Exhibition | The Taste of Diderot
This upcoming exhibition at the Musée Fabre de Montpellier marks the 300th anniversary of Diderot’s birth (5 October 1713); today, incidentally, is the anniversary of his death (31 July 1784). From the museum’s programme brochure:
Le Goût de Diderot
Musée Fabre de Montpellier, 5 October 2013 — 12 January 2014
Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, 7 February — 1 June 2014
Le goût est sourd à la prière. Ce que Malherbe a dit de la mort,
je le dirais presque de la critique; tout est soumis à sa loi.
Diderot, Préface du Salon de 1765
Etienne-Maurice Falconet, Pygmalion et Galatée, 1761, marbre ©RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Hervé Lewandowski
Le musée Fabre de Montpellier Agglomération et la Fondation de l’Hermitage de Lausanne s’associent pour célébrer le tricentenaire de la naissance de Denis Diderot (1713–1784), une figure majeure des Lumières françaises.
Philosophe, romancier, dramaturge, encyclopédiste, Diderot a également joué un rôle pionnier dans le domaine des arts, en rédigeant à partir de 1759, pour la Correspondance littéraire, les comptes rendus des expositions publiques de peinture et de sculpture que l’Académie royale organisait tous les deux ans dans le Salon carré du Louvre. Ces textes serviront et servent encore de modèle et de référence à la critique d’art.
A travers une sélection de peintures (Boucher, Chardin, Vien, Greuze, Vernet, David…), de sculptures (Pigalle, Falconet, Houdon…), de dessins et de gravures, l’exposition propose un aperçu de ce qu’était l’art au temps des Lumières auquel Diderot fut confronté, et de la manière dont il développa et exerça son goût propre. Sa culture visuelle, plastique, architecturale se développe progressivement, ses Salons deviennent au cours des années 1760 la rubrique fétiche de la Correspondance littéraire. Dans les années 1770, il est sollicité comme courtier par Catherine II lors des grandes ventes des collections privées françaises. Goethe lit ses Essais sur la peinture en Allemagne, ses idées esthétiques et sa dramaturgie influencent de façon décisive le courant Sturm und Drang.
Mais ce qu’on retiendra surtout, ce sont les mises en relation audacieuses qu’il propose, où genres, modes, médiums se rencontrent : Greuze avec Boucher, le vrai faux moral et le faux vrai libertin ; Deshays et Doyen avec Homère, Vien et Falconet avec Anacréon, pour que le peintre soit aussi un poète ; Vernet le paysagiste avec les verres et les fruits de Chardin, pour la magie de l’art. L’exposition proposera au spectateur de faire l’expérience de ces rencontres, guidé par la verve inimitable de Diderot.
Note (added 31 March 2014) — The original posting failed to note the mounting of the exhibition in Lausanne.
Conference | Liquid Intelligence and the Aesthetics of Fluidity
From the conference website:
Liquid Intelligence and the Aesthetics of Fluidity
McCord Museum, Montréal, 25–26 October 2013
Caroline Arscott (Courtauld Institute of Art) • Fabio Barry (University of St. Andrews) • Matthew C. Hunter (McGill University) • Yukio Lippit (Harvard University) • Jeffrey Moser (McGill University) • Alexander Nemerov (Stanford University) • Jennifer L. Roberts (Harvard University) • Itay Sapir (UQAM)
In an influential essay, contemporary artist Jeff Wall has sketched a suggestive genealogy linking chemical photography to a range of fluid processes and their modes of “liquid intelligence.” By Wall’s telling, wet procedures done in the dark historically connect photography to a vast, subterranean network of primordial acts of chemical transformation like dyeing and bleaching. But, the pull of liquids on art and aesthetic imagination runs deeper still. From the unctuous stains of Titian’s macchie to Ed Ruscha’s “liquid word” paintings—from Kenneth Anger’s filmic imagination of the Renaissance garden’s ritualized, watery flows to the “boggy, soggy, squitchy” picture that flummoxes Ishmael at Melville’s Spouter-Inn—the urge to sound the fluid image abides. Where Walter Pater would explain Leonardo’s strange imaginings as like sight “in some brief interval of falling rain at daybreak, or through deep water,” no less central a theorist of pictorial ontology than Leon Battista Alberti appealed to the myth of Narcissus. “What is painting,” Alberti asks, “but the act of embracing by means of art the surface of the pool?”
Hosted through the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University and Media@McGill, this conference aims to thematize liquid intelligence and the broader aesthetics of fluidity in which it moves. Drawing together leading, international scholars, the conference seeks to open conversations around conceptions of photography, painting, and other fluid strategies made perceptible by pushing upon liquid intelligence. Can an ingenuity of liquid realization be constructively compared, we might ask, to the raw, “fluid” smarts that psychologists oppose to formal, “crystallized” intelligence? Might the theoretical heuristic of liquid thinking devised for a recent, proximate past help flush out the modalities of more distant minds responsible for, say, the oozing, oil-spotted glazes of medieval tenmoku tea wares or the inky insubstantiality of Zen patriarch portraits? If we, like the intergalactic researchers in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, are influenced by the hegemonic, fluid images we study, how might those subtle currents work to dissolve the dry media genealogies and hoary theoretical constructs that continue inform much thinking on relations between photography, painting and other arts past and present?
F R I D A Y , 2 5 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3
8:30 Coffee/Registration
9:00 Introduction
Session I
9:30 Fabio Barry, TBA
11:00 Jeff Moser, “Fire-Star and Secret Hue: The Molten Mind in Song-Yuan Ceramics”
Session II
2:00 Matthew Hunter, “The Cunning of Sir Sloshua: Reynolds, the Navy and Risk”
3:30 Jennifer Roberts, “Veins of Commerce: Nature-Printed Currency in Colonial North America”
S A T U R D A Y , 2 6 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3
Session III
9:00 Itay Sapir, “Contained Liquidity: Fluid Intelligence and Rock-Solid Framing in the Port Scenes of Claude Lorrain”
10:30 Alexander Nemerov, “Rubens’ Adoration of the Magi at the Prado”
Session IV
1:00 Yukio Lippit, “Inky Painting”
2:30 Caroline Arscott, “Dyeing, Bleaching, Printing: Morris and Abundance”
Session V
4:00 Responses/General Discussion
Call for Papers | ASECS 2014 in Williamsburg
2014 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
Williamsburg, 20–22 March 2014
Proposals due by 15 September 2013
Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia. The original structure was built between
1710 and 1722, with further additions made in the 1750s. Fire destroyed the
main house in 1781. The present building was constructed in the early 1930s.
Photo by Larry Pieniazek, 2006, from Wikimedia Commons.
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The 2014 ASECS conference takes place in Williamsburg, 20–22 March. Along with our annual luncheon and business meeting, HECAA will be represented by two panels chaired by Denise Baxter and Amy Freund and Jessica Fripp. In addition to these, a wide selection of sessions that might be relevant for HECAA members are also included below. A full list of panels (68 pages’ worth!) is available as a PDF file here.
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Anne Schroder New Scholar’s Session (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)
Denise Amy Baxter, 1304 Edgewood Court, Carrollton, TX 75007; denise.baxter@unt.edu
Named in honor of the late Anne Schroder, this seminar will feature outstanding new research by emerging scholars.
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Selfhood and Visual Representation in the Eighteenth Century (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)
Amy Freund, Texas Christian U. and Jessica Fripp, Parsons The New School for Design; a.freund@tcu.edu and frippj@newschool.edu
This panel will consider the relationship between the visual arts and new ideas of selfhood in the eighteenth century. Enlightenment-era debates about the nature of the self had profound effects on how people imagined the individual’s place in society, how gender, age, and racial difference were framed, how science and medicine conceived of the mind and body, and how emotions such as love and friendship were understood and expressed. Some scholars have approached the question of the eighteenth-century self in terms of the rise of possessive individualism, of secularization, and of consumer culture; others have pointed to the persistence and transformation of traditional hierarchies, of collective identities, and of mysticism and the irrational. We are seeking papers that examine the visual representation of the eighteenth-century self, both in portraiture and in other genres and modes, including (but not limited to) genre and history painting, architecture and the decorative arts, dress, and material culture. We encourage proposals that deal with the eighteenth-century self in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and with the transformation (or inapplicability) of Enlightenment ideas outside of Europe. (more…)
New Title | Woods in British Furniture-Making, 1400–1900
Distributed by the University of Chicago Press:
Adam Bowett, Woods in British Furniture-Making, 1400–1900: An Illustrated Historical Dictionary (London: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2012), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-0955657672, $180.
Bowett charts the species, sources, and history of the woods used in British furniture making from medieval times to the twentieth century. The main dictionary section of the book has 460 entries that cover 477 species of hardwoods and softwoods and detail the history of each wood, describe its uses, and provide cross references to other woods. Extensively illustrated with examples of historic furniture, this book also includes an introductory survey of the historic timber trade and several appendices, including over 160 illustrated wood samples from the Economic Botany collection at Kew Gardens. The layout and accompanying photographs make this a valuable and accessible read that will interest furniture and antique enthusiasts, collectors, restorers, curators, and botanists, among others.
Adam Bowett is an independent furniture historian. He has published widely in academic and popular journals and is the author of two books on English furniture. He works as a consultant to museums and auction houses, as well as to organizations such as the National Trust,
Historic Scotland and Historic Royal Palaces.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
How to use this book
Hardwoods
Softwoods
Appendix I: Map of the principal trade routes for imported timber 1400–1900
Appendix II: Woods named in the text, arranged by family
Appendix III: Woods named in the text, arranged by geographical region
Appendix IV: Wood specimens
Bibliography
Index of Botanical Names
General Index
Exhibition | Mark Catesby: Watercolours from the Royal Collection
From the Royal Collection:
Mark Catesby: Watercolours from the Royal Collection
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 6 July — 12 October 2013
Mark Catesby, The Bald Eagle, watercolour and bodycolour heightened with gum arabic over pen and ink, ca.1722-26
(Royal Collection 924814)
Watercolours of birds, fish and exotic flora painted by British naturalist Mark Catesby (1682–1749) go on display at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury, Suffolk, from 6 July. The 27 works lent by Her Majesty The Queen from the Royal Collection were acquired by George III in 1768, when the King purchased Catesby’s original illustrations for Natural History of Florida, Carolina and the Bahama Islands.
Catesby, who was raised and educated in Sudbury, showed a passion for natural history from a young age. After his father died, leaving him a sufficient income, Catesby made extended trips to the east coast of North America from 1712, travelling to Virginia, Carolina, Florida and also to the West Indies.
At the time, there was a burgeoning garden culture in Britain, fuelled by the introduction of plant species from the Near East. This ignited Catesby’s desire to produce a comprehensive study of the flora and fauna native to the eastern seaboard of North America. He collected seeds, animals and botanical specimens during his travels and made detailed drawings along the way. Catesby returned to England in 1726 and began work preparing the plates and text for his Natural History of Florida, Carolina and the Bahama Islands, the first major publication on the subject. The Natural History was issued in parts between 1729 and 1747.
In 1768, George III purchased Catesby’s original watercolours for the Natural History and had them bound into a three-volume set of the publication (rather than the usual two), in the place of the printed illustrations. In more recent times, the watercolours were removed from the volumes for conservation reasons and individually mounted.
Among the studies on display at Gainsborough’s House is The Bald Eagle, which Catesby placed at the beginning of the first volume of Natural History. It was rare for the artist to introduce drama into his compositions, but in this work the eagle is shown swooping to catch a fish which has been dropped by an osprey above.
Exhibition | Threads of Feeling in Williamsburg
This exhibition, organized by The Foundling Museum, was on view in London from October 2010 to March 2011. Through next May, it can be seen in Williamsburg (perfect timing for next year’s ASECS meeting). From the press release (17 May 2013) . . .
Threads of Feeling: The London Foundling Hospital’s Textile Tokens, 1740–1770
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, 25 May 2013 — 26 May 2014
Curated by John Styles
Each piece of fabric or token tells a poignant, emotional story from more than 200 years ago. Many of those stories are on view at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg in a traveling exhibition organized by the Foundling Museum of London. Threads of Feeling consists of 59 books of textile tokens on loan from the Thomas Coram Foundation, a British children’s charity.
“These stories pack powerful, emotional punches, sure to resonate with parents,” said Ronald Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg’s chief curator and vice president for collections, conservation and museums. “We are pleased to have the only mounting of the exhibition in the United States since it closed in London two years ago.”
In the cases of more than 4,000 babies left at London’s Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1760, a small object or token, usually a piece of fabric, was kept as an identifying record. The fabric was either provided by the mother or cut from the child’s clothing by the Foundling Hospital’s nurses. Attached to registration forms and bound up into ledgers, these pieces of fabric form the largest collection of everyday textiles surviving in Britain from the 18th century. A selection of the textiles and the stories they tell us about individual babies, their mothers and their lives form the focus of the Threads of Feeling exhibition. The exhibition also examines artist William Hogarth’s depictions of the clothes, ribbons, embroidery, and fabrics worn in the 18th century as represented by the textile tokens.
“The process of giving over a baby to the Foundling Hospital was anonymous,” said exhibition curator John Styles, research professor in history at the University of Hertfordshire. “It was a form of adoption. The Foundling Hospital became the infant’s parent and its previous identity was erased.”
The mother’s name was not recorded, but many left personal notes or letters exhorting the hospital to care for their child. Occasionally children were reclaimed, and the pieces of fabric in the ledgers were kept with the expectation that they could be used to identify the child if it was returned to its mother. The textiles are beautiful and poignant, embedded in a rich social history. Each swatch reflects the life of a single infant child. The textiles also indicate the types of clothing their mothers wore. Many clothes for babies were usually made up from worn-out adult clothing and the fabrics reveal how working women struggled to be fashionable in the 18th century.
Museum guests also are invited to participate in several programs related to the exhibition:
• Textiles and accessories can be much more than just material objects. Guests create their own memory token during Tokens of Affection. Like those in the Threads of Feeling exhibition, their creations tell their own unique stories. Presented 11 am – noon, Tuesdays and Fridays, June 18 – August 30.
• Open Drawers: Treasured Textiles from Colonial Williamsburg. Guests drop in to get a closer look at the new exhibition, Threads of Feeling and then peer into the textile study drawers and examine related clothing and needlework from Colonial Williamsburg’s collections. Presented 2–3 pm, Mondays, June 3 – August 26.
• Lives Lost and Found. Guests go behind the scenes of Threads of Feeling on a guided tour, examine the textiles on view and discuss the historical and emotional stories behind these textile tokens from the Foundling Hospital in London and the Colonial Williamsburg collection. Space is limited and a $10 ticket is required in addition to museum admission. Presented 9 – 10:30 am, Tuesdays and Fridays, June 18 – August 30.
The conference symposium, Threads of Feeling Unraveled, takes place 20–22 October 2013.
Symposium | Threads of Feeling Unraveled
From the conference program:
Threads of Feeling Unraveled
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, 20–22 October 2013
In association with the loan exhibition Threads of Feeling, which opens at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum on May 25, 2013, Colonial Williamsburg is hosting a symposium that will explore these objects in context. When a mother left her infant at the Hospital during the mid-eighteenth century, she sometimes provided a token that was attached to the paper record, allowing her to later identify and reclaim her own child if her circumstances improved. Most of the tokens took the form of scraps of fabric, ribbons, or cuttings from the baby’s own clothing, identified in the record by their period names. The textile swatches are an invaluable source for identifying everyday textiles and the clothing of infants. As part of the symposium, exhibit guest curator and noted author John Styles will present two lectures. His keynote lecture will give a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at the development of the Threads of Feeling exhibition that received rave reviews in London. Styles will also discuss the history of the Foundling Hospital, the London scene, what is known about the identity of the infants, and the various meanings that can be unraveled from the evocative tokens. Other lectures will discuss clothing for infants and children, what women wore during pregnancy, childhood and orphans in America, and the use of similar textiles by adults in Britain and America. (more…)
Exhibition | Charakterköpfe: Portrait Busts in the Enlightenment
From the museum’s 2013-14 exhibition schedule:
Charakterköpfe: Die Bildnisbüste in der Epoche der Aufklärung
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 6 June — 6 October 2013
Curated by Frank Matthias Kammel and Anna Pawlik
The portrait bust is one of the most fascinating genres of sculpture. It was particularly adaptable to the varieties of concurrent artistic styles prevalent at the end of the 18th century. Portraits of rulers, burghers, artists and intellectuals were oriented towards idealized images, towards the antique, or presented the subject in unidealized, haunting realism. Often they show consideration of the interconnectedness between physiognomy and personality. Through the presentation of sculptural masterpieces, this exhibition illuminates a major facet of a politically and spiritually fascinating era, and not least will convey a lively image of the Enlightenment’s novel interest in the individual.
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From the Germanisches Nationalmuseumm:
Die Porträtbüste ist eine der faszinierendsten Gattungen der Bildhauerkunst. Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts war sie von der Gleichzeitigkeit gegensätzlicher Stile bestimmt wie in kaum einer anderen Epoche zuvor. Bildnisse von Regenten, Bürgern, Künstlern und Gelehrten orientieren sich an Idealbildern, an der Antike oder stellen den Porträtierten ungeschönt, in einem packendem Realismus dar. Nicht selten spiegeln sie Überlegungen zur Abhängigkeit von Gesichtzügen und Charakter wider. Die Ausstellung präsentiert dieses breite Spektrum anhand plastischer Meisterwerke zahlreicher bedeutender Künstler wie Johann Heinrich Dannecker, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Johann Valentin Sonnenschein oder Johann Gottfried Schadow. Namhafte Geistesgrößen der Zeit, wie Goethe, Herder, Pestalozzi oder Winckelmann, erscheinen in Glanzleistungen früher realistischer und klassizistischer Strömungen der Bildhauerei. Flankiert von zeitgenössischer Graphik und Malerei vermittelt die Ausstellung eine lebhafte Vorstellung von einem damals neuartigen Interesse am Bild des Menschen.
Frank Matthias Kammel, Charakterköpfe: Die Bildnisbüste in der Epoche der Aufklärung (Nürnberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2013), 244 pages, ISBN: 978-3936688757, €33.
Conference | Charakterköpfe: Portrait Busts in the Enlightenment
From the conference program:
Bildnisbuesten der Aufklaerung
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 11—13 September 2013
Registration due by 30 August 2013
Begleitend zur Sonderausstellung „Charakterköpfe. Die Bildnisbüste in der Epoche der Aufklärung“ (6.6.–6.10.2013) behandelt eine internationale Fachtagung das plastische Porträt am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, ein Zeitalter großer geistiger und politischer Spannungen und Umbrüche. Vorgestellt und diskutiert werden unter anderem Fragen zur Funktion von Porträtbüsten im privaten und öffentlichen Raum, die seit der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts leidenschaftlich geführte
Debatte zur Physiognomik und Charakteristik sowie die florierende Wachsplastik. Einzelstudien beleuchten die Gleichzeitigkeit gegensätzlicher Stile, die sich in den Bildnissen von Regenten, Bürgern, Künstlern und Gelehrten zwischen Ideal und Individualität bewegen wie in kaum einer anderen Epoche. Bislang war das plastische Porträt als repräsentatives Medium ausschließlich dem fürstlichen Stand vorbehalten, in den Jahren nach 1780 gelangt es auch in bürgerlichen Kreisen zu großer Popularität. Die Tagung richtet den Blick außerdem auf die neuen Materialien und Techniken, die diese Verbreitung bis hin zur Anlage umfangreicher Bildnisgalerien förderten.
Bitte melden Sie sich verbindlich bis 30. August an. Es werden keine Tagungsgebühren erhoben. Information und Anmeldung: Dr. Frank Matthias Kammel, charakterkoepfe@gnm.de.
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1 1 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3
14:00 G. Ulrich Großmann (Generaldirektor des Germanischen Nationalmuseums): Begrüßung
14:15 Frank Matthias Kammel (Nürnberg): Blickwechsel. Warum man sich mit Bildnisbüsten beschäftigen sollte
14:45 Ulrich Söding (München): Die Heiligenbüste im 18. Jahrhundert. Funktionale und typengeschichtliche Aspekte
15:30 Andrea M. Kluxen (Nürnberg): Gibt es eine aufgeklärte Herrscherbüste? Absolutistische Inszenierung und aufgeklärter Legitimationswechsel
Kaffeepause
16:45 Karin Tebbe (Heidelberg): Das Haupt des Kurfürsten und andere Köpfe aus der Kurpfalz
17:30 Claudia Maué (Nürnberg): Die Porträtbüsten des Kurfürsten Maximilian III. Joseph von Roman Anton Boos
Pause
19:00 Roland Kanz (Bonn): Öffentlicher Abendvortrag:Physiognomik versus Charakteristik. Rollenmodellierungen in Porträtbüsten um 1800
1 2 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3
9:00 Axel Christoph Gampp (Zürich): Ein Wiener Charakterkopf: Franz Christoph von Scheyb (1704–1777)
9:45 Mariana Scheu (Salzburg): Die Hervorhebung des Individuums – Johann Baptist Hagenauers Porträtbüsten in St. Peter in Salzburg
Kaffeepause
11:00 Peter Husty (Salzburg): Porträt des Porträtisten. Ein Blick ins Antlitz des Künstlers und Kunstmäzens Franz Laktanz Graf Firmian (1709–1786)
11:45 Anna Seidel (Hamburg): Bildnisbüsten von Bartolomeo Cavaceppi. Herzog Carl I. von Braunschweig-Lüneburg und König Friedrich II . von Preußen
Mittagspause
14:00 Beatrize Söding (München): Grabmal und plastisches Porträt. Die Denkmäler des 18. Jahrhunderts in der Wiener Schottenkirche
14:45 Ingeborg Schemper (Wien): Gelehrte Köpfe in Wien. Zu den Anfängen ehrenhalber aufgestellter Bildnisbüsten im 18. Jahrhundert und ihrem Kontext
Kaffeepause
16:00 Frank Matthias Kammel (Nürnberg): Der Garten als Denkmalort. Bildnisbüsten in Parks
16:45 Bernd Ernsting (Köln): Wie den Jungen der Tod gebildet. Karl Friedrich Wichmanns Zimmerdenkmal für Henriette Jordan im Kontext privater Memorialkultur um 1800
17:30 Yasmin Doosry (Nürnberg): Papierne Büsten. Die Bildnisbüste im Spiegel von Zeichnung und Druckgraphik
1 3 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 3
9:00 Anna Pawlik (Nürnberg): Christian Benjamin Rauschner. Zur Materialvielfalt von bossierten Wachsbildnissen im späten 18. Jahrhundert
9:45 Elisabeth Taube (Nürnberg): Alles nur Wachs? Eine kunsttechnische Studie zu den Wachsbildnissen des 18. Jahrhunderts im Germanischen Nationalmuseum
Kaffeepause
11:00 Doris Lehmann (Bonn): Die Guillotine als Porträtmaschine? Madame Tussauds Wachsköpfe und ihre Vermarktung
11:45 Petra Rau (Frankfurt am Main): Über den Handel mit prominenten Köpfen. Die Kunstmanufakturen in Leipzig, Weimar und Gotha/Altenburg
Mittagspause
13:15 Stefan Schnöll (Wien): Porträtbüsten der Kaiserlichen Porzellanmanufaktur Wien
14:00 Jürgen Klebs (Berlin): Die plastischen Bildnisse Goethes aus seiner Lebenszeit
14:45 Hans Ottomeyer (Berlin): Genies und Heroen. Europäische Galerien und andere Geschichtsforen
15:30 Schlusswort
New Title | Edward Pugh of Ruthin, 1763–1813: ‘A Native Artist’
Distributed for the University of Wales by the University of Chicago Press:
John Barrell, Edward Pugh of Ruthin, 1763–1813: ‘A Native Artist’ (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013), 245 pages, ISBN: 978-0708325667, £65 / $100.
Born in Ruthin, Denbighshire, Edward Pugh (1763–1813) was a Welsh-speaking artist and writer who worked as a miniaturist in London, exhibiting frequently at the Royal Academy. But Pugh’s passion was the landscape, and he painted remarkable views of North Wales that not only captivate but also reveal the development of the Welsh economy and Welsh national consciousness. Pugh also wrote and illustrated a fascinating, informative, and humorous account of a tour of North Wales around 1800–one of the only travel books written at that time by someone who could actually converse with the inhabitants.
Edward Pugh of Ruthin 1763–1813 is the first book to consider the work of this nearly forgotten Welsh artist and writer in detail, linking the history of art in Wales with the social history of the country. John Barrell shows how Pugh’s pictures and writings portray rural life and social change in Wales during his lifetime, from the effects of the war with France on industry and poverty, to the need to develop and modernize the Welsh economy, to the power of the landowners. Almost all of the pictures and accounts we have today of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century North Wales were made by English artists and writers, and none of these, as Barrell demonstrates, can tell us about life in North Wales with the same depth and authenticity as does Pugh.
John Barrell is professor in the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York. He is the author of numerous books, including The Spirit of Despotism: Invasions of Privacy in the 1790s.
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