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Up for sale a RARE! "British Historian" Joan Evans Hand Signed 3X5 Card.
ES-4557E
Dame
Joan Evans DBE FSA (22
June 1893 – 14 July 1977) was a British historian of French and
English mediaeval art, especially
Early Modern and medieval jewellery. Her
notable collection was bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum in
London. Joan Evans was born at Nash Mills, Apsley, Hertfordshire, the daughter of antiquarian and
businessman Sir John Evans and
his third wife, Maria Millington Lathbury (1856–1944).
She was half-sister to Sir Arthur Evans, excavator of Knossos and discoverer of Minoan civilisation. Sir
Arthur was forty two years her senior: he caused huge hilarity at an
antiquarian conference of learned and erudite gentlemen when he brought in a
four-year-old Joan to be "shown off". Evans was educated
privately before going up to St Hugh's College, Oxford to
read Archaeology. She graduated in 1916 as M.A..
In 1930 she was awarded a D.Litt.. The Royal Institution of Great Britain's records suggest that
Evans was the first woman to give a Friday Evening Discourse at the
Institution: this was on 8 June 1923, the title being "Jewels of the
Renaissance". In 1950, Evans's book Cluniac Art concerned art and sculptures made by the monks of the abbey at Cluny in
eastern France, was published by Cambridge University Press.
A Fellow of
the Society of Antiquaries of London, she published the Society's
official history in 1956, and served as its first woman President from 1959–64.
