Tutor, writer, and translator Pernel Strachey became Newnham’s fifth Principal in 1923. Her portrait was commissioned three years later, as a gift to the College from former students. Strachey is depicted wearing one of her trademark brocade coats, painted in vibrant and expressive brushstrokes.
The artist Henry Lamb (1883-1960) was an obvious choice for this portrait, as aside from his notable painting of Strachey’s younger brother Lytton, the Lamb family was very well connected to the College; two of Lamb’s sisters, Dorothy and Helen, studied at Newnham, the latter staying on as a tutor and later Director of Studies in Architecture. His elder brother Walter, also a member of the Bloomsbury Group, read Classics at Trinity, from where he joined Newnham as a lecturer.
Henry Lamb was a founding member of the Camden Town Group of English modernists, having trained in London and Paris. He painted portraits for much of his working life (Evelyn Waugh being one sitter), he had many points of inspiration, for instance the old-fashioned streets of Poole, Dorset, which became the setting for several paintings in the mid-1920s.
At the time Lamb received the commission, in the autumn of 1926, he was without a studio. He had given up his Hampstead base and had recently been evicted from the home of his sister and her husband. Sittings for the portrait therefore took place in Lamb’s spartan lodgings in West Kensington. Being mid-December, and without heating, Lamb purchased an oil stove that was positioned behind Strachey whilst she posed. As described in Keith Clements’ Henry Lamb: The Artist and His Friends (Bristol: Redcliffe, 1985) the whole endeavour was “absurdly hurried”, as Lamb had only a fortnight for the sittings, before Strachey left London on New Year’s Eve. He went on describe Strachey as “quite fascinating” but confessed, “the only difficulty is to keep the dear lady amused. She is rather inclined to go to sleep unless I talk”.