Enfilade

Paul Sandby and the Geographies of Eighteenth-Century Art
Paul Mellon Centre, London, 18-19 March 2010

Paul Sandby, "Roche Abbey, Yorkshire," c.1770s. Watercolour over graphite, 300 x 588 mm. Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photo © Royal Academy of Arts/Slingsby

This conference, to be held at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, will address issues arising from the exhibition Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain (Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, 25 July-18 October 2009; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 7 November 2009-7 February 2010; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 13 March-13 June 2010). Organised by Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, this is the first exhibition to bring together drawings, paintings and prints by this important, if neglected, artist, spanning his long career, and from all the major public collections of his works. In addressing Sandby’s vast and versatile body of work, in its figurative as well as topographical aspects, the exhibition explores how the artist portrayed the character of landscape throughout Britain, and indeed contributed to envisioning the country as a nation state from the cementing of the Act of Union with Scotland, after the failure of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, to the wars with revolutionary and Napoleonic France at the century’s end. Through extensive tours, initially as a military draughtsman and then as a professional artist, Sandby pioneered the artistic depiction of landscape in Scotland and Wales, and searched out new sites throughout England. His art is arguably unrivalled among that of his contemporaries in its portrayal of the appearance and meaning of a range of subjects, rural and urban, modern and historical, in a country experiencing rapid social and commercial development.

Thursday 18 March, Royal Academy of Arts

6:30 Private view of the exhibition, Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain, led by John Bonehill (Curator of Paul Sandby: Picturing Britain and Lecturer in Art History, University of Glasgow), followed by a wine reception.

Friday 19 March, The Paul Mellon Centre

9:40  Welcome by Brian Allen (Director of Studies, The Paul Mellon Centre)

9:45  Morning Session introduced and chaired by Kim Sloan (Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum)

9:50  Keynote address by Bruce Robertson (Professor of Art History, University of California-Santa Barbara), “Paul Sandby:  Father of English Watercolour?”

10:30  Timothy Wilcox (Independent Scholar), “‘Burying the Hatchet’: Paul Sandby at Luton Park”

11:40  Finola O’Kane (Lecturer in Architecture, University College Dublin), “’A Genuine Idea of the Face of the Kingdom’? Jonathan Fisher and Paul Sandby’s portrait of Ireland within the frame of Great Britain”

12:20  John Barrell (Professor of English, Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York), “A Common in Wales: Edward Pugh, the Pastoral, and Progress”

2:15  Afternoon session introduced and chaired by Shearer West (Director of Research, Arts and Humanities Research Council)

2:20  Gillian Forrester (Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale Center for British Art), “‘No Joke Like a True Joke’? ‘Twelve London Cries done from the Life’”

3:00  Nick Grindle (Teaching Fellow, Department of Art History, University College London), “Living in London and Windsor: The Sandby Brothers’ Residences, c.1752-1809”

4:10  Carolyn Anderson (Ph.D. candidate, School of Geography, University of Edinburgh), “’The Art of Depicting with a Soldier’s Eye’: The Military Mapping of Eighteenth-Century Scotland”

4:50  Stephen Daniels (Professor of Cultural Geography, University of Nottingham), “‘Great Balls of Fire’: Representing the Remarkable Meteor of 18^th August 1783”

5:30  Panel and audience discussion chaired by Sam Smiles (Emeritus Professor of Art History, University of Plymouth)

6:15  Wine reception