Each year, the British Academy elects to its Fellowship up to 52 outstanding UK-based scholars who have achieved distinction in any branch of the humanities and social sciences. Others based overseas can also be elected as Corresponding Fellows, and, in addition, the Academy can elect Honorary Fellows. There are currently just over 1,700 Fellows.
This is their space to work, read, meet other Fellows and enjoy the space and art around them. The two rooms have recently been renamed the Weston Room and the Sir Victor Blank Room, who have both made generous donations to the Academy.
The Academy has four pieces by artist Dorothy Mead, all on display here in the Fellows’ room. These were part of a bequest by former Fellow, Professor Ray Pahl.
Although included in the 1964 Arts Council exhibition, 6 Young Painters, along with David Hockney, Peter Blake and Bridget Riley, an active member of the London Group since 1960 and its first female president, Mead was never given the opportunity of a solo show. The relative neglect Mead suffered during her lifetime undoubtedly owes something to the then prevalent attitudes towards women as creators and disseminators of radical ideas. Whereas her male contemporaries are given much broader scrutiny, Mead’s work is given the briefest of appraisals.
Mead has still not yet achieved the level of recognition she rightfully deserves, while her role as mentor to her one-time lecturer and married long-term lover Andrew Forge remains largely unacknowledged.
The Pianist II is a calm, figurative painting that forms a contrast with the more abstract landscapes by Dorothy Mead in the British Academy Collection.
Dorothy Mead was a pupil of David Bomberg in 1944-51 and her Seascape, Brighton painting shows the influence of Bomberg’s early style, based on Cubism while close to abstraction. It is one of her most powerful works.