January 5 2004, Monday, 10am-6pm (continues until January 11 2004, Sunday, 10am-6pm)
LAST WEEK TO SEE "BELOW STAIRS: 400 YEARS OF SERVANTS' PORTRAITS" AT NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
Thanks to the press release received from the National Portrait Gallery, we can let you know about an art exhibition called, "Below Stairs: 400 years of servants' portraits" which is soon to end. The press release presents the exhibition thus, 'The traditional study of portraiture in Britain has concentrated on depictions of the upper classes and the celebrated. This ground-breaking exhibition aims to redress the balance by focusing on a type of portrait that has been created continuously from the seventeenth century onwards: portraits of the domestic employee in a great or modest household, within an institution or at the royal court. Not only indoor servants, but also gardeners, grooms and estate workers will be included with sitters embracing all ranks from the tutor to the scullion.
The exhibition will bring together many works
that have rarely been seen in public and will be accompanied by a fully-illustrated
catalogue.' We went along to the exhibition back in October, and told 'hteL Platinum'
subscribers about it also, back then. We found the exhibition, and shop alongside it,
interesting as it showed a world we had heard of but knew little about (except from seeing
television repeats of "Upstairs, Downstairs"). Admission: £6 (concessions:
£4). Location: Wolfson Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London,
WC2. Tube station: Leicester Square (Northern and Piccadilly lines).
http://www.npg.org.uk/
