This sensitive portrait of a young Philippa Garrett Fawcett (1868–1948 ) was drawn five years before she scored the highest mark of all the candidates for Part I of the Mathematical Tripos, placing her ‘above the Senior Wrangler’. She was awarded First-Class Honours at Part II in 1891, all achieved at a time when women were not eligible for the award of Cambridge degrees. Philippa was awarded a scholarship for further mathematical study at Newnham, and then became a College Lecturer. She left Newnham in 1902 but maintained strong links with the College, attending Roll meetings into her late 70s. Philippa was the only child of the suffragist Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Henry Fawcett, Chair of Political Economy in Cambridge and Postmaster General in Gladstone’s government. The couple were influential supporters of women’s education in Cambridge. A portrait of Millicent Garrett Fawcett also features in this exhibition.
Selwyn Image (1849-1930) was an artist, designer, writer and poet associated with the Arts & Crafts Movement. As an undergraduate he studied drawing under John Ruskin. Image followed in his father’s footsteps by taking Holy Orders, but abandoned the Clergy in 1882. Instead he became an influential designer of stained-glass windows, furniture and embroidery, and was an illustrator of books. Image was an active member of the Art Workers’ Guild in London, becoming a Master in 1900. He was also a writer on design, and gave lectures that were reviewed by Oscar Wilde. In 1910 Image was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford, a post previously held by John Ruskin, and by William Blake Richmond, artist of the portrait of Anne Jemima Clough.
The portrait of Philippa Fawcett was given to Newnham in 2015 by Gillian Metcalfe, from the collection of her late husband, John. Today the portrait is displayed in a corridor at Newnham that looks out onto the Fawcett Courtyard, the design of which takes inspiration from mathematics in nature and is named in celebration of Fawcett’s achievements.