Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Love’s Matter: The Material Culture and Art of Affection, 1700–1900

Online and in-person, University of Neuchâtel, 12–13 November 2026

Organized by Henriette Marsden and Lara Pitteloud

This workshop sets out to explore how love—as material culture, social performance, and artistic practice—shaped and was shaped by the material conditions of modernity from the early 18th to the end of the 19th century. The selected papers will explore the aesthetic properties of romantic desire, amicable companionship, familial connection, charitable responsibility, and political allegiance within the context of empire, global trade, and colonialism.

The workshop is organised in the context of the 9th edition of the Entretiens de la Fondation Maison Borel, held by the Institute of Art History and Museology at the University of Neuchâtel. These study days aim to foster the exchange of ideas and perspectives on methodological issues across various disciplines of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Registration is not required; join online: https://unine.webex.com/meet/lara.pitteloud

Workshop Conception
• Henriette Marsden (PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge, Newnham College), hm772@cam.ac.uk
• Lara Virginie Pitteloud (PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant, University of Neuchâtel), lara.pitteloud@unine.ch

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9.00  Registration and Coffee

9.30  Henriette Marsden (University of Cambridge) and Lara Pitteloud (University of Neuchâtel) — Introduction

10.00  Keynote Lecture
• Sally Holloway (University of Warwick) — ‘I observed in the midst of the jungle a beautiful column’: Practices of Love and Grief in 18th-Century Britain and India

11.15  Coffee Break

11.30  Panel 1 | Distant Desires: Flirtation, Fantasy, and the Imagined Other
• Silvia Amadori (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) — Intimate Gazes: Erotic Materiality of Lovers’ Eyes
• Sofya Dmitrieva (University of Oxford, Voltaire Foundation) — L’heure du berger: Shepherd Love in 18th-Century Material Culture
• Cynthia Sadler (University of Rostock) — The Bold and the Subtle: Women Loving Women in 18th-Century Paris

13.15  Lunch Break

14.15  Panel 2 | Love Tokens: Gift Exchange, Attachment, and Social Obligation
• Stephanie Koscak (Wake Forest University) — ‘Short of Money’: Coins, Care, and Precarity in 18th-Century London
• Maggie Kalenak (University of Cambridge) — ‘Obsolete lollypops’ and ‘Tassel-trimmed’ Boot Bags: Love Tokens and the Material Culture of 19th-Century English Engagements
• Maya Wassell Smith (Cardiff University, Royal Museums Greenwich) — ‘I Came Home with Lots of Toys’: Sailors, Love, and Coercive Giving

16.30  Demonstration of the ‘Automates Jacquet-Droz’ (for the participants only), Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel (Esplanade Léopold-Robert 1)

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9.45  Panel 3 | Affective Surfaces: Material Interfaces of Feeling
• Eliza Goodpasture (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford) — To my Friend: The Painted Canvas as a Conduit for Friendship in the Art of Annie Swynnerton and Susan Isabel Dacre
• Dahi Jung (University of Zurich) — Intimate Surfaces: Pith Paper, Touch, and the Making of Love in 19th-Century Britain. The presentation will also include her paper awarded the VKKS/ASHAA Prize

11.15 Award Ceremony of the ‘Prix d’encouragement à la recherche en histoire de l’art 2026’ of the Foundation Alfred Richterich and the Swiss Association of Art Historians

Senior Category – Tactile Knowledge: Crafting Nature with Pith Paper in 19th-Century Women’s Albums in Britain. To be presented together with Dahi Jung’s paper in Panel 3, Dahi Jung (University of Zurich)

Junior Category – The Catalogue as Stand-Alone Exhibition. How Seth Siegelaub Conceives of a New Exhibiting Medium for Conceptual Art, Leo Kaut (University of Basel)

12.00  Apéritif dînatoire (Sponsored by VKKS)

13.30  Panel 4 | Generative Care: Emotional Expression and Artistic Practice
• Federica Vermot (University of Lausanne) — ‘Jusqu’au bout des doigts’: Sculpted Hands as Intimate Portraits
• Marie-Charlotte Lamy (University of Basel) — For the Love of Dog: Picturing Interspecies Companionship
• Linnéa Kluge (Heidelberg University) — ‘I Divided Everything for My Five Children’: Maternal Love and Material Survival in Anna Marie Lieb’s World of Care and Confinement

15.15  Coffee Break

15.30  Panel 5 | Emotional Regimes: Affective Authority, Patriotism and the Rites of Love
• Jakob Spengler (University of Bern) — Learning to Love the Nation? Affective Objects in the Festivals of the Helvetic Republic, 1798–1803
• Javier Sadarangani (University of Bern) — Masculine Friendships among Chilean Politicians: Letters and the Material Practice of Love, 1808–1861
• Moisés Prieto (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) — Love, Longing, and Loyalty: Authoritarian Rule and Material Culture in the Atlantic Space, ca. 1800–1840s