Conference | The Global Lowlands
From Brown:
The Global Lowlands in the Early Modern Period, 1300–1800
Dutch and Flemish History and Culture in a Worldwide Perspective
Brown University, 4–5 April 2014
During the early modern period the Lowlands became an entrepôt for global exchanges. They connected outwards to every part of the globe through trade, colonization, expanded knowledge, material culture, and consumption. Antwerp during the sixteenth century, and Amsterdam during the seventeenth century were the first modern cities to dominate world trade and commerce. The Lowlands attracted merchants, immigrants, and visitors while importing and redistributing a vast new array of goods and information, not only effecting the culture, art, and sciences of the Lowlands but touching the lives of many other people, from New Amsterdam and Brazil to Africa, the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Japan, and elsewhere. This conference focuses on the Lowlands as an example of how globalization is affecting Renaissance and Early Modern Studies.
Sponsored by Brown University, the Pembroke Center, the History Department, the program in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, department of the History of Art & Architecture and the John Carter Brown Library. Pre-registration required: click here.
F R I D A Y , 4 A P R I L 2 0 1 4
5:00 Session 1 | Introduction and Chair: Evelyn Lincoln, Brown University
• Karel Davids, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, “Instrument Makers, Cartographers, and Navigators: The Dutch and Transnational Networks in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic”
• Mariët Westermann, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, “Retrading the Golden Age: Dutch Art and Its Histories”
6:30 Reception
S A T U R D A Y , 5 A P R I L 2 0 1 4
9:00 Session 2 | Chair: Wim Klooster, Clark University
• Claudia Swan, Northwestern University, “Lost in Translation: Exoticism in Early Modern Holland”
• Dániel Margócsy, Hunter College, “Commercial Visions: Global Trade and Scientific Debate, c. 1700”
10:30 Coffee
11:00 Session 3 | Chair: Jeffrey Muller, Brown University
• Mark Meuwese, University of Winnipeg , “Intention to Exterminate: Massacres in the Making of the Dutch Empire, 1600–1750”
• Julie Hochstrasser, University of Iowa, “Whose Baroque? Drawing and Human Experience among the Khoikhoi”
12:30 Lunch
2:00 Session 4 | Chair: Anne McCants, MIT
• Benjamin Schmidt, University of Washington, “Oriental Despots on Ornamental Desks: On Dutch Geography, the ‘Decorative’ Arts, and the Production of the Exotic World”
• Anne Goldgar, King’s College, London, “The Dutch and Natural History in the Seventeenth-Century Arctic”
• Lissa Roberts, University of Twente, “Deshima as a Center of Accumulation and Management”
4:00 General Discussion | Chair: Harold J. Cook, Brown University
Conference | Russian Art: Exhibitions, Collections, and Archives
From the conference programme:
Exhibit A: Russian Art | Exhibitions, Collections, and Archives
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 21–22 March 2014
Exhibit A: Russian Art | Exhibitions, Collections and Archives, is the second conference in an on-going collaborative project between Moscow Lomonosov State University and the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC). Speakers will explore contemporary and historical practices of exhibiting and collecting Russian art and the potential of collections, exhibitions and documentary archives as important material resources and objects of study in their own right. The conference is also intended as a forum through which to showcase important but less familiar collections of Russian art and documentary material located inside and outside of Russia. It is conceived without chronological boundaries, and papers will address topics ranging from the earliest instances of collecting, exhibiting and writing about Russian art to contemporary practice in these three areas.
Organised by Natalia Budanova (The Courtauld Institute of Art) and Jenn Brewin (University of Cambridge) in collaboration with Moscow Lomonosov State University and the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC), with additional support from the Russian Art World (РХМ).
Ticket/entry details: £25 (£15 students, Courtauld staff/students and concessions) Book online or send a cheque made payable to ‘The Courtauld Institute of Art’ to: Research Forum Events Co-ordinator, Research Forum, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, stating ‘CCRAC conference’.
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F R I D A Y , 2 1 M A R C H 2 0 1 4
13:45 Registration
14:15 Opening remarks
14:30 Session 1 | Collecting Russian Religious and Folk Art
Chair: Nicola Kozicharow (University of Cambridge)
• Engelina Sergeevna Smirnova (Moscow Lomonosov State University), The collection of antiquities in sixteenth-century Russia: motivations and methods
• Aleksandr Sergeevich Preobrazhenskii (Moscow Lomonosov State University), Icon collections of Moscow Old Believers in the early nineteenth century: evidence of owners’ inscriptions
• Valery Stefanovich Turchin (Moscow Lomonosov State University), Collectors of lubki [Russian popular prints] and the development of the avant-garde in Russia (In Russian)
15:40 Coffee
16:10 Session 2 | Collections and Exhibitions in Eighteenth-Century Russia
Chair: Natalia Budanova (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
• Andrey Aleksandrovich Karev (Moscow Lomonosov State University), The portrait gallery in eighteenth-century Russia as an ensemble: a typological aspect
• Zalina Valerievna Tetermazova (Moscow Lomonosov State University), Collecting Russian portrait engravings from the age of Peter to the twentieth century: an outline of the phenomenon and its main features
• Vera Sergeevna Naumova (Moscow Lomonosov State University), The art collection of Count K. Razumovskii: the history of the collection’s formation and composition
• Rosalind P. Blakesley (University of Cambridge), Exhibiting Russian success?: the 1770 exhibition at the Imperial Academy of Arts
17:45 Drinks reception (more…)
Conference | Maritime Culture in the Age of J. M. W. Turner
Next month at Greenwich:
Maritime Culture and Britain in the Age of J.M.W. Turner
Royal Museums Greenwich, London, 21–22 March 2014
Registration due by 20 March 2014
J.M.W. Turner, The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805, 1822–24, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
To coincide with a major exhibition of the work of J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), Royal Museums Greenwich is hosting an interdisciplinary conference exploring the cultural impact of the sea in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Turner and the Sea is the first full-scale examination of the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the sea, and features many of his most celebrated works, from his transformative Academy paintings of the late 1790s and early 1800s to the unfinished, experimental seascapes he produced towards the end of his life. The exhibition offers the opportunity to discover the myriad ways in which Turner responded to the maritime art—past and contemporary—while challenging his audiences with new ways of representing the sea. The conference aims to locate Turner’s seascapes within a broader maritime context, and explore the cultural and political significance of the sea during his lifetime.
Conference fee: £100 (concessionary rate £90). Including Friday evening reception and private view of the Turner and the Sea exhibition. To book tickets contact Lizelle de Jager on 020 8312 6716, research@rmg.co.uk.
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F R I D A Y , 2 1 M A R C H 2 0 1 4
10.30 Registration and refreshments
11.00 Session 1
• ‘Now for the painter’: Turner and the Sea at Greenwich: Richard Johns (University of York)
• ‘Commercial care and busy toil’: Turner’s Image of Downriver Thames: Geoff Snell (National Maritime Museum and University of Sussex)
• Turner, the Mouth of the Thames and Commerce: Leo Costello (Rice University, Texas)
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Session 2
• Craft and Labour in John Ruskin’s Romantic Tradition: ‘The Harbours of England’: Carmen Casaliggi (Cardiff Metropolitan University)
• Nautical Zombies: Death and the Undead in Romantic Maritime Literature: James Robertson (University of Leeds)
15.00 Coffee and tea
15.30 Session 3
• Sperm, Blood, Blubber, Bone, Oil and Water: the 19th-Century Visual and Literary (Sub)Cultures of Whaling: Jason Edwards (University of York)
• Turner’s Abstraction and the Culture of Steam Power in the Ships of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company: Jonathan Stafford (Kingston University)
16.45 Keynote
• Stephen Deuchar (The Art Fund)
17.45 Reception and private view of Turner and the Sea
S A T U R D A Y , 2 2 M A R C H 2 0 1 4
8.45 Pre-conference discussion in Turner and the Sea exhibition
9.45 Coffee and tea
10.00 Session 4
• ‘Baptism of the Waves’: Vernet, Turner and the Near-Death Experience: Melanie Vandenbrouck (Royal Museums Greenwich)
• Literal or Littoral? Constable’s Representations of the Sea: Annie Lyles (independent scholar)
• Perceptions, Practice, Association: Turner and Stanfield: Pieter van der Merwe (Royal Museums Greenwich)
11.30 Coffee and tea
12.00 Session 5
• Carthage, Venice and Holland: Turner, British Identity and the Sea Powers of the Past: Andrew Lambert (King’s College, London)
• ‘One haunting conception’? Turner’s ‘Trafalgar’ Paintings: Christine Riding (Royal Museums Greenwich)
13.00 Lunch (from 13.45 to 14.30 a curatorial talk will take place in the Nelson, Navy, Nation gallery by James Davey, Royal Museums Greenwich)
14.45 Session 6
• Glorious Firsts! Turner, War and British Marine Painting: Eleanor Hughes (Yale Center for British Art)
• Relegation or Patriotic Promotion: a Reconsideration of George IV’s Donation of Turner’s Battle of Trafalgar to the National Gallery of Naval Art: Cicely Robinson (National Maritime Museum and University of York)
• The Sailor in the Gallery: Representing the Reception of Maritime Art: Catherine Roach (Virginia Commonwealth University)
View: A Festival of Art History
London’s View: A Festival of Art History (7–9 February 2014) is the latest example of events that slip by me. For anyone interested, the good news is that events were filmed and could be available online in the near future. Plans are also underway for 2015. Here’s the coverage from Apollo Magazine’s blog, The Muse Room. -CH
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Digby Warde-Aldam, “Great View: The UK’s First Art History Festival,” The Muse Room from Apollo Magazine (19 February 2014).
The venue is a large room in London’s Institut français, its windows looking out over the crazed Victorian skyline of South Kensington. French academic Frédéric Ogée looks slightly taken aback by the crowd, a mix of all ages that has just filled up every available seat—indeed, staff are starting to turn away latecomers to the lecture he is about to give, a fascinating half-hour examination of ‘Englishness’ in English art. At the end of the talk, Ogée is forced to cut short the barrage of questions from the audience in order to clear the room for the next speaker on the bill of the Institut’s View Festival.
The public interest in the talk shouldn’t really be surprising. The View, which had its first edition this month, is Britain’s first art history festival—which, taking into account the fact that the UK has festivals dedicated to everything from Heavy Metal to knitting comes as something of a surprise. Given London’s position as a global art capital, it seems bizarre that nothing like this has ever taken place in the city before. . .
The full review is available here»
Colloque | The Artist and the Antiquary
From the programme:
L’artiste et l’antiquaire: L’étude savante de l’antique
et son imaginaire à l’époque moderne, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 6–7 March 2014
Francesco Bianchini, Camera Ed Inscrizioni Sepulcrali (1727)
L’ambition de ce colloque, dont le sujet se situe à la croisée de l’archéologie et de l’histoire de l’art, est d’analyser les formes de collaborations savantes entre les « antiquaires » et les artistes à l’époque moderne. De la Renaissance à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, la recherche savante sur les civilisations antiques à partir de leurs différents vestiges, écrits et matériels, fut aussi bien le fait de grands lettrés que celui de nombreux artistes et praticiens. Si les hommes de lettres eurent souvent besoin de dessinateurs pour les seconder dans leur travail de documentation des objets et des sites, ceux-ci se sont révélés à l’occasion d’excellents collaborateurs, voire même de fins connaisseurs de l’Antiquité classique qui ont contribué directement à la construction de la discipline.
Le colloque réunira des spécialistes de tous horizons – archéologues, historiens de l’art antique et moderne, historiens de l’archéologie – en vue d’une réflexion commune sur la recherche antiquaire, ses méthodes et ses enjeux, ainsi que sur la fécondité de ces études sur les plans artistique et culturel. Les travaux mettront l’accent sur les réseaux socio-professionnels, sur les pratiques de documentation et l’illustration des traités, ainsi que sur les relations entre savoir et invention, érudition antiquaire et création artistique.
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9.15 Ouverture, Delphine Burlot (INHA) et Emmanuel Lurin (université Paris-Sorbonne)
Artistes et lettrés étudiant l’Antique : commandes, collaborations, rivalités scientifiques
Présidente de séance : Martine Denoyelle (INHA)
9.45 Alain Schnapp (université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Le scribe, l’artisan et le poète : aux origines du savoir antiquaire
10.30 Peter N. Miller (New York, Bard Graduate Center), Peiresc and Marseille: A ‘Knowledge Community’ in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean
11.15 Pause
11.45 Colin Debuiche (université Toulouse-Le Mirail), Les artifices du passé : Antiquité et mythes urbains de la Palladia Tolosa au XVIe siècle
12.30 Delphine Burlot, « La querelle des antiquaires et des graveurs n’est pas prête de finir ». Concurrence entre artistes et antiquaires dans la documentation et la restauration de l’Antique
13.15 Pause déjeuner
Les pratiques de documentation : reproductions, relevés, corpus documentaires et collections
Président de séance : Jean-Louis Ferrary (EPHE, IV e section)
14.45 Jean Guillemain (université Paris Descartes, bibliothèque H. Piéron), Les débuts de la numismatique grecque en France (Lyon, 1552)
15.30 Florian Stilp (université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, labex « Les passés dans le présent »), À chacun son arc d’Orange. La vision variable d’un monument romain à l’époque moderne
16.15 Pause
16.45 Helen Whitehouse (University of Oxford, Oriental Institute), Records of Egyptian Antiquities in the ‘Paper Museum’ of Cassiano dal Pozzo
17.30 Pierre Gros (université de Provence, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), Le coeur antique du futur. Lectures palladiennes des vestiges des temples romains dans le dernier des Quattro Libri
18.15 Discussion générale
V E N D R E D I , 7 M A R S 2 0 1 4
Une démonstration par l’image : le discours antiquaire et son illustration scientifique
Président de séance : Philippe Sénéchal (INHA)
10.00 Emmanuel Lurin, L’antiquaire, l’artiste et le graveur (Rome, XVIe siècle) : autour des relevés « archéologiques » du Codex Orsini et des gravures d’antiquités de Jacob Bos
10.45 Frédérique Lemerle-Pauwels (CNRS, université François Rabelais, Tours), Représenter l’antique : architectes et antiquaires en France (XVIe–XVIIe siècles)
11.30 Pause
12.00 Carmelo Occhipinti (Università di Roma Tor Vergata), Mariette e Bouchardon. Ricerca antiquaria e storia artistica
12.45 Adriano Aymonino (University of Birmingham), Giovanni Pietro Bellori and Pietro Santi Bartoli’s Publications: Their Reception during the Eighteenth Century
13.30 Pause
Un laboratoire pour la création ? Érudition antiquaire et invention artistique
Président de séance : Claude Mignot (université Paris-Sorbonne)
15.00 Flaminia Bardati (Università di Roma La Sapienza), Bâtir à l’antique, sur l’antique, pour l’antique
15.45 Daniela Gallo (université Pierre Mendès-France Grenoble 2), Entre érudition et création artistique. Les objets antiques en marbre au xviiie siècle
16.30 Pause
17.00 Ingo Herklotz (Philipps-Universität Marburg), Visualizing the Catacombs: Between Legend and Scholarship in Early Modern Painting
17.45 Discussion générale
Renseignements: Elsa Nadjm (elsa.nadjm@inha.fr), Marine Acker (marine.acker@inha.fr)
Conference | Objects, Images, and Texts: Pope and Roubiliac
Objects, Images, and Texts: Pope, Roubiliac, and Representations of Authorship
Yale Center for British Art, 21–22 February 2014
Photographer unknown, William Kurtz Wimsatt, ca 1961,
© National Portrait Gallery, London
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This two-day international conference explores the relationship between authorship and the visual arts in the eighteenth century, focusing on the poet Alexander Pope. Building on the work of Yale scholar W. K. Wimsatt, an interdisciplinary panel of speakers will situate Pope’s portraits, both sculpted and painted, within the framework
of debates about his often ambiguous modes of authorial self-presentation involving the design of his printed texts as well as the complexities of the verse itself. The conference coincides with the Center’s exhibition Fame and Friendship: Pope, Roubiliac, and the Portrait Bust in Eighteenth-Century Britain, which focuses on a series of busts of Pope made by the French émigré sculptor Louis François Roubiliac. The conference is free and open to the public. Advance registration is recommended. Register online through February 20. On-site registration will be available at the event.
F R I D A Y , 2 1 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 4
10:00 Amy Meyers (YCBA), Welcome
10:15 Panel 1
Malcolm Baker (University of California, Riverside), Introduction to the Exhibition and Conference
Joseph Roach (Yale), Pope at Yale: The Intentional Fallacy and the Life of the Poet
12:00 Lunch Break
2:45 Panel 2
Session Chair: Gordon Turnbull (Yale)
Jill Campbell (Yale), ‘Give Me Back My Tears’: Monuments and Feeling in the Poetry of Pope
Greg Sullivan (Tate Britain), Roubiliac’s Biographers and his Place in Histories of British Sculpture
2:45 Break
3:15 Panel 3
Session Chair: Matthew Hargraves (YCBA)
Nigel Wood (Loughborough University), Pope and the Reading Public
Matthew Craske (Oxford Brookes), Roubiliac and the Business of Making Sculpture
5:00 Break
5:30 Keynote Lecture
Helen Deutsch (University of California, Los Angeles), ‘Ev’ry Coxcomb knows me by my Style’: Alexander Pope and the Art of Authorship
S A T U R D A Y , 2 2 F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 4
10:00 Martina Droth (YCBA), Welcome
10:15 Panel 4
Session Chair: David Bromwich (Yale)
Janine Barchas (University of Texas at Austin), Counterfeit Authority: Frontispiece Portraits of Fictional Authors and Authors of Fiction
James Raven (University of Essex), Images of Authors Within Eighteenth-Century Libraries
12:00 Lunch Break
1:15 Breakout Sessions
Malcolm Baker (UCR), Martina Droth (YCBA), and Anne Gunnison (Yale University Art Gallery), Looking at Busts of Pope
Kathryn James (Beinecke Library) and Margaret Powell (Lewis Walpole Library), Reading Pope: Rare Books and Documents in the Yale Collections
2:30 Break
2:45 Panel 5
Session Chair: Langdon Hammer (Yale)
David Brewer (Ohio State University), Hanging Pope in Effigy
Richard Wendorf (American Museum in Britain), Classicizing Alexander Pope
Malcolm Baker (UCR), Confronting Pope’s Portraits
5:00 Closing Reception
Symposium | Millinery through Time
This in Williamsburg, just before ASECS. From the conference website:
Millinery through Time
Colonial Williamsburg, 16–19 March 2014
Colonial Williamsburg is pleased to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Margaret Hunter Millinery Shop. For 60 years, the shop has interpreted the 18th-century business and craft of millinery with its ever-changing fashions. As fashion has evolved and changed with time, so has the trade. Millinery Through Time will explore the development of the trade from the 18th century, dealing with thousands of fashionable accessories, to the 21st century, specializing in a single fashionable item: hats.
This conference will present an understanding of the trade from a scholarly and a technical perspective through the collaboration of lectures, hands on workshops, and demonstrations. Join us as we step into the world of millinery, one of change, creativity, commerce, and fashion.
S U N D A Y , 1 6 M A R C H 2 0 1 4
5:00 Welcome, Jay Gaynor, director, Historic Trades, Colonial Williamsburg
• 60 Years at the Margaret Hunter, Janea Whitacre, mistress milliner and mantuamaker, Colonial Williamsburg
• The Margaret Hunter Shop in Media, Leslie Doiron Clark, associate producer, Productions, Publications, and Learning Ventures, Colonial Williamsburg
• Virtual Tour of the Margaret Hunter Shop: The 3D Virtual Reconstruction of the 18th-Century Interior, Peter Inker, Digital History Center, Colonial Williamsburg
• Collections for the Margaret Hunter Shop, Linda Baumgarten, curator, textiles and costumes, Colonial Williamsburg
6:00 Birthday Reception. Central Court. Guests are encouraged to wear their favorite costume. Prizes will be awarded.
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9:30 Welcome and announcement of prizes from the birthday reception.
9:45 The Milliner and Her Trade, Janea Whitacre, mistress milliner and mantuamaker, Colonial Williamsburg
10:30 Coffee
11:00 Monsieur Beaulard: The Man Who Dressed Marie-Antoinette, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, independent scholar, Glendale, California
11:25 ‘To set off every Female Perfection to the highest Advantage’: Milliners, Mantua-Makers, and Dressmakers in Popular Fiction, 1750–2012, Susan Holloway Scott, novelist and history blogger, Philadelphia
11:50 Cry Thief! 18th-Century Milliners and the World of Stolen Goods, Emma Cross, interpreter, Colonial Williamsburg
12:15 Lunch
12:45 Study drawers open in Textile Gallery, Linda Baumgarten, curator, textiles and costumes, and Kimberly Smith Ivey, curator, textiles and historic interiors, Colonial Williamsburg
1:45 ‘Just Imported…and to be Sold on Reasonable Terms by the Subscriber’: Visualizing 18th-Century Textiles through Primary Research, Angela Burnley, independent researcher and owner, Burnley & Trowbridge Co., Williamsburg
2:35 The Morning Ramble or the Milliner’s Shop, Sarah Woodyard, apprentice milliner and mantuamaker, Colonial Williamsburg
3:30 Afternoon refreshments
4:00 Inspired Globally But Created in Upstate New York: An Early 18th-Century Apron with Exotic Motifs, Mary D. Doering, independent scholar, collector, and guest curator, Falls Church, Virginia
4:25 A Mysterious Bit of Millinery: The Mask, Mark Hutter, journeyman tailor supervisor, Colonial Williamsburg, and Phillippe L. B. Halbert, Lois F. McNeil Fellow, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, Winterthur Museum and the University of Delaware.
7:00 Play, The Milliners, with a question and answer session to follow the performance.
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9:30 An American Identity: The Shoemaker’s Label in Revolutionary and Federal America, Meaghan Reddick, candidate for M.A. History of Decorative Arts, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
9:55 ‘Any thing elegant, in the form of a Turban’: Women’s Turbans in Fashion at the Turn of the 19th Century, Ann Buermann Wass, history/museum specialist, Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Riverdale Park, Maryland
10:20 Coffee
10:50 Velvet and Silk Flowers for Millinery and Dressmaking, Mela Hoyt-Heydon, chairman, Theatre Arts Department, Fullerton College, Fullerton, California
11:40 ‘…what vulgar people calls a milliner’: How the Milliner Survived the Westward Expansion, Hat-Making, and French Lessons, Abby Cox, apprentice milliner and mantuamaker, Colonial Williamsburg
12:35 Lunch
1:05 Study drawers open in Textile Gallery, Linda Baumgarten, curator, textiles and costumes, and Kimberly Smith Ivey, curator, textiles and historic interiors, Colonial Williamsburg
2:00 Traffic Lights of Chic: American Millinery and American Style, 1937–1947, Nadine Stewart, adjunct professor, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey
2:55 Shades of Grief: The Role of Millinery and Accessories as Indicators of Mourning in the 1860s, Samantha McCarty, Williamsburg
3:20 Ellen Carbery: Enterprising Milliner of Newfoundland, Cynthia Boyd, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.
3:45 Afternoon refreshments
4:15 ‘Creative Abilities and Business Sense’: The Millinery Trade in Ontario, 1870–1930, Christina Bates
4:40 Millinery as a 21st-Century Occupation: A Current Example of a Career in Hat Making, Ignatius Creegan, Ignatius Hats, Petersburg, Virginia
W E D N E S D A Y , 1 9 M A R C H 2 0 1 4
An assortment of optional workshops are offered on Wednesday.
Symposium | In Circulation: John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West
In addition to the topic, the format of this symposium looks interesting on several counts: the webinar format, the time (Friday afternoon and evening with a light supper and drinks between presentations), and the trans-Atlantic component (which presumably explains the timing). In the digital age, it seems fair to ask what a symposium should look like. I’m glad to see experiments like this one. -CH
From The Paul Mellon Centre:
In Circulation: John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West in England, France, and America
The Paul Mellon Centre, London, 28 March 2014
This symposium and webinar follows on from the international loan exhibition American Adversaries: West and Copley in a Transatlantic World, held at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston between 5 October 2013 and 20 January 2014.
It explores aspects of the work and careers of the American-born artists Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley, focussing in particular on the ways in which they engaged with the exhibition and print cultures of their day, particularly in Britain, but also in France and America. The paintings of both artists moved between and across very different spaces of display, and were increasingly geared to satisfying the demands of a growing exhibition-going public. Just as importantly, Copley and West’s paintings were regularly translated into graphic form. Engravings as well as exhibitions promoted their work to audiences in Britain, France and America, and helped give both artists an international reputation.
The symposium and webinar will investigate the ways in which these forms of display and dissemination shaped both artists’ practice and reputations across transnational visual cultures. This event will be filmed and live-streamed to a group of scholars, students and curators at the MFA in Houston, who will be invited to ask questions of the speakers. It will also be live-streamed online, enabling an international audience to watch and respond to proceedings as they take place in London and submit questions to the speakers via an interactive website. A full symposium programme, with details of papers and ticketing, is available at The Paul Mellon Centre’s website.
P R O G R A M M E
15.15 Mark Hallett (The Paul Mellon Centre), Introduction
15.30 Emily Neff and Kaylin Weber (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Introduce video of American Adversaries
16.00 Tea
16.15 Jane Kamensky (Brandeis University), Copley’s Revolutions
17.00 Stephane Roy (Carleton University), West’s General Wolfe in Eighteenth-Century France
17.45 Drinks and Light Supper
18.45 Rosie Dias (University of Warwick), Copley, West, and John Boydell: New Mechanisms of Patronage in
Late Eighteenth-Century London
19.30 Kaylin Weber (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Displaying History: West’s Gallery and the Great Room
20.15 Drinks
20.30 Sarah Monks (University of East Anglia), Out of Time, Out of Place: Copley’s Last Pictures
21.15 Wendy Bellion (University of Delaware), West and Shakespeare in Early Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia
22.00 Mark Hallett and Emily Neff, Concluding Remarks
At CAA 2014 | British Country Houses and Gardens
Historians of British Art
British Country Houses: Architecture, Collections, and Gardens
Thursday, 13 February, 12:30–2:00, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor, Williford A&B
As late as last December, I announced a Call for Papers for a session at this week’s conference of the College Art Association. As one of Thursday’s lunch panels, the session had already been reserved for the Historians of British Art, and in my announcement I referenced “a spirit of nimble experimentation.” Well I’m thrilled to have three promising papers, the abstracts of which are available below (they obviously won’t be available through CAA). For anyone in Chicago this week, please turn up. The session is intended to be a productive opportunity for feedback and discussion. And as a midday session, it is open to the public without the usual CAA membership or conference registration fees (it’s entirely free). For easier printing, a PDF file of the abstracts is also available here.
Many thanks,
Craig Hanson
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William L. Coleman (University of California, Berkeley), ‘Both instructive and pleasant’: The Country House Garden in Vitruvius Britannicus
The Scottish architect Colen Campbell is best known not for any of his buildings nor for the influential offices he held during his lifetime but for his collection of engraved views of British country houses: Vitruvius Britannicus, or the British Architect. This project, issued in three volumes from 1715 to 1725 with nearly 300 folio plates has been called “the most ambitious publication of engraved material yet attempted in Britain.”1
While the mission of Vitruvius Britannicus is clear enough—the advancement of Palladian architecture in Great Britain as an alternative to Roman ecclesiastical influence through a direct appeal to those in a position to commission new country houses—there are major differences between the contents of the volumes of the book. In contrast to the first two entries in the series, which consist exclusively of plans, elevations, and occasional sections of noteworthy buildings, the 1725 third volume of also includes birds-eye views and elaborate perspectives of country-house gardens. Here, for the first time in the book, Campbell shows detailed information about the form of the grounds of the country houses he celebrates, often to the detriment of the architectural representation that has been central until this point. The garden images have rarely been commented upon in the literature on Vitruvius Britannicus despite the fact that Campbell alerted his audience to the significance of this material in an advertisement for Volume III, in which he wrote “the Author has made a great Progress in a Third Volume containing the Geometrical Plans of the most considerable Gardens and Plantations with large Perspectives of the most Regular Buildings, in a Method intirely new, and both instructive and pleasant.”2 If these plates are not merely “pleasant” but “instructive,” in what do they instruct?
This paper will argue that Campbell’s garden views should be understood as integral to his overarching goal of reforming British taste, rather than as decorative adjuncts to it, and that these plates suggest a new way of understanding a period in garden history that has proven problematic in the past. Christopher Hussey and John Harris, among others, have recognized that many English gardens built from about 1715 to 1730 differ from the Anglo-Dutch style that came before in their gradual departure from bi-lateral symmetry and their embrace of elaborate, classicizing outbuildings to create interesting perspectives, but do not yet reject geometric construction in the way the better known work of Capability Brown would later in the century.3 Rather than treating the gardens Campbell describes and represents in his book as aberrant or merely transitional, it will be productive to consider how they relate to his architectural project. Just as Volumes I and II of Vitruvius Britannicus argue for a British Palladianism to counter perceived Catholic decadence, so does Volume III make a case for what can be called the Neopalladian garden. While damning others with faint praise, Campbell held up as exemplary gardens that, by means of their citations of Palladio in buildings and their allusions to laborless Arcadian bounty, constituted an alternate horticultural modernity.
1. E. Harris, “Vitruvius Britannicus before Colen Campbell,” The Burlington Magazine 128 (May 1986), p. 340..
2. Campbell, Vitruvius Britannicus II, p. 8.
3. C. Hussey, English Gardens and Landscapes: 1700–1750 (New York, 1967), p. 132; J. Harris, “The Artinatural Garden” in C. Hind ed. The Rococo in England: A Symposium (London, 1986), pp. 8–9.
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Jocelyn Anderson (Courtauld Institute of Art), From Stowe to Mount Edgcumbe: Touring Collections in Gardens
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as country-house tourism became increasingly popular, guidebooks for specific houses and gardens were published. Indicative of houses having thoroughly established themselves as destinations for polite tourists, these guidebooks provide critical evidence as to how these sites were presented to and remade for visitors. Many guidebooks focus on the art collections of houses, cataloguing pictures and sculptures and explaining them for readers. Several guidebooks, however, describe gardens, and close examination of these texts sheds new light on the public significance of these places. While garden historians have usefully analysed these cultivated landscapes from the perspective of designers and owners, guidebooks demonstrate that tourists’ experiences of these places would often have been quite different. This paper explores the guidebooks for three gardens and considers the significance of how these texts describe and comment on these sites.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, Viscount Cobham’s gardens at Stowe (Buckinghamshire) spread over 200 acres and contained over forty temples. They were among the most famous in Britain, and they had become a popular tourist attraction, complete with an inn for tourists’ convenience. Stowe’s first guidebook was published in 1744, and over the following sixty years, over twenty editions appeared. The gardens at Hawkstone (Shropshire) were not as famous, but the estate also had an inn for visitors, and ten guidebooks to its grounds were published between 1766 and 1811. It was known for its rugged natural landscape, which included a sharp ridge of sandstone hills and a deep ravine, along with an exceptionally eccentric collection of ornamental features. In the former aspect it was similar to Mount Edgcumbe (Devon), whose coastal site had inspired a garden which incorporated panoramic views of the ocean and walks along cliffs. Mount Edgcumbe was celebrated in the later eighteenth century, but it wasn’t until the early nineteenth century that its first guidebooks were published.
What these three gardens have in common is the approach guidebook authors took when they described them for visitors. The first, and most prominent, device adopted was the circuit, which organized both the guidebook and the garden itself. The circuit was the itinerary tourists were meant to follow while visiting the garden, leading them through both locations in space and descriptions on the page (depending on the garden, it was not necessarily circular). The circuit in all three of these guidebooks is constructed by a progression of entries about specific temples and locations; these are, in effect, descriptions of gardens written as chains of descriptions about destinations within them. Within this structure, the guidebooks provide detailed entries about each place where visitors were expected to pause during their tour. Many of these entries are extraordinarily attentive to detail, supplying information about everything from the architect who designed a temple to what might be visible on the distant horizon. Through these guidebooks’ approach, visits to these gardens are constructed as collections of close examinations and responses, similar to those which might be had touring the art collection inside a country house.
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Laurel O. Peterson (Yale University), Art, War, and Politics in William Kent’s North Hall at Stowe
In the late 1720s, Richard Temple, viscount Cobham, commissioned William Kent to design and decorate the interior of his north entrance hall at Stowe House. Kent had established himself as a leading artist in Britain, and he created a room for Cobham in the latest fashion. While only the grisaille and gold ceiling remains of Kent’s scheme, it is the oldest surviving interior at Stowe. This paper considers Kent’s and Cobham’s intertwining artistic, social, and political aims in the decoration of the North Hall, and argues for an interpretation of this space as representative of a vital artistic culture found in the early eighteenth-century country house.
The North Hall celebrates Cobham’s military career. The central allegorical ceiling panel portrays the young Cobham receiving a sword from Mars, and commemorates the date in 1702 when he received his own army regiment from William III. Cobham rose through the ranks, eventually serving as a lieutenant general under John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, in the War of Spanish Succession. Cobham’s military career enabled his political and social rise; he served in the ministries of George I and ultimately was elevated to a viscountcy in 1718. While the expression of Cobham’s Whig ideologies through garden architecture is well known, this paper draws attention to the interior as a central part of his project. By representing a moment that celebrates his connection to William III, Cobham chose to emphasize his commitment to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, a political statement that aligned with his Opposition Whig politics. Other parts of Kent’s original decorative scheme, such as Christophe Veyrier’s marble relief of the Family of Darius before Alexander (c. 1680), reinforced the military theme.
The North Hall—the point of entry for any guest to Stowe House—formed one part of a larger temporal and spatial viewing experience. This paper suggests ways in which Kent’s decoration worked in dialogue with other spaces and works of art in various media in the building, such as the set of the Art of War tapestries (ca. 1706–12), woven by Judocos de Vos after designs by Lambert de Hondt.
This paper not only explores how the North Hall was invested with political meaning, but also examines the stakes in play with this aesthetic project. Contextualizing this space within a larger continuum of other interiors highlights the specific aims of both Cobham and Kent. Blenheim, the preeminent contemporary military palace, built for and decorated in honor of the Duke of Marlborough, Cobham’s former commander, is a particularly salient comparison. In addition, examining Kent’s ceiling in relation to his work at Kensington Palace and at Houghton Hall, as well as in relation to continental models, situates the artist’s work both within ambitious and distinguished artistic traditions and on the forefront of innovative design. Artistic production and ambition within the country house must be understood as concomitant with developing political roles of the landed elite. This paper suggests how a space such as Stowe’s North Hall must be considered a key site of artistic production, part of a dynamic artistic culture thriving in early eighteenth-century country houses.
Spring 2014 at the Bard Graduate Center
Details for upcoming events are available at the BGC Calendar:
As part of the Bard Graduate Center’s commitment to making our innovative programming more widely available and so shaping the global discourse about the cultural history of the material world, we will be live-streaming our seminar series and symposia on the BGC’s channel. We look forward to seeing you on West 86th Street in New York City for these events; however, for those of you who can’t attend in person, we look forward to your watching us live online.
February 11, 6:00–7:30
Conservation Conversations
Francesca Brewer, “Material Matters: Early Scientific Inquiry in Archaeology and Art”
Laurent Olivier, “Henri Hubert Between Durkheim and Mauss: The Visual Reconstruction of Archaeological Time”
February 12, 6:00–7:30
William Stenhouse, “Conserving Relics of the Classical Past: Civic Bodies and the Preservation of Antiquities in the Renaissance”
February 19, 6:00–7:30
Lara Penin, “Design Futures: Service Design for Social Innovation”
February 25, 6:00–7:30
Birgitt Borkopp-Restle, “How To Do Things with Textiles: Marie Antoinette at the Courts of Vienna and Versailles”
March 5, 10:00–5:45
Symposium | “The Material Text in Pre-Modern and Early Modern Europe”
March 25, 6:00–7:30
Alexander Marr, “Early Modern Instrument Aesthetics”
April 1, 6:00–7:30
Max Tillmann, “Les derniers goûts de France: Elector Max Emanuel and French Decorative Arts about 1715″
April 3, 9:00–5:30
Symposium | “Material Reformations: Towards a Material Culture of Protestantism”
April 9, 6:00–7:30
Glenn Wharton, “The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai’i”
April 11, 9:00–5:00
“Objects and Power: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Medieval Islamic Material Culture”
April 14, 1:30–5:00
Symposium | “Woven Worlds: The Social Lives of Andean Textiles”
April 23, 6:00–7:30
Nathan Schlanger, “Material Culture: The Concept and its Use in Historical Perspective”
April 24, 6:00–7:30
Conservation Conversations | Judith Olszowy-Schlanger & Michelle Chesner, “Case Study in Collaboration: Conserving Thousands of Lost Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts”
April 25, 9:00–5:00
Symposium | “Mapping New York”
April 29, 6:00–7:30
Ines Rotermund-Reynard, “Beads and Buttons from Briare: A Global Industrial Success Story from 19th-Century France”
May 9, 9:00–6:00
Symposium | Day 1: “History and Material Culture: World Perspectives
May 10, 9:00–6:00
Symposium | Day 2: “History and Material Culture: World Perspectives”
May 15, 6:00–7:30
Symposium Keynote: “Majolica: A World View”
May 16, 9:00–6:00
Symposium | “Majolica: A World View”
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