New Book | De l’avènement des « arts décoratifs »
From Brepols:
Ann Perrin, De l’avènement des « arts décoratifs »: Écrits et réflexions, 1693–1798 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2026), 364 pages, ISBN: 978-2503620220, €75. Also available via open access.
At the crossroads of the arts, commerce and knowledge, the field of ‘decorative arts’ emerged in the eighteenth century as a real social issue. This book traces its discursive and historiographical genesis, through a wide range of unpublished or little-known sources.
Souvent considérés à l’aune de l’historiographie des beaux-arts avec lesquels ils sont mis en concurrence, les « arts décoratifs » sont rarement étudiés des points de vue théorique et discursif. C’est l’objectif de ce livre, qui défend l’idée selon laquelle les « arts décoratifs », en tant que « champ » autonome constitué – au sens bourdieusien –, émergent progressivement durant une période charnière de l’histoire, au moment précis où se mettent en place une large culture de la consommation et une grande diffusion des connaissances relatives aux arts de la décoration et à la mode. Anne Perrin montre que l’indicateur majeur de cette évolution culturelle se situe dans une efflorescence d’écrits et de réflexions qui firent débat parmi les contemporains, attestant une considération nouvelle acquise pendant un ample XVIIIe siècle par ce champ des « arts décoratifs » alors en construction.
Afin de reconstituer un tel processus historiographique et épistémologique, l’ouvrage rassemble un vaste corpus de sources anciennes, dont la plupart sont méconnues ou jamais incluses dans les bibliographies abordant le sujet. Ont été retenues celles qui se démarquent par leurs qualités critique, réflexive et exploratoire au sein d’une grande diversité de formes textuelles (discours, traités, précis, leçons, annonces, dictionnaires, etc.). Ces textes sont analysés depuis leur contexte d’énonciation, par des hommes et femmes de terrain, qui s’emparèrent du secteur et contribuèrent à le développer, étant artistes, artisans, marchands, pédagogues, philosophes, critiques d’art, amateurs, historiographes, journalistes, économistes, naturalistes ou officiers de l’administration royale. Parmi ces sources imprimées, la production écrite de Jean-Jacques Bachelier, fondateur de la plus importante école de dessin appliquée aux manufactures de la monarchie française (actuelle ENSAD), se distingue autant qu’elle fait écho aux autres voix de son temps.
Anne Perrin est professeure des universités en histoire de l’art moderne à l’Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès – Laboratoire FRAMESPA-UMR 5136. Ses recherches portent sur les arts du XVIIIe siècle, qu’elle aborde sous l’angle de leurs interrelations et dans des approches autant théoriques que pragmatiques. Elle est l’auteure de plusieurs livres et articles sur la culture de la décoration et de la mode, ainsi que sur la pédagogie artistique.
c o n t e n t s
Avertissement
Introduction
Première partie | Prendre la parole
1 Définitions
2 Tensions
Deuxième partie | Défendre une vision
1 Personnalité
2 Formation
Troisième partie | Incarner le changement
1 Économie
2 Mode
Conclusion
Postface de Melissa Hyde — available as a PDF here»
Sources manuscrites et imprimées relatives à Jean-Jacques Bachelier
Sources manuscrites éditées après le XVIIIe siècle
Sources imprimées
Bibliographie
Crédits photographiques
Index des noms propres
New Book | The First Emancipation
From Princeton UP:
Jeremy Popkin, The First Emancipation: The Forgotten History of Abolition in Revolutionary France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2026), 440 pages, ISBN: 978-0691246925, $40.
The First Emancipation is a dramatic account of how slavery and race profoundly influenced the course of the French Revolution and had a central impact on the lives of key leaders, including Mirabeau, Robespierre, Toussaint Louverture, and Napoleon. Acclaimed historian Jeremy D. Popkin brings this often-forgotten story to life, highlighting the arguments put forward by French abolitionists and their opponents and the profound repercussions of the first abolition of slavery in a Western empire.
When the French revolutionaries passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789, they immediately faced a burning question: did that document’s first article—“Men are born and remain free and equal in rights”—apply to the 800,000 enslaved Black people in the country’s colonies? Over the next dozen years, revolutionary leaders fought over this question. The First Emancipation tells how French lawmakers initially protected slavery in their constitution but reversed themselves in 1794, making France the first western country to abolish slavery throughout its empire. Yet only eight years later, in 1802, Napoleon tried to force the emancipated Black populations of the colonies back into slavery. His decision led to his first major military defeat and to the proclamation of the independence of the Black nation of Haiti, but also to the reestablishment of slavery in other French colonies, where it would not finally be abolished until 1848. The story of how France emancipated its enslaved people and declared them full citizens only to return many of them to bondage, The First Emancipation reveals that the course of abolition in the modern world was more winding and halting than is often remembered.
Jeremy D. Popkin is the William T. Bryan Chair Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Kentucky. His many books include A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution and You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery.
Exhibition | Revolutionary Prints from Britain and America
Left | Josiah Wedgwood, creamware jug, transfer printed with an image based on the painting The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West (Milwaukee: Chipstone Foundation; photo by Gavin Ashworth). Right | Philip Dawe, The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man or Tarring and Feathering, 1774, London, mezzotint with engraving (Milwaukee: Chipstone Foundation; photo by Gavin Ashworth).
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Now on view at the Haggerty Museum of Art:
Defying Empire: Revolutionary Prints from Britain and America
Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, 4 June — 1 August 2026
Curated by J. Patrick Mullins, with Jonathan Prown and Jessica Cooley
On the occasion of the Semiquincentennial of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University welcomes visitors to visualize a passionate, participatory Revolution. Its summer exhibition, Defying Empire: Revolutionary Prints from Britain and America, explores how eighteenth-century British and American prints shaped public opinion about politics, from the French and Indian War through the end of the Washington presidency. Drawn from the collections of the Chipstone Foundation and the Haggerty Museum, the exhibition brings together more than twenty prints on paper, a selection of transfer printed ceramics, and an eighteenth-century maple dining table. Through works by both Britons and Americans of diverse political persuasions, it interprets the Revolutionary era as a time of transatlantic cultural exchange in which political ideas were communicated not just by documents like the Declaration but also objects from the fine and decorative arts.
In the eighteenth century British-speaking world, printed cartoons, portraits, and landscapes circulated widely, accessible to a much broader public than most official documents. These images could trigger such responses as amusement, contempt, reverence, and outrage, spurring viewers to political action. As creators and consumers, middle-class and working-class men and women used etchings, mezzotints, punchbowls, and teapots to participate in elite conversations about imperial authority and colonial resistance. Defying Empire provides an array of these politically charged artworks, including such featured objects as a creamware jug by Josiah Wedgwood interpreting The Death of General Wolfe, prints by William Hogarth satirizing Whig leaders like William Pitt and John Wilkes, Charles Willson Peale’s iconic portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and Paul Revere’s inflammatory Bloody Massacre. Replicas of additional prints are displayed on a ‘coffeehouse table’ for visitors to handle and examine at their leisure.
Defying Empire: Revolutionary Prints from Britain and America was curated by Dr. J. Patrick Mullins, Associate Professor of History and Public History Director at Marquette University, in collaboration with Mr. Jonathan Prown, Dr. Jessica Cooley, and the staffs of the Chipstone Foundation and Haggerty Museum of Art. A virtual exhibit and catalog of curatorial essays will be available in Fall 2026 at the Chipstone website. For more information, visit the museum online, or contact Dr. Patrick Mullins at john.mullins@marquette.edu.
Support for this exhibition is generously provided by the John P. Raynor, S.J. Endowment Fund and in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Exhibitions | America 250 at the MFAH
From the press release for the presentation and series of exhibitions:
America 250 at the MFAH
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1 July 2026 — 3 January 2027
Organized by Kaylin Weber and Christine Gervais
Joshua Johnson (ca. 1765–after 1825), Lady on a Red Sofa, 1820–25, oil on canvas, 30 × 25 inches (MFAH, 2026.5).
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston marks the 250th anniversary of America’s founding with a roster of more than 70 artworks that speak to the American experience from across its campus and collections—from antiquities to global modern and contemporary art. Beginning 1 July 2026, visitors to the MFAH main campus and its two decorative-arts house museums, Rienzi and Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, can map their own pathway, indoors and out, guided to the artworks and newly created audio stops and labels that discuss each of them from this historical and cultural perspective.
Comments Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH, “The collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston take pride of place within our galleries and our curators are continually engaging with and revisiting these works of art. On the occasion of the nation’s 250th anniversary, we saw a singular opportunity to look at our collections and select objects that reflect the multitudes of individuals who have contributed to the identity of our nation. The curators’ choices will allow our visitors to experience our collections framed within a series of illuminating and sometimes surprising narratives.”
The America 250 presentation has been organized by Dr. Kaylin H. Weber, The Lora Jean Kilroy Curator of American Painting and Sculpture, and by Christine Gervais, MFAH Curator for Decorative Arts and the Fredricka Crain Director of Rienzi.
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A New Nation: The Early United States as Reflected in Books and Objects
from the Powell Library and the Bayou Bend Collection
Kitty King Powell Library, MFAH, 1 May — 29 August 2026
In honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, this display features books and objects from the early years of the United States representing various achievements and aspects of the period. The first encyclopedia printed in America by Thomas Dobson celebrated the country’s new identity, its history, and geography. It also presented the latest international technological and scientific discoveries that supported economic development. Other works demonstrate the importance of maintaining the military strength and strategic alliances that enabled the victory over Britain and that would also be needed to protect the citizens’ hard-won liberty. Surveying instruments and manuals assisted the country’s rapid expansion into new territory. Items related to Benjamin Franklin represent the importance of the Founding Fathers to the society and culture of the new nation.
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George Washington: America’s Enduring Icon
Bayou Bend, MFAH, 11 February — 22 November 2026
George Washington: America’s Enduring Icon includes objects from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries featuring images of George Washington during his lifetime, as well as many that mourned or honored him after his death. On view at the MFAH house museum Bayou Bend, the exhibition examines the many ways that Americans have recognized, honored, celebrated, memorialized, and appropriated the memory of Washington.
New Book | Constable’s Year
From Thames & Hudson:
Susan Owens, Constable’s Year: An Artist in Changing Seasons (London: Thames & Hudson, 2026), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0500028896, $35.
Published to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth, this book offers a fresh look at John Constable, whose life and work were profoundly shaped by the cycle of the natural world in his native rural England.
As exhilarating as a lungful of oxygen: that’s how some of his contemporaries felt about John Constable’s paintings. Others, though, were baffled by his uncompromisingly fresh and realistic treatment of the natural world. Author Susan Owens follows Constable’s work and life through the seasons, tracing the rhythms and resonances of the artist’s year to offer a vivid, unconventional perspective on this beloved figure. Whether in London in May, preparing pictures for exhibition and longing for the Suffolk spring, or painting boat-builders and waiting to be married in a particularly gloomy September, Constable’s life and work were unusually shaped by the yearly cycles of weather and agriculture, as well as by the often competing demands of the art world. Raised in Suffolk, England, and trained to manage his father’s land, his rural background had an enduring impact on his painting. His was the approach of one who knew the laneways, ploughs, and millponds he painted intimately, and who understood the countryside as a place of both labor and natural phenomena. Though today he is often considered a traditional artist, in truth John Constable (1776–1837) was a radical in his own time. His sketchbooks and paintings reject secondhand, slipshod versions of nature, instead subjecting the land, its people, and industry to intense scrutiny; developing a new kind of painting to fit the landscape he saw with his farmer’s eye and felt beneath the soles of his boots.
Susan Owens is an expert on British landscape art and a leading critical voice in the field. Her publications include The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History, which was Apollo magazine’s 2024 Book of the Year, Imagining England’s Past: Inspiration, Enchantment, Obsession, and Spirit of Place: Artists, Writers and the British Landscape. She was curator of paintings at the V&A, and was involved in the major V&A exhibition and catalog Constable: The Making of a Master.
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N.B.— And as The Guardian noted in June, Constable’s cello will be displayed at Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich from 17 June until 4 October.
Conference | Painting and Genre
From ArtHist.net and St Edmund Hall:
Painting and Genre
St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford, 6 August 2026
Organized by Sofya Dmitrieva
Painting genres structure artistic practice, shape reception, and inform institutional frameworks. Yet as an analytical category, genre has long occupied a marginal position within art history.
This is not to suggest that the discipline has produced no genre theory. Influential studies, such as Wayne Franits’s Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (Yale University Press, 2004), have addressed genre explicitly, and scholarship on individual genres, particularly portraiture and landscape, is vast. Questions related to genre, most notably the academic hierarchy of genres, have received sustained scholarly attention, from Jean Locquin to Christian Michel, Mark Ledbury, and Paul Duro. Indeed, one of the discipline’s foundational texts—Alois Riegl’s The Group Portraiture of Holland (1902)—is a genre study.
Art-historical approaches to genre have likewise been varied and innovative. To cite just a small selection of recent examples, Amy Freund has examined the hunting portrait from a sociohistorical perspective, linking it to the changing status of the sword nobility in the early eighteenth century (Art History, 2019); Susanna Caviglia has revisited history painting under Louis XV, relating it to contemporary political and cultural discourses on pleasure (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020); and Stephanie O’Rourke has explored how late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century landscape painting registered practices of resource extraction (University of Chicago Press, 2025).
Still, despite this substantial body of scholarship, the study of genre has remained largely overshadowed by iconographic and formalist approaches. In contrast to literary and film studies, where genre theory occupies a central methodological position, art history has yet to develop a comparably sustained theoretical framework for the analysis of genre.
This one-day conference brings together contributions that place genre at the centre of the analysis of painting. It seeks to foreground genre not merely as a classificatory device but as a critical category through which artistic production, reception, and historiography can be re-examined. Attendance is free of charge, and no registration is required. A light lunch and refreshments will be provided.
p r o g r a m m e
13.45 Welcome and introduction by Sofya Dmitrieva
14.00 Panel 1 | Definitions
• Emma Barker (The Open University) — Defining Genre Painting
• Miles Fletcher (University of Cambridge) — Een Algemeen Schilder: Landscape, Technology, and the History of Depiction in England and the Low Countries, 1649–1702
15.00 Panel 2 | Institutions
• Anastasia Skoybedo (University of Cambridge) — Landscape Painting within the Soviet Hierarchy of Genres: The Case of the Leningrad Landscape School
• Alyse Muller (Columbia University) — The Genealogy of the Marine Genre in France
16.00 Coffee Break
17.00 Panel 3 | Taste
• Daniel Sobrino Ralston (National Gallery) — The Rise and Fall of a Genre in Second Empire Paris
• Vittoria Cervini (Royal Collection Trust) — From Carlton House to Buckingham Palace: Seventeenth-Century Genre Paintings in George IV’s Collection
18.00 Panel 4 | Reimaginings
• Tom Zille (Mucha Foundation) — Queering the Conversation Piece
• Sarah Hegenbart (Heidelberg University) — Towards Transcultural Pictorial Genres
Call for Papers | Baroque Portraiture in Silesia
From ArtHist.net:
Baroque Portraiture in Silesia and its Neighbouring Lands: New Perspectives
The Ossoliński National Institute, Wrocław, 26–27 November 2026
Organized by Emilia Kłoda and Marek Kwaśny
Proposals due by 31 July 2026
Following the end of the Thirty Years’ War and the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Silesia, as a land belonging to the Bohemian Crown, became the arena of fundamental political and social transformations. In place of the local Protestant nobility, new cosmopolitan aristocratic families of the Catholic faith emerged, loyal to the imperial authority. The confessional character of the Habsburg state fostered the renewal of religious life and increased the influence of ecclesiastical institutions on politics, culture, and society.
These changes manifested themselves in numerous and magnificent artistic foundations. Noble and episcopal palaces, monasteries, and academies filled with art, with portraiture occupying a particularly prominent place. Alongside images of the ruler and his family—expressions of political loyalty—noble portrait galleries comprised likenesses of contemporary family members and their most illustrious ancestors. Thus created, the ancestor halls were intended as an artistic manifestation of high status, aspirations, and proof of noble lineage. Bishops’ palaces were adorned with portraits of successive church hierarchs, while the representative halls of monasteries were filled with extensive portrait cycles depicting subsequent abbots and abbesses. These often included imaginative representations of semi-legendary early superiors, reaching many centuries back, thereby underscoring institutional continuity and sanctioning the communities’ exceptional social position.
On the other hand, despite a more difficult political and religious situation, numerous portrait commissions also came from the numerically dominant Protestant inhabitants of Silesia: wealthy burghers, councillors, scholars, humanists, and Lutheran clergy, equally eager to emphasise their significance as prosperous and educated representatives of society. It must of course be remembered that the portrait in this period served various functions: from the most fundamental one of „making the absent present,” through representative, ritual, propagandistic, and commemorative roles, to finally serving as a tool of self-creation and manifestation of identity (social, political, and religious).
Thanks to extensive field research conducted in recent years, we know of over 800 surviving Baroque portraits of various types located in Silesian museums, palaces, monasteries, and public institutions. Despite such a rich heritage, many aspects of this artistic activity still await new, interdisciplinary approaches. Suffice it to say that over forty years have passed since the last exhibition on early modern portraiture in Silesia, organized by the National Museum in Wrocław, and since then no comprehensive, overarching study has been dedicated to this subject, leaving it on the margins of other art-historical inquiries.
Therefore, the Institute of Art History of the University of Wrocław and the Ossoliński National Institute invite you to participate in an international academic conference devoted to early modern portraiture in Silesia and its neighbouring lands. The artistic phenomena observable in Silesia were similar in other lands of the Bohemian Crown, while the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had extraordinary patrons of portraiture among its magnates and high-ranking clergy. We invite you to jointly reflect on the place of the portrait in the visual culture of Central Europe, on its functions, meanings, and transformations over the centuries. We are open to new methodological perspectives and various interdisciplinary approaches that take into account the socio-economic conditions of the epoch and region. We welcome not only scholars interested in painted portraiture but also in sculptural, graphic, and drawn portraits.
We encourage the submission of papers addressing, among others, the following topics:
• The portrait and its function: representation of power, propaganda, commemoration, self-creation, the portrait as an object of exchange
• Historicising portraiture and sacred identification portraits
• The portrait and the sitter’s identity: confession, estate, nationality, gender
• Portraitists and their place in the art market: the artistic activity of portrait painters and guild structures with their constraints, secular and ecclesiastical servitorate, artist mobility and earnings
• The portrait and its display: residential ancestor galleries, monastic portrait cycles of abbots and abbesses, collections of portraits of famous figures, scholars and professors, bourgeois interiors, images in public spaces, epitaphs and tombstones
• The portrait in sculpture, numismatics, graphic arts, and decorative arts
• The turbulent fate of portraits: translocations, destruction, thefts, restitution
The thematic scope remains flexible. We will gladly consider proposals that extend beyond the aforementioned areas.
Speaking time: 20 minutes
Conference languages: English
Please send your proposals by 31 July 2026 to marek.kwasny2@uwr.edu.pl.
Submissions should include:
Full name, academic title/degree, affiliation
Paper title
Abstract (max. 200 words)
Short biographical note
Notification of acceptance will be sent by 31 August 2026.
We plan to publish a peer-reviewed post-conference monograph in English with a high-scoring academic publisher.
Conference Fee: 450 PLN / 100 EUR
The fee includes: conference materials, coffee breaks, lunches, and a gala dinner. Please note that the organizers do not cover travel or accommodation expenses. However, we are happy to assist with hotel reservations where possible.
Scientific Committee
Katarína Kolbiarz Chmelinová, PhD., Comenius University Bratislava
Andrzej Kozieł, University of Wrocław, University of Ostrava
Zuzana Macurová, Ph.D., Palacký University Olomouc
Jacek Tylicki, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
Organising Committee
Emilia Kłoda, The Ossoliński National Institute in Wrocław
Marek Kwaśny, Institute of Art History, University of Wrocław
Call for Session Proposals | ASECS 2027, Portland
From ASECS:
2027 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
Portland, Oregon, 1–3 April 2027
Sessions Proposals due by 18 July 2026
Paper Proposals will be due by 18 September 2026
The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) is pleased to announce our Call For Papers for the 57th Annual Meeting, to be held 1–3 April 2027 in Portland, Oregon. The Society, established in 1969, is the foremost learned society in the United States for the study of all aspects of the long eighteenth century, the period from the later seventeenth through the early nineteenth century. In their 57th edition, ASECS is co-hosting its Annual Meeting along with the Western Society of Eighteenth American Studies, and collaborating with the Society for French Historical Studies.
ASECS is committed to fostering an inclusive and welcoming conference environment in which all members participate fully in the exchange of knowledge and ideas. The society welcomes scholars pursuing all aspects of eighteenth-century studies and in all careers and career stages: in graduate studies; in tenured, tenure track, or non-tenure track academic positions; in part-time or temporary positions in the academy; and colleagues in contexts beyond the academy including libraries, museums, publishing, and teaching, as well as independent scholars.
The Annual Meeting has four rounds for submissions:
Round 1 | 22 May — 22 June 2026
Call for guaranteed sessions (panels, roundtables, poster sessions, and special sessions) submitted by caucuses and affiliate society chairs. Submissions must have session title, session description, email, chair/co-chair. Submissions for these sessions must be from caucuses or affiliate members in good standing. Caucuses can have up to two sessions, affiliates can have one.
Round 2 | 22 June — 18 July 2026
Open call for session proposals by chairs (panels, roundtables, project sessions, special sessions). Submission must have session title, session description, email, and chair/co-chairs.
Important: Before submitting, please review the guaranteed caucus and affiliate sessions that were submitted in Round 1 to avoid duplication.
Round 3 | 31 July — 18 September 2026
Open call for individual paper abstracts to proposed chairs’ sessions. Submissions must have presenter’s name, paper title, email, and paper abstract.
Round 4 | 10–18 October 2026
Open call for individual paper abstracts. Submissions must have presenter name, paper title, and paper abstract Individual paper abstracts that were not selected in Round 3 can become part of Round 4 or ASECS created sessions, that are organized by the Program Committee.
Please direct any questions to ASECS Meeting Planner, Devon Binder, at programs@asecs.org.
Program Committee
Monica Hahn
David Diamond
Soren Hammerschmidt
Sal Nicolazzo
Marisol Barbón
Leigh Mercer
Resource Spotlight | The Anthony M. Clark Archive at the NGA
Notebook on 18th-century artists: M–MAS opened to page on “Agostino Masucci,” Anthony M. Clark Archive, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC.
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Nearly everything that appears here at Enfilade is aggregated from other sources with the aim of spreading news of exhibitions, books, conferences, and other scholarly events and opportunities. Nothing, however, precludes other kinds of posts, including original contributions. Huge thanks to Missy Lemke for this very helpful introduction to the Anthony M. Clark Archive at the NGA! –CH
Overview of the Anthony M. Clark Archive at the National Gallery of Art
By Melissa Beck Lemke, Image Specialist for Italian Art, Image Collections,
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The National Gallery of Art’s Department of Image Collections is a photographic archive documenting art and architecture from all over the world. It includes over 3 million photographs, negatives, reproductive prints, and digital images acquired predominately from scholars, photographers, dealers, and museums. Our scholars’ archives are unique and allow us to instantly improve our collection in that area of specialty.
The archive of Anthony M. Clark (1923–1976) is one such example. It came to the NGA in 2012 through the generosity of Clark’s colleague and friend, Edgar Peters Bowron (Pete). The archive is a rich collection documenting not only Tony’s interest in Roman Settecento painting, but also artists of all media across Europe. It consists of photographs, research notes, portrait engravings and miscellaneous files related to his personal art collection, teaching, and scholarship.
Tony Clark was a significant figure in the field of Roman 18th-century painting. He graduated from Harvard in 1945 with a degree in fine arts, but eventually his interests shifted to art history. He was the Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, and eventual Director, of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In 1973, he was made Curator of European Painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, but left in 1975 after disagreements with its director, Thomas Hoving, about changes to his exhibition The Age of Revolution: French Painting, 1774–1830. Tony went on to teach at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York and Williams College in Williamstown, MA. In 1976 he had a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome to complete work on his survey of Roman 18th-century painting. While jogging by the Villa Doria-Pamphili, he had a heart attack and died; he was 53 years old.
Tony was lauded for his contributions to growing the collections at Minneapolis and for his important exhibitions at the Met. Although he did not publish a great deal, he did leave behind reams of research documents in preparation for his intended publications. Scholars have continued Tony’s work, most especially Pete Bowron, as evidenced by his 2-volume catalogue raisonné on Pompeo Batoni published in 2016. Tony’s continued influence and significance in the field was displayed recently by a stunning exhibition held in honor of what would have been his 100th birthday at the Nicholas Hall Gallery in New York in October of 2023, entitled The Hub of the World: Art in Eighteenth-Century Rome.
Photograph and letters regarding Pietro Bianchi, Clio Holding a Trumpet and Herodotus, formerly with Dorotheum, Vienna, Anthony M. Clark Archive, Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC.
The addition of the Clark Archive was transformative for the department of Image Collections’ 18th-century holdings. It added over 11,000 black-and-white photographs and color transparencies of paintings, drawings, and sculptures by nearly 300 artists. They are often annotated or accompanied by letters and other ephemera which have been filed together within the photo archive. The decision to incorporate the Clark materials into the NGA’s photo collection allows researchers to view them alongside photographs obtained from dealers, photographers, and other scholars providing a broader view of each subject.
Tony’s work is documented not only through the photos, but also in 60 small, 6-ringed binders which record his research and thoughts on nearly 1,300 artists, as well as hundreds of historical personalities, dealers, collections, churches, and palaces. The notebooks are characterized by Tony’s small script and charming drawings. One can imagine him making notes and sketches within a church or museum and slipping the small book back into his jacket pocket. They also contain copious notes from books, archives, bibliographies, and monographic lists.
The artists most significantly represented are: Pompeo Batoni (11 books), Giuseppe and Pier Leone Ghezzi (1 book), Sebastiano Conca (231 pages), Giuseppe Cades (177 pages), Corrado Giaquinto (132 pages), Carlo Maratta (130 pages), Benedetto Luti (125 pages), Antonio Cavallucci (112 pages), Angelica Kauffman (110 pages), and Francesco Trevisani (106 pages). His concentration on Kaufman is noteworthy considering the paucity of scholarship on female artists at the time. Clark’s extant artist lists include eleven other women of varying levels of renown.
Tony was a scholar of 18th-century Europe—not only its painters and sculptors, but also its scientists, humanists, poets, royals, and religious figures, as evidenced by his notebooks entitled “Persons.” Unfortunately, only two books from the “Persons” series have survived (those for A–L) with entries on 208 individuals, some brief and others significant, like 19 pages on the titular queen of England, Maria Clementina Sobieska, 11 pages on the English music historian and composer Charles Burney, and 13 pages on the French patron Pierre Crozat. Created in an age well before the internet, they serve as an encyclopedia of the 18th century.
The notebooks and photo archive stand as a monument to Clark’s scholarship. Twenty-nine of the notebooks have been digitized and added to the the National Gallery’s Image Collections database. This includes persons, popes, churches, palaces, visits to New York dealers, and all artists except for the 13 books on Batoni. The names of all the people, sites and dealers included in the notebooks are keyword searchable within the database. This material’s inclusion in the National Gallery’s Image Collections will ensure its preservation and accessibility for other scholars to continue Tony’s work. For more information on the archive see our website or contact Missy Lemke at m-lemke@nga.gov.
Exhibition | Celtic Art Across the Ages
Now on view at Harvard Art Museums, the exhibition spans a wide period including the reception of Celtic art in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Celtic Art Across the Ages
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 6 March — 2 August 2026
Curated by Susanne Ebbinghaus, with Penny Coombe, Laure Marest, and Matthew Rogan
Discover the many forms of Celtic creativity and their artistic legacies in this sweeping story that spans ancient to modern times.
When you think of the word ‘Celtic’, what do you picture? Perhaps intricate knotwork designs, legendary warriors, or mystical spirituality? Maybe even a certain NBA team? Celtic Art across the Ages will introduce visitors to the worlds of the various peoples who were historically labeled ‘Celts’—through the objects they created, the interactions they had across the European continent, and the myths that shaped their legacy, then as now. The exhibition stretches from 800 BCE through today, showcasing the craftsmanship, innovation, cultural connections, and multilayered reception that characterized Celtic art in Europe and beyond.
The first major exhibition on this topic to take place in the United States, Celtic Art across the Ages offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore masterful metalwork, including exquisitely decorated weaponry, jewelry, and horse and chariot trappings of the first millennium BCE Iron Age and early medieval times, all brought to light through archaeological discoveries of the last 200 years. See how imagery transformed under Roman rule, and trace the revival of Celtic art and identities in the modern era. From shape-shifting ancient ornaments to the more well-known Celtic iconography of medieval Ireland and Scotland, the objects in this exhibition reveal rich and complex artistic traditions that defy stereotypes of what constitutes ‘Celtic art’.
The exhibition is curated by Susanne Ebbinghaus, George M.A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art and Head of the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art, with Penny Coombe, Kelekian Curatorial Fellow in Ancient Art, Laure Marest, Damarete Associate Curator of Ancient Coins, and Matthew Rogan, Senior Curatorial Assistant for Special Exhibitions and Publications.
The catalogue is disributed by Yale UP:
Susanne Ebbinghaus, ed., Celtic Art Across the Ages (Cambridge: Harvard Art Museums, 2026), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0300286380, $45. With contributions by Franck Abert, Sophia Adams, Bettina Arnold, Kathryn Brush, Kimberly Cassibry, Michael Dietler, Christian Dupont, Susanne Ebbinghaus, Astrid Fendt, Ana Franjić, Martin Goldberg, Gloria Polizzotti Greis, Karina Grömer, Vanessa Haussener, Veronika Holzer, Thomas Hoppe, Fraser Hunter, Marina Kliger, Rachel Love, Laure Marest, Catherine McKenna, Nancy Netzer, Laurent Olivier, Sean Rainbird, Matthew Rogan, Maeve Sikora, Adrian Stähli, Georg Tiefengraber, and Katharina Ulmschneider.
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