Enfilade

As previously noted here at Enfilade, Wolf Burchard co-curated the exhibition Revolution! now on view at The Met. He also has just published this small book, from Thornwillow Press:

Wolf Burchard, Picture Democracy (Newburgh, New York: Thornwillow Press, 2026), 80 pages, $65.

What did power look like before 1776? This is the question Wolf Burchard asks in Picture Democracy. His answer unfolds through three iconic portraits of George III, Louis XVI, and George Washington and reveals just how radical the American experiment truly was. If kings had long been portrayed through the established language of majesty, inherited authority, and divine right, how was one to portray the leader of a republic?

At the center of the book is Gilbert Stuart’s great Lansdowne portrait of Washington, a painting that helped invent a new visual language for democratic leadership. But how do you portray a president? Washington was the first of his kind, so there was no established formula comparable to that employed in the depictions of other heads of state, kings, queens, emperors, and popes. Picture Democracy is about such people of power, and how some of the supreme artistic exponents of their time tried to convey that power through portraiture. It tells the story of three likenesses of three men—George III, Louis XVI, and George Washington—who never met in person, but who for decades had almost daily interactions with one another, or were, at the very least, on each other’s minds.

Wolf Burchard is Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he joined the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts in 2019, after holding curatorial positions at the British Royal Collection and the National Trust. Much of his work focuses on the relationship between art and power. In 2026, he co-curated Revolution! at The Met, an exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and The Rediscovered Treasure of the Sun King, at the Grand Palais in Paris. He also co-organized the exhibition The First Georgians: Art and Monarchy, 1714–1760, shown at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace to mark the tercentenary of the Hanoverian succession in 2014, and published The Sovereign Artist: Charles Le Brun and the Image of Louis XIV (2016).

From Bloomsbury:

Ekaterina Heath, Women, Gardens, and Agency in Imperial Russia: Empress Maria Feodorovna’s Pavlovsk Park (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), 144 pages, ISBN: 978-1350544505, £45 / $62.

How does a woman with no formal political authority influence the politics of an empire? Through her garden.

In the hierarchies of the late 18th- and early 19th-century Russian imperial court, a consort held no direct access to power. Yet Empress Maria Feodorovna, wife of Paul I and later Dowager Empress during the reign of Alexander I, influenced the politics of her era through the cultivation of Pavlovsk Park near St Petersburg. Women, Gardens, and Agency in Imperial Russia draws on the rich historical record of the Russian royal court to recover the evidence of her agency. Heath traces Maria Feodorovna’s strategies for maintaining access to power under Catherine II and Paul I, and examines how, widowed and formally sidelined, she used Pavlovsk to consolidate influence during her son’s reign, turning a garden into a panopticon, a memorial, and a vehicle for rewriting history.

Ekaterina Heath is a Research Associate at the University of Sydney, specialising in garden studies and Russian history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her earlier work includes essays on Grand Tour memory at Pavlovsk and on plants as diplomatic gifts in British-Russian relations.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction
1  Imperial Family: Building Bridges
2  Plants in the Garden: Growing the Power Base
3  Diplomacy: Weaving the Networks of Power
4  Grief: Turning Defeat into Victory
5  Pavlovsk Panopticon: Arguing against Abolishing Serfdom
6  Charity: Creating Legacy through Rewriting History
Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

From Oxford UP:

Emily Sneff, When the Declaration of Independence Was News (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2026), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0197816691, $30.

Tracing the moments after its creation, this groundbreaking book follows how news of the Declaration of Independence spread to people throughout the thirteen United States and the Atlantic world.

In 1776 people could hear the Declaration of Independence proclaimed in public squares and could read it in the pages of their local newspapers. Stories of the Declaration typically recount the work that took place inside the Continental Congress, focusing on the men tasked with drafting the text. Although Congress declared independence, the work of spreading the news involved printers, post riders, ship captains, civic leaders, soldiers, clerks, orators, preachers, diplomats, and translators.

When the Declaration of Independence Was News reveals the stories behind how the Declaration was communicated in the United States and around the Atlantic. Tracing the travels of the founding document of the United States from Philadelphia to New York, Boston, Charleston, London, Leiden, Paris, and beyond, Emily Sneff shows how people both celebrated the Declaration and critiqued it. In the weeks after the document was penned, it was printed in the columns of newspapers, translated into German and French, and shared with Native American allies. The document induced some people to make public their privately held beliefs about whether they wanted the United States to be independent or to reconcile with King George III. The Declaration was met with unique circumstances everywhere it went, and people modified the text along the way. The questions of who experienced the news of independence, when, and how reveal an expansive and complex history of a critical moment in the American Revolution.

Published for the 250th anniversary of American independence, When the Declaration of Independence Was News returns to a time before the legacy of these words and the outcome of the war against Great Britain were known to reconsider what the founding of the United States meant to the people who were living through it.

Emily Sneff is a historian of the founding era of the United States and a leading expert on the Declaration of Independence. With a PhD in history from William and Mary, she is a consulting curator for museum exhibitions for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration.

c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments

1  Introduction: The News of Independence
2  When the Declaration of Independence was News
3  Short of Independence: The May 15 Resolution
4  Postponed: The Continental Congress Debates Independence
5  Publish and Declare: The People Learn the News
6  Melted Majesty: Statues Fall and Tensions Rise in New York
7  The Reigning Subject: Inoculation and Independence in Massachusetts
8  Words and Wampum: Native Americans Acknowledge Independence
9  Embarrassment: Clergymen Close Churches and Change Prayers
10  Intercepted: Broadsides in British Hands
11  Pretended Acts: London Changes the Declaration
12  An Old Storey: Silas Deane Waits for the Declaration
13  Conclusion: A Lasting Testimony

Appendix: Transcription of the Dunlap Broadside of the Declaration of Independence

Notes
Bibliography
Index

From Yale UP:

Holly E.J. Black, The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2026), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0300274080, $35.

A vivid history of the evolution of printmaking as a means of creative expression, from prehistory to the present day

The significance of printmaking within the history of art is often underplayed, obscured or misunderstood. This book tells the story of artist prints from across the globe in a manner that is accessible and engaging. It demystifies how prints are made—from woodblock to etching—and explores how, throughout history, printmaking has defied easy categorisation, straddling ‘fine’ art practices and commercially minded production. In fact, it has been employed as much for creative experimentation as it has for disseminating information.

Beginning in ancient East Asia and travelling through Renaissance Europe, revolutionary Mexico, and post-Apartheid South Africa, these ten chapters celebrate the interconnected nature of the printed image and its multiple histories, while illuminating the lesser-known players who have been deliberately or erroneously overlooked. Whether formed by slicing linoleum or plunging plates into acid, then distributed via bound books or pasted posters, the print has not just replicated the world, it has shaped it.

Holly E. J. Black is a London-based journalist and contributing arts editor at The World of Interiors. Her writing has appeared in titles including The Art Newspaper, Art Review, Financial Times, House & Garden, and Wallpaper. She is the author of Artists on Art.

Distributed by The University of Chicago Press:

David Pearson, Bookbindings: An Illustrated History (Oxford: Bodleian Library Publishing, 2026), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1851246458, £50 / $75.

An extravagantly illustrated history of the development of bookbindings, from antiquity to modern day.

Bindings have been an essential—and often beautiful—component of books since the codex form was invented 2,000 years ago. They make books work, but they also provide an opportunity for binders to display their skills. Until book trade processes were industrialized in the nineteenth century, every binding was a unique handcrafted object, no matter how simple or elaborate. Bindings have been made of all kinds of materials—calfskin, parchment, vellum, ivory, even silver—and embellished using many different techniques to satisfy the wishes of owners, ranging from students to kings. How they were produced and decorated has evolved, and many countries have their own distinctive traditions. Bindings may testify to the taste and social status of wealthy connoisseurs, or to the economic necessities of ordinary households. Because they can often be dated and localized, they also give us information about the histories of individual volumes. This lavishly illustrated book provides a fascinating history of the development of bookbindings from Roman times to the present day. Almost all the examples are chosen from the shelves of the Bodleian Library, showcasing the outstanding collection of historic bindings to be found there.

David Pearson is a leading authority on the history of books. His previous books include Provenance Research in Book History and Speaking Volumes: Books with Histories also published by Bodleian Library Publishing.

c o n t e n t s

Birth of the Codex to Medieval Traditions
New Ideas in a World of Print
Craftsmanship & Innovation
Nineteenth-Century Transformations
The Rebirth of Craft Binding
Bindings with a Purpose
Materials & Techniques
Decorative Themes

Published by the PMC  and distributed by Yale UP:

Meredith Gamer, City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2026), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107529, $45.

The macabre, interwoven histories of art and punishment in eighteenth-century London

Over the course of the eighteenth century, the visual arts in Britain flourished as never before. The nation’s first art academies were founded; its first exhibitions of contemporary art were staged; and a vastly expanded public for the arts began to form. This book demonstrates that these developments were intimately linked to another, darker kind of art: the spectacle of capital punishment. Between 1680 and 1820, the number of crimes punishable by death under British law rose dramatically—from roughly fifty to more than two hundred—and at Tyburn, London’s main execution ground, dozens of people were hanged each year before thousands of spectators.

City of the Gallows uncovers the complex and often unexpected connections between eighteenth-century London’s sites of punishment and its spaces of art-making, instruction, and display. Drawing together a wide range of images, objects, and texts—from popular woodcuts and anatomical sculptures to moral tracts and dictionaries of slang—it offers new readings of works by major artists, such as William Hogarth, Johan Zoffany, and Joseph Wright of Derby, and shines a light on others that traditional accounts of the period have overlooked or ignored. In doing so, this book shows how state violence shaped the art and visual culture of this era, whose legacies persist to this day.

Meredith Gamer is associate professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, where she specialises in the art and visual culture of eighteenth-century Britain and the Atlantic world.

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Note (added 5 June 2026) — The original posting mistakenly listed Yale UP as the publisher. In fact, the Paul Mellon Centre is the publisher.

From Yale UP:

Amy Boyington, The Country House Dining Room: A History of Georgian Feasting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2026), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-0300276923, $40.

The country house dining room was an elaborate theatre for Georgian elites to entertain their guests and, more importantly, show-off their wealth, power and social status. Every detail was carefully orchestrated, usually by the lady of the house, from the decor and tableware to the food and drink served. Decorated with fine art, antique sculptures, and lavish furnishings, the dining room was governed by strict dining etiquette and social rituals. It was expected for guests to eat and drink to excess, so it is perhaps unsurprising that in the Georgian era we see the development of supposed miracle cures for obesity, alcoholism, and related illnesses. Drawing on previously unpublished contemporary accounts of feasts at Holkham Hall, Hardwick Hall, and Blenheim Palace, among others, Amy Boyington brings the Georgian dining experience to life and charts how the dining room encapsulated the intricate cultural and political dynamics of the 18th century.

Amy Boyington is a public historian and popular social media historian (@history_with_amy). Her past roles have included Senior Properties Historian at English Heritage, Trust Director at The Lutyens Trust, and Post-Doctoral Researcher at both Kensington Palace and Queens’ College, Cambridge. She is the author of Hidden Patrons: Women and Architectural Patronage in Georgian Britain.