Emily Learmont
Programme:
History of Art - MPhil/PhD/MSc by Research
Start date:
Sep-19
Mode of study:
Full time
Research title:
'Decorative Painting of a Pictorial Kind': William Bell Scott and the Visualisation of National Historical Identity
Biography
Emily Learmont is an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership candidate in the School of History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and the National Galleries of Scotland. Her thesis centres on the nineteenth-century Edinburgh-born artist William Bell Scott (1811–1890) and is provisionally titled "Decorative Painting of a Pictorial Kind": William Bell Scott and the Visualisation of National Historical Identity’.
Emily previously studied Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art (BA Hons) and the Royal Academy Schools (PG Dip / MA), where she was supported by The Leverhulme Trust, and History of Art, Theory and Display at the University of Edinburgh (MSc). She has exhibited her paintings at the Royal Academy and Royal Scottish Academy, and her research has appeared in The British Art Journal. Her book, William Bell Scott's Screen: A Pre-Raphaelite Romance, was published by the National Galleries of Scotland in 2023. She is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Edinburgh Centre for Open Learning and a gallery educator for the National Galleries of Scotland. She has also worked as an arts educator for The Royal Collection Trust and Art in Healthcare, and a research assistant on a Leverhulme-funded catalogue raisonné project.
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.
Research
Research
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.
‘William Bell Scott and the King’s Quair Screen’, The Pre-Raphaelite Podcast, 30 September 2023.
'The Evil Genius': A Lost Pre-Raphaelite Portrait and Spiritualist Reference in the King’s Quair Screen by William Bell Scott’, Pre-Raphaelite Society Graduate Network, 4 December 2023.
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).
William Bell Scott’s Screen: A Pre-Raphaelite Romance (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2023).
The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Sir Joseph Noël Paton and Una and the Lion by William Bell Scott in Scottish Art in 100 Works (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2023).
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:
Co-ordinator 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.