Enfilade

Thomas Gainsborough, Landscape with Sheep and Cattle on the Bank of a Stream, 1780–84, synthetic black chalk with stumping on wove paper, all four corners cut (London: Courtauld Gallery, Robert Clermont Witt, bequest, 1952).

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Upcoming at the Courtauld:

Imagining Britain: Postgraduate and Early Career Research in British and Irish Art

Courtauld, Vernon Square Campus, London, 9 June 2026

Organized by Claire Ó Nualláin and Clara Shaw

A decade on from the inaugural provocation of British Art Studies Volume I, published in November 2015, in which art historians responded to the statement, “There’s No Such Thing as British Art,” a significant aspect of British art studies has involved reflection on the nature and boundaries of the field itself.

The expansion of the field’s geographic and intellectual perspectives has opened new avenues for further research. For instance, scholars have recognised the possibilities afforded to the study of British art when it is brought into dialogue with the arts of regions which have been marginalised in its discussion, including Ireland and former colonial territories. This introspection has instigated a re-examination of British collections, with major rehangs including at Tate Britain, encouraging fresh perspectives on canonical works of art and the emergence of lesser-known artists and histories from the archive. In 2025, the Courtauld Institute of Art announced the opening of the Manton Centre for British Art, a major new initiative in the field, and providing new contexts in which to explore the definition, scope and even relevance of the concept of ‘British’ art.

Centred around themes of a national taste, the construction of landscapes, visualisations of empire, and the fabrication of a ‘national’ identity, this symposium provides an interdisciplinary, cross-period forum for fruitful discussions by PhD and early career researchers on the role of visual and material culture in reinforcing, challenging and complicating the notion of ‘British.’

This symposium event is organised by Claire Ó Nualláin and Clara Shaw, supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership and the Manton Centre for British Art.

p r o g r a m m e

9.30  Registration

10.00  Opening remarks

10.10  Session 1 | Cultivating Taste
Chaired by Jelena Sofronijevic
• Isobel Muir — ‘Art for the People’? An Examination of the Response to the ‘Modern Painters of To-Day’ exhibitions of 1942, curated by Lillian Browse
• Nam Huh — Whose Britain? Diasporic Moving-Image, Archives, and Contemporary Histories
• Ella Nixon — The Arts Council Collection: Redefining British Art in the 1980s

11.20  Tea and Coffee break

11.35  Session 2 | Constructing Spaces
Chaired by Jack Englehardt
• Grace Fannon — Performing Britain in John Speed’s The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine
• Eleanor Stephenson — Visualising Britishness in Industrial Landscapes of Wales
• Méabh Scahill — Germinating ‘Britain’ in Ireland?: Centring Ireland in Decimus Burton and Richard Turner’s Botanic Architecture

12.45  Lunch break

13.45  Session 3 | Conceptualising Empire
Chaired by Alisha Ma
• Abigail Spencer — The Maternal Image and the Visual Culture of Slavery, c.1788–1814
• Sarah Hutcheson — ‘Whose rich productions we so justly prize’: Naturalizing Catarina de Bragança in the Ceiling Paintings at Windsor Castle, 1678–88
• Shaheen Alikhan — Elephant and Castle: African Forts and Heraldry in the Shaping of British National Identity

14.55  Tea and coffee break

15.10  Session 4 | Creating Identities
Chaired by Emma Davis
• Christina Childs — Free Unions Locked Up: The Paradox of Resistance and the Special Branch Confiscation of a British Surrealist Journal
• Ed Kettleborough — Sunset on Stability: Class, Nation, and Masculinity in the Early Work of Derek Boshier
• Amber Butchart — Fabric of Britain: Textiles, Affect, and the Propaganda of National Identity

16.20  Closing remarks

16.30  Wine reception