Made when Julia Trevelyan Oman was still a student, this self-portrait shows her before the fame of television, theatre, and ballet design, already insisting on herself as a serious working artist. Born in Kensington in 1930 to a historically minded family, she studied at Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art, later winning awards for her inventive BBC sets and Jonathan Miller’s TV program Alice in Wonderland. She depicts herself as a young woman with light, ruddy skin and thick auburn curls sitting facing the right, her head twisted back towards us with a steady, slightly wary gaze. A blue hairband pulls her hair away from her forehead, echoing the dark blue of her simple collared dress, which opens at the neck and catches soft flashes of light. Firm shadows carve her jaw, nose, and neck, modeling her features in green, rose, and amber tones that suggest both studio glare and tiredness. Her bare forearm thrusts out to the lower right, bent as if resting on the unseen arm of a chair or drawing board, giving her pose a muscular, working energy. Behind her a scalloped, mirror-like field of swirling greens and soft blacks halos her figure, the paint laid in rough, visible strokes that keep the surface alive and searching. Her costume here is deliberately plain as the blue dress and cropped, close-up composition feel almost documentary, as if she has paused between tasks at an easel or drawing board. The compressed space, scalloped outline, and restless background anticipate her later fascination with enclosing environments on stage, while the unsmiling, appraising stare speaks to a young woman testing how she will be seen in a profession largely run by men. Now preserved in the University of Bristol Theatre Collection as part of her archive, the painting doubles as an intimate likeness and an early manifesto from a designer whose detailed, naturalistic sets would shape the look of post-war British performance for decades.

“Self Portrait” by Julia Trevelyan Oman (British) - Acrylic on canvas paper / c. 1950 - University of Bristol Theatre Collection (England) #WomenInArt #JuliaTrevelyanOman #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #UBristolTheatreCollection #art #artText #BlueskyArt #UniversityofBristol #SelfPortrait