Onora Sylvia O’Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (2002)
Oil on canvas
Onora O'Neill FBA (b. 1941) is a philosopher whose work has focused on Kantian ethics, and the importance of trust, the subject of her BBC Reith lectures in 2002. She was Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge 1992-2006. She was made a life peer in 1999 and elected FRS in 2007 in recognition of her work on Bioethics.
She was elected to the Fellowship in 1993 and became the first female President of the Academy (2005-2009).
Victoria Russell has become a successful portrait painter since graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 1997. Among her other well- known sitters are Fiona Shaw and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.
This portrait is on loan to the Academy from the National Portrait Gallery.