Capturing the Moment: Fashion, Portraiture and Taste

Lily Cole, Sarah Knights, Helen Rosslyn, Jamie Hawkesworth, & Harry Dalmeny
As a vehicle to convey personality, power, status, identity and wealth, portraiture is unmatched. Whether you’re standing in front of Queen Elizabeth I’s Armada Portrait or gazing at fashion royalty on the cover of Tatler, these images have been constructed to make an impact. How do portraits capture the zeitgeist? What do they tell us about an individual? And which portraits have really stood the test of time? This talk will explore the various forces that come together to produce an iconic portrait, and examine how these images both reflect and shape the societies that made them.

Meet the Panel

Lily Cole

Lily is a model, author and filmmaker. Her book and accompanying podcast, Who Cares Wins, explore the myriad of environmental solutions from tech-utopia to indigenous wisdom. Lily has co-written and presented documentaries for Sky Arts and the BBC and directed multiple short documentaries for VICE and Nowness. She holds a first-class Masters in History of Art from the University of Cambridge and was an affiliate at The Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Lily is Patron of the Environmental Justice Foundation and was the first Global Ambassador for community fair-trade pioneer The Body Shop.


Lord Dalmeny, Chairman of Sotheby’s UK & Ireland

Lord Dalmeny began his career at Sotheby’s as a graduate trainee in 1990. He became a Director in the House Sale department in 1999 and rose to Chairman of Sotheby’s Olympia in 2003. Here, he continued to oversee House and Single-Owner sales whilst managing the strategic development of Sotheby’s Olympia. Harry was appointed Chairman of Sotheby’s UK & Ireland in 2017. In this capacity, he leads Sotheby’s client-focused activities in the UK & Ireland, and ensures a continued rich trajectory for Sotheby’s long tradition of landmark house and single-owner sales. 

Harry has played a leading role in many of the most significant Single-Owner sales of the last quarter century, including the “Duke & Duchess of Windsor” (February 1998), “Chatsworth: The Attic Sale” (October 2010), and more recently, “The Family Collection of the late Countess Mountbatten of Burma” (2021). He is auctioneer for the biannual Old Master Evening Sales in London. Over the course of the pandemic, Harry played a role in the success of Sotheby’s award-winning livestream hybrid auction series.

Renowned for his ‘sixth sense’ on the rostrum, Lord Dalmeny has auctioneered hundreds of charity sales and in turn has helped to raise over £120m for charitable organisations over the course of his career.


Jamie Hawkesworth

Jamie Hawkesworth is a photographer based in London. His recent solo exhibitions include: Preston Bus Station (Tokyo, 2019), A Short Pleasurable Journey Part Two (London, 2019) and Photographs and Sculptures (2018). His recent group shows Include: the 19th DongGang International Photo Festival Korea (2021), North: Fashioning Identity (Somerset House, London, 2017), and Disobedient Bodies: JW Anderson (The Hepworth Wakefield, 2017). In 2018 he won the Royal Photographic Society’s Award for Editorial, Advertising and Fashion Photography, and in 2020 he was commissioned to shoot British Vogue’s special cover series dedicated to the UK’s key workers.

 


Sarah Knights

Sarah Knights is a Trinidadian artist who was born in the small town of Sangre Grande. She graduated with an associate degree in Visual Communication from The John S. Donaldson Technical Institute and furthered her education in Visual Arts at the University of the West Indies. After graduating from the UWI she began working on a body of mixed media paintings using herself as the main subject to discuss issues of identity in modern societies. Knights presented her first solo exhibition One Thousand Mes in 2017 and has exhibited in various group exhibitions over the years including: Connecting Cultures: Contemporary Art From Trinidad and Tobago (U.S Chief of Mission Residence); Growth (The Caribbean Center for the Arts, St Croix); Thru Contemporary Arts Collection (Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago); Mixed Bag (Boxout, 59 Rivoli, Paris); Movement (Boxout, Frankfurt); and From Likeness to Fiction:The Portrait Inside Out (UWI and Brock University).


Helen Rosslyn 

Helen Rosslyn is Tatler’s Arts Editor and writer and presenter of the Tatler online short art film series In the Frame. She has written and presented art history documentaries for the BBC, including the three-part series Bought with Love: A Secret History of British Art Collections. Her other roles include Director of the London Original Print Fair at Somerset House and author of the acclaimed Royal Academy publication A Buyer's Guide to Prints.