Gertrude Bell

Created by Anne Crawford Acheson

Date: 1926
Usually date of exhibition rather than production

Object class: sculpture

Object type: bust

Material: metal - bronze

Technique: cast

Description: A bronze head on a small socle. The figure is very simply presented, the only adornment being the double string of pearls around her neck. These hint at Bell's wealthy background.

Notes: This is a portrait of Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (1868–1926) who was the first woman to achieve a First in Modern History at Oxford University. She became an independent traveller, first in Europe and then in Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Assyria, where she became involved with archaeological discovery and political observation. Between 1914 and the early 1920s Bell acted as a diplomat for the British government and as a political adviser to King Faisal. She played an instrumental role in the foundation of the modern state of Iraq.

Bell was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in June 1913 soon after membership was opened to women. This bust was commissioned for a memorial that was erected in the Baghdad Museum in 1929 to commemorate Bell's role in setting up the museum. Both the museum and the memorial were designed by the English architect I. M. Wilson. In Baghdad, the head was set against a carved semi-circular relief of lotus flowers and roses inter-twined forming a halo around the sculpture. The Royal Geographical Society acquired another cast of this head.

Citing this record

'Gertrude Bell', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/object.php?id=ann_1283453980, accessed 20 Jan 2021]