Overview

From the beginning, the Bodleian Library received bequests not only of books and manuscripts, but also of portraits. By the eighteenth century, these were sufficiently important to be displayed in what was then the Upper Gallery of the Old Library (now the Upper Reading Room) beneath the frieze running the full length of the room, depicting 202 famous heads. After 1830, a perambulation around Oxford included the Bodleian Gallery as one of the sights. The diversity of sitters and artists is one of the delightful hallmarks of the collection. It includes literary figures: Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Pepys, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley; philosophers: Duns Scotus and John Locke; founders of Oxford colleges and Bodley's Librarians, as well as a liberal sprinkling of kings, queens, princes, courtiers, prelates and eccentrics. The portraits provide a fascinating record of political, social and academic history. They include works by Van Dyck and John Singer Sargent. This is a major revision of the edition by Lane Poole of 1912 - 1925 and is fully illustrated, with full-page entries for each portrait and helpful indexes.

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9781851240760

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Kenneth Garlick is the former Keeper of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

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