Painting Pairs: Art History and Technical Study’ is a research opportunity for graduate students enrolled in the MA in the History of Art, MA in Curating the Art Museum and the PhD programme. It is supported by the Research Forum, the Courtauld Gallery and the Department of Conservation. Selected students are given the opportunity to form a research partnership with future conservators from the postgraduate diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings
Each pairing explores the contribution technical study can make to art historical scholarship (and vice versa) through research on a painting undergoing analysis or treatment in the Department of Conservation and Technology. The paintings are drawn from private and public collections, including the Courtauld Gallery.
The program is now in its 13th year – this year we have five pairs of graduate students, in each pair a student in Conservation and one from the history of art or curating working together to formulate their initial research questions that focus on paintings under technical study and treatment in the Conservation department.
This first presentation the pairs will introduce themselves, the paintings they are working on and the questions that they have decided to investigate in the coming months. The research will culminate in a second presentation on Friday May 24th. After each presentation we can take questions.
2023 – 24 Participants and paintings
Nitzan Band and Jessica Raja-Brown, Bearded Man with a Falcon, Courtauld Gallery
Grace Storey and Sarah Brokenborough, Mary Queen of Scots, Royal Collection Trust
Christina O’Brien and Ana Maria Delmar, Portrait of Stephanie Pilkington 1919, Private Collection
Victoria Ward and Tiffany Foster, Childbirth Scene, Private Collection
Sakeenah Montanaro and Bianca Arthur-Hull, Portrait of a Lady, Parham House