The Smetham Collection is one of our Methodist related collections, having been deposited at Westminster College by descendants of the artist in the 1990s. An associate of the Pre-Raphaelites, work by James Smetham bears many of the hallmarks of work by his friends, including Ruskin and Rossetti. Despite this, Smetham’s work was unpopular during his lifetime, and has remained under-utilised and under-studied ever since.

This difference in popularity between Smetham and other pre-raphaelites is often attributed to the religious imagery he depicted - often drawn from his Methodist beliefs. Indeed, many of Smetham’s clients were from Methodist backgrounds, and it was the Methodist Westminster College where Smetham found employment and, more importantly for him, where he met his wife.

Whilst this work would appear to depict one such religious scene, its inspiration is actually found in poetry: its title is a quote from a work by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. An inscription detailing more of this verse was found underneath this preparatory work during conservation in 2020.

One of the most important works in our collections, this painting by John Piper depicts Westminster College as it was following the end of the Second World War. The buildings are shown as blackened and bomb damaged, matching recollections of students and staff having to step around bomb craters when they returned in October 1945. Funded by alumni and students, there are few records about its commission. There are records, however, of the importance of depicting the College during the war, and their joy at the finished work. It has remained important to the College ever since, hanging in the Principals Office or the College Board Room - both as a reminder of the institution’s history, and of its resilience.

The last of the ‘Emergency Training Colleges’, Bletchley Park College was founded among the remnants of the world famous codebreaking site in 1948. Having fully established itself by the mid-1950s, Evelyn Dunbar was commissioned to work as the College’s ‘Artist in Residence’, and to create a large mural for the College’s Dining Hall. Suffering from ill health, this mural was never created, with only this handful of sketches showing us what might have been.

Despite not being able to create the large scale mural she had intended, Dunbar did manage to create two panels for the college at Bletchley - ‘Alpha’ and ‘Omega’. Finishing her work in 1958, they are among the last works created by Evelyn, who died in 1960. Relocating in 1966, these works now form focal points of the Library created for the renamed ‘Lady Spencer Churchill College’, today the Wheatley campus of Oxford Brookes University.

It is these preliminary works and panels which have inspired research into Dunbar, and the subsequent creation of the Centre’s “Dunbar Collection”.