PMC notes

A New Chapter

O c tob er 2015 / No. 1 p aul-mellon -c e nt re.a c .uk

PMC Staff Director of Studies Mark Hallett Deputy Director for Collections and Publications Martin Postle Deputy Director for Finance and Administration Sarah Ruddick Deputy Director for Research Sarah Victoria Turner Librarian Emma Floyd Archivist and Records Manager Charlotte Brunskill Archives and Library Assistant Frankie Drummond Charig Assistant Archivist and Records Manager Jenny Hill Fellowships and Grants Manager Mary Peskett Smith Digital Manager Tom Scutt Events Manager Ella Fleming Operations Manager Lyndsey Gherardi Education Programme Manager Nermin Abdulla Picture Researcher Maisoon Rehani IT Administrator Zaiba Badrudin Finance Officer Barbara Ruddick Editor, Special Projects Guilland Sutherland Director’s Assistant and Office Administrator Harriet Fisher Receptionist Ellie Mayes Buildings Officer Harry Smith Editorial Assistant Postdoctoral Fellow Hana Leaper Brian Allen Postdoctoral Fellow Jessica Feather

Senior Research Fellows, Special Projects Hugh Belsey Elizabeth Einberg Eric Shanes Advisory Council Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery Alixe Bovey, Courtauld Institute of Art Christopher Breward, University of Edinburgh David Peters Corbett, University of East Anglia Anthony Geraghty, University of York Michael Hatt, University of Warwick Richard Marks, Art Historian and Curator Martin Myrone, Tate Britain Andrew Saint, English Heritage MaryAnne Stevens, Art Historian and Curator Shearer West, University of Sheffield Alison Yarrington, Loughborough University Board of Governors Peter Salovey, President of Yale University Ben Polak, Provost for Yale University Amy Meyers, Director of Yale Center for British Art Stephen Murphy, Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer of Yale University Photography Martine La Roche Design Cultureshock Media Contact us Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art 16 Bedford Square London, WC1B 3JA United Kingdom T: 020 7580 0311 F: 020 7636 6730 www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

Contents October 2015 — No.1

Director’s Note 4 Back Home 6 British Art Studies 10 Fellowships and Grants 12 Spotlight on Slade 14 “Map-work” 16 Adventures in the Archives 18 Drawing Room Displays 22 Richard Wilson at Aberystwyth 26 Publications Report 30 The Romney Catalogue 32 Research Events and Collaborations 34 PMC Events Calendar 36 PMC Profile: David Chia 37 YCBA Events Calendar 2

Director’s Note

I’m delighted to introduce the first issue of PMC Notes, which has been launched to accompany the Paul Mellon Centre’s return to expanded and redecorated premises in Bedford Square. Like our gleaming and strikingly spacious new home, it marks a fresh chapter in the Centre’s history. It succeeds our long-established and much-loved newsletter, brilliantly edited for many years by Guilland Sutherland, and is designed to offer you a lively and colourful way of keeping up to date with our many activities and projects.

PMC Notes will appear three times a year and will feature a mix of reports and features, together with a calendar of events taking place both here and at our sister institution, the Yale Center for British Art. We hope you will find it both interesting and useful. Read it in tandem with our recently redeveloped website and – from November onwards – our new online journal, British Art Studies. Keep it handy on your desks and shelves. Pop it in your pockets and bags. Most importantly of all, use it as a prompt to come and visit us when you can. If you have known us of old, it will be wonderful to welcome you back; if not, try and find the time to participate in one of our events, to browse in our beautiful Public Study Room and to enjoy our new Drawing Room Displays. Either way, we look forward to seeing you soon.

Mark Hallett Director of Studies

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Lecture Room, 15 Bedford Square

Back Home Returning to 15 & 16 Bedford Square

Martin Postle, Deputy Director for Collections and Publications, reports on the busy run-up to our re-opening As I write, in the dwindling days of summer, the Paul Mellon Centre is a hive of activity. Our construction company, Sykes & Son, is working hard to complete the refurbishment of our old building at 16 Bedford Square and our newly acquired building next door at number 15.

Walls and ceilings are being given fresh coats of paint and new colours, cornices are being repaired and refurbished, chandeliers hoisted into position, banisters polished, and carpets laid.

The last eight months have seen a complete transformation of the Centre. For a start we have doubled our size through the acquisition of the lease on number 15 Bedford Square. As visitors will see, there is a new sense of space as vistas open out between the two buildings, connected laterally across four levels, from the basement to the top floor. There is a wide range of new teaching and seminar rooms, including a top-floor teaching space for our Yale in London programme, which enjoys commanding views over the rooftops and chimneys of Bloomsbury. Below stairs, across the two buildings, is a labyrinth of Research Collections storage rooms, bringing together in one integrated space the Centre’s holdings of publications, archive and photographic archive material. Here, our Research Collections staff also have their own dedicated work space, where they can catalogue acquisitions and prepare material for readers. On the ground floor of number 16 we have a new reception area, which we are calling the “Drawing Room”; and on the ground floor of number 15, we even have a beautiful catering kitchen and a new staff room.

Some things remain the same, however. Our spacious Public Study Room to the rear of number 16 is still there – albeit in a lighter and rather serene shade of green.

Public Study Room, 16 Bedford Square

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BRITISH ART STUDIES Hana Leaper, one of our Postdoctoral Fellows, reflects on her role in developing our new online journal

In the ten short months I have been working at the Centre, British Art Studies has grown from an innovative and exciting idea into an almost-realised online publication, which we will launch in November.

British Art Studies is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that will feature research and scholarship of the highest quality on all aspects of British art, architecture, and visual culture in their most diverse and international contexts. This is a joint publication between the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Yale Center for British Art, and marks a commitment on the part of both of our institutions to setting new intellectual and creative benchmarks for online publishing in our field.

The journal will have its own website, which we have developed with a company called Keepthinking, who have also been responsible for building the Paul Mellon Centre’s new site. With our colleagues at

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British Art Studies

Keepthinking, we have been working hard to create a visually exciting and bold design that goes beyond a “PDFs on-screen” model and is responsive to different reading devices. We have also assigned Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to each issue, article, section, and figure to allow for the citation of a specific element within an article (something that has been difficult to do online given the absence of page numbers).

This is an exciting feature of the journal and a major contribution to the field of digital scholarship.

An element of the project that I have really enjoyed is collaborating closely with our “digital team” – our Digital Manager Tom Scutt, the Deputy Director for Research Sarah Victoria Turner, and Mark Hallett, the Centre’s Director of Studies – to brainstorm ways we might reimagine the individually authored art-historical essay, and publish collaborative and multi-authored texts in new and innovative formats.

One of the special features we have developed for the journal is a regular ‘Conversation Piece’ in which contributors respond to an initial scholarly proposal designed to provoke debate. Dr Richard Johns of the University of York has convened our first ‘Conversation Piece’, which is devoted to the proposition: “There’s no such thing as British art”, and to which more than fourteen academics, artists, and curators have contributed short texts, films, audio pieces, and slide shows.

Development of the journal is ongoing and will not cease with the publication of our first issue. It is an exciting process and we will continue to create new features and make improvements in response to feedback and in light of the data that we receive about how the journal is being used. The first issue will be an experiment in the best possible sense and we hope it will be seen as a bold and pioneering contribution to publishing art-historical research online.

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Fellowships and Grants Some Digital Developments Mary Peskett Smith, Fellowships and Grants Manager, notes some important changes to our application process and highlights a new Digital Project Grant award The new Paul Mellon Centre website and online journal were not the only digital innovations put in place while our Bedford Square premises were undergoing expansion and refurbishment.

Our old paper-based Fellowships and Grants application system, which served us well for many years, had begun to groan under the strain of the everincreasing number of applications we receive each year. Our Digital Manager, Tom Scutt, has expertly managed and implemented an online application system developed and customised by the Canadian company FluidReview. The new system will eliminate considerable duplication of work and provide us with useful statistics and reports to enable further development of our flourishing awards programme.

Our key ambition for the new system is to make the application process more straightforward. We hope that several new features will be welcomed. For example, applicants can now register online, start working on their submission, and return to it at any time to make changes until they are happy with their

Hallway, 16 Bedford Square

final version. At this stage they can submit the application. Referees too will complete their references online, having been contacted automatically by email when the application is submitted.

Another development within the Fellowships and Grants area is the creation of a new Digital Project Grant award, which is being offered for the first time in autumn 2015. In many respects, this has similar aims to our long-running Curatorial Research Grant category.

Both awards help support a Curatorial Researcher to undertake research for a specific exhibition, cataloguing, or other scholarly project. However, we wanted to make it clear that not all curatorial projects we support have to have a “hard-copy” outcome. Online catalogues or database research projects would come within this new category.

This first year of the Digital Project Grant will be rather experimental and we hope to receive an interesting range of applications to present to our Advisory Council when it next meets to decide on successful awards.

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Percy Wyndham Lewis, Stooping Nude Child, 1900 Black chalk, 39.1 × 35.8 cm UCL 6003 © The Estate of Mrs G. A. Wyndham Lewis. By permission of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust

Spotlight on Slade The PMC supports a wide array of museum and gallery projects; Helen Downes, Paul Mellon Centre Research Curator at UCL Art Museum, reports on an exciting exploration of a special sub-section of the Museum’s holdings

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With the support of the Paul Mellon Centre, UCL Art Museum is undertaking a three-year research project into its holdings of Slade works. Spotlight on Slade focuses on over 3,000 prints, drawings, and paintings collected through the Slade School of Fine Art’s annual prize system.

Through full cataloguing, enrichment of the online catalogue, and enhancement of artist files through archive research, the project will present a comprehensive document of British art school practice from 1897 to the present day.

The collection includes early works by notable figures in modern British art, such as Augustus John and Stanley Spencer.

However, as the first art school to admit female students on equal terms with their male counterparts, the collection is particularly rich in the work of women artists, and showcases key works by early twentieth-century artists such as Winifred Margaret Knights, as well as early work by later alumni with international reputations such as Paula Rego and Ana-Maria Pacheco. Due to its development through the prize system, the collection also includes the work of lesser-known artists, providing a unique insight into art practice in the twentieth century.

Already, links are being made with organisations which have related holdings and plans are underway for collaborations and an exhibition that will reveal hitherto hidden strengths of the collection.

Exciting finds are emerging, including a record of some 360 works included in an exhibition to mark UCL’s centenary in 1927 and biographical information regarding lesser-known artists such as Clara Klinghoffer, whose solo exhibition in 1919 when the artist was just nineteen brought her immediate success.

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“Map-work” John Britton and the Reform of Topography in Nineteenth-Century Britain Stephen Daniels, Paul Mellon Centre Senior Fellow, introduces the unsung hero of his current research project John Britton (1771-1857) built a fiftyyear career as a prolific producer of richly illustrated works on the landscape, architecture, and antiquities of Britain, subjects he encompassed in a reformed vision of topography. Prompted by its low artistic reputation, famously dismissed as “map-work” in Henry Fuseli’s lectures to the Royal Academy, Britton sought to raise the cultural status of topography and broaden its social public.

During my year-long fellowship I will be writing the first book on John Britton. It will examine Britton’s ambition to reform topography as part of a nineteenthcentury “march of progress”, powered, in his words, by “steam, gas, the electric telegraph, penny postage and railroads”.

Britton’s works address relations of past and present, modernity and antiquity, including the implications of new technologies for understanding medieval monuments and prehistoric landscapes.

The book will place Britton’s topography in a wider cultural and artistic world. It will address the work of now little-known artists such as Frederick Mackenzie and William Henry Bartlett, and provide new perspectives on the betterknown figures Britton knew and worked with, including Cotman, Soane, Martin, Turner, and Constable.

John Britton FSA, Drawn by R W Satchwell and T Uwins, Engraved by J Thomson, from European Magazine, 1820

Britton’s career in topography was a collaborative one, involving many partnerships and associations as author, illustrator, editor, publisher, critic, collector, dealer, lecturer, patron, and client. While collaborative, Britton’s work is also characterised by an assertive selfconsciousness and personal expression.

Perhaps inevitably, in a fast-changing, highly competitive field, relationships proved contentious as well as convivial, revealingly so for research, as these are documented in extensive correspondence.

The book will address the geographical range of Britton’s work, focusing on places in which he had a strong personal stake, including his native county of Wiltshire, and London, where he lived and worked.

The book will also explore the cultural and ideological terrain of topography as Britton’s vision and practice combined and competed with that of others, including gentlemen amateurs, professional experts, clerical scholars, and commercial competitors.

Now that topography is being reevaluated more widely as a genre of knowledge and representation, a form of social engagement and cultural imagination, it is time for Britton’s work and place in the cultural world of the nineteenth century to be fully recognised and re-assessed.

October 2015 — No. 1 15

Adventures in the Archives

A New Collection Arrives at the PMC Charlotte Brunskill, Archivist and Records Manager, celebrates another generous gift to our Collections The summer has been a busy one for Research Collections staff. Although separated from the Library, Archive, and Photographic Archive material – which was sent to storage during our refurbishment – there has been much for the Collections team to do in preparation for our reopening. Alongside checking the complex plans and specifications of the Research Collections area, we have also been engaged in activities that will provide readers with access to more material than ever before.

To this end, we have been working hard to review and catalogue previously unlisted material. We are delighted to report that all the pamphlets in the collection of material donated to the Library by Peter and Renate Nahum now have entries on the online library catalogue. Likewise, detailed descriptions of the John Hayes Archive, including digital images of some of the items in the collection, will be launched after Christmas.

We have also been concerned with expanding and enhancing the range and depth of material available for researchers. In most instances, library material is acquired from the comfort of the office, through the means of online ordering. The acquisition of archives is more complicated and usually requires

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travelling to view the material in situ.

This was the case with our recently acquired Charles S Rhyne Archive, which necessitated a visit to Portland, Oregon.

Rhyne was a renowned John Constable scholar. He had a long-standing connection with the Centre, having been a recipient of a Paul Mellon Foundation grant in 1964. He lectured and wrote widely on Constable and advocated the importance of images as evidence in the practice of art history.

The Charles S Rhyne Archive was kindly donated to the Centre by his widow, Barbara, who was extremely helpful and hospitable throughout the acquisition process. Not only did she welcome two members of Research Collections staff into her home; she also found time to show them parts of Portland and of Reed College.

The Rhyne Archive arrived safely in the UK in June and we look forward to making it available to researchers when we re-open. We would like to thank Barbara Rhyne and her family for this generous gift.

Anon, Drawing of Charles S Rhyne, Prague, 1993 Courtesy of Barbara Rhyne

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Drawing Room Displays The first of a new series of small exhibitions accompanies the re-opening of the Centre. Jenny Hill and Liz Moody (formerly of our Collections Team) describe its contents One of the most exciting aspects of the PMC’s expansion project from a Research Collections perspective is that its newly refurbished buildings will include a permanent display space.

This will be located in the Drawing Room, a specially designated waiting area for visitors, next to reception on the ground floor. Exhibiting items in this fashion is a long-held ambition and will provide us with a platform to showcase material from the Library, Archive, and Photographic Archive to those who may have been previously unaware of the Centre’s holdings.

Each display will focus on a different subject, idea, or strand found within the material in the Research Collections. All the displays will be accompanied by a pamphlet and many will be linked to events organised by the Centre.

The first Drawing Room Display, which has been curated by Research Collections Staff, features material from the Dennis Sharp Archive.

This collection includes original items from the groundbreaking and controversial architectural firm, Connell, Ward and Lucas. This trio were

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Connell, Ward and Lucas, Living room of 95 Salisbury Road, a private house built in Worcester Park, Surrey, c.1930s PMC Archive Reference: DCS/2/7/72

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Corporate Christmas card produced by the Connell, Ward and Lucas practice showing the Concrete House at Bristol, c.1934 PMC Archive Reference: DCS/2/2/5

innovative in their use of building materials, embracing the malleable qualities and economic benefits of products such as concrete. Connell, Ward and Lucas were responsible for pioneering projects which included privately commissioned houses, film studios, and speculative housing.

Whilst many of their buildings are now admired and have received listed status, at the time their work was not to everyone’s taste. This display therefore focuses on the scandals and uproar that the firm’s work regularly produced. Please visit us and peruse this inaugural Drawing Room Display.

Further information on the Dennis Sharp Archive can be found here: www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/collections/sharp-spotlight The Dennis Sharp Archive is fully catalogued and available for consultation in the Public Study Room. Please see the online catalogue www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/collections/ archive-collections/dennis-sharp and our website www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/ collections/appointments for further details.

Detail of illustration for The Book of Parkwood Estate, c.1935 PMC Archive Reference: DCS/2/6/11

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A Closer Look

Richard Wilson at Aberystwyth Paul Spencer-Longhurst, editor of Richard Wilson Online, travels to Wales on a fascinating study trip

During the research for the PMC’s new online catalogue of the works of the Georgian landscape artist Richard Wilson, many study visits were made to public and private collections in Britain and worldwide.

Inevitably, however, it was not possible to cover all bases in time for the 300th anniversary of the artist’s birth in 2014. One of the most pressing omissions was a visit to the collection of the artist’s works at the National Library of Wales/Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru at Aberystwyth (NLW), so it was with eager anticipation that the distinguished conservator Kate Lowry and I set off to explore its holdings at the end of April. As might be expected, given Wilson’s nationality, the NLW houses a good number of works by or attributed to the artist—eleven paintings, six drawings, and seventeen prints, making 34 in all.

The seaside university town of Aberystwyth is an attractive spot to undertake a spring research trip, and we were most impressed by the helpfulness and efficiency of the NLW staff Lona Mason, Jenny Williamson, Huw Bonner, and Paul Joyner. They had gone to great lengths to prepare for our visit, setting aside a special study room in which we found all the works unframed, complete with curatorial files and comprehensive photographic and photocopying facilities.

Detailed results of our study days can be seen in Richard Wilson Online (RWO): see www.richardwilsononline.ac.uk. Among the most exciting discoveries were telling details that come only from seeing the objects themselves, such as the pinholes and Wilson’s notes on the drawing of Pembroke Town and Castle (RWO D368). This turned out to be a onesheet drawing despite a vertical “join” in the centre and was clearly made on the spot, probably with the aid of an optical device. Meanwhile, the paintings we inspected included Wilson’s small oval portrait of his father with its verso inscription recording that the artist painted it from memory (RWO P0); also his youthful Portrait of Miss Catherine Jones (RWO P216), Wilson’s cousin and owner of the house at Colomendy, where he died over five decades after painting her. The most exciting painting of all, however, was The Destruction of the Children of Niobe (if that is what it is) formerly

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Richard Wilson at Aberystwyth

Richard Wilson, The Destruction of the Children of Niobe, c.1752-1758 (undated) Oil on canvas, 75.2 × 98.3 cm Private Collection on loan to the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

in the collection of Lord Davies at Llandinam (RWO P90C). The subject is ambiguous as there is no sign of Niobe herself in the painting and much of the composition is in reverse orientation to Wilson’s other versions of the same subject, such as the one at Yale (RWO P90). That might argue for the picture’s derivation from William Woollett’s engraving of 1761. Meanwhile, the flaming building on the left and the ancient Greek sculpture Lion Attacking a Horse, which we discovered on the right, do not appear in other versions. We also found a Wilson monogram on the plinth of the sculpture, together with a possible date, reading 1752 or 1758. If either were the actual date of the composition, it would confirm the painting as one of Wilson’s earliest ideas for the subject.

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Publications & Events

Publications & Events

Publications Report The following books are being published by the Paul Mellon Centre over the next few months, in association with Yale University Press Art in Britain 1660-1815 David H Solkin Art in Britain 1660-1815 presents the first social history of British art from the period known as the long eighteenth century, and offers a fresh and challenging look at the major developments in painting, drawing, and printmaking that took place during this period. It describes how an embryonic London art world metamorphosed into a flourishing community of native and immigrant practitioners, whose efforts ultimately led to the rise of a British School deemed worthy of comparison with its European counterparts. Within this larger narrative are authoritative accounts of the achievements of celebrated artists such as Peter Lely, William Hogarth, Thomas Gainsborough, and JMW Turner. David H Solkin has interwoven their stories and many others into a critical analysis of how visual culture reinforced, and on occasion challenged, established social hierarchies and prevailing notions of gender, class, and race as Britain entered the modern age. More than three hundred works of art, accompanied by detailed analysis, beautifully illustrate how Britain’s transformation into the world’s foremost commercial and imperial power found expression in the visual arts, and how the arts shaped the nation in return.

David H Solkin is Dean and Deputy Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art

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Series: The Yale University Press Pelican History Format: Hardback Publication date: 31 October 2015 ISBN: 9780300215564 Dimensions: 28.6 × 24.8 cm Pages: 384 pages..8 c Illustrations: 320 colour ills.

Price: £55.00

On Display Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence Erin Griffey In the early modern period, rulers demonstrated their power and influence through carefully curated “display”: their presence in court ceremonies, their palaces and their contents, and their portraits. Henrietta Maria of France (16091669), queen consort of King Charles I of England, embraced these opportunities for display with particular flair. This richly illustrated book follows Henrietta Maria through and beyond the Bourbon and Stuart courts to chart her patronage and engagement with the visual arts, building works, and the luxury trade. It develops a powerful picture not just of the images, fashions, interiors, and buildings shaped by the queen’s directorial influence but also of the political and religious factors that governed her choices and policies of court display. Her cultural patronage in particular emphasised her family honour, dynastic clout, Catholic piety, feminine virtue, and discerning taste. Erin Griffey analyses the full spectacle of the queen’s represented image, not only through the well-known portraits by Sir Anthony van Dyck but also through her rich bed ensembles, tapestries, jewellery, clothing, and devotional goods – the objects that embodied and conveyed her royal power.

Series: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Format: Hardback Publication date: 15 January 2016 ISBN: 9780300214000 Dimensions: 26.7 × 21.6 cm Pages: 272 Illustrations: 75 colour + 45 b/w illus.

Price: £40.00

Erin Griffey is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Auckland

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Publications & Events // Publications Report

Pompeo Batoni A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings Edgar Peters Bowron

This meticulously researched catalogue presents an authoritative assessment of the works of Pompeo Batoni (17081787), one of the eighteenth century’s most celebrated painters. Born in Lucca, Batoni established himself in Rome and received commissions from popes, princes, and British aristocrats on the Grand Tour. Batoni was highly sought after for his theatrical yet incisive – and often flattering – portraits. Connoisseurs and cognoscenti also prized his learned and technically brilliant allegorical, religious, and mythological compositions. With entries on more than 480 paintings and 250 drawings, this magnificent two-volume set provides the most complete examination to date of Batoni’s entire oeuvre. Featuring beautiful, high-quality reproductions, the book provides thorough details on provenance and exhibition history as well as biographies of the portrait sitters.

New analysis of the works, resulting from decades of research, re-interprets some of Batoni’s iconography, identifies new textual and visual sources of his imagery, and reveals insights gleaned from unpublished archival materials.

Edgar Peters Bowron is the former Audrey Jones Beck Curator of European Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

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Series: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Format: Mixed media product Publication date: 25 February 2016 ISBN: 9780300148169 Dimensions: 30.5 × 24.8 cm Pages: 750 Illustrations: 420 colour + 40 b/w illus.

Price: £195.00

Apethorpe The Story of an English Country House Kathryn A Morrison, John Cattell, Emily Cole, Nick Hill, Pete Smith This beautiful publication narrates the fascinating biography of an architecturally significant country residence and its rescue from decline. Dating from the mid-fifteenth century, Apethorpe in Northamptonshire was home to a succession of leading courtiers and politicians. At the command of King James I, the house was refurbished with a richly decorated state apartment. The suite, with its series of rare plaster ceilings and carved chimneypieces, unquestionably ranks as one of the finest – and least known – in Britain. In 2004, English Heritage rescued the house from ruin and has since restored it to much of its glory. This book places Apethorpe in its wider historical and architectural context, comparing it with other Tudor and Jacobean houses. It sheds new light on the furnishing, decoration, and circulation patterns of state suites in country homes. Written by architectural and archeological experts from Historic England, this monograph, the first on Apethorpe, is illustrated with new and historical photographs, paintings, maps, engravings, and specially commissioned interpretive drawings that reveal how the house looked at key moments in its history.

Series: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art Format: Hardback Publication date: 15 March 2016 ISBN: 9780300148701 Dimensions: 29.2 × 24.1 cm Pages: 480 Illustrations: 250 colour + 50 b/w ills.

Price: £60.00

Kathryn A Morrison is a Senior Architectural Historian based in the Cambridge office of Historic England

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Publications & Events // Publications Report

The Romney Catalogue Alex Kidson’s George Romney: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings was recently published by the Centre, in collaboration with Yale University Press. Here, with the help of Guilland Sutherland, Special Projects Editor, Alex answers the questions he is most frequently asked about his catalogue

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How long did the catalogue take you to write?

AK — I was asked if I’d be interested in doing it in December 2002, and I handed in the final draft of the text in June 2013. There were two more years polishing it up while it was in production. But before 2002 I worked for nine years on a monographic Romney exhibition, and way before that I did a student dissertation on Romney’s political patrons and how they differed from Reynolds’s and Gainsborough’s. So – a long time.

How many works are in the catalogue?

AK — There are 1,852 separate entries, plus numerous “related works”, replicas, and copies by other artists, that I’ve never bothered to count.

But when you use the catalogue, you may find that a few works have probably, unavoidably, been included twice.

Any you’ve had second thoughts about including?

AK — There are about four or five pictures that don’t look right, which I decided to include anyway.

The amount of, shall we say, “collaboration” on some Romneys can be so large that “looking right” is not always an issue, and I decided it would be more helpful in a few cases to put a dodgy picture in and state the reservations.

George Romney, John Flaxman Modelling the Bust of William Hayley (detail), 1795–1796 Oil on canvas, 226 × 145 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Have you found any new ones that missed the cut?

AK — Yes, the list for the addenda currently stands at eight, and I imagine quite a few more pictures will emerge. Some of these of course will be works that are documented and in the catalogue as untraced, but a few are bound to be complete unknowns.

Has the book come out as you thought it would when you started?

AK — Yes, to a surprising degree. There was a rough ten-year work plan at the start, and it was rather like a clockwork toy – wind me up and off I went. Even some of my private ideas happened, for instance that three volumes would work for Romney much better than two, and no Lady Hamiltons on the dust jackets (please!).

The actual design and production are beyond my imagining – just amazing.

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Publications & Events

Research Events and Collaborations The PMC is hosting a lively series of scholarly events over the autumn.

Sarah Victoria Turner, Deputy Director for Research, introduces the programme and notes some highlights

Below left: Michael Craig-Martin, Portrait of Zaha Hadid, 2008 Wall-mounted LCD monitor/ computer with integrated software National Portrait Gallery, London Below right: Cornelius Johnson, Portrait of a Woman, traditionally identified as the Countess of Arundel, 1619 Oil on panel, 73.7 × 66 cm Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Over the last three years, we have considerably expanded the programme of research events held at the Centre.

Regularly sold out, these popular events were starting to exert a certain amount of pressure on our old building.

A much-anticipated feature of the expanded Centre are two newly appointed rooms designed to host our research events. Conferences and symposia will be held in the airy first-floor Lecture Room, and smaller events such as our Research Lunches will take place in the ground-floor Seminar Room. Kitted out with the newest audiovisual technology, these rooms will allow us to develop an even more varied research programme at the Centre.

The Events Calendar on pp.36-37 of this issue of PMC Notes gives a handy overview of the range of topics that will be covered in our slightly truncated Autumn Term. The “Portraiture” theme connecting our research

seminars and lunches will be immediately obvious.

Portraiture is a well-researched field of British art, of course; but it is one that continues to stimulate new and rich readings of historic and contemporary British culture.

On 25 November, Sandy Nairne, who was Director of the National Portrait Gallery from 2002 to 2015, will begin our research seminar series by giving us an insight into the complex process of commissioning new public portraits.

Other talks taking place in the Autumn Term will open up new approaches to portraiture and the portrait artist.

Subjects will include the international career of Cornelius Johnson; the Scottish portraiture of the Restoration period; Wedgwood’s portrait medallions; the work of Henry Perronet Briggs; and questions of artistic identity in the self-portraits of Vanessa Bell. Should you be lucky enough to be in California in early December, we are also collaborating with the Yale Center for British Art on a symposium on the topic of portraiture at The Huntington in San Marino: Portraiture as Interaction: The Spaces and Interfaces of the British Portrait www.huntington. org. Finally, a discussion of portraiture will feature significantly in the sold-out conference on The Painting Room: The Artist’s Studio in Eighteenth-Century Britain (29–30 October), which will be hosted in London and at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury, Suffolk.

In addition to putting our new events spaces into regular use, we are continuing to collaborate with museums, galleries, and academic partners to cohost events beyond the Centre. We are excited about developing more events on recent and contemporary British art, for example. This autumn, in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery, we have organised a three-day international conference on Artists’ Moving Image Practice in Britain: From 1990 to Today.

We look forward to welcoming you back into the Centre to contribute to the debate and discussion generated by our research events. For those of you based further afield, meanwhile, we plan to stream more of our events on the internet and make them available as digital recordings so that you can participate in the Centre’s research culture from wherever you are based in the world.

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Publications & Events

PMC Events Calendar All events are at the Paul Mellon Centre unless otherwise indicated

October 26 October 2015–29 January 2016 Exhibition Concrete and Controversy in Modern British Architecture: Materials from the Dennis Sharp Archive Drawing Room 29–30 October 2015 Conference The Painting Room: The Artist’s Studio in EighteenthCentury Britain Sotheby’s Institute of Art and Gainsborough’s House

November 5–7 November 2015 Conference Artists’ Moving Image Practice in Britain: From 1990 to Today Whitechapel Gallery Thursdays from 5 November–3 December 2015, 18.30–20.30 Public Lecture Course Satire to Spectacle: British Art in the Eighteenth Century 11 November 2015, 18.00–20.00 Evening Lecture Reflections on Richard Wilson Paul Spencer-Longhurst 13 November 2015, 12.30–14.00 Research Lunch Heads and Hands: Josiah Wedgwood’s Jasper Portrait Medallions Brigid von Preussen

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Walter Sickert, The Miner, 1933–1936 Oil on canvas, 127.6 × 76.8 cm Birmingham Museums Trust

Above: David Scougall (c.1630-1685), Elizabeth Leslie, c. 1675 Image courtesy of the Clan Leslie Charitable Trust Right: Richard Wilson, Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle, c.1765-1766 Oil on canvas, 101 × 127 cm Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool

20 November 2015, 12.30–14.00 Research Lunch Statements of Artistic Identity in Vanessa Bell’s Self-Portraits Hana Leaper 25 November 2015, 18.30–20.30 Research Seminar New Public Portraits – Icons and Idols at the National Portrait Gallery Sandy Nairne 27 November 2015, 12.30–14.00 Research Lunch The Scougall Family, Scottish Portraiture of the Restoration Period Carla van de Puttelaar

December 2 December 2015, 18.30–20.30 Research Seminar Portrait and Autograph: Replication, Authenticity and the Authority of the Image in the Work of H P Briggs (1792-1844) Martin Myrone 4 December 2015, 10.00–18.30 Conference Walter Sickert: The Document and the Documentary

11–12 December 2015 Symposium Portraiture as Interaction: The Spaces and Interfaces of the British Portrait The Huntington, San Marino, California This symposium is jointly organised with the Yale Center for British Art and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens 16 December 2015, 18.30–20.30 Research Seminar The National and Professional Identities of Cornelius Johnson (1593-1661) Karen Hearn

Further information about these events, including details about attendance and enrolment, can be found on the Centre’s website, www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk.

Those interested in finding out more about our programme can also email Ella Fleming,

Events Manager, on efleming@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

October 2015 — No. 1 35

PMC Profile

David Chia, Yale-NUS ’17 Nermin Abdulla, Education Programme Manager, talks to a recent visiting student at the Centre

David Chia is one of the first Yale-National University of Singapore (Yale-NUS) students to participate in our Yale in London programme. When I asked David why he chose this particular programme, he mentioned the theatre class as a driving factor in his decision. He also admitted that he had a good instinctive feeling about the programme as a whole. In retrospect, it would seem that his gut feeling ended up being an accurate one.

During each term of the Yale in London programme, students are required to take all the courses on offer, something that required David to trust that the overall selection of courses would benefit him and further his cultural immersion into London: “It’s a bit like the Common Curriculum [taught at Yale-NUS]”, he

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noted. He also felt that the programme’s emphasis on experiential learning played a large part in making his time in London so rewarding; he likened this kind of teaching to an “extended version of Week 7”, a programme offered by Yale-NUS. Under the guidance of his professors, David began to think about museums and galleries in new ways, and since the end of the programme has been reflecting on the questions raised by his time in London.

Since completing his Yale in London course, David has stayed on in London this summer to work with Toynbee Hall, a charity that works with deprived communities in Tower Hamlets. David says that it was Professors Keith Wrightson and Sarah Victoria Turner who prepared him most for his work with Toynbee Hall. David noted: “I kept hearing Sarah’s voice” as he looked at the archives. Using the skills he picked up through his courses, David played an important role in Toynbee Hall’s project to catalogue their work and history for a museum to be opened in the near future.

To learn more about Yale in London and the courses we offer, please see our website.

YCBA Programmes and Events 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 USA

After completing the final phase of a building conservation project, the Yale Center for British Art will re-open in spring 2016 with re-installed galleries and updated facilities. To stay connected and learn more about the Center’s programmes taking place in the community and afar, visit britishart.yale.edu. The YCBA events listed below all take place outside the Center itself.

13 October 2015, 18.00 Royal Oak Lecture From Coughton Court to Sizergh Castle: Life in the Recusant Country House The Explorers Club, New York Tessa Murdoch, Deputy Keeper, Victoria and Albert Museum, London This lecture is jointly sponsored with the Royal Oak Foundation

28 October 2015, 17:30 Norma Lytton Lecture Reinstalling a Permanent Collection Loria Center, Yale University, New Haven Robert Storr, Dean, Yale School of Art

6 November 2015, 20.00 and 7 November 2015, 14.00 Chamber Opera Performance Refuse the Hour University Theater, New Haven William Kentridge with Philip Miller, Dada Masilo, Catherine Meyburgh, and Peter Galison Co-sponsored by the Andrew Carnduff Ritchie Fund, Yale Center for British Art, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Yale Repertory Theatre, Yale School of Music, and Yale University Art Gallery

8 November 2015, 15.00 Andrew Carnduff Ritchie Lecture Peripheral Thinking Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven William Kentridge, artist

Friday–Saturday, 11–12 December 2015 Symposium Portraiture as Interaction: The Spaces and Interfaces of the British Portrait The Huntington, San Marino, California This symposium is jointly organised with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens