Matilda Theresa Talbot (formerly Gilchrist-Clark, 1871-1958)
Paul Ayshford Methuen, 4th Baron Methuen (Corsham 1886 - 1974)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1949 (signed and dated)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
711 x 610 mm (28 x 24 in)
Place of origin
Wiltshire
Order this imageCollection
Lacock, Wiltshire
NT 996350
Caption
Meet Matilda, WREN, cookery teacher, traveller and the last member of the Talbot family to own Lacock Abbey. You can share in her memories of life at Lacock when you visit the Abbey today. She was committed to preserving the Abbey and village for future generations to enjoy, observing that: ‘I have a pleasant feeling that Lacock is rather like a tree which will go on growing, even if most of the people that sat under its shade have moved into another world’.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Matilda Theresa Talbot (formerly Gilchrist-Clark, 1871-1958) by Paul Ayshford, Lord Metheun (Corsham 1886 - 1974), signed and dated Methuen 1949. Painted in 1949, five years after Miss Talbot presented Lacock to the National Trust.
Full description
This portrait was painted in 1949, five years after Matilda Talbot presented Lacock to the National Trust. She had inherited Lacock on her uncle’s death in 1916. She was fascinated by the history of Lacock, and in 1932 she held a pageant to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the foundation of the abbey, posing as Ela, the Countess of Salisbury. During the Second World War Maltilda had 85 evacuee children living and learning in Lacock. She never married, devoting herself to the house. In her memoirs, she expressed the hope that Lacock ‘may adapt itself to all the changes through which we are living, so as to preserve the spirit sympathetically enough to reach and touch contemporary thought’. The artist had studied under Walter Sickert, and was a Trustee of the National Gallery and the Tate. He had inherited Corsham Court, not far from Lacock, which he leased to the Bath Academy of Arts.
Credit line
Lacock Abbey, National Trust
Marks and inscriptions
Methuen 1949
Makers and roles
Paul Ayshford Methuen, 4th Baron Methuen (Corsham 1886 - 1974), artist