We are delighted to receive a grant from the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Fund to buy a portrait by Little Missenden artist Mary Henrietta Dering Curtois (1854-1928). With support from the Fund, the museum acquired its first work by Curtois in 2023, a small impressionistic landscape titled ‘Hayricks.’ Publicity about this acquisition led to Belgian art dealer, Bert Nordin, offering to sell this work which he had acquired from a house sale in Belgium, a much larger work with a distinctly contrasting style and subject.
The Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Fund supported the portrait’s purchase with their maximum contribution of 50% of the asking price. Sincere thanks to the Friends of Amersham Museum and the Amersham Society for providing the match-funding to secure this acquisition.
Mary Henrietta Dering Curtois (1854-1928) was an artist living and working close to Amersham, in the village of Little Missenden. As outlined in a piece on our website by local historian and museum trustee Alison Bailey, Curtois played a key role in the village community.
However, she played a much broader role in both local and national activities, notably in the suffrage movement nationally through the Artists’ Suffrage League and locally through the Mid Bucks Suffrage Society. She was also a founder member of the Bucks Art Society, and of the Chiltern Club of Arts and Handicrafts. She was therefore part of a wider artistic and activist circle, notably featuring Louisa Jopling and Catherine Courtauld, who also lived locally in Great Missenden and Chesham Bois respectively.
The museum has worked to explore, share and develop its collections related to these and other local woman who played significant roles both creatively and politically, particularly since producing an exhibition and accompanying book on this theme in 2018.
In addition, we were awarded a research and development grant by the Weston Loan Programme with Art Fund this year for a 12 month project enabling us to research and scope a potential temporary exhibition to be held in 2027/28. This exhibition, tentatively titled ‘Artists want the vote!’, would bring together the stories of local artists who were also activists in the sphere of women’s rights to coincide with the centenary of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act of 1928. Curtois will be a key individual in this project, and therefore an additional work by her in our permanent collection is an exciting acquisition.
