Enfilade

From The University of York’s Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies:

Court, Country, City: British Art 1660-1735

The 3-year research project Court, Country, City: British Art 1660-1735 is funded by the AHRC and represents a major collaboration between the University of York and Tate Britain. Members of the core team are the principal investigator, Professor Mark Hallett (Head of Department of the History of Art, York); co-investigators Professor Nigel Llewellyn (Head of Research, Tate) and Dr Martin Myrone (Curator, Tate); post-doctoral research assistants Dr Lydia Hamlett and Dr Richard Stephens, and PhD students Caroline Good and Peter Moore.

The research project, which was launched in October 2009, is intended to stimulate new approaches to British visual culture from 1660-1735. The period in question saw profound changes in the nation’s character and these included a similarly important period of transformation in the visual arts, beginning with the appointment of Peter Lely as court painter to Charles II and ending with the emergence of the St Martin’s Lane Academy in the mid-1730s. In terms of British art history, the later decades of the eighteenth century – the ‘age of Hogarth and Reynolds’ – have been relatively well explored; however, the art of the preceding period has not been recovered or interpreted in the same depth. It is in order to redress this art-historical imbalance, and to provide a set of fresh perspectives on the art of late-Stuart and early Georgian Britain, that this project has been conceived and developed.

Researchers on the team have a wide range of interests and expertise, which are being focused on three major arenas of the visual arts in this period: the later Stuart and early Hanoverian courts, the country seats of the landed aristocracy and the urban spaces occupied by a mix of social classes. Important cross-cutting themes include the development of art theory and the impact of imperial expansion on the visual arts. As well as generating a wide range of publications – including books, journal articles, conference papers and PhDs – the project also aims to communicate the period to a wider audience through gallery displays of art and online resources.

Research Staff
Principal Investigator: Professor Mark Hallett, Professor of History of Art, the University of York
Co-Investigator: Professor Nigel Llewellyn, Head of Research, Tate Britain
Co-Investigator: Dr Martin Myrone, Curator, Tate Britain
Post-doctoral Research Assistant: Dr Lydia Hamlett
Post-doctoral Research Assistant: Dr Richard Stephens

Research Students
Caroline Good, PhD student: ‘The Making of a National Art History: British Writers on Art and the Narratives of Nation, 1660-1735’
Peter Moore, PhD student: ‘British Art in an Atlantic Economy, 1660-1735’

Forthcoming Events
A six-month display – with the aim of introducing major questions from the research project and relating them to objects in the Tate Collection – will be installed at Tate Britain in autumn 2010.
A one-day conference on new approaches to the period is to be held at Tate Britain in May 2011.
A two-day conference to mark the end of the project and to present its major research findings is to be held in York in 2012.

Past Events
A one-day conference on current art-historical scholarship in the field was held at York on May 7th 2010. For further details, click here.