Rare Brontë portrait on display in writer's Bradford home

BBC News

4 days ago

A rare portrait of the writer Emily Brontë has gone on show in West Yorkshire for the first time in almost twenty years. The oil painting was created by her brother Branwell and was last displayed at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth in 2008.It is on loan from the National Portrait Gallery as is part of the museum's Bradford 2025 City of Culture programme. Experts believe the work was painted in about 1833 and is the only surviving fragment of a lost group portrait that included her siblings Anne, Charlotte and Branwell.
Ann Dinsdale, the museum's principal curator, said there was a lot of "excitement" surrounding the loan of the painting which officially went on public display on Friday.She said: "The museum has been buzzing. All the staff have been coming in to look at it."There's a real feeling of excitement here and I do know that we are going to get a lot of extra visitors who are going to take advantage of this opportunity."The portrait was discovered at the same time as another sibling group portrait, the Pillar Portrait, which is also in the National Portrait Gallery's collection.
Rebecca Yorke, the museum's director, said: "It's actually quite emotional to think this is where it was painted."It was painted by Branwell, Emily's brother, and they both lived here and it's come back home to where it all began."I think what's really fascinating is that he didn't actually make himself very successful as a portrait painter."But the portrait of Emily Brontë, along with the Pillar Portrait, is one of the most popular in the National Portrait Gallery." The museum is in the former Brontë family home where the sisters spent most of their lives and wrote their famous novels in the 19th Century.Visitors can see the portrait until 31 October.Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.