Full Name: Tudor-Craig, Pamela Wynn
Other Names:
- Pamela Wynn Reeves
- Lady Wedgwood
- Pamela Wynn
- Pamela Wedgwood
Gender: female
Date Born: 26 June 1928
Date Died: 05 December 2017
Place Born: London, Greater London, England, UK
Home Country/ies: United Kingdom
Subject Area(s): Medieval (European)
Career(s): art historians, conservators (people in conservation), and educators
Institution(s): Courtauld Institute
Overview
Medieval scholar, architecture preservationist. Pamela Wynn Reeves was the daughter of Herbert Wynn Reeves (1880–1973), an orchestral conductor, and Madeline Marian Wynn Reeves (Brows) (1899-1980), a former beautician. She was educated at home and then attended a convent school when she was eleven. She went to the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and received a BA in Art history in 1949. During her PhD in English stiff-leaf sculpture at Courtauld, she was approved by her advisor Anthony Blunt to take one year away from school to assist the Society of Antiquaries of London in organizing the 1951 exhibition celebrating the bicentenary of its royal charter. She joined the Society of Antiquaries of London committee since then. She completed her PhD in 1952.
Pamela married James Tudor-Craig (1899-1969), an antiquarian, in 1955. Tudor-Craig maintained the relationship with the Society of Antiquaries of London and was elected a fellow in 1958. Her daughter Elizabeth (“Liz”), who became an artist, was born in 1960. In the same year, they moved to Ickworth House to manage it on behalf of the National Trust. Although she had done so much to the conservation of the site, the National Trust refused to offer her a curatorship due to her gender after her husband’s unexpected death in 1969 (Harcourt-Smith). She and her daughter had to leave their home at Ickworth House.
She then began teaching at the United States International University’s campus outside London and at Harlaxton Manor in Lincolnshire, the British campus for the University of Evansville in Indiana. She curated the exhibition Richard III at the National Portrait Gallery in 1973, with the help of Roy Strong, to identify the misconception about Richard III due to his distorted portraits. In 1982, she married Sir John Wedgwood (1907-1989) of the pottery dynasty. William Jewell College awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1983. In 1984, she founded the annual Harlaxton Medieval Symposium in Lincolnshire. In 1985, She launched a BBC broadcast series The Secret Life of Paintings featuring five well-known pictures painted between 1433 and 1533, produced by Richard Foster, with whom she co-authored the book with the same name of the series.
After Sir John Wedgwood died in 1989, she moved to Lewes in East Sussex and turned her house into a salon for artists, musicians and writers. In 2006, she was invited to give a lecture tour in New York, including Christ Church, Bronxville, St Mary the Virgin, 46th Street (Smoky Mary’s), the United Nations, Fordham University, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During her tour, she attended Charles Littles’s conference “Facing the Middle Ages” at the Metropolitan. Her book, A Catalogue of the Paintings in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries, inspired by Eric Fernie (b.1939) and more than sixty years in the making, was finally released in 2015 with co-authors Bernard Nurse and Jill Franklin. This catalog outstands its predecessor by George Scharf, which was printed long ago in 1865. Tudor-Craig died of pulmonary fibrosis in 2017.
A Catalogue of the Paintings in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries was described as a “sumptuous volume” for its profoundness but not quantity (Palliser). Roy String recognized its significance by stating “It contains the most important early sixteenth-century royal portraits to survive as a group (besides Royal Collection)” in the foreword.
As a devout Christian, she devoted much time to preserving churches and cathedrals. She was especially interested in English cathedrals, having long associated with Westminster Abbey and others. In 1982, she founded the Cambridgeshire Historic Churches Trust. According to David Souden, the head of exhibitions at the British Museum, “English cathedrals would not be what they are today without her persistence” (The Times).
Selected Bibliography
- “Medieval Panel Paintings from Norwich, St Michael at Plea.” The Burlington Magazine 98, no. 642 (1956): p.333–p.334.
- Richard III. National Portrait Gallery, 1973.
- and Richard Foster, The Secret Life of Paintings. Boydell Press, 1986.
- and Christopher Wilson, Richard Gem, John Physick. Westminster Abbey. Bell and Hyman, 1986.
- Anglo-Saxon Wall Paintings. 1991.
- and Jill A. Franklin, Bernard Nurse. Catalogue of Paintings in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Harvey Miller Publishers for the Society of Antiquaries of London, 2015.
Sources
- [obiturary] “Pamela Tudor-Craig.” The Times. December 13, 2017. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/article/pamela-tudor-craig-5jnvwswvc.
- Goldring, Elizabeth. [review of Catalogue of Paintings in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London] The Burlington Magazine 157, no. 1351, 2015, p.716–p.717.
- Palliser, D.M. [review of Catalogue of Paintings in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London] The English Historical Review 132, no. 554, 2017, p.215–p.217.
- International Who’s Who of Authors and Writers. p.549.
- Harcourt-Smith, Sabrina. “Wedgwood [née Reeves; first married name Tudor-Craig], Pamela Wynn, Lady Wedgwood (1928–2017), art historian and medieval scholar.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 14 Jan. 2021. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.
Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang