Study Day | Collecting through the Ages
From The Wallace Collection and the conference programme:
The Wallace Collection is thrilled to announce the relaunch of the History of Collecting as Collecting Past and Present. This new series will take the format of biannual, themed study days, which will include fascinating talks from leading specialists, exploring collecting through the ages. Exclusive interviews with modern-day collectors will also feature, revealing tantalising glimpses into how exceptional objects are brought together. These will be followed by drinks receptions that will act as unique forums for discussion. For those further afield or unable to make it to the museum, the talks can be watched online. And if you are interested in taking part as a speaker at future events, calls for papers will be shared throughout the year.
Bishan Singh, The Court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780–1839), Amritsar or Lahore, 1863–64
(Toor Collection)
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Collecting through the Ages
Online and in-person, The Wallace Collection, London, 5 July 2024
The Wallace Collection and the outstanding artworks it contains were brought together through the 18th and 19th centuries by an extraordinary family of collectors—the marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard and Lady Wallace. Delve into the history of collecting across the ages at our first Collecting Past and Present event. You’ll hear from leading academics and specialists on a variety of subjects, from the collecting of Shakespearean relics to the houses of Calouste Gulbenkian. Also join us for a conversation with a leading modern-day collector of Sikh, Indian and Islamic art, Davinder Toor, who will offer exclusive insights into his passions and inspirations.
Registration is available here»
p r o g r a m m e
10.15 Welcome
10.30 Verena Suchy — Women as Collectors of 18th-Century Cabinets
In the theory and history of collecting, women collectors have often been absent. Examples of noble women from different German principalities, however, indicate that in the 18th century it was common—if not necessary—for aristocratic women to assemble collections of jewellery, decorative art, and precious objects. Examining these collections with Dr Suchy will shine a light on the collecting practices of women and their political and representative functions.
11.15 Refreshments
11.45 Kirsten Tambling — Shakespearean Relics in the Royal Collection
1816 was the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s death, and, in this year, George, Prince Regent, ordered seven toothpick cases fashioned from ‘Shakespere’s Tree’. He was thus inserting the monarchy into a buoyant contemporary trade in Shakespearean ‘relics’. Focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries, Dr Tambling will investigate Shakespearean relics in the Royal Collection and the significance of royals collecting
Shakespeare.
12.45 Peter Humfrey — Amabel, Countess de Grey, as Collector and Curator in Post-Orléans London
Diarist, practising artist, and commentator on the political events of her time, Amabel was also a well-informed collector, both of Old Masters arriving on the London art market in the wake of the French Revolution, and of the work of her younger contemporaries. Further, she was heir to a distinguished collection of paintings from her family and was active in documenting and rehanging it. Professor Humfrey will take a closer look at this fascinating character.
13.30 Q&A
13.45 Lunch break
14.45 Barbara Bryant — Stephen T. Gooden and the Marketing of Edward Burne-Jones’s Legend of St George and the Dragon Series
In 1894, a series of seven paintings by Burne-Jones came to auction at Christie’s. Dr Bryant will consider the protracted attempts by various dealers to sell the series in the 1890s until the successful sale by the relatively new gallery owner Stephen T. Gooden. Gooden’s achievement will give an insight into how art
dealers of this period marketed the modern masters.
15.45 Vera Mariz — The Making of a House for Calouste Gulbenkian’s Art Collection
Dr Mariz will explore the various residences that housed Calouste Gulbenkian’s art collection, with a primary emphasis on 51 Avenue d’Iéna. While the acquisition process of the latter mirrors that of acquiring artworks, Gulbenkian’s satisfaction remains uncertain. Newly discovered materials and innovative approaches offer fresh interpretations of the hôtel Gulbenkian, which will be presented as an intimate testament to Gulbenkian’s essence as an art collector.
16.30 In Conversation with Davinder Toor
Two centuries ago, Punjab’s Sikh ruling elite lavishly patronised artists and craftsmen to enhance the splendour of their empire. By the mid-19th century, the Sikh empire had met its demise at the hands of the East India Company. Over the following century and a half, Sikh artefacts were dispersed across the globe. Some ended up in British institutional collections, while others were bought and sold by collectors. With Curatorial Assistant Alexander Collins, Davinder will discuss how he has pursued his passion as a collector to create a lasting legacy to the empire of the Sikhs.
17.15 Q&A
17.30 Drinks reception
Exhibition | Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King
Now on view at The Wallace Collection:
Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King
The Wallace Collection, London, 10 April — 20 October 2024
Explore the life of the great Sikh leader Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) in this major exhibition
With an unwavering sense of destiny, Ranjit Singh conquered the Punjab, an area that today encompasses Pakistan, following a period of anarchy caused by decades of Afghan invasions. By the early 19th century, he emerged as the undisputed Maharaja, establishing the influential Sikh Empire. Ranjit Singh’s leadership led to a golden age marked by thriving trade, flourishing arts, and a formidable army. Discover his story through nearly 100 stunning artworks, including jewellery and weaponry from the Sikh Empire drawn from major private and public collections. The exhibition also features historic objects from his court, courtiers, and family, including items owned by the Maharaja and the most famous of his 30 wives, Maharani Jind Kaur. Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King is a unique opportunity to see our remarkable collection of Sikh arms and armour alongside other Sikh artworks for the first time.
From Bloomsbury Press:
Davinder Toor, Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2024), 144 pages, ISBN: 978-1781301265, £20 / $30.
This book, published to coincide with the exhibition at the Wallace Collection, features historic artworks, jewellery, and weaponry from Ranjit Singh’s court, courtiers, and family members. Also highlighted are objects intimately connected with his son, Maharaja Duleep Singh—the deposed boy-king turned country squire who was a favourite of Queen Victoria and father of the prominent suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. Richly illustrated, this catalogue also reveals the achievements of Ranjit Singh’s European and American officials. Acknowledging Ranjit Singh’s remarkable feat of holding back the threat of a British invasion for four decades, these ‘Firangis’ would nickname their esteemed Sikh sovereign ‘The Napoleon of the East’.
Davinder Toor is a leading figure among a new generation of Sikh, Indian, and Islamic art collectors. He has acted as a consultant to major private collectors, auction houses and institutions such as the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Wallace Collection. He currently lectures on the ‘Arts of the Royal Sikh Courts’ and ‘Sikh Painting and Manuscripts’ for the V&A’s prestigious Arts of Asia course. Both he and objects from the Toor Collection of Sikh Art were featured on the BBC’s Lost Treasures of the Sikh Kingdom (2014) and The Stolen Maharajah: Britain’s Indian Royal (2018) documentaries. The Toor Collection, comprising more than 1,500 works, acts as a lasting legacy to the empire of the Sikhs.
c o n t e n t s
Maps
Foreword
Preface
Prelude to Power — Davinder Toor
Masters of War — Davinder Toor
The Lahore Durbar — Davinder Toor
Firangis — William Dalrymple
Legacies — Davinder Toor
Notes
Bibliography
Image credits
Online Course | Sâqib Bâburî on Ranjit Singh
An example of the programming offered in conjunction with exhibition Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King, now on view at The Wallace Collection:
Sâqib Bâburî | Life Stories: Ranjit Singh (1780–1839)
Online, Wednesdays 8, 15, and 22 May 2024, 18.00–20.00 BST (and recorded)
In the 18th century, the once powerful Timurid (Mughal) Empire retreated from the wealthy region of the Punjab, now divided between India and Pakistan. Unstable and continually plundered by invasions from Afghanistan, peace and prosperity was eventually restored to the region through local resistance and the enigmatic leadership of Ranjit Singh. Over three sessions, we’ll examine Ranjit Singh’s rise to power and the multifaceted reasons for the stability and duration of his almost four-decade reign—regarded as a highpoint in an otherwise violently unstable century. The course will be taught through Zoom Webinar. Each course session duration is 120 minutes, including a five-minute break and time for Q&A with the tutor. Tickets are for all dates (£60 / £57). Ticket holders will be emailed the Zoom link, Webinar ID, and Passcode 24 hours in advance of the first course session, which should be retained for accessing all three sessions of the course. The course will also be recorded. Within 48 hours of each course session, ticket holders will be emailed a link to view the recording, which will be available for two weeks only.
Sâqib Bâburî is a Content Specialist Archivist with the Qatar Foundation Partnership, based at the British Library, where he was formerly the Curator for Urdu Collections and Curator for Persian Manuscripts. His research interests include the history and art history of Persianate South Asia, palaeography and manuscript cultures, ornament and design, arms and armour, regalia, and culinary cultures. Dr Bâburî has worked among other institutions with the Royal Collection Trust, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Oldenburg, Göttingen, Singapore, King’s College London, Warburg Institute, SOAS University of London, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Session One | Ranjit Singh, an Origin Story
We’ll begin our course by tracing the rise of Ranjit Singh’s ancestors through the Persian account, Tazkirat al-umarāʾ (Remembrance of the Nobles) written by his contemporary Colonel James Skinner (1778–1841). We’ll also examine the significance of militant resistance to the Timurid Empire and Afghan invaders in Ranjit Singh’s journey to rule over a cosmopolitan kingdom, termed the Khalsa State, centred on Lahore.
Session Two | Between War and Peace
In our second session we’ll explore the tensions between Ranjit Singh’s private life and public duties, focusing on his early years as a free-spirited prince taking pleasure in military exercises and avoiding bookish learning. Looking at his household, consorts, and offspring, we’ll also chart the significant developments that shaped the course of his career as an administrator, patron, and military leader. We’ll look closely at architecture, paintings, manuscripts, documents, and arms and armour to understand the aesthetic and thematic range of Ranjit Singh’s patronage.
Session Three | European Encounters
In our final session we’ll consider Ranjit Singh’s role in promoting transregional and international commercial and diplomatic relations. Once holding an antagonistic attitude towards the Timurid Empire, we’ll understand his efforts to renew connections across India, as well as West and Central Asia. Finally, we’ll look at how Ranjit Singh’s later relations with Britain, Russia, and France anticipated future disputes over the Afghanistan-Punjab corridor, leading to the collapse of the Khalsa State within a few years of his demise.
New Book | Liberty, Equality, Fashion
From Norton:
Anne Higonnet, Liberty, Equality, Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution (New York: Norton, 2024), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-0393867954, $35.
Three women led a fashion revolution and turned themselves into international style celebrities.
Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, had nothing left to lose. After surviving incarceration and forced incestuous marriage during the worst violence of the French Revolution of 1789, they dared sartorial revolt. Together, Joséphine and Térézia shed the underwear cages and massive, rigid garments that women had been obliged to wear for centuries. They slipped into light, mobile dresses, cropped their hair short, wrapped themselves in shawls, and championed the handbag. Juliette made the new style stand for individual liberty. The erotic audacity of these fashion revolutionaries conquered Europe, starting with Napoleon. Everywhere a fashion magazine could reach, women imitated the news coming from Paris. It was the fastest and most total change in clothing history. Two centuries ahead of its time, it was rolled back after only a decade by misogynist rumors of obscene extravagance. New evidence allows the real fashion revolution to be told. This is a story for our time: of a revolution that demanded universal human rights, of self-creation, of women empowering each other, and of transcendent glamor.
Anne Higonnet is professor of art history at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she teaches a course called ‘Clothing’. She has received many awards, including Guggenheim and Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellowships.
Conference | Captivity: Assembling Nature’s Histories
From the Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies at UCLA:
Captivity: Assembling Nature’s Histories
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, 17 May 2024
Conference organized by Anna Chen, Rebecca Fenning Marschall, and Bronwen Wilson
The early modern period was a hothouse for the study of physical things in the natural world, and for the collection and assembly of them in human-made physical spaces. In other periods, botanical samples were preserved by diarists in their journals, such as Poems and Riddles written by Mary Woodyeare Tibbits (ca. 1764–1840), and Pressed specimens of butterflies and moths (1905), compiled by Yasushi Nawa (1857–1926), which are both in the Clark Library’s collections. Nawa’s lepidochromic book showcases the technique of ‘printing butterflies’, or fixing the scales of their wings onto paper. Specimens of all sorts were admired for their variegated colors, curated in collections, and assembled into books. Birds were captured in aviaries for their sounds, or killed and prepared as specimens for display, study, and scientific descriptions. Plants were transported across oceans in terraria, and contained in plots and glasshouses.
Libraries were deeply implicated in these historical pursuits of the collection and classification of the contents of the natural world, as are modern libraries that now grapple with whether and how to preserve the nature that enters their collections. The interior-exterior division of libraries is a highly regulated boundary. Libraries strive tirelessly to seal the building envelope against the environmental conditions of the outdoors, as fluctuating temperature and humidity levels, mold spores, insects, rodents and natural disasters all threaten damage to their holdings. Libraries also capture books about nature on their shelves, as flora and fauna cohabitate on their grounds. At the Clark Library, Cooper hawks nest, feral cats roam, and roots of trees probe the ground in search of water. What might we learn from these efforts to capture and to conserve nature, coupled with its potential to decompose or to invade environments?
The conference is free to attend with advance registration and will be held in-person at the Clark Library and livestreamed on the Center’s YouTube Channel. No registration is required to watch the livestream. In-person registration will close on Monday, May 13 at 5.00pm. Seating is limited at the Clark Library; walk-in registrants are welcome as space permits.
p r o g r a m
9.15 Introduction — Anna Chen, Rebecca Fenning Marschall, and Bronwen Wilson (UCLA)
9.30 Panel 1 | Flight and Containment
Moderator: Rebecca Fenning Marschall (UCLA)
• Cynthia Fang (UCLA) — Containing Sound, Exhibiting Images: An Aviary at the European Palace Complex in Qing China
• V. E. Mandrij (University of Konstanz / University of Amsterdam) — The Lepidochromy Technique: Capturing Colors of Butterflies and Moths in Books and Paintings
• Jennifer Martinez Wormser (Ella Strong Denison Library, Scripps College) — One Hundred Years Later: Ellen Browning Scripps and William Leon Dawson’s Birds of California (1923)
11.00 Coffee break
11:30 Panel 2 | Accretions
Moderator: Anna Chen (UCLA)
• Tori Champion (University of St. Andrews) — Material Afterlives: The Shell Craze in 18th-Century France and the Forgotten Mollusc
• Joy Zhu (UCLA) — Misinterpreting Fossil Evidence: On the Discovery of ’Dragon Fossils‘ in China, 1915–30
• Andrew Weymouth (University of Idaho) — Humanizing Nature Research History with Static Web Design
1.00 Lunch, with a display of Clark Library materials in the North Book Room
2.30 Panel 3 | Unruly Collections
Moderator: Rebecca Fenning Marschall (UCLA)
• David Jones (Northwestern University) — In However Low Degree: Reframing the Role of Silverfish in Louis Fleckenstein’s Photography
• Ashley Cataldo (American Antiquarian Society) — From Weeding to Reseeding: Removing (and Restoring) Botanicals in Library Collections
• Deirdre Madeleine Smith (University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Museum of Natural History) — Whither ‘Papered Leps’: On Accidental Human Archives at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History
4.00 Coffee break
4.30 Panel 4 | Assembling
Moderator: Bronwen Wilson (UCLA)
• Lindsay Wells (Independent Scholar) — Portrait of a Colonial Botanist: Joseph Dalton Hooker and the Visual Politics of Plant Science
• Frederico Câmara (Independent Scholar) — Views of Paradise: A Photographic Atlas of the Artificial Environments of Zoological Gardens and Aquariums in Oceania
Upcoming Events from The Georgian Group
Upcoming events from the The Georgian Group:
Hampshire Visit: Stratfield Saye House
Tuesday, 7 May 2024
Stratfield Saye House
In the heart of the English countryside on the Hampshire/Berkshire border, you’ll find the elegant, but intimate, Stratfield Saye House, home to the Dukes of Wellington since 1818. After the Battle of Waterloo the First Duke of Wellington, or the Great Duke as he was universally known, was regarded as the saviour of his country and of Europe. A grateful nation voted a substantial sum of money to enable him to buy a house and an estate worthy of a great national hero. After considering many far grander properties, he chose Stratfield Saye. Stratfield Saye House does not compare in either size or grandeur with the other great ducal houses, and it was the Great Duke’s intention to build a huge palace in the northeast corner of the park, but fortunately the money was not available. He therefore set about making his home convenient and comfortable and, as a very practical man, he was well satisfied with the results. The House today is lived in by the 9th Duke of Wellington and his family. Whilst the Great Duke’s wonderful collection of pictures are at Apsley House, which was given to the nation by the 7th Duke in 1947, Stratfield Saye House contains a fascinating collection of paintings and furniture purchased by the Great Duke with many mementos of his occupation of his modest country home. This visit is for Georgian Group members only, and participants must make their own arrangements for transport. Refreshments and lunch are included (£50).
Sue Berry | Builders as Architects and Their Significant Influence in Town and Country: The Morris and Wild Families of Sussex, 1720–1840
Online, 7 May 2024, 6.30pm
Arthur and John Morris played an important role in the development of Coombe, Firle, and Glynde Places in Sussex and worked on houses in Lewes. They dealt directly with clients even when there was an architect. Amon and Amon Henry Wilds worked mainly in two towns, Amon Henry shifting from builder to architect. He made a big impact on Brighton, designing houses, projects, churches, and chapels. There must have been many more local entrepreneurs like these, and we need to know more about them. The Wilds moved to Brighton and undertook speculative development as well as worked for clients. The Morris family did not, as Lewes did not offer the same opportunities. £5 members / £7 non-members.
Steven Brindle | The Greek Revival in England
In-person, The Georgian Group, Fitzroy Square, London, 6.30pm
In the 1750s a debate unfolded in Rome as to which was superior: Greek or Roman art? Despite the publication of volume 1 of Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of Athens (1762), British architects and clients instinctively took their inspiration from Roman art for another generation or more. Steven Brindle considers the development of the Greek style in England, from its tentative and experimental mid-Georgian beginnings, to its sudden triumph in the Regency age, its establishment as the ‘public style’ in the 1810s and 20s, its relationship to the mainstream neoclassicism of the late-Georgian age, its decline—and its somewhat different course in Scotland. £15 members / £18 non-members.
Online Talk | Brian Cowan on Extra-Illustration
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Today, from YCBA:
Brian Cowan | Extra-Illustration and the British Historical Imagination, ca. 1660–1850
Online, 30 April 2024, 12.30pm (Eastern Time)
Extra-illustration was a practice that developed in the later eighteenth century as a means by which collectors added imagery (most often prints, but sometimes manuscripts, objects, or original artworks) to existing books. In this talk, Brian Cowan will examine the practice of extra-illustration as a means of understanding the varieties of British historical imagination in the long eighteenth century. His project explores the relationships between political history, secret history, and biography as these genres developed over the course of the long eighteenth century in Britain.
The session is part of YCBA’s Art in Context series. Presented by faculty, staff, Student Guides, and Visiting Scholars, these talks focus on a particular work of art—often in the museum’s collections or special exhibitions—through an in-depth look at its style, subject matter, technique, or time period.
Registration is available here»
Brian Cowan is an associate professor of history at McGill University. He has published widely on early modern British and European history and is a founding member and inaugural president of the board for the international research group devoted to the history of sociability in the long eighteenth century. This group recently launched DIGIT.EN.S, an online encyclopedia of the history of sociability. Cowan’s publications include The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (2005), The State Trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell (2012), and as a member of the twenty-two-person ‘multigraph collective’ Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in the Era of Print Saturation (2018). His edited collection on The Cultural History of Fame in the Age of Enlightenment is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic, and he is currently editing (with Valerie Capdeville) The Oxford Handbook of the History of the European Enlightenment for Oxford University Press.
Image: Edward Hyde Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England begun in the year 1641: with the precedent passages, and actions, that contributed thereunto, and the happy end, and conclusion thereof by the king’s blessed restoration and return upon the 29th of May, in the year 1660 (Oxford, 1702–04).
Exhibition | High Strung: 500 Years of Keyboard Instruments
One of the world’s finest musical instrument collections (boasting the world’s oldest cello as well as significant archival resources) is housed on the campus of the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, in the southeast corner of the state, about 40 miles from Sioux City, Iowa. Founded in 1973 around Arne Larson’s collection of some 2500 instruments, the National Music Museum recently finished a major renovation and re-installation project. In January, Elizabeth Rembert provided a profile for NPR’s All Things Considered (2 January 2024), and later that month the museum announced the acquisition of five cellos (including 17th- and 18th-century instruments), 27 bows, archival materials, and a Hawaiian guitar previously owned by the late cellist Robert Cancelosi. In addition to the NMM’s regular exhibitions, this special exhibition is on view through the end of the year:
High Strung: Five Centuries of Stringed Keyboard Instruments
National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota, March — December 2024
For over 600 years, stringed keyboard instruments have served as repositories for human imagination, science, technology, craft, artistry, and music. They are admired for their stature—and oftentimes stunning beauty—alongside their ability to play both melody and harmony. Keyboard innovation has continuously expanded throughout the world, throughout time. The special exhibition High Strung: Five Centuries of Stringed Keyboard Instruments explores the form, function, and development of keyboard instruments from early harpsichords to the modern piano. The special exhibition brings together nearly 20 keyboard instruments from the NMM’s collections—some of which have never before been exhibited.
Exhibition | 18th-Century Masterpieces from the Uffizi
This is the fourth of ten planned exhibitions to emerge from a 2021 partnership between the Uffizi and the Bund One Art Museum (with thanks to Art History News for noting it). From coverage in Shine, an affiliate of Shanghai Daily:
18th-Century Masterpieces from the Uffizi
Bund One Art Museum, Shanghai, 11 April — 25 August 2024
The exhibition reveals the artistic evolution brought by the political and social changes in the 18th century through the presentation of the Uffizi’s 18th-century collection of treasures, varying from grand historical themes to detailed common customs, showing a panoramic view of the splendid artistic development during that pivotal period in Western history.
Many modern and even contemporary features began to take shape at this time. It was also the Age of Enlightenment, illuminated by the light of reason, a new secular way of thinking that broke through prejudice and brought an irreversible and progressive change that encompassed culture, economy and society.
The Uffizi’s collection of 18th-century art comes mainly from the customizations and collections of the last descendants of the Medici family (rulers of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany until 1737) and of the Habsburg-Lorraine family, the successors of the Grand Duchy. The exhibition features 80 masterpieces . . .
Call for Papers | Watercolour & Weather, 1750–1850
Louis Ducros, View of the Grand Port of Valette, detail, ca. 1800–01, black ink (pen), watercolor, heightened with gouache and oil on paper, 78 × 127 cm (Lausanne: MCBA).
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From the conference website:
Watercolour & Weather, 1750–1850 / Aquarelle & phénomènes météorologiques, 1750–1850
Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, 5–6 June 2025
Organized by Bérangère Poulain and Desmond Kraege
Proposals due by 15 June 2024
Simultaneously with a resurgence of landscape painting, the period 1750–1850 in European art witnessed an increased interest in the weather, not only as concerns its momentary states (clouded skies, lightning), but also the broader study of meteorological phenomena and of their unfolding over time. Besides the more radical events—such as storms—that were frequently represented, this period thus developed a keen observation of subtle moments of changing weather, allowing artists to combine varied effects of light. This is true not only of the most famous British painters (Joseph Mallord William Turner, John Constable, Alexander and John Robert Cozens) but also of figures from further afield, such as Giovanni Battista Lusieri, Caspar David Friedrich, and Abraham Louis Rodolphe Ducros.
In close connection to this artistic evolution, the period under scrutiny also witnessed the development of meteorology and climatology as scientific disciplines. This led both to Luke Howard’s classification of clouds (1804) that remains in use to this day, and to the theorisation of the greenhouse effect by Joseph Fourier in 1824. A new consciousness of the atmosphere and of its complexities, leading directly to present concerns regarding climate change, can thus be traced back to this cultural environment.
Luke Howard’s study of clouds rested partly upon watercolour sketches representing nebulous formations, revealing that the multiplication of weather-related images extended beyond the professional field of landscape painting to encompass works by scientists. Likewise, architects were not to be excluded: Pierre François Léonard Fontaine, chiefly known for his role in Napoleon I’s ambitious construction projects, chose to cover his design for a monumental cemetery on Montmartre with a stormy sky (Paris, ENSBA, PC 82161); whereas in Joseph Gandy’s cutaway view of Sir John Soane’s Bank of England (London, Sir John Soane’s Museum, P267), rays of sunlight part the clouds to illuminate the sprawling structure. These works confirm that watercolour, together with closely related techniques such as wash drawing, gouache, and hand-coloured etching, constituted the chief medium for the pictorial exploration of weather conditions by figures hailing from varied disciplinary horizons. As a water-based technique, comparatively rapid in uptake and highly adapted to outdoor use, it was particularly suitable for capturing fleeting atmospheric variations on the spot. Professional painters’ preparatory watercolor sketches for oil paintings also ensured that a strong connexion was maintained with this more highly specialised technique. More generally, parallels emerge between representations of the weather in watercolour and in other media such as oil and pastel, each technique furthermore being used to produce both studies and finished works.
While considerable attention has been paid to representations of meteorological conditions by the most famous British landscape painters, the broader development of this phenomenon remains to be studied, both in British, Continental, and non-Western art: how can Swiss painter Abraham Louis Rodolphe Ducros’s sudden interest in increasingly dramatic skies around 1790 be explained, and what impact did his work exert on his younger contemporaries? Likewise, what interactions emerge between the works of Indian artist Sita Ram and the evolving British watercolour? What role was performed by the exchange of ideas and artworks in connection with the Grand Tour or other travels?
This conference will attempt to elucidate some of these questions, along axes of enquiry that might include—but are not limited to—the following:
• The evolving concern for the representation of weather conditions in watercolour painting (or wash drawing, gouache, or hand-coloured etching) between 1750 and 1850
• Convergences or divergences between the practice of watercolour painting and the development of meteorology as a science
• Watercolour representations of weather conditions outside the field of professional landscape painting; for instance in works by amateurs, architects, scientists, or their draughtsmen
• Individual painters’ evolving engagement with the weather, including their affinity or familiarity with specific meteorological phenomena
• Interactions between representations of the weather in watercolour and in other pictorial techniques (including oil painting, oil studies, and pastel), and between open-air and workshop-based practice
• Weather conditions and (traces of) human presence in a landscape
• Reflections in watercolour painting of broader cultural (including literary) pairings between weather and emotion
• Continuities and/or distinctions between topographical representation (including the veduta tradition) and the integration of weather conditions in the image, particularly as regards historical perceptions of the ‘objectivity’ or ‘subjectivity’ of these representations
• Women artists’ contributions to the pictorial exploration of meteorological phenomena
• The possible impact on watercolour painting of maritime knowledge and of seafarers’ preoccupations regarding weather conditions
This conference forms part of a broader research and teaching project at the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva concerning Swiss watercolour artist Abraham Louis Rodolphe Ducros, whose personal collection forms the original nucleus of the Lausanne MCBA Museum. The conference will include a viewing of a selection of his works.
The conference will be held on 5 and 6 June 2025 at the Lausanne MCBA Museum. We look forward to receiving proposals (max. 400 words) for 20-minute papers until 15 June 2024 at the following addresses: berangere.poulain@unige.ch and desmond-bryan.kraege@unil.ch. Accommodation in Lausanne will be provided, as well as reimbursement of travel expenses within Europe. The primary conference language is English, though proposals in French will also be accepted. A collective publication is planned.
Organisers
Bérangère Poulain (University of Geneva)
Desmond Kraege (University of Lausanne)
Scientific Committee
Basile Baudez (Princeton University)
Jan Blanc (University of Geneva)
Werner Busch (Freie Universität Berlin)
Ketty Gottardo (The Courtauld Gallery, London)
Catherine Lepdor (Lausanne MCBA Museum)
Camille Lévêque-Claudet (Lausanne MCBA Museum)
Constance McPhee (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Christian Michel (University of Lausanne)
Perrin Stein (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Enfilade 
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