Description

Half length, quarter turned, frontal, seated portrait of Heyhoe-Flint. Depicted in the Committee Room of Lord's Pavilion. Wearing a red and gold MCC pin badge. Media Centre in the background.

Display caption

Portrait of Rachael Heyhoe-Flint (2010) is an exciting new addition to the MCC Collections, so new, in fact, that the canvas is still wet. Commissioned by the Arts & Library Committee as part of the Lord’s Portrait Project 2006 - 2010 it is the first portrait of a female cricketer in the Collection. On the subject of being “done in oils” Hayhoe-Flint reflects “when I look around the Pavilion it is just about possible to spot in one or two painting a few elegant ladies depicted in various classic pictures – mainly as spectators at Grand Matches, so to have my own individual portrait makes me very proud.” Heyhoe-Flint joins a host of famous faces who have contributed to cricket and its development over the centuries. She is used to being first: the first woman to captain England at Lord’s in the 1976 Women’s Ashes Series and the first female to join the MCC General Committee in 2004. Appropriately, the portrait was executed by the artist James Lloyd in the MCC Committee Room. Lloyd speaks of depicting the cricketer in the “clothes she would wear to a meeting in this very room.” For Heyhoe-Flint meeting HM The Queen last summer after “a highly successful morning’s play when England challenged Australia in The Ashes” is her greatest memory associated with the Room. The artist maintains that “both Rachael’s professional side and her personality are important to the piece. She always has lots of banter with the Pavilion back door stewards and is very friendly and chatty. I hope to be able to portray some of her sparkle.” Lloyd has certainly captured a twinkle in her eye, as well as a sense of movement through visible fluid brush work, typical of his style.