Christiana Herringham

When Bedford merged with Royal Holloway in 1985 Lady Herringham’s eclectic private art collection joined the collection that Thomas Holloway bought for his women’s college.

Although now relatively unknown, Christiana Herringham (1852-1929) was a mover and shaker in the Edwardian art world. She was close friends with the art critic Roger Fry (1866-1934) and the artist William Rothenstein (1872-1945) as well as being one of the few female artists to receive praise from Walter Sickert (1860-1942) for her translation of a 14th-century Italian treatise on art. Her interest in early Italian art led her to found the Society of Painters in Tempera in 1901. This group spearheaded a revival of the medium used before the discovery of oil paint. She was a skilled artist and painted copies of works by Botticelli (about 1445-1510) and his contemporaries, several of which are on display in the entry to the Picture Gallery.

Herringham fought for other artistic causes too. It was her money which founded The National Art Collection Fund in 1903 to buy works of art for the nation that were at risk of being sold abroad. The charity is now known as The Art Fund and now has over 90,000 members. With William Rothenstein she undertook a project to restore Buddhist cave paintings in Ajanta, India and this interest is reflected in the rare Indian miniature paintings which are part of her collection.

Independently wealthy, due to her father’s will, she also used her money to improve the lives of women. She gave money to found scholarships for women going to Newnham College, Cambridge and in 1888 she was one of the founding directors of the Ladies’ Residential Chambers & Co. which built accommodation for ‘educated working women’. Through her close friendship with Millicent Fawcett and her sisters she was heavily involved in the struggle for the vote for women. She was a member of the Artist’s Suffrage League and the managing director of the Women’s Tribune newspaper. Her art collection reflects these interests as it includes a number of paintings by fellow women artists including the Manchester suffragette Annie Swynnerton, who, in 1925, became the first woman to become a member of the Royal Academy since 1768.