going, artists no longer have to be British. She has won £30,000 and a commission from the NPG to paint a portrait (subject to be agreed) for an additional £5,000 fee. When Lucy Willis, whose work I admire, won in 1992 she painted Lord and Lady Longford.
Clara is such an engaging person, more engaging in fact than her winning portrait, Girl in a Liberty Dress. Take a look and I hope you like it as much as the judges did.
Born in Edinburgh, Cambridgeshire-based Clara Drummond studied modern languages at Cambridge University before going on to study at the Prince’s Drawing School. Her work was previously selected for the BP Portrait Award in 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2014.
Clara’s shortlisted portrait is of her friend, the artist Kirsty Buchanan, who wore a vintage Liberty dress to the sittings. This was in reference to the fact that both artists were working with the William Morris Society archive at the time and admired the hand-drawn fabric, wallpaper and tapestry patterns by William Morris’s wife Jane and daughter May. Clara says of Kirsty: ‘She is inspiring because she is always immersed in the ideas around whatever she is making at the time – history, nature, mythology and art all feed into her work – so when I am drawing or painting her it feels more like a collaboration than a portrait sitting.’
The judges said: ‘This year’s overall winner was noted by all of the judges for its subtle, enigmatic nature, and for the indelible impression the artist’s skill makes on the viewer.’
So William Morris is all around me – in the air that I breathe.