Famous Women Dinner Service

In 1932 Kenneth Clark, an English art historian and Keeper of the Fine Art Department of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, decided to commission a dinner service. He was inspired by a dinner he had attended, held by New York-based art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen, during which the meal was served on a lavish Sèvres dinner service, part of the 744-piece Cameo Service made for the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in 1778–1779. Clark commissioned artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, whose Omega Workshops design collective was well known and admired. There was no brief. Clark accepted the Directorship of the National Gallery in London in January 1934, the year the service was completed. ==Design==

Despite agreeing to supply "36 large plates, 12 smaller plates, 36 side plates, 12 soup cups & saucers, 1 salad bowl & stand, 2 junket dishes, 6 oval dishes at different sizes, 2 sauce boats & stands, 4 pepper pots, 4 salt pots, 4 mustard pots, 2 sauce tureens & stands & handles, and 3 Liverpool jugs”, They were free to decorate the crockery in whatever manner they chose. They worked on the plates at their home, Charleston Farmhouse, and settled on the representation of famous women from history, divided into four groups of twelve: ‘Women of Letters’, ‘Queens’, ‘Beauties’, and ‘Dancers and Actresses’. They included themselves in the 50. The plates have hand-painted portraits of the head and shoulders of the women (and lone man), with their name and a decorative border. The artists did not sign the plates. Most of the women depicted were from history, biblical history or mythology; five were alive at the time of the set's construction (not counting the artists themselves): Virginia Woolf (Bell's sister), Mary of Teck, Marian Bergeron, Mrs Patrick Campbell and Greta Garbo. Women of Letters • 1. Jane Austen (1775–1817) • 2. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) and her dog Flush • 3. Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) • 4. George Eliot (1819–1880) • 5. Fanny Kemble (1809–1893) • 6. Murasaki Shikibu (c. 973–c. 1014 or 1025) • 7. Dorothy Osborne (1627–1695) • 8. Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) • 9. George Sand (1804–1876) • 10. Sappho (c. 630–c. 570 BCE) • 11. Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) • 12. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) (Vanessa Bell's sister) Queens • 13. Catherine the Great (1729–1796) • 14. Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626–1689) • 15. Cleopatra (70/69–30 BCE) • 16. Elizabeth I (1533–1603) • 17. Eugénie de Montijo (1826–1920) • 18. Jezebel (died c. 843 BCE) • 19. Marie Antoinette (1755–1793) • 20. Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) • 21. Mary of Teck (1867–1953) • 22. Queen of Sheba (c. 1000 BCE) • 23. Theodora (c. 500–548) • 24. Queen Victoria (1819–1901) Beauties • 25. Beatrice Portinari (c. 1265–1290) • 26. Marian Bergeron (1918–2002) 'Miss 1933' • 27. Sarah Churchill (1660–1744) • 28. Pauline von Metternich (1836–1921) • 29. Lola Montez (1821–1861) • 30. Pocahontas (c. 1596–1617) • 31. Rachel (Biblical figure) • 32. Juliette Récamier (1777–1849) • 33. Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862) • 34. Agnès Sorel (1422–1450) • 35. Helen of Troy (Greek mythology) • 36. Simonetta Vespucci (1453–1476) Dancers and Actresses • 37. Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) • 38. Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo (1710–1770) La Camargo • 39. Mrs Patrick Campbell (1865–1940) • 40. Eleonora Duse (1858–1924) • 41. Greta Garbo (1905–1990) • 42. Nell Gwyn (1650–1687) • 43. Dorothea Jordan (1762–1816) • 44. Lillie Langtry (1853–1929) • 45. Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) • 46. Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) • 47. Marie Taglioni (1804–1884) • 48. Ellen Terry (1847–1928) The Artists • 49. Vanessa Bell (1879–1961) • 50. Duncan Grant (1885–1978) The only man in the service ==Subsequent history==

It has been speculated that Clark might have been surprised by the commission, as he was expecting a more traditional full dinner service with a variety of plates and dishes. which then sold the set to the Charleston Trust in 2018. The Trust was aided in its purchase with grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund, as well as private donations. It was returned to Charleston, where it is on permanent display in the Outer Studio. ==Reception==

The set has been described as "one of the foremost works of a then nascent feminist field of art", and that "the recovery of the Famous Women set makes clear its principal place in a feminist artistic tradition". Judy Chicago's 1979 feminist work The Dinner Party is strongly reminiscent of the 1932–1934 Famous Women Dinner Service, both in nature and in theme, but it has been noted that "it is impossible to ascertain, and ultimately unproductive to speculate whether other artists, critics, and writers knew of [Bell's and Grant's] earlier efforts." The Dinner Party features the place-settings at a table of 39 women (opposed to the Famous Women Dinner Service's 49 women); unsurprisingly, some of the same women occur in both works: Sappho, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth I, and Theodora. ==References==