On Saturday 22 April 2023, the Centre welcomed over 50 guests (both in person and virtually) to the Harcourt Hill Campus for Rediscovering Evelyn Dunbar: a Life in Art – a celebration of the life and work of Evelyn Dunbar (1906-1960) – most famous as the only woman artist salaried by the War Artists Advisory Committee during the Second World War.
Professor Lucy Mazdon, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes, provided an introductory message:
During the course of the day we heard four excellent papers illuminating different aspects of Dunbar’s life and artistic practice; Peter Vass drew from the recently-discovered sketchbooks now in the Centre’s collections to provide insights into her juvenilia; Gill Clarke explored Dunbar’s illustrations informed by her deep knowledge of gardening and horticulture; Claire Brenard elaborated on Dunbar’s connection with the War Artists Advisory Committee, with specific reference to papers and artworks in the collections of the Imperial War Museum; Jan Cox highlighted the importance of Christian Science as the spiritual foundation of Dunbar’s life and art.
The day concluded with a round table discussion featuring all speakers, led by Ian Holgate, senior lecturer in the History of Art at Oxford Brookes.
This commenced with an address by Christopher Campbell-Howes, who gave an enthusiastic and generous recap of the day’s events, which included indications of future pathways of ‘Dunbar Studies’:
I leave you – you, Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History – that spark that Peter Vass mentioned, that holy fire, that sacred flame of her work and her memory. Everything that she stood for. And I know that that flame will be well-tended and kept burning brightly.
You can revisit these papers here:
The conference was accompanied by an exhibition of works by Dunbar from the Centre’s collection, supplemented with items loaned from a private collection especially for the occasion.
The Evelyn Dunbar Collection is available for consultation at the Centre. For more information click, here.
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