This portrait of Mathilde Blind was originally one of two in the collection at Newnham– the other was sold to the British Museum in the 1990s. The College also has a portrait drawing of Mathilde Blind by Pre-Raphaelite artist Lucy Madox Brown.
Mathilde Blind was born in 1841, the daughter of Jacob Abraham Cohen and his wife Friederike. Mathilde’s father died when she was a child and her mother remarried to Karl Blind. They immigrated to London, and the young Mathilde took her stepfather’s surname. Blind travelled extensively in Switzerland from the age of 18, studying Latin, medieval German and literature. She set up her own household when she was 30. She continued to travel, spending part of each year in Manchester with her friend Ford Madox Brown and his family. Blind became known as a writer, her first piece appearing in the Westminster Review. Her first book, a narrative poem The Prophecy of St Oran appeared in 1881. The Ascent of Man, an epic poem inspired by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, is considered her masterpiece.
In the mid-1890s Blind spent time in Cambridge, her purpose being a serious one; she was conscious of her failing health and wished to use her estate to support women’s education. After visiting several institutions, she chose Newnham as that which was most aligned to her ideals. Blind died in London in 1896 and left her residuary estate to the College to provide scholarships to study ‘English or Foreign or Ancient Literature’.
This memorial medallion was produced two years after Blind’s death. It is a reduced version of the circular portrait ornamenting her marble monument by Lanteri in St Pancras Cemetery. The monument was commissioned by the chemist and art collector, Ludwig Mond, whose wife Frida was a close friend of Blind. It was unveiled by him in December 1898. Mond was one of Blind’s literary executors and a significant patron of Lanteri. He or his wife presumably chose to have a very small edition of bronze reductions of Blind’s memorial portrait cast for selected recipients. Three other examples are known: at the National Portrait Gallery, Girton College, Cambridge, and the British Museum (purchased from Newnham).
The medallion is also reproduced in The Ascent of Man by Mathilde Blind, published by Unwin in 1899.
Edouard Lanteri (1848-1917) was born in France, trained in Paris and came to London in in 1872 to work as a studio assistant to Joseph Edgar Boehm. Although a skilful carver of stone, most of his work, like this portrait, was modelled and cast in bronze. From 1880, he was also an important teacher of sculpture at the South Kensington Art Schools (later the Royal College of Art) where he was Professor of Modelling from 1900 to 1910. Lanteri produced many portrait busts, statuettes and imaginative groups and followed his friend Alphonse Legros in producing cast medallions.