Sunday Lecture: Projecting Personality: Mrs Carl Meyer & John Singer Sargent 1896 - Dr Tessa Murdoch

Through the lens of Sargent’s great portrait of Adèle Meyer and her two children, Elsie and Frank, Tessa Murdoch will share new research on her great-grandmother, drawing on recently rediscovered photograph albums and thirty years of family correspondence. Adèle Meyer’s passionate engagement with social justice and philanthropy and delight in theatre and music both as performer and spectator provide vivid insight into their Anglo-German Jewish circle of Cassels, Monds, Rothschilds and Sassoons which she nurtured together with her husband Carl, an eminent City financier.
Tessa Murdoch is former V&A Deputy Keeper, Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in 1988, she is also a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. Currently she is Acting Chair of the Huguenot Museum, Rochester. Tessa’s book Europe Divided: Huguenot Refugee Art and Culture, 2021, was written as Getty-Rothschild Fellow 2019. She serves on the Arts Council Acceptance in Lieu Panel and advises the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the National Trust.
Kenwood is home to another of Sargent's portraits: Daisy Leiter, Countess of Suffolk, 1898. Entry to Kenwood House is free. It has two significant painting collections, the Suffolk Collection and the Iveagh Bequest.
Introduction music: Reynaldo Hahn accompanying himself on the piano, singing ‘L'île heureuse’, by Emmanuel Chabrier
Produced by Friends of Kenwood
www.friendsofkenwood.org.uk
‪@friendsofkenwood7574‬