Sep 4, 2018

Important Margaret Carpenter Self-Portrait sold to Tate Britain

We are delighted to announce that Margaret Carpenter’s Self-Portrait of 1852, recently re-discovered by Bagshawe Fine Art, has been acquired by Tate Britain. The painting will hang in Tate’s nineteenth-century galleries beginning this autumn.

Margaret Carpenter (1793-1892) was one of the most important professional women artists working in England during the Regency and early-mid-Victorian periods, and despite a career in which she showed more than 150 pictures – mostly portraits – at the Royal Academy, her name is still really only known to art cognoscenti. This painting, an unpretentious demonstration of technical competence combined with great character awareness, is the first work by Carpenter to enter Tate’s collection.