Page - 223 - in Der Arkadenhof der Universität Wien und die Tradition der Gelehrtenmemoria in Europa

CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT COMMISSIONING IN BRITISH UNIVERSITIES – TWO CASE STUDIES Sara Ayres This paper focuses on the contemporary pro-duction of scholars’ monuments in British universities, specifically, the painted portrait and its display within academic spaces.1 It offers a de- tailed discussion of two cases of contemporary academic commissioning undertaken in 2011– 12. Both portraits were commissioned via and undertaken by artist members of the Royal Soci- ety of Portrait Painters (RP): the first, of Sir Tim Wilson DL, Emeritus Professor at the University of Hertfordshire is by Brendan Kelly (Fig. 1); the second, of Professor William Brown, Master of Darwin College between 2000 and 2012, is by Geoffrey Hayzer (Fig. 2). Within the academic context, the scholar’s monument is a unique, durably material ob- ject which records not only the appearance of an honoured individual, but the triangulation of interpersonal relationships between that individ- ual and the portrait’s commissioner and its artist. The portrait’s value lies not only in the commis- sioner’s or commissioning group’s esteem for the person whose living presence is represented. It is also encoded in the vision, skill and time of the artist, the portrait’s temporal durability, and its Fig. 1: Brendan Kelly, Sir Tim Wilson, 2012, 120 x 70 cm, oil on canvas. University of Hertfordshire. 1 Within Britain, this practice appears to have originated in the Oxbridge Colleges and then replicated elsewhere. Existing literature on scholars’ monuments in university collections includes J. Jones, The Portraits of Balliol Col- lege, Oxford 1990; R. Lane Poole, Catalogue of Portraits in the Bodleian Library, completely revised and expanded by K. Garlick, Oxford 2004; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Portraits: from Lely to Hockney, Cambridge 1978; J. Weatherburn Goodison, Catalogue of Cambridge Portraits, Cambridge 1955; H. Guest, On the shoul- ders of Giants: Portraits from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge 2008; D. Talbot Rice, The University Portraits, Edinburgh 1957; J. H. Burnett / D. Howarth / S. D. Fletcher, The University Portraits: Second Series, Edinburgh 1986. Other literature in English on scholars’ portraits includes P. Fara, Framing the Evidence: Scientific