Constructing Corporate Identity before the Corporation: Fashioning the Face of the First English Joint Stock Banking Companies through Portraiture

Abstract

This article considers how the joint-stock banks established trust within the local marketplace. We undertake a new investigation of pictures of senior bank management. Building on the expansion of the art market in the nineteenth century, joint-stock banks used portraits as a public and visual mechanism to commemorate their successes and accomplishments. Portraiture, as a well-established art form, provided enterprises with a historical legacy that for many did not, as yet, exist. Through the use of portraiture, banks attempted to solidify their identity and add to the sitter’s social standing, as well as signal the new organization’s reputation for high culture, prestige, and professionalism to those who viewed these artworks. These illustrations personified the company and gave a human face to the early joint-stock economy.

City governance and visual impression management: Visual semiotics and the Biccherna panels of Siena

“…We add to rare studies that have shown the importance of art in organizing (e.g. Barnes and Newton, 2017) and earlier references to the Biccherna panels (Catturi, 2013;Yamey, 1989), by showing that artworks can contribute to governance. Meyer et al (2018) further identify four 'affordances' of the visual pertinent to our study of the Biccherna panels.…”

“…Although, as with more recent moveable organizational visual artefacts such as 19thcentury banking portraits (Barnes and Newton, 2017), it is not possible to trace all the locations where the Biccherna panels were displayed in pre-modern times, we believe it reasonable to suppose they had a wide audience. The fact that the panels were commissioned by the Commune, of well-known artists, probably influenced by important officials (Norman, 2003: 20), and at some expense, and their durability over several centuries, would corroborate this supposition.…”

Women, uniforms and brand identity in Barclays Bank

“…As Turner indicates, in the nineteenth century the wealth of bank shareholders was an important signalling device in an era of unlimited liability; private banking was no different (Turner, 2009;Cassis, 1994). Bank executives and staff members knew their communities; they offered their services through extensive social networks that were bound by familial and class ties (Newton, 1996;Barnes & Newton, 2017). Proximity to groups of wealthy depositors motivated early expansion as banks raced to gain additional sources of capital (Barnes & Newton, 2018b).…”

Symbolism in bank marketing and architecture: the headquarters of National Provincial Bank of England

“…The lesson of shrewd and firm bank management was one that senior bankers wished to remember, retell and teach so that this behavior could be thought of as a cornerstone of this bank's policy. These sort of tributes and memorials were made by other banks and given to other bank managers in the period (Barnes and Newton 2017).…”