Biography
Emma Boyce Gore achieved a BA in art history from the University of Essex in 2000, then trained in the conservation of easel paintings at Palazzo Spinelli in Florence in 2005, and graduated from the Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge University in 2009. During that time she specialised in sixteenth-century Italian paintings. Following that she undertook internships at the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where she focused on the technical examination of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. Emma has worked in museums and private studios in the Netherlands and the UK, conserving and researching a wide range of paintings dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. She now works at The Hamilton Kerr Institute, where she conserves and researches paintings and contributes to the teaching of students and interns of paintings conservation; she also runs her own private practice.
Interests
Emma is keenly involved in public engagement to spread knowledge and understanding of conservation and technical analysis of paintings; she has given numerous public lectures and featured in a television series. She is also enthusiastic about documenting and sharing knowledge within the conservation and art history communities so enjoys contributing to paintings catalogues and writing research reports. Emma is particularly interested in painting materials and production techniques, and holistic interpretation of data from a range of sources, especially in relation to resolving mysteries about paintings. In the studio, Emma enjoys all aspects of practical paintings conservation, including cleaning, retouching and structural repairs. Emma is attracted to frames almost as much as paintings, both to conserve, and to research in the context of the paintings they house.
Research
Emma has carried out the technical examination of a wide range of paintings from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, using a variety of analytical techniques; she has focused mainly on sixteenth-, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian, British, Dutch and Flemish paintings. Most recently she has worked almost exclusively on sixteenth-century Northern Italian paintings by painters such as Jacopo Bassano, Fede Galizia, Correggio and Parmigianino and seventeenth-century Antwerp painters including Hendrick van Balen, Sebastiaan Vrancx and Jan van Kessel.
Publications
- Boyce Gore, E., ‘Tudor portraits of the Le Strange family of Hunstanton: Sir Thomas Le Strange (1493/4–1545)’, Tales of the Unexpected in Conservation, postprints from the BAPCR conference, 2019, Archetype Publications Ltd, 2019, pp.3-14
- Boyce, E.R., Stainer-Hutchins, K., Platt, H., ‘Another fragment-half of a Flemish devotional panel; Mater Dolorosa, c.1520, by an anonymous artist associated with the Master of the Holy Blood’, The Picture Restorer, Number 48, Spring 2016, pp. 18-28
- Boyce, E. R., ‘Lombardy, Leonardo and a long-lost Piazza: an alternative attribution for a 16th-century Madonna and Child’, Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin Number 4, Archetype Publications, London, 2013, pp.77-94
- Massing, J. M., Kempski, M., Boyce, E.R. and Leonard, D., ‘Conservation and technical study of Siciolante’s Deposition of Christ’ Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin Number 4, Archetype Publications, London, 2013, pp. 7-20
