Postgraduate student profile Emily Learmont

The University of Edinburgh:

Teaching Fellow, the University of Edinburgh Centre for Open Learning.

Tutor for the pre-honours course, History of Art 2: Reason, Romance, Revolution: Art from 1700 to 1900. Nominated for a 2023 Teaching Award.

National Galleries of Scotland:

Tours and art workshops for schools, community groups and adult learners; public tours; tours of Mertoun House; descriptive tours for visually impaired visitors; reminiscence sessions for groups of older visitors with mild-to-moderate dementia; children’s weekend and holiday activities.

The Queen’s Gallery, The Palace of Holyroodhouse:

Tours and art workshops for community groups; descriptive tours for visually impaired visitors; amplified tours for visitors with hearing impairment; children’s weekend and holiday activities.

Art in Healthcare, Scotland:

Art workshops at healthcare venues including Rachel House (Children’s Hospice Association Scotland); The Royal Hospital for Sick Children; Leuchie House.

PhD thesis:

‘Decorative Painting of a Pictorial Kind’: William Bell Scott and the Visualisation of National Historical Identity’. 

This focuses on William Bell Scott (1811-90), an Edinburgh-born artist and member of thePre-Raphaelite circle, and the historical subjects that he employed in his wall paintings, decorated furniture and stained-glass panels, in relation to concepts of national identity in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. 

MSc dissertation:

‘Victorian Childhood and the Fantastic Imagination: Three Paintings by Sir Joseph Noël Paton from the 1860s’: awarded First Class.

This examines The Lullaby (1861-2) by Sir Joseph Noël Paton (1821-1901), a portrait of the artist’s wife and infant son, and two associated works, In Memoriam (1863-4) and The Fairy Raid – Carrying Off A Changeling, Midsummer Eve (1861-7), in the context of the idealisation of childhood innocence in Victorian visual and literary culture.

Presentations and conference papers:

‘Childhood Enshrined: The Lullaby by Sir Joseph Noël Paton’, ‘Speaking When They’re Spoken To? Re-integrating the Experiences and Perspectives of Children into Historical Research’, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, the University of Edinburgh, 6 June 2017.

'In Focus: The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Sir Joseph Noël Paton', Lunchtime Lecture, National Galleries of Scotland, 20 April 2018.

'Our Friends on the Twining Stair': Pre-Raphaelite Portraits in the King's Quair Mural by William Bell Scott', 'Communities, Relationships and Networks in the Long Nineteenth-Century', London Nineteenth-Century Studies Seminar Graduate Strand Conference, 30 April 2022.

Position Paper, Pre-Raphaelites: Drawings and Watercolours Study Day, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 15 October 2022.

Publications:

‘Childhood Enshrined: The Lullaby by Joseph Noël Paton’, The British Art Journal, XX, 2, (2019).

'Una and the Lion by William Bell Scott: Poetry and Patriotism', The British Art Journal, XXIII, 1, (2022).

Publications in progress for the National Galleries of Scotland.

Awards and scholarships:

2020: Princeton University Library Research Grant.

2020/22: Postgraduate Research Expenses Grants, Edinburgh College of Art.

Research project:

Research assistant to Sir Mark Jones on a project to catalogue the works of William Wyon (1795-1851), Chief Engraver at the Royal Mint, funded by The Leverhulme Trust.

Organisations:

Member of the founding committee of the Pre-Raphaelite Society Graduate Network.

Trustee of the Patons of Dunfermline.

Research interests:

Nineteenth-century British visual and material culture, especially Scottish, Pre-Raphaelite, and medieval and Celtic revival; visualisations of children and childhood; the history of the illustrated book.