College oil paintings available online
Details and images of the College’s oil paintings have now been made available online thanks to the Public Catalogue Foundation. During 2011, the PCF recorded and photographed over 270 paintings hung throughout the College. Thanks are due to the Master, Fellows and staff of the College for allowing the photographer access to the rooms in which they live and work.
The paintings may be seen online at:
The paintings in St John's College have been acquired over five centuries. For the most part they represent donations and bequests to the College made by alumni and benefactors, though St John's has from time to time commissioned works from prominent artists, particularly when commemorating the famous or when thanking generous Johnians. Examples of the work of many prominent portrait painters are found in the collection: Mary Beale, Alexis-Simon Belle, George Romney, Henry William Pickersgill, and Michael Noakes being just a few. As might be expected, most oil paintings in the Collection are portraits of Masters, Fellows, and other alumni. An exception to this is the Samuel Butler collection, which is also the largest by any single artist. A St John’s alumnus, Butler was better known as a writer, but a substantial collection of his work was presented to St John’s in the early years of the twentieth century by Henry Festing Jones. A number of Butler’s paintings show scenes in Italy, where he sketched quickly and often directly onto board.
The paintings at St John's College are not in public ownership. In accordance with the charitable aims of the College, which is a private institution, our paintings have been included in this project to widen public awareness and for the benefit of scholarship. The paintings are hung throughout the College, mainly in private areas, with only those in the Chapel regularly on public view. Access to paintings other than those in the Chapel is normally limited to those involved in academic research, though other requests are sympathetically considered wherever possible. Those interested should apply to the Librarian.
The project has thrown up unexpected bonuses. High quality photographs have allowed previously obscured signatures to be deciphered, enabling us to identify some sitters after many years of anonymity. The discovery of the signature of John Longstaff, a prominent Australian portrait painter, on a picture sadly known to us only as ‘unknown cleric’ prompted new research. Labels on the reverse indicated that the picture had been framed in Melbourne, which narrowed the field of potential clerical subjects. St John’s has produced more than one Bishop of Melbourne, but only one who fitted the correct time frame: the first Archbishop of Melbourne, Harrington Clare Lees. Photographs of Lees on the internet bore a strong resemblance to our unknown cleric, and a visit to Melbourne Cathedral by a relative of one of the PCF researchers confirmed that our portrait was either a copy of, or preliminary sketch for, the portrait of Lees which hangs in their Chapter House.