From Internee to Art Collector: Tribute to Ruth Borchard

Born near Hamburg in 1910, the writer Ruth Borchard came as a German-Jewish refugee to Britain in 1938. As an ‘enemy alien’ in wartime she was imprisoned first in Holloway Prison, then interned in Rushen women’s camp on the Isle of Man. Her fictionalised memoir We Are Strangers Here: An Enemy Alien in Prison in 1940, only published after her death, provides a rare insight into life as a refugee in Holloway Prison.

Between 1958 and 1971 she amassed a superb collection of over 100 self-portraits by British-based artists, well-known and less well-known, which provides a fascinating overview of British portraiture in the mid-twentieth century

After her death in 2000, the collection was transferred to a charitable trust to become the Original Ruth Borchard Collection, under the custodianship of Piano Nobile. In 2011 a biennial self-portrait prize was set up in her name, with a selection of submitted works acquired for the Next Generation Collection. For more information, click here.

The film being screened was made by Unity House for Sky Arts in 2020, to coincide with an exhibition of works from the Ruth Borchard Collection being shown on the Isle of Man.

It will be followed by a Q&A with, we hope, members of Ruth’s family as well as others intimately familiar with her life story and achievements.

This event is held in partnership with Jewish Renaissance magazine.

Image: Michael Noakes, Ruth Borchard (detail), 1958, oil on canvas, 52 x 42 cm. Ruth Borchard Collection

For details of other events in this series, click here.