Enfilade

Congratulations to Bill Pressly!

On December 7, William Pressly was awarded the 2015 William M. B. Berger Prize for British Art History for his book James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art (Cork University Press). The book demonstrates that Barry’s RSA paintings contain a hidden meaning that has gone undetected for 230 years. The pictures offer in the heart of the London establishment a glorification of the Roman Catholic Church. The artist’s creation of a complex, mythic narrative establishes him as the mentor of William Blake, whose approach to art owes a profound debt to the Irishman’s example.

Other titles relevant to the eighteenth century on the short list included:

• Ruth Guilding, Owning the Past: Why the English collected Antique Sculpture, 1640–1840 (Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)

• Jane Munro, Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish (Yale University Press in Association with the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)

• Malcolm Baker, The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)

The complete list, including the long list is available here»