Collections at the Eton Action Fair
Last Saturday, the Collections welcomed over a thousand visitors to Lower School and 671 to the Verey Gallery. In addition, 155 visitors stopped at the Collections stand in School Yard, where children were invited to have a go at embroidery, inspired by the lavishly embroidered costumes in the Ad Montem exhibition.
New Exhibition opens in London
Last week, An Etonian Collector: The Richard Amis Bequest was opened by the Provost at Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, Mason’s Yard, London. The event was attended by representatives of the Amis family, friends and classmates of Richard Amis, watercolour specialists and members of the Eton College Community. The display, featuring 28 works collected by Old Etonian Richard Amis, was well received and people who knew Amis shared their memories of him and his love of art. The collection will remain at Guy Peppiatt Fine Art until Wednesday 27 September, before returning to Eton for display in the Verey Gallery from 15 November until 24 March 2024.
First Folio on Show
A copy of this iconic book from College Library will be on public display as part of national celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio of William Shakespeare in 1623. This pop-up display can be viewed in the Verey Gallery with our temporary exhibition, Ad Montem, which tells the story of an historic Eton festival first recorded a few years before Shakespeare’s birth.
Jane Evans Goes to Boston
A portrait of Jane Evans (the last Eton Dame to keep a boys’ house, 1878-1906) by John Singer Sargent has travelled to Boston, where it may be seen in the forthcoming exhibition Fashioned by Sargent at the Museum of Fine Art there (8 October 2023 to 15 January 2024). The portrait, along with the rest of the exhibition, will move to Tate Britain next year for its London run (22 February to 7 July 2024).
Album conservation
Two albums compiled by Charles Routh (CRNR), former House Master of Timbralls 1934-49, have been conserved. The albums are frequently used by the College Archives as they comprehensively depict life at Eton during the Second World War. The treatment they have received means that they can continue to be shown to boys and visitors for years to come.
Digitising Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray’s manuscript notes of his observations of nature in his copy of The Naturalist’s Journal (MS 954) have been digitised in full, thanks to the initiative of the donor of this important manuscript by one of Eton’s greatest poets.
Filming in College Library
College Library was the setting for an interview between BBC presenter Reeta Chakrabarti and Rosie Cavaliero from the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association, for a documentary which will include footage of their visit to Eton in June 2022 to mark the bicentenary of Shelley’s death in 1822.
