Enfilade

Jean-Baptiste Raguenet, A View of Paris from the Pont Neuf, 1763, oil on canvas, 46 × 84 cm
(Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 71.PA.26)

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From The Courtauld, with a few of the 20 offerings noted below (there also are 5 online courses available) .  . .

Summer School at The Courtauld

The Courtauld, London, June — July 2025 (each class lasts one week)

Each in-person Summer School course is full-time, and while you can take only one course per week, you are able to pursue a particular interest in a period or theme across two or more weeks. The teaching day generally lasts from 10:00 to 16:30, with registration from 9:30 on the first day. Morning or afternoon classroom sessions are complemented by object-focused study in London’s museums, galleries, printrooms, churches, and other sites. We benefit greatly from The Courtauld Gallery. It features as a teaching resource in many of our courses, and is the venue for post-graduate talks introducing aspects of our collections and for our Summer School party. The fee for all Summer School on-campus courses is £645 (each online course is £395).

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#6  Harvey Shepherd | Rococo to Revolution: French Art and its Geographical Contexts, 1700–1789
In-person, 23–27 June 2025

This course will examine the ever-changing roles of French art during the turbulent eighteenth century, from the later years and death of Louis XIV to the Revolution of 1789. Students will consider the role that French art played in forming identities and tastes across the world; from shaping desirable aristocratic luxury to envisaging radical futures.

French art and taste of the eighteenth century will be encountered through a series of ever-widening geographical contexts. The opening classes will examine the political and economic centres of France, looking at the Château de Versailles, as well as the artistic culture of Paris and its society during the Enlightenment and the early years of the French Revolution. Alongside the court and the capital, we will consider France’s periphery and its neighbours, examining interactions with cities like Lyon and Marseille, and both peacetime connections and wartime rivalries with European states such as Great Britain, The Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire. Lastly, the course considers the wider global contexts of French art as it was both collected and sent abroad, examining the colonial and imperial interactions of France in an increasingly connected world, from the court of Qing China to Senegal, India, and the Caribbean.

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#7  Nicola Moorby | Travelling Light: Turner, Constable, and the Shape of British Art
In-person, 23–27 June 2025

This course will explore a fascinating aspect of British art history, the parallel careers of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. Between them, these giants of landscape painting revolutionised the status of their genre, transforming the depiction of place through empirical experience and emotive response.

However, their approaches were very different. Turner roamed throughout Britain and the Continent in search of inspirational scenery, combining observation of nature with literary and historical references. By contrast, Constable nurtured his vision at home, rooting himself in the familiar and the everyday. As well as comparing differences and similarities within their works, we shall examine the wider cultural contexts pertinent to their careers: the reproductive print market, the nineteenth-century experience of travel, and particularly the role of the Royal Academy in London, the arena where their robust professional rivalry was played out. We shall also look closely at the artists’ materials and techniques, particularly their innovations with oil paint, watercolour and their use of sketchbooks. The course culminates with a discussion of their respective artistic legacies and their changing reputations through the twentieth century and beyond.

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#13  Kyle Leyden | Constructing the Heart of Empire: London’s Public Architecture
In-person, 30 June – 4 July 2025 (the course is booked, but there is a waiting list)

Architecture is the art form whose presence, symbolic message and socio-political legacy cannot be avoided. The construction of great buildings is an undertaking imbued with significant symbolic and political currency which continues to have an unavoidable resonance with those who continue to interact with these spaces today.

Through an overview of key historical moments and an examination of several major architectural projects, this course will present London as a city in which architecture was consciously deployed as a potent device through which the changing essential values of, and core political vision for, the British Empire were communicated to Londoners, the wider British population and to foreign observers. It will also consider current debates about how post-imperial societies can and ought to deal with the highly contested legacies of these prominent urban spaces.

Engaging with diverse issues and concepts, the course gives students an opportunity to gain a solid understanding of the social and artistic history of London and its critical role as a stage for the theatre of Empire. It features visits to major public buildings and royal palaces and includes spaces that are otherwise inaccessible to the general public including the Royal Apartments of the Palace of Westminster, and the spectacular interiors of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

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#17  Giulia Martina Weston | Beyond Artemisia: Italian Women Artists in the Long 17th Century
In-person, 7–11 July 2025

Over the last decade a conspicuous number of monographic exhibitions has been devoted to Italian women artists of the early modern period, paving the way for notable scholarly findings, chief rediscoveries and newly emerged research avenues. Focusing on the careers and production of a selected group of artists, this course will unveil the most significant discoveries gathered so far, aiming to engage its attendees in a rich exchange on the roles played by these extraordinary women in their society as well as consider what lesson can be drawn today from their experiences.

Ranging from the pioneering examples set by Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana to the versatile output of Artemisia Gentileschi and Giovanna Garzoni, our enquiry will look at specific geographical areas (such as the Bologna of Elisabetta Sirani and Ginevra Cantofoli) and consider a wealth of artistic media, from minute artworks on parchment to Plautilla Bricci’s grand architectural designs. Visits to the National Gallery and The Courtauld Print Room will allow us to gain first-hand knowledge of this exquisite group of artists, and to consider their legacy in dialogue with the predominant art-historical canon.

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#23  Sheila McTighe | Re-Imagining the Everyday: Genre Paintings and Prints in 16th- to 18th-Century Europe
In-person, 14–18 July 2025

The secular subject matter we now call ‘genre’ imagery grew steadily in popularity through the early modern period across Europe. From depictions of peasants at work or play to the erotic intrigues of the aristocracy, genre imagery explores the full range of human behaviours, sometimes imagined, and sometimes rooted firmly in real life. We shall investigate this subject matter and the artistic practices of naturalism or realism with which it was often allied in works by artists like Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Sofonisba Anguissola, Caravaggio, Jacques Callot, Diego Velazquez, Georges de La Tour, Judith Leyster, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Antoine Watteau, and Jean-Siméon Chardin.

In contemporary writings about art, genre painting was often decried as unworthy of an ambitious artist. However, primary sources show that such art was highly sought after, whether by elite patrons commissioning paintings or by ‘middling’ people buying images made for the marketplace. Printed images were a constant source of new subjects drawn from modern life, while prints reproducing paintings further expanded the range of genre art and reached a wide audience. Among other, we shall discuss what the functions of everyday imagery might have been for such a diverse body of people. Classroom sessions will be complemented by visits to London’s rich collections of paintings and prints.