New Book | British Portrait Miniatures from the Thomson Collection
From Ad Ilissvm, an imprint of Paul Hoberton Publishing and also distributed by The University of Chicago Press (the Thomson Collection is now part of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto):
Susan Sloman, British Portrait Miniatures from the Thomson Collection (London: Ad Ilissvm, 2024), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1915401120, £80 / $100.
Portrait miniatures were highly prized in Europe for nearly four hundred years; and, unusually, artists based in Britain were the acknowledged masters of this specialised field. Many of the best painters are represented in this remarkable but relatively little-known collection. As is illustrated and described in this book, miniatures were frequently made as tokens of love or memorials of loved ones; part-likeness, part-reliquary and part-jewel, they might be wearable in a locket, on a bracelet, or even on a finger ring, but their portability also made them desirable as gifts.
Styles, techniques, and modes of presentation naturally evolved between 1560 (the date of the first miniature in the catalogue) and around 1900. Some changes happened rapidly; in England, for example, the foundation of exhibiting societies in 1760s created a demand for larger miniatures that could hang on the wall alongside full-sized portraits. The Thomson collection includes fine examples of the work of Nicholas Hilliard (from the Elizabethan period) and John Smart (from the eighteenth century) as well as notable portraits by less familiar names such as Jacob Van Doordt and James Scouler. It is apparent from the scope and character of his acquisitions that Ken Thomson never planned an encyclopaedic collection. Reacting to miniatures that spoke most eloquently to him when held in the hand, or examined under a glass, he developed over time a fondness for particular artists and had no qualms about omitting others altogether.
Using this collection housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario as a case study, the catalogue discusses the function of miniatures, their material presence, the circumstances in which they were made, and aspects of their later history. The homes and studios of the most successful painters, as sumptuous as those occupied by oil painters, often passed from one generation to another: here, one key property in Covent Garden is described and illustrated. In this book, for the first time, a number of specialist artists’ suppliers are identified, showing where ivory could be obtained and enamel plates prepared and fired. The links between enamelling for clock and watch faces and enamelling for miniatures are demonstrated. The illicit practice within the late nineteenth and early twentieth century art trade of duplicating old miniatures, a topic generally avoided in the literature, is addressed here. Miniatures are difficult to display in museums, but recently-developed photographic methods of identifying pigments are also proving to be a way of introducing a new audience to this multi-layered subject. Eighteen years after Ken Thomson’s death, there could not be a more opportune moment to highlight his collection.
Susan Sloman has written extensively on British art, her most recent book being Gainsborough in London (2021). She has a longstanding interest in studio practice and artists’ premises and a record of unearthing fresh documentation on the lives of artists.
Call for Essays | Miniature Painting and Recipes, 1500–1800
From ArtHist.net:
Miniature Painting and Its Recipes in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800: The Transmission of Technical Knowledge in the East and West
Volume edited by Mandana Barkeshli and Matthieu Lett
Proposals due by 15 January 2025; completed essays due by 15 November 2025
Peer-reviewed volume edited by Mandana Barkeshli (UCSI University) and Matthieu Lett (Université de Bourgogne/LIR3S, Institut Universitaire de France), to be published in Brill’s book series Studies in Art & Materiality (Editor-in-Chief: Ann-Sophie Lehmann).
In art history, the practice of miniature painting raises unique challenges in terms of definition. This is partly due to its material hybridity—both in terms of supports and pictorial layers (pigments, binders)—but also because of its size and the variety of objects it encompasses. The term miniature covers a wide range of techniques, including painting on paper, vellum, or ivory, as well as enamel and illumination.
In both the East and the West, the early modern period marked a pivotal moment of technical experimentation, coinciding with the development of both professional and amateur practices of miniature painting. During this time, miniature painting was practiced by professionals but also by high-ranking figures such as Shah Tahmasp I and the Spanish queen Marie Louise d’Orléans. The distinctive properties of miniature paints—such as the lack of staining or odor, unlike oil paints—along with the ease of copying compositions, may have encouraged its adoption in courtly settings.
The simultaneous emergence of practical treatises in both the East and West—notably the Qanun us-Suvar by Sadiqi Bek (ca. 1570–1600) and A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning by Nicholas Hilliard (ca. 1600)—reflects this phenomenon. These treatises provided recipes for mixing colors, advice on representing certain motifs, and instructions for preparing various supports. They signaled a major shift in how the knowledge and techniques of miniature painting were transmitted. While these texts could not entirely replace the traditional master-apprentice model, some manuscripts and books enabled students to grasp the basics independently. Independent learning was especially encouraged for women, who increasingly pursued miniature painting in Europe from the second half of the 17th century onward. Similarly, Persian women artists made notable, though less documented, contributions to miniature painting during the Safavid and Qajar periods. However, professional training primarily took place within workshops, where the secrets of the craft were closely guarded.
This volume, building on discussions initiated during the 36th CIHA Congress (Lyon, 23–28 June 2024), seeks to study the technical recipes and transmission methods of miniature painting in the East and West from a comparative perspective. By doing so, it aims to illuminate the material hybridity of miniature painting and provide new insights into the conditions of its production.
We invite contributions from academics, museum and library professionals responsible for Eastern or Western miniature collections, and conservation scientists specializing in materials analysis. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
1 Materials used in miniature painting (supports, paper colors, sizing, dyes, pigments, inks, binding mediums).
2 Rediscovery of technical knowledge and practices based on historical recipes and/or scientific analysis.
3 The conditions of transmission through oral traditions or written sources, especially recipes.
4 The social (workshops, courts) and/or gendered contexts of transmission.
5 Terminology in historical manuals and recipes, including challenges in translation and understanding the historical context of recipes through modern chemistry.
Comparative approaches are especially encouraged.
The selected contributions will be published in Brill’s Studies in Art & Materiality, a peer-reviewed series dedicated to innovative scholarship on the intersections of art, materials, and making (Editor-in-Chief: Ann-Sophie Lehmann). Authors will be required to submit a full manuscript of up to 50,000 characters (including spaces and references) by 15 November 2025. Each article may include up to 12 images, which should be provided as JPG or TIFF files at 300 DPI resolution. All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review.
To submit a proposal, please email Mandana Barkeshli (mandana@ucsiuniversity.edu.my) and Matthieu Lett (matthieu.lett@u-bourgogne.fr) by 15 January 2025 with the following documents:
• Title of the proposed paper (concise and reflective of the paper’s content)
• Abstract (350–500 words in English), including 4–6 keywords and a brief bibliography
• Short Curriculum Vitae
Online Talks | Pets and Portraiture / Art and the Portuguese Court
The final seminar of the series takes place on Wednesday:
Luba Kozak and Diogo Lemos | Pets, Portraiture, and Identity
Online, Material and Visual Culture Research Cluster, Edinburgh, 4 December 2024
Each week we hear from two speakers, sharing their research on, and approaches to, the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century material and visual culture. We aim to make a space in which these rich histories can be explored from varied disciplines to enhance our research practices. We meet on Wednesdays, 5–6pm GMT, online using Zoom; registration closes 1 hour before seminar start time.
Luba Kozak | Pet Animals as Connectors: Exploring the Role of Pet Animals in Shaping British Identity and Colonial Encounters in 18th-Century British Portraiture
This paper explores the role of pet animals in shaping British identity and colonial encounters as portrayed in eighteenth-century British portraiture. Through an analysis of John Eccardt’s Portrait of Lady Grace Carteret, Countess of Dysart with a Child, Black Servant, Cockatoo, and Spaniel (1740) and Johann Zoffany’s Colonel Blair and his Family with an Indian Ayah (1786) as case studies, I investigate how pet animals reveal power structures and hierarchies within the domestic sphere, exposing deeper tropes of colonisation and race (Braddock; Bocquillon). Ultimately, I propose that pet animals act as critical contact points between the British aristocracy and enslaved individuals in these artworks, bridging cultural, racial, and species divides.
Recognising the need to address the material presence of animals in art and their marginalisation in the field of art history, I analyse these paintings through more inclusive theoretical frameworks including ecocriticism and post-colonialism. Building on the scholarship of Ingrid Tague and Erin Parker, who discuss the domestication of animals within British households, I examine how these animals negotiated status and place within elite homes as depicted in visual culture. This approach repositions non-human figures as active subjects rather than pictorial accessories. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, this paper is at the intersection of art history, animal studies, philosophy, and ethics. Amidst growing concern for animal ethics and the Anthropocene, this timely research offers a broader understanding of the complexities of human-animal relations, relevant in historical and contemporary.
Luba Kozak is a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan (Canada).
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Diogo Lemos | Spreading the Icon: Visual Culture and Royal Patronage under the Reign of John V, King of Portugal
During his reign (1707–1750), John V recognized the importance of emulation and identifying the most renowned masterpieces of his time. By so, he instructed his diplomats to collect copies of certain artworks from various courts. The most iconic among them served as vital iconographic sources for artworks commissioned by the king, executed by artists trained in Europe’s leading apprenticeship circuits, who later disseminated these same iconographic references in other courts. This talk aims to highlight a set of artworks produced within European courts which played a pivotal role in shaping the image of the Portuguese court.
The primary goal is to decipher the mechanisms of ‘promotion’ of these artworks; to grasp the processes and means (ex. the press but also espionage) used to transform them into true icons. Relating this context with the Portuguese court, documentation will also reveal the mechanisms—and circles of influences—used by John V to know and acquire them. Furthermore, the project seeks to intersect these artworks (primarily portraits) with the material culture of both the Portuguese and European courts in which France plays an important role. Nevertheless, rather than solely emphasizing France as the primary influencer, the intention is to accentuate the nuances and distinctiveness of the artistic and material cultures within these courts, moreover, highlighted by Portuguese court itself. In short, focusing on the iconology of the Catholic Kings, this proposal aims to unveil and decode a curated collection of artworks commissioned by King John V, providing new insights into the cultural (and political) milieu of the era and demonstrating how certain iconic masterpieces (yet often underestimated) not only reflected cultural exchanges between nations during the reign of John V but also shaped European visual culture during this period.
Diogo Lemos is a researcher at the Centre for the History of Society and Culture of the University of Coimbra, where he is developing an art history PhD project in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities for which he was awarded a fellowship by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.
PMC Book Night | Esther Chadwick, Ian Dudley, and Mark Laird
Coming up at the Mellon Centre:
Book Night with Esther Chadwick, Ian Dudley, Mark Laird
Paul Mellon Centre, London, 11 December 2024
Please join us for Book Night at the Paul Mellon Centre, where we will celebrate some of our latest publications by asking authors to discuss their research and answer questions about their books. Each author will give a short talk discussing the research behind their book. Afterwards, there will be drinks, canapes, and a chance to meet the authors.
• Esther Chadwick, The Radical Print: Arts and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Centry Britain
• Ian Dudley, Aubrey Williams: Art, Histories, Futures
• Mark Laird, The Dominion of Flowers: Botanical Art & Global Plant Relations (remoting in)
Book tickets here»
Esther Chadwick is a lecturer in art history at the Courtauld, where she specialises in eighteenth-century British art. She studied art history at the University of Cambridge and completed her doctorate at Yale University in 2016. Before joining the Courtauld, she was a curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. Esther’s research addresses the materiality and agency of printed images, the role of art in the age of revolutions and the visual culture of the circum-Atlantic world. She is working on a book that examines the formative role of printmaking in the work of British artists of the late eighteenth century. Exhibition projects have included Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain (Yale Center for British Art, 2014) and A Revolutionary Legacy: Haiti and Toussaint Louverture (British Museum, 2018).
Ian Dudley is a Visiting Fellow in Art History at the University of Essex. His research focuses on relationships between histories of art and empire from the early modern period to the present. Recent work includes a study of Olmec colossal heads in the paintings of Aubrey Williams, published in Art History, and an examination of slavery visualisation in the sculpture of Stanley Greaves, published in Third Text. His 2017 doctoral thesis investigated Edward Goodall’s Sketches in British Guiana within the context of colonial geography and anthropology during the 1830–40s. He also curated the exhibition Southern Press: Prints from Brazil, Paraguay and Chile with the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA) at Firstsite gallery, Colchester.
Mark Laird is professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and former faculty member at Harvard University. He is the author of The Flowering of the Landscape Garden and A Natural History of English Gardening—recipient of an Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Award. He has been historic planting consultant to Painshill Park Trust, English Heritage and Strawberry Hill Trust.
Call for Papers | Interspecies Interactions in the Visual Arts, 1550–1914
From ArtHist.net:
Interspecies Interactions in the Visual Arts, 1550–1914: Collaborations, Experimentations, Oppositions
Lyon, 21–23 May 2025
Organized by Oriane Poret, Clara Langer, and Laurent Baridon
Proposals due by 10 January 2025
While representations of animals abound in Western art, often invoked by iconography to support symbolic interpretations of works, they are, however, rarely considered for their own sake by academic research, despite numerous calls to “look at animals” (Berger, 1980). Over the last forty years, the role of animals has attracted increasing interest from historians and art historians, particularly in the Anglophone world, and is gradually gaining ground in other regions, notably in French research. This renewed attention is part of a broader movement to reconsider the relationships between humans and other-than-humans, illuminating the multiple ways in which animals have been represented, perceived, and involved throughout history. While Éric Baratay reconstructs animal lives (Baratay, 2017) and Katie Hornstein investigates the reasons behind the disappearance of felines from 19th-century art (Hornstein, 2024), Sean Kheraj and Jennifer Bonnell (Kheraj & Bonnell, 2022) undertake the challenging task of reading animal traces in archives. A similar trend can be observed in museums. For instance, the curators of the exhibition Les Animaux du Roi at the Château de Versailles (2021) endeavoured to reconstruct a royal menagerie through artworks. In 2023, the British Library highlighted its sound archives of the animal kingdom in the exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound. Inspired by various natural habitats, the exhibition documented the lives of species while preserving their voices. Broader research projects are also being conducted by research institutions, such as the Moving Animals project led by Raf de Bont at Maastricht University since 2019. Others have focused on specific families of animals and their long-term history, including the New History of Fishes project conducted by the LUCAS centre at Leiden University between 2015 and 2019 (Smith & Egmond, 2024).
The proposed symposium aligns with this dynamic and aims to analyse the interspecies interactions between humans and other animals visible in the visual arts. It spans the era commonly known as the ‘scientific revolution’ to the industrial/industrious revolution, covering a period from the mid-16th century to the early 20th century. The second half of the 16th century witnessed a renewal of thought regarding animals: this was expressed, on the one hand, in the field of natural history, which moved away from the ancient writings that had served as models until then, revised by authors such as Pierre Belon and Ulysse Aldrovandi; and on the other hand, in the renewed reflection on the human-animal relationship, brought to the forefront by figures such as Michel de Montaigne and Pierre Gassendi, or, in opposition, René Descartes. These evolving ideas are perceptible in art, which renders this new philosophy of the human-animal relationship tangible (Cohen in Enenkel/Smith, 2007), and embeds these representations within the process of scientific development. The long 19th century marks a turning point in the understanding and exploitation of animals. As animal protection movements institutionalised at the beginning of the century, with the establishment of societies dedicated to animal welfare and the introduction of the first laws against cruelty, a new perspective emerged, focusing on the animal-machine concept. This notion, already present in Descartes’ modern thought, was exacerbated by the development of mechanisation and mass production, embodied by the advent of assembly lines, notably in slaughterhouses. From then on, the animal was perceived not only as a cog in an economic system but also as a participant in the modern war machine (Baratay, 2014).
This symposium proposes to study how artists have not only observed animals and, in some cases, lived alongside them, but have also sometimes attributed agency to them. The idea of an active relationship between the artist and the animal raises fundamental questions about the role of animals in artistic production. Are they merely objects of study, partners in creation, or autonomous agents in a larger process? How does the making of artworks define or blur boundaries between humans and other-than-humans? The analysis of artistic practices allows for questioning the nature of the bond between humans and other animals, and examining how, in certain works, the animal can be perceived as a protagonist capable of resisting attempts at reification. Rather than being a mere reflection of power relations between humans and animals, artistic creation thus becomes a site of negotiation, even contestation, of these relationships.
The ambition of this symposium is to offer a transversal and innovative reflection on artistic modes of appropriation of animals, without limiting itself to domesticated animals and mammals. It is also to transcend traditional frameworks of art history by examining the relationship between Western artists and animals, perceived both as companions in life, partners in creation, and as social and cultural actors. By focusing on the restricted cultural area of the West, it will allow for the exploration of particular modes of relations with animals, situating them in relation to other ontologies (Descola, 2021), and recontextualising them within broader discussions on issues of circulation and domination. In doing so, it will seek to examine how artists have echoed, or not, the profound changes in the relationships between humans and animals.
The symposium seeks interdisciplinary approaches as well as contributions from different disciplines. In the hope to encourage those various attitudes, four main sections can be considered. Proposals for presentations may align with one or more of these sections, as they are indicative and not exclusive, aiming to provoke diverse reflections on the place of animals in art and in the humanities/social sciences. The committee will also appreciate proposals that include reflections on the methodologies of art history in addressing animal-related questions.
Section 1 | (Re)viewing and (Re)reading Animal Behaviours
Animals are inherently active, animated, and mobile beings with their own will. While this understanding is accepted today (Harchi, 2024), a portion of modern authors, particularly those within Cartesian thought, has questioned this capacity. The perception of animal behaviours is fluctuating, prompting an inquiry into how artists represent these behaviours across different historical periods. To what extent do these representations reflect contemporary veterinary, naturalistic, or zootechnical discourses? Are certain animals endowed with human traits, or are they depicted as autonomous entities with their own behaviours? What of representations that reify animals, transforming the entirety of the creature or its substance? With the ‘scientific revolution’, modes of representation and appropriation of fauna have evolved, coinciding with the proliferation of menageries. Surpassing mere symbolism or decorative accessory, animals have become subjects in visual culture. Iconographic codes borrowed from scientific literature have been integrated into visual arts by figures such as Paulus Potter or George Stubbs, progressively individualising animals into genuine ‘portraits’. Does the portrait then reflect actual relationships with the animal? This section aims, first, to examine how artists translate discoveries regarding animal behaviour into their works and how these evocations fit within successive scientific debates. It will then explore potential interspecies affinities detectable in visual or textual archives.
Section 2 | Animal Experience, Between Beliefs and Sciences
Experience is understood here in a deliberately multifaceted sense: the experience by the animal, the experience of the animal, and the experience on the animal. The animal’s body is the field for experiments, both scientific and more esoteric, exploiting the animal’s substance. This is evidenced from the 16th century by nature casts from the German artists Wenzel Jamnitzer and Bernard Palissy, followed in the 18th century by paintings such as An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby (1768). For a long time, animals were associated with belief systems and superstitions, embodying supernatural forces or polysemous symbols. Alchemy gave them pride of place, echoing other beliefs with pagan origins. Scientific and industrial developments changed these paradigms, turning the animal body into a source of knowledge and production. What are the material traces of experiments and experiences conducted with/on the animal body in works of art and artistic objects? How do artists position themselves in relation to the experiments of their contemporaries?
Section 3 | From Extraction to Artistic Exploitation
From the dawn of sedentarisation, animals have been integrated into human economic systems, playing a central role in exploitation through farming, hunting, transportation, and the trade of so-called ‘exotic’ species. This extractivist dimension (Pouillard, 2019)—which encompasses capture, forced domestication, and mass movements of animals—is often overlooked by art history, despite its profound impact on artistic representations. This section seeks to interrogate the strategies employed to benefit from animal resources and the networks available to artists. Artists were actors in circuits of appropriation and transmission of animals akin to amateur collectors. Who were then the intermediaries (merchants, caretakers, transporters, etc.) between animals and artists? How did the forced circulation of animals, their commodification, and practices of domestication influence their treatment in visual representations? This section proposes to expand the reflection to include animals that have been reified post-mortem through taxidermy and used as artistic models. Extractivist practices invite a reconsideration of the forms of governance exerted by humans over animals (Piazzesi, 2023). In this sense, can artistic work be seen as a form of domination or collaboration? What is the extent of the violence present in the imagery?
Section 4 | Resistances, Negotiations, and Oppositions
In light of the affinities between artists and animals, this last section offers an opportunity to explore forms of ‘animal resistances’ visible in works of art, discernible in historical testimonies, or perceptible in the material evolutions of objects. Given the diversity of discussions on this issue and the risk of anthropomorphism, this section seeks to reclaim the term ‘resistances’ to encompass more subtle forms that imply “a conscious and intentional decision to oppose” (Pearson, 2015) authority and oppression. Beyond escape attempts, flights, or bites that defy constraints, how can we identify signs of boredom or weariness within the works? What non-human communications are detectable in the sources? What do animal reactions teach us about their exploitation as models? What do textual and visual archives (notably photography) reveal about the reality of the treatment of animals? Many researchers, for instance, interpret the cracking of ivory objects as manifestations of the animal material’s memory of its exploitation or reification. Thus, this section, as well as the previous one, also encourages papers looking at animals as art materials.
Numerous academic works invite the humanities and social sciences to question their methods and underscore the necessity of a paradigm shift. This call aspires to foster a convergence between sciences and to summon knowledge from various research fields and plural horizons, conditions deemed essential today to comprehend animal existence (Baratay, 2010) and interspecies issues in images. By gathering knowledge and expertise, the symposium aims to deliberately open the perspectives of art history to collaborations with other scientific fields.
Proposals
We invite scholars in art history and animal history, as well as those from the fields of animal sciences and ethology, to submit proposals that address these questions and open new avenues of reflection on the relationship between animals and artistic creation. Proposals, whether individual or collaborative, are welcome for case studies, comparative approaches, and ongoing research. Aware of the structural challenges in working with both visual and textual archives to recover animal traces, the scientific committee will pay particular attention to methodologies and to innovative proposals.
Proposals (around 300 words), accompanied by a short bio-bibliography, should be sent by 10 January 2025 to clara.langer2@univ-lyon2.fr and riane.poret@univ-lyon2.fr. Notification should follow by 21 February.
Presentations, lasting 15 to 20 minutes, will be followed by discussions with the audience. Travel costs for speakers to Lyon may be covered by the organization, subject to available funding (doctoral students and speakers with no affiliation as a priority). The symposium may be the subject of a publication, the form of which remains to be defined. For any questions or additional information, please contact: clara.langer2@univ-lyon2.fr and oriane.poret@univ-lyon2.fr.
Organising Committee
Oriane Poret, Université Lyon 2 / LARHRA
Clara Langer, Université Lyon 2 – Universität Konstanz / LARHRA
Laurent Baridon, Université Lyon 2 / LARHRA
Scientific Committee
Prof. Dr. Guillaume Cassegrain, Université Grenoble-Alpes / LARHRA
Dr. Kate Nichols, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
Dr. Amandine Péquignot, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle / PALOC
Dr. Violette Pouillard, CNRS / LARHRA
Prof. Dr. Maurice Saß, Alanus Hochschule für Kunst und Gesellschaft, Alfter
Dr. Silvia Sebastiani, EHESS / CRH-GEHM
Attingham Courses in 2025
Daniel Zuloaga y Bonetta, El Salón Gasparini del Palacio Real de Madrid, 1875, oil on canvas, 58 × 72cm
(Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, P006884)
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Attingham offerings for 2025:
London House Course
Led by David Adshead, 1–7 April 2025
Applications due by 17 January 2025
This seven-day non-residential course studies the development of the London house from the Renaissance to the present. It combines numerous visits to houses, many of them private, with a series of lectures by leading authorities. Progressing broadly chronologically and exploring all over London, the course takes members inside grand aristocratic buildings, smaller domestic houses, artists’ studios, and the garden suburb.
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The 72nd Summer School
Led by Tessa Wild and David Adshead, 28 June — 13 July 2025
Applications due by 31 January 2025
This intensive 16-day residential course will include visits to country houses in Sussex, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, and Lincolnshire. Accompanied by specialist tutors and lecturers, the Summer School will examine the country house in terms of architectural and social history, focus on the collections of fine and decorative arts with close-up in-depth study, and encourage discussion on topical issues of conservation and interpretation.
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Royal Collections Studies
Led by Helen Jacobsen, 31 August — 9 September 2025
Applications due by 14 February 2025
Run on behalf of The Royal Collection Trust, this ten-day residential course offers participants the opportunity to study the magnificent holdings of paintings, decorative art, jewelry, books, and arms and armor in the Royal Collection and to examine the architecture and interiors of the palaces that house them. Based near Windsor, the course will also examine the history of the collection and the key roles played by monarchs and their consorts over the centuries.
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New Perspectives in Country House Studies
Led by Elizabeth Jamieson, 21–25 September 2025
Applications due by 14 February 2025
Based in Yorkshire, this intensive five-day themed, residential course will focus on a series of fresh perspectives that are currently informing country house studies, including the global and colonial contexts of objects; craftspeople, and makers, both then and now; women as patrons, as collectors and as instigators of change in the country house; how the buildings were lived and worked in, and how they reflect both the lives of their occupants and wider social change.
N.B. This short course is intended for anyone who has a professional or academic interest in the arts and heritage. The Attingham Trust welcomes all applications, including those at the early stages of their career, in the process of completing their academic studies, and from backgrounds under-represented in these fields.
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The Study Programme: From Granada to Madrid
Led by Annabel Westman and Helen Jacobsen, 12–18 October 2025
Applications due by 14 February 2025
This intensive seven-day residential course to Spain will begin at the Alhambra palace complex in Granada, renowned for its architectural and decorative beauty. The programme will continue to Madrid, where a mix of architecture, interiors, and works of art will be studied, with a focus on the exceptional decorative arts in Spanish royal and aristocratic collections. Visits are planned to palaces, private houses, and gardens and—as with all Attingham courses—the course will be supported by local curators and experts and will include visits with privileged access.
New Book | Blenheim: 300 Years of Life in a Palace
From Rizzoli:
Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, with photography by Hugo Rittson-Thomas, Blenheim: 300 Years of Life in a Palace (New York: Rizzoli, 2024), 360 pages, ISBN: 978-0847833504, $75.
The most important, most visited, and most renowned of all of Britain’s stately homes, Blenheim has been home to the Churchill family for more than 300 years.
Regarded as perhaps the greatest of the stately homes and the finest example of baroque architecture in Great Britain, Blenheim is a treasure of English heritage. In this stunning volume, Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, the twelfth generation of the family, takes us on a privileged tour of the palace.
Designed by John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor (a protégé of Christopher Wren) in the early 1700s; with stonework, furniture, and tapestries crafted by the best talents of the age; and art and statuary by such notable artists as John Singer Sargent and Joshua Reynolds, Blenheim is filled with artistic commissions that provide a window into the history of England. In addition to the gilded staterooms and acres of landscaped gardens, Spencer-Churchill shows us the family’s private apartments, with their secret corridors and history of illustrious guests, as well as the ‘downstairs’ staff area with its iconic bell system. With beautiful photography of the magnificent interiors and priceless collections, and Spencer-Churchill’s fascinating text, this volume illuminates Blenheim as it’s never been seen before.
Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill is an interior designer, founder of Woodstock Designs, and author of multiple Rizzoli books on design and historic styles, including The Life of the House, Blenheim and the Churchill Family, and Classic English Interiors. She lectures widely on design and design history in the US and the UK.
Hugo Rittson-Thomas is a portrait photographer of many high-profile subjects, including the British royal family. His work has been published in Romantics and Classics, Secret Gardens of the Cotswolds, and Great Gardens of London.
New Book | The English Landscape Garden: Dreaming of Arcadia
From Frances Lincoln:
Tim Richardson, with photographs by Clive Boursnell, The English Landscape Garden: Dreaming of Arcadia (London: Frances Lincoln, 2024), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-0711290921, £40 / $60.
Smooth lawns, glassy pools, cool garden temples, mysterious woodland glades, evocative statuary … the 18th-century English landscape garden offers a transcendent vision of Arcadia, a world of rich escapism peopled by gods and goddesses, young lovers and dairymaids, poets and philosophers.
This sumptuous, beautifully photographed volume celebrates this quintessentially British creation, arguably its greatest artform, taking you on a tour of 20 of the finest surviving gardens, including:
• Studley Royal (Yorkshire), a dreamy valley garden which culminates with a view down and across the ruins of a Cistercian abbey
• Stowe (Buckinghamshire), the great politically motivated garden of its day, boasting the ensemble masterpiece that is William Kent’s Elysian Fields
• Chiswick House (London), Lord Burlington’s experiment in neoclassical architecture
• Petworth (Sussex) of ‘Capability’ Brown, who eschewed the symbolism of earlier generations but created instead his own powerful vision of pastoral Arcadia
• Hawkstone Park (Shropshire), designed to elicit a thrill of fear in visitors as they traverse rocky precipices and encounter live hermits
Tim Richardson is a writer who specializes in garden and landscape design and history. He has been gardens editor at Country Life and landscape editor at Wallpaper* magazine, and was founding editor of both the award-winning gardens magazine New Eden and Country Life Gardens. He contributes to The Daily Telegraph, House and Garden, Gardens Illustrated, and Country Life. He is the author of Phaidon’s The Garden Book, Vanguard Landscapes Gardens of Martha Schwartz, English Gardens of the 20th Century, and Arcadian Friends: The Makers of the English Landscape Garden. He is also the author of The New English Garden (Frances Lincoln).
New Book | The English Garden
First published in 2010, The English Garden has been reissued by Haus Publishing, with distribution by The University of Chicago Press:
Hans von Trotha, The English Garden, translated by John Brownjohn (London: Haus Publishing, 2024), 104 pages, ISBN: 978-1914982095, £10 / $17.
Garden design in England was entirely reinvented during the eighteenth century. The strictly symmetrical gardens of the French Baroque were replaced by artificial landscapes almost indistinguishable from natural scenery. What continues to govern our notions of a beautiful landscape, even today, is the ideal image of nature conceived by eighteenth-century English landscape gardeners. Hans von Trotha’s journey through the history of the English garden introduces us to twelve of the most important, original, and beautiful parks in Britain, all of which can be visited today. On the way, we learn how the new landscape garden was born of the spirit of political opposition. We also learn the significance of imitation Greek temples and Gothic ruins. The foreword presents a historical outline of the origins of the English garden.
Hans von Trotha studied literature in Heidelberg and Berlin, completing his PhD in eighteenth-century gardens. He became a radio journalist and later a university lecturer. He spent ten years as the editorial director at Nicolai Verlag in Berlin and is the author of a novel, Pollak’s Arm (2019).
John Brownjohn is an experienced and versatile literary translator with almost 200 books to his credit. His work has won him critical acclaim and numerous awards on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Schlegel-Tieck Prize (three times), the US PEN, and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for Marcel Beyer’s The Karnau Tapes and Thomas Brussig’s Heroes Like Us.
Exhibition and Book | Lost Gardens of London
Now on view at London’s Garden Museum:
Lost Gardens of London
Garden Museum, London, 23 October 2024 — 2 March 2025
Curated by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan
Did you know that Southwark once had a zoo? That for a short spell Britain’s first ecological park was built within a stone’s throw of Tower Bridge? Or that one of the capital’s most celebrated botanical gardens now lies beneath the platforms of Waterloo station? The exhibition Lost Gardens of London reveals the secret history of some of London’s most beguiling forgotten gardens.
Thousands of gardens have vanished across London over the past five hundred years—ranging from princely pleasure grounds and private botanical gardens, to humble allotments and defunct squares, artists’ gardens, eccentric private menageries, and the ecological parks of the twentieth century. Guest curated by landscape architect and historian Dr Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, Lost Gardens of London will explore this legacy and reveal tantalising glimpses of some of the rich and varied gardens that once embellished the metropolis. Paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, and maps bring these lost gardens to life, depicting changing trends and fashions in garden design while exploring London’s enduring love affair with nature, and how green spaces have always been a vital part of life in the capital.
In every borough, parks, gardens, and green open spaces have succumbed to new roads, street-widenings, railway encroachments and new buildings, or have simply been swallowed up by suburbia. Accompanying public programmes will explore how the remaining green spaces that may be taken for granted in London today have survived thanks to protests, community action, and legal protections being put in place. The exhibition is a timely reminder of the vulnerability of urban gardens and access to nature.
Lost Gardens of London coincides with a new book by Longstaffe-Gowan of the same name, published by the Modern Art Press (and distributed by Yale University Press).
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, Lost Gardens of London (London: Modern Art Press, 2024), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1738487806, £25 / $35.
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