President

The President’s Jewel

Each year a person of standing in the county is invited to be Honorary President of The Devonshire Association.

A president’s year of office commences at the Annual General Meeting (held as part of the Annual DA Conference). The outgoing President chairs the AGM and invests the incoming President with the silver-and-enamel ‘President’s Jewel’, given to the Association in 1935 by Lady Radford. The new President then gives a talk on a Devon subject of his or her choosing, which is normally published as a keynote address in the forthcoming Transactions.

The President also conceives and organises the President’s one-day symposium assisted by the Executive Committee.

Current President 2023–24

Jenny Pery BA MA

JENNY PERY was born in India, educated at Cranborne Chase School in Dorset and at Oxford, where she read Modern Languages (Russian and French) at Lady Margaret Hall. She worked briefly in publishing at Pergamon Press, helping to inaugurate a program of Russian language books for schools. After marriage and a year in Istanbul, she settled with her family in Argyll, where she ran a children’s playgroup, and founded the still flourishing Oban Art Society. She attended art schools in Glasgow and London before acquiring a degree in Fine Art in Exeter. She later gained a Masters in Printmaking at Camberwell College of Art in London, and took a further degree in German with Creative Writing at the Open University.

For over thirty years she divided her time between Devon and Argyll, finally settling full-time in Devon in 2012. A practising artist, she has had many solo exhibitions, and as a member of Devon Open Studios she exhibits regularly in her Dartmoor studios. She is also a contributing member of the South West Academy, the Plymouth Society of Artists, the 21 Group of Artists, and the Society of Wood Engravers. As an art historian she is the author of many biographies and monographs on artists, including Claude Rogers OBE, Tristram Hillier RA, Anthony Eyton RA, Daphne Todd OBE, Andrew Festing MBE, Alan Cotton MBE and the painter Benedict Rubbra. She has written papers for DA’s Transactions on the Victorian painters Benjamin Haydon, Sir Charles Eastlake, Samuel Prout, and the Barbican artist William Gibbons.

September 2023: Inauguration conference, held in Exeter.

Former Presidents

Some details of our most recent presidents are here.

List of all our Presidents

Including the locations of the AGMs at which they were inaugurated.