Virginia Woolf

1 portrait of Virginia Woolf

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Virginia Woolf

by Lady Ottoline Morrell
vintage snapshot print, circa 1917
3 1/8 in. x 1 7/8 in. (80 mm x 48 mm) image size
Purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Dame Helen Gardner Bequest, 2003
Photographs Collection
NPG Ax141320

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

  • Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), Patron of the arts; half-sister of 6th Duke of Portland; wife of Philip Edward Morrell. Artist or producer associated with 1716 portraits, Sitter associated with 600 portraits.

Placesback to top

Events of 1917back to top

Current affairs

King George V changes his name from 'Saxe-Coburg' to 'Windsor.' Amid wartime anti-German public sentiment the British Royal Family decided to relinquish their German name and titles. The name 'Windsor' was chosen as variation on ''Wettin', the late Prince Albert's personal surname.

Art and science

The National Photographic Record is established at the instigation of the photographer Walter Stoneman to commission photographs of 'distinguished living contemporaries of British nationality.' This project allowed the National Portrait Gallery to circumvent its own rule that portraits could not enter the collection until the sitter had been dead ten years.

International

The Russian Revolution begins with the February Revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Seven months later the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin seize power in the October Revolution forming the Soviet Communist Government, which lasted until 1991. The USA abandons its neutrality and joins the war against Germany following a series of attacks on American passenger and merchant ships.

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Robert Todd

07 November 2021, 13:35

Virginia and Leonard Woolf made their first visit to Garsington on the weekend of 17-18 November 1917. She wrote it up in her Diaries, vol. 1, pp, 78-9 and in a letter to Vanessa Bell (Letters, vol. 2, pp. 197-8). There seems to be no photograph of Virginia with the other guests she identifies (Lytton Strachey, Aldous Huxley, Dorothy Brett et al.). If this item is from 1917, it is the only photographic record of that visit. But there were at least five other visits between 1918 and 1924 on which it could have been taken.