The Compton shift can be derived using the conservation of energy and momentum principles. The scattered photon has a longer wavelength (and therefore lower energy) than the incident photon, and this change in wavelength is called the Compton shift. The fact that it’s two women – one is black, one is white – is particularly interesting for us now and they were stories that were deliberately not told.(a) The Compton effect is the scattering of a photon by a charged particle, usually an electron. She added: “We don’t know who the women were. For us, it opens up a conversation about who’s in portraits and why certain people aren’t in portraits.” We’ve got portraits and folk art, where we’re thinking about different ways of showing people. Geraldine Collinge, its CEO, said: “The painting fits so interestingly with our collections. With its permanent collections, it is an accredited museum and registered charity. Two Ladies will now undergo conservation and extensive study to understand its complex narrative by the Yale Centre for British Art at Yale University, before going on public display next year.Ĭompton Verney is based in a Grade I-listed Georgian mansion within 120 acres of parkland designed by the 18th-century landscape architect Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. Compton Verney covered the rest through an acquisition fund established by the sale of a painting several years ago. Now it has been acquired by Compton Verney for more than £300,000, with £154,600 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and £50,000 from the ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund. It had an initial valuation of between £2,000 and £4,000, but it sparked such intense interest that it sold for £220,000. The picture, an oil on canvas measuring 640 x 750mm, was unknown to scholars until it surfaced at auction from the estate of the sixth Lord Kenyon. It added: “It visualises in a way that no other painting of the period does the early modern debates concerning the morality of cosmetics use discourses on ideal beauty and blackness issues concerning gender hierarchy and female agency as well as attitudes to race and ethnicity, especially so in an age that witnessed increasing global contact through trade and colonial expansion.”Īn unidentified owner had intended to take the painting overseas unless a UK buyer could be found. Noting that its departure from the UK would be a “misfortune”, the committee’s report stated: “The depiction of a black female sitter in a 1650s painting was highly unusual … inviting important debate about race and gender during the period.” The independent body, serviced by Arts Council England (ACE), advises the secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on whether a cultural object intended for export is of national importance under specified criteria.

A temporary stop to allow a UK institution to acquire it was placed by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest. The painting was at risk of permanently leaving the UK after being auctioned in Shropshire in 2021. The white sitter wears black patches of various shapes and the black sitter has white ones. Part of the purpose of the patches was to hide imperfections or signs of disease. Wearers of such patches or spots – made of silk or velvet – risked provoking the wrath of God. Their faces are covered in curious beauty patches that were fashionable at the time and which the painting’s inscription condemns as a sin of pride, a widespread opinion in the 17th century. Titled Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies, the work, part of the English school dating to about 1650, appears to be a moralising picture, criticising the use of cosmetics in altering a person’s natural appearance.

Compton effect video