Alongside the various portraits and views of the College that adorn the walls of the President’s lodgings, I have (in the kitchen) only one piece of abstract art – a colourful late work by one of my favourite artists, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

Barns-Graham was one of the most innovative figures in British modernism and a key member of the mid-century artistic community in the Cornish town of St Ives. I popped down there last weekend, where the largest survey of her work to date has just opened at Tate St Ives.

This fantastic show spans Barns-Graham’s eight-decade career, from early landscapes and studio interiors to the bold abstract canvases of her later work. Inspired by Scotland, Cornwall and Switzerland, she once wrote: “In my paintings I want to express the joy and importance of colour, texture, energy and vibrancy, with an awareness of space and construction. A celebration of life – taking risks so creating the unexpected.”

Barns-Graham has always been rather in the shadow of Barbara Hepworth, who saw herself as the leading female member of the St Ives School – and she is certainly the most famous. But the show is well worth a visit – as is Tate St Ives itself, which stands opposite the rolling surf of Porthmeor Beach on the site of a former gasworks. Alongside the recent Barns-Graham biopic directed by Mark Cousins, A Sudden Glimpse into Deeper Things, I hope that the show will bring Wilhelmina’s life and work to a wider audience.

It should be said that my knowledge of art is very much limited to ‘I know what I like’. Which is why I still have to pinch myself that I am now on the appointment panel that will be interviewing for and selecting the University’s new Professor of the History of Art, who will succeed our Fellow Geoff Batchen, who retired at the end of the last academic year.

My presence reflects the fact that Trinity has provided the college home for the holder of this Chair for the past 70 years. Back in 1955, Trinity was next in line among the colleges to host a Statutory Chair. Indeed, the Senior Proctor wrote that we had ‘an inexpugnable claim’ to it – a word of which I intend to make much more use. The main question was whether we would take History of Art or the Archaeology of the Roman Empire. We chose the former, and this was approved by a vote of the Hebdomadal Council.

Edgar Wind, a world-renowned specialist in Renaissance art, was the first holder of the Chair. Born in Berlin, he became a colleague of Aby Warburg’s and helped bring the Warburg Library to London from Nazi Germany. This being the good old days, he was invited to take up the post without anything so mundane as a formal search process, his appointment being supported enthusiastically by Maurice Bowra, the Warden of Wadham, and the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, among others.

Wind quickly became famous for his erudite public lectures, which proved so popular that he had to give them twice in the same day, both times filling the Oxford Playhouse. His 55-minute orations were performed without notes and carefully choreographed, with the speaker habitually arriving five minutes late to build anticipation in his audience. He illustrated them with personally supervised black-and-white lantern slides that he mysteriously moved in sequence with a button hidden in the lectern.

In 1967, Wind was succeeded by Francis Haskell, who began his career as a junior library clerk in the House of Commons. Haskell published widely, focusing on the patronage of art from the early modern period through to the nineteenth century. He held the Chair until 1995, a tenure of 28 years that is by far the longest of the five occupants to date.

Haskell’s successor was Martin Kemp, an expert on Leonardo da Vinci but unafraid to venture far more widely, especially when it concerned the relations of science and art. More than his predecessors, Martin took on the role of a public intellectual, periodically appearing in the media as an expert commentator. But crucially, here in Oxford, he also facilitated the establishment of a BA programme in History of Art.

When Martin retired in 2008, Craig Clunas was appointed. As an expert in the history of Chinese art, Craig was the first to specialise in a field outside Europe. During his 11 years in post, Craig established Oxford as a world-leading centre for the study of Chinese art. Like Martin, he made important contributions to the culture of the College, actively ensuring that the visual arts remained part of the mix of experiences available to our students.

Geoff Batchen arrived in 2020, the first appointee to hail from Oceania and the first professor here to specialise in the history of photography. He was unlucky to arrive just as the pandemic took hold, but lucky to be here when the Bodleian Library consolidated and enhanced its photography collections, offering new research possibilities. During his six years in the post, Geoff curated five exhibitions of photography in Oxford, doing his best to continue a tradition of reaching out to audiences beyond those enrolled at the University. Geoff stepped down at the end of the last academic year.

It was a huge pleasure last year to raise a glass with Martin, Craig and Geoff, to celebrate their contributions to History of Art at Oxford and Trinity, and those of their predecessors over the previous 70 years. I hope very much that our panel will be able to appoint a worthy successor to them all.