Online talks held by The Stained Glass Museum include “Pauline Boty: Collage into Stained Glass” with Sue Tate

Pauline Boty, Untitled (Paris, dreaming woman and rose), 1961

Organised by The Stained Glass Museum, the online talk from Dr Sue Tate – Pauline Boty: Collage into Stained Glass – a Pop Art Approach – will take place on Thursday 2 November 2023 at 7pm (UK).

“Pauline Boty was one of the founders of British Pop; a talented and ambitious artist, and also a charismatic player on the swinging London scene. She produced a vibrant body of work in stained glass, collage and paint that both challenges and enriches Pop from a female perspective. This talk will focus on the stained glass work she made while at the Royal College of Art (including the piece held at the Ely Stained Glass Museum). It will explore the relationship between the mediums of collage and stained glass and place both in the wider context of Boty’s whole oeuvre and contribution to Pop.

Dr Sue Tate is a freelance art historian with a specific interest in women artists. She is the leading expert on Pauline Boty, British Pop Artist, 1938-66, having curated exhibitions of her oeuvre, lecturing on it in the UK, Europe and the USA, and publishing essays, book chapters and the definitive book on the artist: Pauline Boty: Pop Artist and Woman.

This is an online event held via Zoom webinars. A Zoom link will be circulated in the week leading up to the event.” [information from The Stained Glass Museum website]

Details
Date: 18 October 2023
Time: 7pm (UK)
Price: General £6.50, Friends of the SGM £5.00

Further information, including how to buy tickets, is available here: [link]

The Stained Glass Museum,
South Triforium, Ely Cathedral,
Ely, Cambridgeshire, CB7 4DL
(+44) 01353 660347

Pauline Boty’s stained glass self portrait back on display soon at the National Portrait Gallery

Pauline Boty’s stained glass “Self Portrait”, c.1958 at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo by paulineboty.org

The National Portrait Gallery, closed for extensive refurbishment since 2020, has confirmed that Pauline Boty’s c.1958 stained glass work “Self Portrait” will be on display (in Room 28) when reopening to visitors on 22 June.

“A rare self-portrait in Boty’s oeuvre, this is a beautiful and assured portrait in stained glass, believed to date from 1958 when Boty was a student in the stained glass department at the Royal College of Art. There are conventional borders with floral motifs and quatrefoils. The work incorporates many of the creative techniques associated with the influential stained glass department of the Royal College of Art at that period, including layering, aciding of deep flashed layers, and expressive use of glass painting. The glass leading is experimental, with its eccentric use of arbitrary leads such as the piece cutting across the face of the figure.” [from the NPG’s website]

Detail of Pauline Boty’s stained glass “Self Portrait”, c.1958 at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo by paulineboty.org

The gallery also has a number of portraits of Boty by different photographers including Lewis Morley, Michael Ward and Michael Seymour, which can be viewed on their website at npg.org.uk

Further information is available here: [link]

Early Boty study for stained glass sold at Christie’s

Earlier this month the gouache on card work, created by Boty when a student at the Royal College of Art, sold for double its high estimate. The following image and details are all courtesy of Christie’s:

Pauline Boty (1938-1966). Designs for stained glass window. Price realised GBP 20,000. Estimate GBP 7,000 – GBP 10,000. © Christie’s Images Limited 2021

Produced in the first year of her studies at the RCA, this design already demonstrates Boty’s breadth of interests and talent for creative juxtapositions. The proportions and diptych arrangement seem made for church windows, but the content is far from ecclesiastical. Instead, the design features a dreamlike mix of architectural elements and a large letter ‘L’ framing figural elements including heads (painted frontally and in profile), and two lovers locked in an embrace. The assembly of disparate elements into a cohesive whole foreshadows Boty’s later Pop Art paintings and collages. It also reflects the influence of Charles Carey, who first taught Boty stained glass design at the Wimbledon Art School, and who encouraged students to use collage during the design process as a means of adding contemporary elements to an ancient artform.

Pauline Boty was a polymath who entered the Royal College of Art in 1958 to study stained glass design but became a leading light in the nascent Pop Art scene alongside contemporaries including Peter Blake and Derek Boshier. In this guise she produced paintings and collages which blended abstract elements with a profusion of imagery poached from pop culture, with surreal and often satirical results. She was also heavily involved with film and literature societies and agitated against some of the more egregious examples of contemporary architecture in London as a key organiser for the ‘Anti Uglies’.

Provenance
The artist’s family.
Private collection, London.
Purchased by the present owner at the 2016 exhibition

PAULINE BOTY (1938-1966)
Designs for stained glass window
gouache on card
9 ¼ x 3 in. (23.5 x 7.6 cm.) each
Executed circa 1958

Literature
Exhibition catalogue, Pop Art Heroes Britain, London, Whitford Fine Art, 2016, pp. 26–27, no. 13, illustrated

Exhibited
London, Whitford Fine Art, Pop Art Heroes Britain, May – July 2016, no. 13

Map showing locations of works now added

The screen grab below is of a new map added to the website showing the locations of Pauline Boty’s works in galleries and museums around the world. The map itself is available here [link]
NB: not all are permanently on display however, so please be sure to check with the institution in question before making a trip specifically to see a work.