St Peter’s College is pleased to administer the Romilly Awards Student Prizes, which promote student engagement with the JWM Collection of Duncan Grant artworks at the College.
The JWM Collection at St Peter’s is one of the largest private collections of works in the UK by the celebrated artist and designer Duncan Grant (1885–1978). The items are on long-term loan to the College by a generous alumnus. St Peter’s College is grateful to this alumnus for funding the Romilly Award Student Written Response Prize (£500) and the Romilly Award Student Visual Response Prize (£500).
Angelika Woodruff
The winner of the Romilly Written Response Prize is Angelika Woodruff, a first-year undergraduate student reading English Literature at New College. Angelika’s essay ‘One may as well begin with the letter paper’, considers connections between aesthetics and function in Duncan Grant’s art.
Reanna Brooks
The winner of the Romilly Visual Response Prize is Reanna Brooks, a first-year DPhil candidate in English Literature at St Hilda’s College. Reanna’s acrylic painting, ‘Viewing Someone Viewing Duncan Grant’, portrays an observer looking upwards and engaging with the JWM Collection in situ at St Peter’s College.
This was the inaugural year of the visual response prize, and St Peter’s received a wonderful range of artworks from entrants, including a multimedia sculpture entitled ‘There is Only So Much I can Take in Pursuit of Our Beauty (Table Relationship)’ by Maisie Goodfellow (St Edmund Hall) and ‘Duncan at the Table’, a mixed medium collage by Angelika Woodruff.
Visual Response Entries and Winning Entry
Romilly Awards entries were considered anonymously by our expert prize panel, Dr Cora Gilroy-Ware (Fellow and Tutor in the History of Art, St Peter’s College), Prof Marina Mackay (Fellow and Tutor in English, St Peter’s College), and Dr Joshua Phillips (Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of English).
The collection is open to public viewings for both individuals and groups. Learn more here.