Charles Cundall, Encaenia 1946

 

(This text is printed on the back of the greeting card)

Every year since 1674 the Oxford University Press has published the Oxford Almanack - a calendar of the forthcoming year which has traditionally been illustrated with a drawing or painting of Oxford. In 1946, Charles Cundall was commissioned to produce this painting of Encaenia - the ceremonial high point of Oxford's academic year.

The modern ceremony derives from a medieval gathering known as 'The Act' at which degrees were conferred and students traditionally let off steam listening to satirical and sometimes bawdy speeches. The increasingly secular character of the ceremony eventually caused it to be moved from St Mary's to the Sheldonian Theatre. After the last Act, which occurred in 1733, it was replaced by Encaenia, which involved the bestowing of honorary degrees and the recitation of prize-winning compositions. The tradition of unruliness, however, did not immediately disappear. In 1905 the novelist Henry James felt that the impressiveness of Encaenia 'was much diminished by the boisterous conduct of the students, who superabound in extravagant applause, in impertinent interrogation and in lively disparagement of the Orator's Latinity.' James went on to reflect that perhaps this was 'only another expression of the venerable and historic side of Oxford ..... tolerated because it is traditional; possible because it is classical ' It was not to last for long, however. The entire life of the university was disrupted by the First World War and by the 1930s the old unruliness of Encaenia had disappeared almost without trace.