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»
Eighteenth-Century Studies 47 (Winter 2014)
Eighteenth-Century Studies 47 (Winter 2014) | Special Issue: Eighteenth-Century Easts and Wests
A R T I C L E S
Chi-ming Yang, “Eighteenth-Century Easts and Wests: Introduction,” pp. 95–101.
The essays in this “Eighteenth-Century Easts and Wests” issue of Eighteenth-Century Studies inaugurate the journal’s institutional relocation from California to New Haven, by way of India, China, Russia, and the Levant. Far from peripheral, the histories and perspectives that emerge from these sites are central to their interdisciplinary remapping of traditional eighteenth-century encounters of enlightenment and of imperialism. The virtues of a collection that is organized at this moment in time by an East-West rubric are several: it signals a regional, relational, and critical orientation that at once refuses the catchall, and too often Eurocentric, categories of the “exotic” or the “global,” and yet invites questions of comparison across and between cultures. Although seemingly axiomatic, it also calls into question its own bipartite structure of analysis by foregrounding the heterogeneity of the Easts and Wests under consideration here. The vector of a Pondichéry, Morocco, Andalusia, or Kiakhta shifts in relation to the particular local or intra-regional network of exchange in which it is situated. At the same time, the attention to place, and the importance of place to textual and archival analysis, keeps us attuned throughout to the larger structures of European and Asian states, companies, and institutions, as well as the continuing role of Western institutions in structuring the distinctions between Orient and Occident that open up fields of inquiry even as they push Asia to the margins of the modern academic mainstream. . . .
Matthew W. Mosca, “The Qing State and Its Awareness of Eurasian Interconnections, 1789–1806,” pp. 103–16.
This article examines the response of the Qing state to two instances in its foreign relations that required long-distance coordination between overland and maritime frontiers: the implementation of a rhubarb embargo in 1789 and the emergence between 1792 and 1806 of clear links between affairs at Kiakhta and Canton. It argues that Qing emperors and minsters had the intelligence capabilities to perceive that their empire was encircled within global networks of economic exchange and political rivalry. Unlike their Russian and British competitors, however, they pursued their interests primarily by seeking to break rather than forge these connections, designing their frontier as a series of discrete sectors rather than one integrated entity.
Kristina Kleutghen, “Chinese Occidenterie: The Diversity of ‘Western’ Objects in Eighteenth-Century China,” pp. 117–35.
The eighteenth-century Chinese taste for European things was met less by importing foreign goods than by domestically producing occidentalizing works of art, a diverse category of objects that can be termed “occidenterie.” This essay redirects the previous consideration of occidenterie from the Jesuit mission and imperial court painting toward a diversity of examples that span geography, material, format, and social class. The various ways in which Chinese occidenterie produced in different places and for different audiences employed elements connoting the West, thereby acquiring their foreign or exoticizing auras, more accurately reflects the empire-wide complexity of this phenomenon.
Danna Agmon, “The Currency of Kinship: Trading Families and Trading on Family in Colonial French India,” pp. 137–55.
In the French colony of Pondichéry, French and local actors alike drew on the shared idiom of kinship to strategically advance their political and commercial agendas. Recent scholarship has shown that the structures of family underlay early modern European state building and imperial expansion. This essay deploys this insight in the colonial context, to examine how indigenous families in the Tamil region entered into the European colonial project. For native commercial brokers, involvement with European newcomers could actually strengthen local family ties. Simultaneously, French employees of the Compagnie des Indes were eager to insert themselves into Tamil networks and did so by deploying public and inscribed performances of kinship.
Suzanne Marchand, “Where Does History Begin?: J. G. Herder and the Problem of Near Eastern Chronology in the Age of Enlightenment,” pp. 157–75.
This essay treats the very long set of debates concerning biblical and oriental chronology in early modern Europe down to the time of J. G. Herder and William Jones in the later eighteenth century. It shows that sacred chronology remained a burning issue for Herder; controversy about dating “oriental” texts did not wane, even as a series of newly-readable, original texts made their way westward. What did happen in Herder’s lifetime, however, was that a more specialized classical philology began to set the standards for what counted as wissenschaftlich, making it more difficult for scholarly “orientalists” to make the case that the cultures that they studied really had been at the forefront of cultural developments.
Nabil Matar, “Christians in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Mashriq,” pp. 177–94.
The article examines a selection of writings and icons by and about the Christian Arabs of the Middle East. Living under Ottoman rule, from Syria to Egypt, they became aware of an Arabic linguistic identity that helped them write and translate numerous chronicles, disputations, theological commentaries, sermons, and histories, in verse and prose. At the same time, they engaged the larger Muslim population in dialogue. While their legal status was that of second class dhimmis, they enjoyed their own religious space, by far more secure than was allowed minorities in the European World of expanding empires.
Srinivas Aravamudan, “East-West Fiction as World Literature: The Hayy Problem Reconfigured,” pp. 195–231.
This article focuses on the reception history of translations of Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan and how natural theodicy, empiricist experimentalism, and philosophical fiction influenced eighteenth-century England. Discussing the status of Ibn Tufayl’s ideas in relation to Edward Pococke, John Locke, Robert Boyle, and Daniel Defoe allows scholars to go beyond the East-West dichotomy and instead create an opening from eighteenth-century studies onto recent debates around world literature. Using Hayy as a prism, we can understand the opportunities as well as the drawbacks of a world literature paradigm, as theorized by Wolfgang von Goethe, Erich Auerbach, and more recent scholars.
R E V I E W A R T I C L E S
Ruth P. Dawson, “Actress Images, Written and Painted, Famed and Defamed, British and German,” pp. 233–35.
Review of Mary Helen Dupree, The Mask and the Quill: Actress-Writers in Germany from Enlightenment to Romanticism (2011); Laura Engel, Fashioning Celebrity: Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making (2011); and Gill Perry with Joseph Roach and Shearer West, The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons (2011).
Suzanne Desan, “Gender, Intimacy, and Politics in the French Revolutionary Era,” pp. 236–40.
Review of Andrew Cayton, Love in the Time of Revolution: Transatlantic Literary Radicalism and Historical Change, 1793–1818 (2013); Lindsay Parker, Writing the Revolution: A French Woman’s History in Letters (2013); and Annie Smart, Citoyennes: Women and the Ideal of Citizenship in Eighteenth-Century France (2011).
« Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture » 26 (2013)
From the Centre André Chastel:
“Les Ministres et les arts,” numéro thématique des Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture 26 (2013), €23.
Basile Baudez, “Le comte d’Angiviller, directeur de travaux : le cas de Rambouillet”
Alexandre Burtard, “Sur la piste des orientations artistiques de Nicolas Frochot, premier préfet de la seine sous le Consulat et l’Empire”
Rose-Marie Chapalain, “L’abbé Terray, seigneur de la Motte-Tilly”
Marie-Claude Chaudonneret, “Les ministres de l’intérieur et les arts sous le Directoire”
Hélène Drutinus, “Jean Naigeon, conservateur du Luxembourg sous le Consulat : les rapports d’un conservateur avec le Sénat et le ministre de l’intérieur”
Dominique Massounie, “Philibert Orry et l’embellissement du territoire autour de l’Instruction de 1748 : genèse d’un paysage routier et urbain”
Gabriele Quaranta, “Deux générations à côté du pouvoir : quelques remarques sur les arts chez les de Fourcy”
Aleth Tisseau des Escotais, “Finances et arts pendant la Révolution et le Premier Empire : l’exemple du Garde-Meuble”
Summaries for a selection of the articles are available as a PDF file here»
Oxford Art Journal, December 2013
From the latest issue of the Oxford Art Journal:
• Tim Ingold, “Lines in Time / Review of Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline (2010),” Oxford Art Journal 36 (December 2013): 463–64.
• Mechthild Fend, “Allegory and Fantasy: Portraiture Beyond Resemblance / Review of Sarah Betzer, Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, and History (2012) and Melissa Percival, Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting and Imagination (2012),” Oxford Art Journal 36 (December 2013): 465–67
• Richard Taws, “Ruins and Reputations / Review of Nina Dubin, Futures and Ruins: Eighteenth-Century Paris and the Art of Hubert Robert (2010) and Elizabeth Mansfield, The Perfect Foil: François-André Vincent and the Revolution in French Painting (2012),” Oxford Art Journal 36 (December 2013): 467–70.
The Burlington Magazine, December 2013
The (long) eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 155 (December 2013)
E D I T O R I A L
• Richard Shone, “Home is Where the Art Is,” p. 807.
Houses once occupied by distinguished residents are a special strand of the heritage industry that increasingly dominates a nation in thrall to all aspects of the past. We are constantly being exhorted to save and preserve this or that—a factory, a view, a manor house, a pier, a site of outstanding natural beauty, the historic habitat of wildlife, or, indeed, of the famous dead. Some of the shrines we visit are more larded with authenticity than others. Inevitably, the further back in time the illustrious lives were lived, the fewer objects there are likely to be which were familiar to the inhabitants. Was this her chair; was this really his easel? The aspic of preservation continually wobbles between the authentic and the fake. We do not always know—are not always told—whether something is ‘of the same period’ or ‘similar to’ or a ‘replica of’ what may or may not have been originally there, under the eye, the hand, the bottom or the feet of the presiding genius. Much depends on the piety of heirs and descendants, the
changing ownership of the house and the fluctuating stakes of fame. . . .
The latest appeal for an artist’s house has much to recommend it and should attract supporters beyond British shores. It concerns the restoration and preservation of J.M.W. Turner’s rural retreat at Twickenham, west London. This is an exceptional project and not simply a matter of tidying up and putting a blue plaque on the front. Turner designed this house himself, and plans for it abound in sketchbooks of c.1810–12, after he had purchased two plots of land near the Thames. The intention is to remove later additions (not serious) and reveal its compact interior, obviously influenced by his friend John Soane’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. For Turner, Sandycombe Lodge was for rest and recreation such as fishing (when he could ‘angle out the day’) and hosting friends on excursions for picnics, rather than for long residence and staying guests. Turner sold the house in 1826 and the adjoining meadow in 1848 (to the Windsor, Staines and South Western Railway). Under the auspices of the Turner’s House Trust, the appeal for £2 million is well underway, with support already assured from the Heritage Lottery Fund, among many other organisations and private donors, although further funding is still needed.2 It is expected that the public will be able to visit in 2016.
2. For an entertaining and informative account of the house, see C. Parry-Wingfield, with Foreword by A. Wilton: J.M.W. Turner. The Artist and his House at Twickenham, London 2012. Donations can be sent to the Trust at 11 Montpelier Row, Twickenham, tw1 2nq, or at www.turnerintwickenham.org.uk.
The full editorial is available here»
A R T I C L E S
• Gauvin Alexander Bailey and Fernando Guzmán, “The Rococo Altarpiece of St Ignatius: Chile’s Grandest Colonial Retable Rediscovered,” pp. 815–20.
An examination of the Rococo altarpiece of St Ignatius in Santiago, Chile, and of the European influences on this great retablo.
• David Pullins, “Dating and Attributing the Earliest Portrait of Benjamin Franklin,” pp. 821–22.
A re-evaluation of a painting now found to be the earliest known portrait of Benjamin Franklin, added to an earlier figure of a man by Robert Feke (c.1746–48).
R E V I E W S
• Elizabeth Goldring, Review of Laura Houliston, ed., The Suffolk Collection: A Catalogue of Paintings (English Heritage, 2012), p. 835.
• Michael Rosenthal, Review of Leo Costello, J.M.W. Turner and the Subject of History (Ashgate, 2012), p. 836.
• Basile Baudez, Review of the exhibition Soufflot: Un architecte dans la lumière, pp. 850–51.
• Xavier F. Salomon, Review of the exhibition Il Gran Principe Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663–1713) collezionista e mecenate, pp. 851–53.
• Angela Delaforce, Review of the exhibition Da Patriarcal à Capela Real de São João Baptista, pp. 855–56.
• Jamie Mulherron, Review of the exhibition Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800, pp. 856–58.
Forthcoming Issues of ‘Eighteenth-Century Studies’
From Joseph Roach’s introduction to the ASECS News Circular (Fall 2013). . .
. . . In addition to encouraging individual submissions of articles for consideration, Steve Pincus [editor of Eighteenth-Century Studies] has introduced a process for the regular creation of special issues on topics of current interest and future promise. The Lewis Walpole Library and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library have agreed to alternate in sponsoring Workshops in a particular interdisciplinary subfield. Scholars prominent in that field are invited to Farmington or the Yale campus to spend a day sharing their expertise and identifying potential contributors to a special issue. Workshops in three topics have been held so far: “The Eighteenth Century: East and West”; “The Maritime Eighteenth Century”; and “Performance in the Eighteenth Century.”
On February 23, 2013, the Walpole Library hosted a panel consisting of Felicity Nussbaum (English, UCLA), Robert K. Batchelor (History, Georgia Southern University), David Porter (English and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan), and Peter Perdue (History, Yale University). They identified key issues and trends, profiled new work in the field by both well established and emerging scholars, and made recommendations. After a process of further vetting, solicitation, and review, the East-West special issue (forthcoming) will be introduced by Chi-ming Yang (English, University of Pennsylvania) and contain the following articles: Danna Agmon (History, Virginia Tech), “The Currency of Kinship: Trading Families and Trading on Family in Colonial French India”; Srinivas Aravamudan (English, Duke), “East-West Fiction as World Literature: The Hayy Problem Reconfigured”; Kristina Kleutghen (Art History, Washington University in St. Louis), “Ocean Goods and Occidenterie: The Art of Eighteenth-Century Chinese Fascination with the West”; Suzanne Marchand (History, Louisiana State University) Herder’s “Oldest Document of Mankind” and the Problem of Near Eastern Chronology”; Nabil Matar (English, University of Minnesota), “Christians in Arabic Writings of the Eighteenth-Century Levant”; and Matthew Mosca (History, William and Mary), “The Qing State and Its Awareness of Eurasian Interconnections, 1789–1805.”
On May 23, 2013, the Beinecke Library hosted a panel on “The Maritime Eighteenth Century” consisting of Joseph C. Miller (History, University of Virginia), Neil Rennie (English, University College London), Felicia Gottmann (French, University of Warwick), Ellie Hughes (Art History, Yale Center for British Art), and Gagan Sood (History, Yale University). Plans for the special issue on “The Maritime Eighteenth Century” are pending.
On October 17, 2013, the Lewis Walpole Library hosted a panel on “Performance in the Eighteenth Century” consisting of Misty Anderson (English and Theatre, University of Tennessee Knoxville), Jeffrey Leichman (French, Louisiana State University); Kathleen Wilson (History and Cultural Studies, Stony Brook University), John Cooper (Clare-Mellon Fellow in the History of Art, Yale University) and Will Fleming (East Asian Languages and Literature and Theater Studies, Yale University). Virginia Johnson (Sociology, University of Michigan) was unable to attend, but she is communicating her views in writing. Plans for the “Performance” special issue are in the early stages.
With the cooperation with Carolyn C. Guile, ECS Review Editor, special issues will include reviews of pertinent new work on the featured topics. Members are encouraged to propose ideas for future special issues, including nominations for Workshop panelists and potential contributors. The Editor and Managing Editor held a session for interested scholars at the recent NEASECS Conference in New Haven, and a dynamic critical conversation ensued. More will be welcome, live or electronic. . .
The Wellcome Library Open Access Fund
With the move toward open access gaining more momentum, even as questions regarding who funds the access remain, this is a particularly interesting example from the Wellcome Library:
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The Wellcome Library is a free resource and is open to anyone who wants to use our collections. We know that lots of our users publish the outcome of their Library research. We want to encourage and support this research, and to ensure that it can be read and enjoyed by as many people as possible.
The Wellcome Trust has a long-standing commitment to Open Access, and provides funding to grant-holders to help them make their research accessible. We’re extending this principle to users of the Wellcome Library in a new scheme aimed at independent scholars, as well as students and university-based researchers who don’t have funding to cover the costs of open-access publishing.
The new Wellcome Library Open Access Fund is (and will always be) entirely voluntary – it’s up to library users whether they want to take advantage of it. We will pay the costs associated with open-access publishing for peer-reviewed journal articles, scholarly monographs or book chapters aimed at academic audiences. To qualify, you’ll need to have made substantial use of our collections; to have had your research accepted for publication; and to be ineligible for open-access funding from any other source.
In the Fall 2013 Issue of ‘Konsthistorisk Tidskrift’
Konsthistorisk Tidskrift / Journal of Art History 82 (Fall 2013)
A special issue of Konsthistorisk Tidskrift / Journal of Art History, guest edited by Peter McNeil (Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building University of Technology Sydney, Australia and Centre for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University) and Patrik Steorn (Centre for Fashion Studies, Stockholm University), addresses the theme of “Fashion and Print Culture: Translation and Transformation.”
From the editorial:
Print itself is both a materiality as well as a vehicle of representation. How did the meaning of various forms of fashion-related prints change as they were circulated in new contexts? What was the relationship of ‘fashion words’ and images? What were the mechanisms through which print – as newsprint, almanac, trade-card, respectful or satirical image – supported or undermined the spread of fashions, from ‘head-piece’ to ‘borders’? A pluralistic perspective is needed to better understand the transmission of ideas about fashion in print as well as in practice – and their interrelationship for the new readers and viewers of the period from the renaissance to the eighteenth century. This theme issue of Konsthistorisk tidskrift publishes some of the findings related to the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA)/European Science Foundation funded project ‘Fashioning the Early Modern: Innovation and Creativity in Europe, 1500–1800’ (FEM) and the portfolio ‘Print Culture and Fashion Products’ managed therein by Peter McNeil and Patrik Steorn. HERA FEM was a three-year major funded project conducted from 2010 to 2013.
C O N T E N T S
· Peter McNeil and Patrik Steorn, The Medium of Print and the Rise of Fashion in the West, pp. 135–56.
· Chia-hua Yeh, From Classical to Chic: Reconsidering the Prints from Varie acconciature di teste usate da nobilissime dame in diverse città d’Italia by Giovanni Guerra, c. 1589, pp. 157–68.
· Lena Dahrén, Printed Pattern Books for Early Modern Bobbin-made Borders and Edgings, pp. 169–90.
· Cecilia Candréus, The Use of Printed Designs in Seventeenth-Century Embroidery: Layers of Transfer and Interpretation, pp. 191–204.
· Mark de Vitis, Sartorial Transgression as Socio-political Collaboration: Madame and the Hunt, pp. 205–18.
· Patrik Steorn, Migrating Motifs and Productive Instabilities: Images of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century Swedish Print Culture, pp. 219–34.
· Carolina Brown, Portraits en savoyarde and the Shepherdess of the Alps: Portraits, Prints, Literature, and Fashion in Eighteenth-Century Sweden, pp. 235–51.
· Arlene Leis, Displaying Art and Fashion: Ladies’ Pocket-Book Imagery in the Paper Collections of Sarah Sophia Banks, pp. 252–71.
· Audrey Millet, Dessiner La Mode En Régime De Fabrique: L’imitation Au Cœur Du Processus Créatif, pp. 272–86.
The Burlington Magazine, October 2013
The eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 155 (October 2013)
A R T I C L E S
• Simon Lee, “A Newly Discovered Portrait of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David,” pp. 687–92.
Discusses the various versions of David’s portrait of the emperor, including a previously unknown example.
R E V I E W S
• François Marandet, Review of Karen Chastagnol, Nicolas Colombel, 1644–1717 (Editions Nicolas Chaudun, 2012), p. 711.
Painting in France at the end of Louis XIV’s reign has for many years been regarded as the precursor of the Rococo era. Charles de La Fosse’s aimables figures anticipate Antoine Watteau’s world of the fêtes galantes, who himself was the precursor of the peintre des grâces François Boucher. One of the merits of the exhibition devoted to Nicolas Colombel recently at the Musées des Beaux-Arts, Rouen (closed 24th February), was to demonstrate that the story of history painting c. 1700 was much more complex. Karen Chastagnol, curator of the exhibition, rightly insists on the direct link between early eighteenth-century French artists and the art of Poussin: as well as François Verdier, René-Antoine Houasse and Daniel Sarrabat, to which could be added the names of Sébastien II Leclerc of Henri de Favanne. . .
• Willibald Sauerländer, Review of Guilhem Scherf and Séverine Darroussat, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et son image sculptée, 1778–1798 (Paris: Varia, 2012), pp. 711–12.
The iconography of the grands hommes des Lumières has become a fashionable topic. In 1994 Guilhem Scherf wrote an important essay on the iconographie sculptée of Voltaire; now he has added a substantial text on Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la Révolution: Les avatars d’une representation sculptée. . .
• Robin Middleton, Review of John Martin Robinson, James Wyatt, 1746–1813: Architect to George II (London: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2012), pp. 712–13.
The range and diversity of James Wyatt’s designing, the sheer number of buildings with which he was involved (the Catalogue of Works lists 283 sites) makes any attempt to chart his career a task of the utmost difficulty. Anthony Dale’s pioneering but nonetheless solid account of Wyatt’s career is, however, quite overtaken by John Martin Robinson’s new book. Dates and attributions are sharpened. The nature of the ordnance work is fully revealed — all quite decent. But the most significant revelations are contained in the chapter on Wyatt’s activity as an industrial and furniture designer. . .
• Ann Massing, Review of Noémie Etienne, La Restauration des peintures à Paris, 1750–1815: Pratiques et discours sur la matérialité des œuvres d’art (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012), p. 713.
The period before and after the French Revolution in Paris was one of enormous change and, due to the French centralised administration, the French National Archives and the AMN (Archives des musées nationaux) are a fertile source of information for one of the most interesting periods of the history of painting restoration — when the King’s painters became professional art restorers. Noémie Etienne’s book contributes much to our knowledge of this fascinating period. Her archival research encompasses not only the rich resources in Paris, but also those in Rome, Venice, Madrid, Antwerp and Brussels. Her approach is mainly based on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century written sources, and the wealth of information she has culled is presented not as a chronological series of events but by theme. . .
• Shearer West, Review of Marcia Pointon, Portrayal and the Search for Identity (London: Reaktion, 2013), p. 714.
Marcia Pointon has a distinguished record of scholarly publication about portraiture, since Hanging the Head (1993) revolutionised and enlivened a historiography that had somewhat fallen in the doldrums. There are few historians of British art who have not been inspired by her nimble imagination, unexpected visual analysis and deep intellectual engagement with her textual and visual sources past and present. Her latest collection of essays on portraiture will not disappoint her admirers, although the more dazzling parts of her analysis are intertwined with sections that have the flavour of a work in progress . . .
• Rüdiger Joppien, Review of Olivier Lefeuvre, Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg (Paris: Athena, 2012), pp. 714–15.
. . . The catalogue raisonné is of exceptional value, and lies at the very heart of the book, . . . [which] gives a splendid account of Loutherbourg’s career as a painter, as well as a thoroughly documented, reliable idea of his artistic output. That this monograph could be published so fully and handsomely is due to the assistance of the Athena publishing house. Its appearance coincided with the retrospective exhibition devoted to the artist at the Musée de Beaux-Arts in Strausbourg (17th November 2012 to 18th February 2013), which the author organized. Both the book and the exhibition are indicative of the esteem in which France still holds the artist, even though he worked less than ten years in Paris and almost forty years in London.
Review | A Selection of Digital Humanities Projects
The current issue of Renaissance Quarterly includes Michael Ullyot’s assessment of five digital resources, several of which are relevant to eighteenth-century studies:
Michael Ullyot, “Review Essay: Digital Humanities Projects,” Renaissance Quarterly 66 (Fall 2013): 937–47.
“Are databases the defining genre of the twenty-first century? This question was at the core of a debate in 2007 over the nature of the Walt Whitman Archive in PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America). With digital resources now firmly established as an essential scholarly research tool, the question remains: what status do we afford databases relative to other forms of publication, like editions or monographs? The question is pertinent not just to tenure and promotion decisions, as the MLA Committee on Information Technology recently advocated, but more fundamentally to the circulation and provocation of ideas.1 If databases help us to interact with texts and cultural objects differently, enabling us to interpret them in ways we
could not otherwise do, how do they differ from monographs or journal articles? . . .” (937)
1. “Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media.” http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital; accessed 17 January 2013.
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· Mapping the Republic of Letters, which draws on the University of Oxford’s Electronic Enlightenment data, a collection containing over 50,000 letters.
· The Map of Early Modern London, a digital atlas of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London (Ullyot references, in passing, Locating London’s Past, which is based on John Rocque’s 1746 map).
· 1641 Depositions Project, which collects 8,000 manuscript accounts of the 1641 Irish rebellion of Catholic gentry against Protestant settlers from England and Scotland.
· The Medici Archive Project, which aims to catalog the Medici Archival Collection (Mediceo del Principato), a collection of over four million letters written between 1537 and 1743. To date, approximately 10 percent of the archive is included within the database, though Ullyot explains a number of new, “promising” features aimed at making the platform more efficient and more interactive.
· Early English Books Online, a collection of texts published between 1473 and 1700. “What makes EEBO truly innovative and interesting is the Text Creation Partnership (TCP), under which the University of Michigan and Oxford University began in 1999 to convert these PDFs [created from microfilm copies of the books] into fully searchable texts. The TCP has focused on transcribing all 70,000 of the unique monographs in EEBO’s collection. These transcriptions are cross-linked to the page images they are taken from, so they are fully integrated into EEBO. At present, only members of the TCP consortium of libraries are able to access this resource, but it will ultimately pass into the public domain [starting in 2015 and finishing up in 2020]” (945).
Enfilade
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