WINIFRED MABEL BRUNTON (1880-1959)

 
 
WEST WALL OF THE SHRINE OF  AMUN-RA AT THE TEMPLE OF SETI  IN ABYDOS (EGYPT)
 
 
Signed l.l. W.M.N.B.
Watercolour heightened with white
12.7 x 7.6 cm
 
 
PROVENANCE
Andrew McIntosh Patrick, London
By whom sold with the Fine Art Society, London, 2007
Virginia Ogilvy, Dowager Countess of Airlie, D.C.V.O. (1933-2024)
 
 
EXHIBITED
London, Fine Art Society, 'The Andrew McIntosh Patrick Collection', 2007, cat. no. 29 [see fig. I for an illustration of the work in-situ in Andrew McIntosh Patrick's London home]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Winifred Brunton (née Newberry) was born in Boer-occupied South Africa to a fabulously wealthy family of English origins. She was presented at Court in London in 1898, where she met the man who would become her husband, the Egyptologist Guy Brunton. They studied at University College London, where she painted a portrait of Flinders Petrie in 1912, which is now part of the UCL Art Collection.
 
 
Both Winifred and her husband trained with Margaret Murray at University College London before heading to Egypt's Lahun to join Flinders Petrie for fieldwork in 1912-14. Working with her husband on archaeological digs, she examined the evidence of diverse paintings, sculptures, and even mummies to create her final portraits and studies of the ancient Pharaohs, their tombs and temples they saw. Guy and Winifred continued to contribute to excavations organised by Flinders Petrie's British School of Archaeology in Egypt in the 1920s.