s ie ud St rt A sh ti ri B g in ch un La
Januar y 2016 / No. 2 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 Finance Assistant Rashida Nakaddu Editor, Special Projects Guilland Sutherland
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 for Finance and Chief Financial Officer of Yale University Photography
Director’s Assistant and Office Administrator Harriet Fisher
Martine La Roche
Receptionist Ellie Mayes
Design
Buildings Officer Harry Smith Editorial Assistant Postdoctoral Fellow Hana Leaper Brian Allen Postdoctoral Fellow Jessica Feather
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 January 2016 — No.2
Director’s Note 4 British Art Studies 6 Fellowships and Grants 8 From Networks to Receivers 10 Spotlight on Sudbury 14 The Country House 16 Launching London, Asia 18 The Public Study Room re-opens 20 Drawing Room Displays 22 A Closer Look 24 Critical Conversations 28 Publications Report 32 Expanding Access to Art History 33 PMC Events Calendar 36 PMC Profile: Jessica Feather 37 YCBA Events Calendar 2
January 2016 — No. 2 1
Director’s Note
Welcome to the second issue of PMC Notes. Over the last few months, we have been gradually settling in to our newly expanded and redecorated premises at Bedford Square, and getting used to the smell of fresh paint. We have enjoyed welcoming scores of colleagues and students into our Public Study Room and been very busy hosting a full programme of research events. Autumn highlights have included a riveting talk on contemporary portraiture by Sandy Nairne, formerly Director of the National Portrait Gallery; a stimulating conference on the artistic practice and legacy of Walter Sickert; and a lively and highly creative research lunch paper on Vanessa Bell’s self-portraits, given by our colleague Hana Leaper. We were also delighted to collaborate with two other institutions in organizing major conferences: Gainsborough’s House, with whom we co-hosted a fascinating set of discussions on the artists’ painting rooms of the eighteenth century; and the Whitechapel Gallery, with whom we organized a two-day event focusing on artists’ moving image practice in contemporary Britain. Research thrives on such collaborations, and on the conversations, ideas and arguments that are generated and shared through them—and we look forward to working with many other similarly congenial and ambitious partners in future. Another especially exciting collaboration also began to bear fruit this autumn: the publication of the first issue of British Art Studies, the online journal which we have developed with our sister institution, the Yale Center for British Art. We hope you agree that the first issue has offered a fresh, innovative, and intellectually ambitious intervention into the fields not only of British art studies, but of digital art history more generally. We are proud of this venture, which has been spearheaded by my colleague Sarah Victoria Turner; at the same time, we are very pleased to have been receiving lots of feedback about the ways we might make
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The Drawing Room at the PMC
British Art Studies—the second issue of which will be published in the spring—an even more dynamic publication. As with all our activities, it can only succeed with the participation and input of the larger scholarly community of which we are part; so please feel emboldened to suggest new ideas and initiatives, both for the journal itself, and for everything else we do at the PMC. We look forward to hearing from you! In the meantime, I trust that you enjoy the features and reports we have put together for this issue of PMC Notes and that you will find our listing pages informative, useful, and—not least—highly appetizing! Mark Hallett Director of Studies
January 2016 — No. 2 3
After an intense year of work, we were delighted to launch British Art Studies on 30 November 2015. In the first week alone there were two thousand unique users who accessed the journal’s website from fiftyfour countries. British Art Studies is a new online and peer-reviewed journal published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. All of its content is
open access, meaning that it is free to use and enjoy at www.britishartstudies.ac.uk without a password or subscription. It is one of only a few completely open-access journals in the field of art history. This first issue covers a diverse range of topics: Renaissance art criticism; the photographic lantern slide; the imagery of charity in eighteenth-century London; the complex status of painting within the Arts and Crafts movement; feminism and the unwritten histories of women artists in the work of Magda Cordell McHale; and the engagement with post-industrial landscapes in Prunella Clough’s art works. As well as these six articles by single authors, British Art Studies contains a range of collaborative and multi-authored features. The One Object article, coauthored by Cyra Levenson (Yale Center for British Art) and Chi-ming Yang (University of Pennsylvania) with a photo-essay by the contemporary artist Ken GonzalesDay, takes Francis Harwood’s Bust of a Man as a starting point to think about materiality, portraiture, and race from the time of the bust’s manufacture through to the present day. The Look First article consists of a series of evocative films made by Jon Law, James Boaden, and Paul
BRITISH ART STUDIES
Sarah Victoria Turner, Deputy Director for Research and the Managing Editor of British Art Studies, reports on the launch of the first issue of the journal.
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Above: Walter Crane for Jeffrey & Co., At Home, 1872. Tempera on paper, Leeds Museums and Galleries, City Art Gallery. Illustrated in Morna O'Neill’s article
Portrait of Pegeen Guggenheim (detail), 1957. Image courtesy of The John Deakin Archive
Rousseau, exploring the work of postwar British photographer John Deakin. The first Conversation Piece is led by Richard Johns (University of York), who has invited a diverse range of academics, curators, and artists to respond to the provocation, “There’s no such thing as British art.” Through text, film, and visual work, this conversation captures the vivacity and multiplicity of opinions prompted by the subject of “British art”, and a discussion board allows readers to add their own comments to the conversation. The cover of British Art Studies represents another collaboration. Working with the curators and artists of the British Art Show 8 exhibition, which is
currently touring the UK, we have created a dynamic cover of eight art works. A new work will load each time you return to the cover of our first issue. In developing the journal, the editorial team has continuously asked the question: what is it possible to do with a digital journal that might not be possible to do in print? We hope that you will find British Art Studies to be an exciting, visually stimulating, and refreshing response to this question. Issue 2 of British Art Studies will be published in April 2016. A special issue on British sculpture abroad, 1950–2000 will follow in the summer. More details about how to submit an article for consideration can also be found at www.britishartstudies.ac.uk.
January 2016 — No. 2 5
Fellowships and Grants Mary Peskett Smith looks back at the autumn 2015 round of awards and forward to our next deadline
We allowed an eight-week window for receipt of applications to our autumn round of grants. By 30 September, when that window closed, we had received 222 applications for eight categories of award via our new online grants system. This figure represented an increase of over 33 percent compared with September 2014. One reason for this large increase in applications was the introduction of the new Digital Project Grant category, offered for the first time this year. This stimulated much interest and resulted in a staggering fifty-three applications. As this was a pilot year for this new award, we plan to make some modifications to it, including making the rubric more precise and structured, stating which type of projects we are able to support as well as those which would not come within the scope of this funding stream. One factor which became apparent is that the sustainability and longevity of any digital project is vital for the success of such projects; in most cases institutional support is crucial. Our Advisory Council made six awards for Digital Projects, so we had to disappoint over forty applicants in this category of award alone.
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Our well-established Curatorial Research Grants attracted considerable interest once again. Nine awards were made to a wide range of institutions, including the ICA, Turner Contemporary, and the Greenwich Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College. A full list of awards made by our Advisory Council in autumn 2015 is on our website at the following link: paul-mellon-centre. ac.uk/fellowships-and-grants/awarded/ autumn-2015. On pages 10-13, Peter Moore, who is the Research Curator at Gainsborough’s House, explains how a PMC Curatorial Research Grant awarded last year is helping to support a project to research and catalogue the museum’s collection of paintings, drawings, and prints. Meanwhile, the spring 2016 round of awards is fast approaching. This consists mainly of our five categories of Fellowship. These Fellowships range from nine-month Senior Fellowships to three-month Junior Fellowships, the latter normally being awarded to non-UK graduate students to further their doctoral research in the United Kingdom. We also offer one Rome Fellowship based at the British School
at Rome, as well as Mid-Career and Postdoctoral Fellowships. We established the Mid-Career Fellowship in 2014 and it immediately became clear that it provided a much needed strand of funding between our Postdoctoral and Senior awards. We now award three Mid-Career Fellowships annually. One of the first recipients of this award in 2014, Elizabeth Darling, Reader in Architectural History at Oxford Brookes University, writes on page 9 about the research she has undertaken with the Paul Mellon Centre’s support. As well as Fellowships, we also offer Research Support Grants and Educational Programme Grants each spring. The closing date for receipt of applications for all the spring awards is 31 January 2016. The closing date for receipt of references is 10 February 2016. Full details are available on our website at: paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/ fellowships-and-grants/opportunities.
From Networks Elizabeth Darling, Reader in Architectural History at Oxford Brookes University, reflects on receiving one of our first Mid-Career Fellowships for her research on the material and spatial cultures of broadcasting in interwar England
to Receivers The focus of this research is to consider how the emergence of the broadcasting and wireless industry in the wake of the Great War created a new problem for architects and designers: how to give material form to something as immaterial as sound. My research has focused on the architects Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates, and Raymond McGrath, and their work for the BBC at Broadcasting House, London (1932), for which they designed the majority of the studios, and their subsequent work as wireless set designers for the electronics manufacturer EKCO Ltd (from 1933 onwards). I have also sought to trace the personal networks that brought them these commissions, and their collaborations with broadcasters, engineers, and manufacturers as they worked, from scratch, to invent
AD65 wireless set by Wells Coates for EKCO Ltd (1934)
equipment like microphones, turntables and mixing desks, in order that noise could become sound, and the nation’s nine million licence holders could be both educated and entertained. Much of my time has been spent deep in the archives, working through committee minutes to build up a detailed history of events, or analysing personal diaries to reconstruct the places in which client and architect first encountered each other. The richness of the material means that a project intended to produce two articles has become one for a book. This study will develop our understanding of how Modernist architects and their patrons shaped a central aspect of English modernity—the ways in which the nation communicated and projected itself during in the interwar decades.
January 2016 — No. 2 9
Spotlight on Sudbury A Grant for Gainsborough’s House Peter Moore, Research Curator at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury, Suffolk
Spotlight on Sudbury Thomas Gainsborough, Wooded Landscape with Travellers, black chalk, white lead, ochre, red and green washes on prepared laid paper, dipped in skimmed milk and varnished, ca.1777, Gainsborough’s House
With the support of the Paul Mellon Centre, Gainsborough’s House is currently undertaking a major project to research and catalogue its collection of some 2,500 items, amassed over half a century since the museum and gallery opened in the 1960s. A major output of the project will be the publication of the collection online in spring 2016. As a publicly accessible and fully searchable database, we aim to establish this resource as a central hub for the study of Thomas Gainsborough. The collection contains a significant body of paintings, prints, and drawings by Gainsborough, spanning his whole career and offering a broad view of his entire oeuvre. There are also many works after the artist, which demonstrate his continuing influence on British art, particularly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In addition, Gainsborough’s House owns numerous works on paper by
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Thomas Gainsborough, Wooded Landscape with Country Cart and Figures, aquatint with touches of drypoint, ca.1786. Gainsborough’s House
other eighteenth-century artists, including Francis Hayman, with whom Gainsborough worked in London during the early part of his career. Drawings by artists such as Peter Tillemans provide a valuable opportunity to study Gainsborough’s work in relation to the earlier landscape traditions from which he derived inspiration. A large collection of drawings by Hubert-François Gravelot, produced as designs for various engravings and decorative arts, are also a significant focus of current research, and will form the basis of an exhibition, Designing Georgian Britain, which will open in February 2016. This project is operating alongside a number of other collectionbased research activities, including the recent conference and current exhibition, The Painting Room, which has provided the opportunity to undertake new practice-based research in the Gainsborough’s House print studio. As a result, a significant critical reappraisal of Gainsborough’s innovative experiments in soft-ground etching and aquatint has been made possible. A conservation research project, being undertaken in conjunction with the Hamilton Kerr Institute, has also recently commenced. Among the many aims of this project, we hope to gain a greater understanding of the materials used by Gainsborough during his Suffolk period, and to discover how these materials affected his developing techniques.
January 2016 — No. 2 13
The Country House: Collections and Display Martin Postle introduces a new research project that builds on the PMC’s longstanding Country House studies
Joshua Reynolds, John Mudge FRS, ca. 1752. Trewithen House, Cornwall
In 2016 the Paul Mellon Centre is embarking on an ambitious flagship research project entitled “The Country House: Collections and Display”. The project will aim to explore various facets of the collection and display of works of art in the country house in Britain and Ireland from the sixteenth century to the present day. At the time of writing—in November 2015—we are still considering the precise scope and parameters of the project. However, one of our core intentions is to create a research portal using the Paul Mellon Centre’s collections as a hub, collating and highlighting relevant research material, including photographs, catalogues, books, and manuscript sources. We also aim to
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digitally photograph a number of carefully selected country house collections each year in order to provide new avenues and opportunities for research. The images will also assist us to generate research questions and develop cataloguing methods and skills. In addition, the project will incorporate regular workshops focusing upon aspects of collecting and display, as well as evening lectures and post-graduate seminars. Beginning in 2016, the Centre will facilitate scholarly visits to country house collections, with the emphasis upon those digitally photographed by the Centre or otherwise less familiar to the scholarly community. Invitations to visits will be on the basis of the relevant research interests of participants, and our aim is to include a broad range of scholars and participants. In developing this project, I will be assisted by Dr Jessica Feather, recently appointed as the first Brian Allen Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre.
Opposite: Glyn Philpot, Margaret (Peggy) Crewe-Milnes, Marchioness of Crewe, 1917. West Horsley Place, Surrey
Sarah Victoria Turner reports on a new research collaboration between Asia Art Archive (AAA) and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Launching London, Asia This project posits London as a key, yet under-explored, site in the construction of art historical narratives in Asia, and examines its influence through exhibitions, patronage, art writing, and art education. London, Asia also reflects on how the growing field of modern and contemporary art history in Asia intersects with, and challenges, existing histories of British art. We are not proposing a comparative framework, but rather encouraging new perspectives on the entanglements, historic and contemporary, between London and Asia. By looking at examples of particular exhibitions, events, institutions,
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Above: Envelope of letter from F.N. Souza to Wahab Jaffer, 1975. Courtesy of Wahab Jaffer and Asia Art Archive
and individuals, this project asks broader methodological questions about the ways in which the art histories of Britain and Asia have been, and are being, written, circulated, and negotiated. This project has been developed in collaboration with Hammad Nasar, Head of Research and Programmes at the AAA. It came about after conversations Hammad and I had in light of the “British Art through its Exhibition Histories, 1760-Now” session at the AAA conference in April this year at which Hammad gave a paper entitled “Inadvertent Restaging or Exhibitionary De-colonisation? Migrations: Journeys into British Art and the Other Story”.
Below: Ha Bik-chuen and his son at Henry Moore sculpture exhibition, Hong Kong City Hall, 1970. Courtesy of the Ha family and Asia Art Archive
Through the London, Asia project, AAA and the PMC will collaborate on a series of discussions, events, and residencies, in addition to archival and digital projects, for an initial period of three years. We will reach out to the broader community of interest to shape and realize these initiatives, and anticipate the collaborative development of a repository of digitized materials, filmed conversations, oral histories, and texts that will be made available as resources for the field. The project is envisaged as a series of interventions and conversations with no specific end point; rather, these initiatives and resources are intended to open up and fuel generative engagement with an area that art historians, curators, and researchers have yet to examine in a systematic and critical way.
Planned Events and Initiatives The first key component of London, Asia will be the symposium, Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in Britain, 1900 to Now (30 June–1 July 2016), accompanied by a panel discussion in association with Tate on occasion of the exhibition Bhupen Khakhar at Tate Modern (2 July). A workshop exploring the impact of art schools and pedagogic practices on the development of art practice and art-historic narratives will conclude the three-year project. A number of other initiatives will be developed over the course of 2016–18 and will be announced regularly on both AAA and PMC websites.
THE PUBLIC STUDY ROOM REOPENS
After months of careful planning and at least a week of heavy lifting, Research Collections staff are pleased to announce that the Public Study Room is once more open to readers The first van load of library stock – some four hundred boxes – arrived back from off-site storage at the Centre on 8 October. It took a full three days for the movers, working with Collections staff, to unpack and reshelve the material, but the final result is very impressive. The shelves are much less crowded than before—a result of one of the key aims of the building project, which is to make more space for Research Collections material. Those of you familiar with the Centre’s Public Study Room will welcome this as a huge improvement: books can now be removed from the shelves with ease! A time-lapse video, filmed over two days (at four images per minute) shows the books being returned to the shelves in the Public Study Room. It has become quite a hit on Twitter and can be viewed here:www.paul-melloncentre.ac.uk/whats-on/news/reopening/
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A second van load of material was received a week later and this material has been shelved in the Library Annex. This is a new space for library readers (it was previously the staff kitchen!), and thanks to the wonders of rolling racking, it now houses more books than the Public Study Room itself. Pamphlets and exhibition catalogues have also returned to the Centre and these have been filed into the cupboards in the Public Study Room. The majority of library stock has now been returned and, at the time of writing, plans are in place to bring back from storage four of the Centre’s most significant archive collections—the archives of Brinsley Ford, Frank Simpson, Oliver Millar, and Ellis Waterhouse. These are both the most extensive and traditionally the most consulted of the collections so we anticipate that their return will be of particular interest
The Public Study Room
to our readers. These four collections will join those already at the Centre: the John Hayes and Dennis Sharp archives. It is also our aim to initiate the return of the Paul Mellon Centre’s Photographic Archive as soon as possible. Please contact Collections staff should you wish to consult this material. This is an exciting period of rapid change for the Centre and, as such, we recommend that you contact us in advance of any visit to consult Research Collections material (collections@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk). We look forward to welcoming you to the newly refurbished Public Study Room soon.
January 2016 — No. 2 19
Material relating to the John Cornforth Drawing Room Display
John Lewley Cornforth (1937–2004) was an architectural historian who wrote numerous articles for Country Life from 1961–93 and worked for the National Trust for many years. His specialism was the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century country house, but he also wrote extensively on the town house and its interiors. John Cornforth’s personal working library was donated to the Paul Mellon Centre, through the auspices of the National Trust, in August 2004, shortly after his death. This collection, from which staff selected nearly eight hundred books and journals, increased the Centre’s already extensive holdings on the history of the town and country house and added considerably to the previously small collection on eighteenthcentury decorative arts. He also donated to the Centre’s Photographic Archive the collection of photographs taken for his book, Early Georgian Interiors, published posthumously by Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre in 2004. The new Drawing Room Display will consist largely of materials donated from his collection but will also include a number of works about Cornforth or written by him drawn from the rich holdings of the Centre’s library. The holdings relating to Cornforth are just one of the many points of entry to study the town house of the eighteenth century in the Research Collections. The Centre’s Archive holds relevant material in, for example, the Oliver Millar archive and the Brinsley Ford archive on interiors and architects for this period.
Drawing Room Displays The second Drawing Room Display, curated by Research Collections staff, focuses on material donated to the Centre from the Estate of John Cornforth. Emma Floyd describes how the display, which will run from February to May 2016, will concentrate on the town house in the eighteenth century
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To find out more about the Research Collections holdings, please consult the online catalogues on our website: http://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/collections/our-resources. Please note that most, but not all, material is catalogued online so please contact Research Collections at collections@ paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk for more information.
A Closer Look
A Catalogue RaisonnĂŠ of Francis Towne by Richard Stephens Maisoon Rehani, Picture Researcher, reports on the progress of the Francis Towne online catalogue raisonnĂŠ
As part of our ongoing commitment to publishing art-historical research online and providing open-access research resources, we have been working with the independent scholar Dr Richard Stephens on developing an online, open-access catalogue of the works of Francis Towne (1739–1816). This has involved commissioning new photography of works in public and private collections, which will mean that many drawings that are rarely on public display will become available to view in digital form. One of the groups of images which has been photographed recently is the collection of Towne’s works at the Huntington including On the Rhine, which was the very last drawing that the artist made on his 1780–1 Continental tour. High-quality photographs of such works make it possible to appreciate the restricted palette and the distinctive forms of draughtsmanship that Towne was employing in the weeks immediately following his visit to the valley of Chamonix in Switzerland, where he had made some of his most famous drawings, such as the Source of the Arveyron. Apart from commissioning new photography, the other element of the project that I have really enjoyed has been working closely with Tom Scutt (Digital Manager) on creating linkages between works of art and collections, exhibitions, bibliography and provenance data. This will allow users to explore these connections and develop a deeper understanding of the artist and his work. Progress on this has been greatly facilitated by the Centre’s powerful and flexible QI content management system which has been developed by the company Keepthinking. They have also designed an exciting project website interface that is responsive to different reading devices and features advanced image zooming. This reflects the design concepts of the Centre’s new website and online journal, British Art Studies, also developed by Keepthinking. The publication of a catalogue raisonné of Francis Towne (1739-1816) in spring 2016 is designed to coincide with an exhibition of the artist’s drawings at the British Museum, due to open in January 2016. This is another example of the Centre’s many exciting collaborations with galleries and museums, which are designed to enrich our understanding and appreciation of British art through the interaction between exhibition curating, viewing, and scholarly research.
Francis Towne (1740–1816), On the Rhine, undated, pen and watercolour, 15.2 × 21 cm. The Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens, San Marino Opposite: Francis Towne (1740–1816), The Source of the Arveyron, 1781, ink and watercolour on paper, 31.10 × 21.2 cm. Tate, London
January 2016 — No. 2 23
Phoebe Unwin, Arms Up with Hair, 2015, Indian ink on acrylic sized canvas, 140 x 130 cm. Courtesy of the Wilkinson Gallery
Critical Conversations Mark Hallett introduces a new strand of collaborative enquiry being fostered by the PMC The challenge of engaging with contemporary art from an art-historical perspective is an enduring and complex one. As a modest contribution to addressing this challenge, and in the hope of bringing a rich variety of approaches to bear on current forms of artistic practice in Britain, the PMC is developing a new series of informal research events collectively entitled Critical Conversations. These events are designed to bring arthistorians, artists, curators, collectors, critics, and gallery owners together to discuss exhibitions of contemporary art in the flesh: that is, in front of the exhibited works of art themselves. This year, our Critical Conversations programme focuses in part on exhibitions of contemporary British or British-based painters, and it began with a visit to a recent exhibition by the artist Phoebe Unwin at Wilkinson Gallery, entitled Distant People and Self-Soothing Objects (closed 18 December). Around a dozen participants, including Phoebe Unwin herself, took part in a lively and thought-provoking two-hour discussion about her work and the exhibition as a whole. Those present included Iwona Blazwick, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery; Katharine Stout, Head of Programmes at the ICA; Professor David Rayson, Head of Painting at the Royal College of Art; the curator and writer George Vasey; the painter Jonathan Lux; the collector Sarah Elson; the critic Michele Robecchi; and the gallerists Amanda and Anthony Wilkinson.
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Opposite: Installation photograph of Phoebe Unwin: Distant People and Self-Soothing Objects exhibition, Wilkinson Gallery, London, 9 October – 18 December 2015.
Critical Conversations
Phoebe Unwin, Couple, 2014, Indian ink on acrylic sized canvas, 153 x 183 cm. Courtesy of the Wilkinson Gallery
All the participants noted how useful and stimulating it was to systematically interrogate and explore an exhibition in this sustained way. During the event, Unwin’s work was discussed and debated from a variety of perspectives. It was situated in relation to the wider practice of painting within contemporary visual culture, while also being placed within longer art-historical traditions, including that of pastoral landscape painting. It was analysed in relation to the distinctive qualities, histories, and associations of Indian ink, the material she deployed in the pictures exhibited in Distant People. And it was placed in dialogue with the conventions of air-brush painting, the technique with which Unwin experimented in her submissions to the show. As we’d hoped, our conversations were wide-ranging and free-flowing and often took us in unexpected directions. Phoebe Unwin herself commented upon how refreshing it was to see her work being subjected to this kind of close critical looking and discussion, and we look forward to organizing many other such events in the future.
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Publications & Events
Publications & Events
Publications Report Spring/Summer 2016
Young Mr. Turner The First Forty Years, 1775–1815 Eric Shanes A complex figure, and divisive during his lifetime, Joseph Mallord William Turner has long been considered Britain’s greatest painter. An artist of phenomenal invention, complexity, and industry, Turner is now one of the world’s most popular painters. This comprehensive new account of his early life draws together recent scholarship, corrects errors in the existing literature, and presents a wealth of new findings. In doing so, it furnishes a more detailed understanding than ever before of the connections between Turner’s life and art. Taking a strictly chronological approach, Eric Shanes addresses Turner’s intellectual complexity and depth, his technical virtuosity, his personal contradictions, and his intricate social and cultural relations. Shanes draws on decades of familiarity with his subject, as well as newly discovered source material, such as the artist’s principal bank records, which shed significant light on his patronage and sales. The result, written in a warm, engaging style, is a comprehensive and magnificently illustrated volume which will fundamentally shape the future of Turner studies. Eric Shanes is a professional painter, independent art historian and lecturer. He is a leading expert on Turner, a vice president of the Turner Society and the author of many books on the artist, including Turner’s England and Turner’s Watercolour Explorations.
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Publication date: April ISBN: 978-0-300-14065-1 Dimensions: 286 × 241 mm Pages: 552 Illustrations: 350 colour + 100 b/w illus. Price: £85.00
Aubrey Beardsley A Catalogue Raisonné Linda Gertner Zatlin
This is the first book to bring together the surviving works—more than 1,150 in total, including over 50 that have never before been published —of the celebrated and controversial artist Aubrey Beardsley. Despite his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 25, Beardsley’s work shaped Art Nouveau in Britain. His distinctive graphic style outraged critics and led them to overstate his rebellious and eccentric persona. Beardsley’s illustrations, by turn frankly grotesque, delicately beautiful and hilariously bawdy, influenced art and artists the world over and continue to enthral today. This comprehensive catalogue is an essential reference and a delight for Beardsley enthusiasts. Alongside superb reproductions, Linda Gertner Zatlin presents Beardsley’s double-sided paintings, watercolours and drawings in terms of their material history, provenance, themes, motifs and symbolism, as well as their worldwide reception. She discusses the exhibition and reproduction history of each work, as well as the criticism that greeted Beardsley’s graphic imagery and the gossip it aroused. This study explores the subversive challenge that Beardsley’s work posed to Victorian moral strictures; at the same time it contributes significantly to the history of art as an agent of cultural change.
Format: 2-Volume Boxed Set Publication date: May ISBN: 978-0-300-11127-9 Dimensions: 285 × 245 mm Pages: 1104 Illustrations: 75 colour + 1145 b/w illus. Price: £175.00
Linda Gertner Zatlin is professor of English at Morehouse College, Atlanta, specializing in Victorian literature. Her revised, expanded edition of Beardsley’s letters is forthcoming.
January 2016 — No. 2 29
Publications & Events
Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland Patricia McCarthy
For aristocrats and gentry in eighteenthcentury Ireland, the townhouses and country estates they resided in were carefully constructed to accommodate their cultivated lifestyles. Based on new research from Irish national collections and correspondence culled from papers in private keeping, this publication provides a vivid and engaging look at the various ways in which families tailored their homes to their personal needs and preferences. Halls were designed in order to support a variety of simultaneous activities, including dining, music, and games, while closed porches allowed visitors to arrive fully protected from the country’s harsh weather. These grand houses were arranged in accordance with their residents’ daily procedures, demonstrating a distinction between public and private spaces, and even keeping in mind the roles and arrangements of the servants in their purposeful layouts. With careful consideration given to both the practicality of everyday routine and the occasional special event, this book illustrates how the lives and houses of these aristocrats were inextricably woven together. Patricia McCarthy is an independent architectural historian based in Dublin. She has contributed to several books on Irish architecture, and is the author of Building the King’s Inns.
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Publication date: June ISBN: 978-0-300-21886-2 Dimensions: 279 × 241 mm Pages: 278 Illustrations: 80 colour + 80 b/w illus. Price: £45.00
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
Figures and Landscapes, 1914–1925: The Complete Paintings, Volume IX
The Complete Paintings Cumulative Index to Volumes I–IX
Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray The last in a series of books devoted to the work of John Singer Sargent, this volume covers the figure and landscape works that Sargent produced between 1914 and 1925. The story begins with the artist painting with friends on vacation in Austria in the summer of 1914, unaware that war was about to be declared. The following year, he began working in London on his ideas for the murals at the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, before spending two years in Boston and exploring other parts of America. While in Florida to paint a portrait of John D. Rockefeller, he produced a group of uniquely Floridian watercolours that are breathtaking arrangements of colour, form, and light. In July 1918 he accepted an invitation from the British government to travel to the Somme battlefields as an official war artist. This experience led him to produce a remarkable group of works depicting troop movements, off-duty soldiers relaxing, and the studies for his epic canvas Gassed. Sargent returned to Boston in 1921 and 1922 to complete his mural projects, and visits to Maine and New Hampshire yielded numerous watercolours. Chapters on Sargent’s materials and the framing of his pictures complete this remarkable project.
The cumulative index to John Singer Sargent: The Complete Paintings comprises two indexes covering the nine volumes of the catalogue raisonné: a comprehensive general index and an index of the titles of all the works by Sargent that have been referenced in the catalogue.
Richard Ormond is an independent art historian and the great-nephew of John Singer Sargent. Elaine Kilmurray is research director of the John Singer Sargent Catalogue Raisonné Project.
Publication date: July ISBN: 978-0-300-17737-4 Dimensions: 305 × 248 mm Pages: 352 Illustrations: 194 colour + 106 b/w illus. Price: £50.00
Publication date: June ISBN: 978-0-300-21920-3 Dimensions: 305 × 248 mm Pages: 144 Illustration: 2 b/w illus. Price: £25.00
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Publications & Events
Expanding Access to Art History Nermin Abdulla, Education Programme Manager, reviews the PMC’s first Public Lecture Course
Over the past few years, the PMC has developed a rich and varied programme of events, conferences, symposia, and workshops, together with our popular series of research lunches and seminars. In late 2014 we turned our gaze to new horizons, taking a step into the realm of public education. This chimes with the vision of Paul Mellon himself. His ethos for our sister institution, the Yale Center for British Art, was for the collection to be accessible to all—that someone with little or no experience of art could step off the street and experience great works of art for free. This same philosophy has been applied to the Public Lecture Course, the Centre’s new education programme. Designed to appeal to members of the public with little to no background in British art history, this programme is the first of its kind to run at the Paul Mellon Centre and is completely free, so truly anyone can enrol onto the course and learn more about British art. The response was fantastic. The course was fully booked within two days. We asked the participants on the first Public Lecture Course, “Satire to Spectacle: British Art in the Eighteenth Century”, which was taught by Mark Hallett and Martin Postle, what it was about this course that attracted their interest. One participant, a garden
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and landscape historian, said that it had appealed because “garden history is very linked to art history”, and having only briefly touched on British landscapes during a Master’s degree she wanted to learn more. Another participant, who despite a fascination with art history was unable to read the subject at university, said that she was keen to attend because “it’s rare to have a course specifically on such an important period of painting”. One other participant, a lawyer by profession but who also has an active interest in galleries and art history, commented that the links between London and British art were of “particular interest” and that he hoped to use the knowledge gained from “Satire to Spectacle” when visiting galleries. We hope to continue the Public Lecture Course later this year in the autumn with a new series of lectures.
PMC Events Calendar All events are at the Paul Mellon Centre unless otherwise indicated
January 13 January 2016, 18.00–20.00 Research Seminar Was Concrete Modern? Adrian Forty
15 January 2016, 12.30–14.00 Research Lunch Cross Paths and Currents: Cubist and Constructive Work in Wartime St Ives Rachel Smith
22 January 2016, 9.30-6.30 pm Workshop Rowlandson and After: Rethinking Graphic Satire PMC and The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace
27 January 2016, 18.00–20.00 Research Seminar Manufacturing Giants: A Material History of Gogmagog and Corineus from the 15th century to the present Alixe Bovey
‘Abstract Paintings, Sculptures, Mobiles Exhibition, A.I.A. Tate Archive, TGA 201011/3/1/35/6, © The estate of Nigel Henderson © The estate of Victor Pasmore
28–29 January 2016 Conference Exhibiting Contemporary Art in Post-War Britain, 1945–60 Tate Britain
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Publications & Events
Thomas Rowlandson, A York Address to the Whale. Caught lately off Gravesend. Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015.
February 5 February 2016, 12.30–14.00 Research Lunch Primitive Forms and Prospects: Geological Landscapes in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-century Britain Allison Ksiazkiewicz
8 February – 27 May 2016 Display John Cornforth: A Passion for Houses. Material on the town house from the Cornforth Collection Drawing Room
10 February 2016, 18.00–20.00 Research Seminar Surveying the City: John Britton’s “London Topography”, 1820–1840 Stephen Daniels 34
Opposite: Bodleian Laud Misc. 733, fol. 22v. Bodlein Library, University Oxford
Title: Spencer House, West Façade. © Spencer House Limited. Photograph by Mark Fiennes.
19 February 2016, 12.30–14.00 Research Lunch Peaks and Pencils: Victorian Illustrations and Paintings of the Dolomite Mountains William Bainbridge
24 February 2016, 18.00–20.00 Research Seminar Renaissances (and Baroque?) in Scottish architecture Ian Campbell
26 February 2016, 12.30–14.15 Research Lunch Screening and discussion of Trewyn Studio, a new film on Barbara Hepworth’s studio-museum Helena Bonnett and Jonathan Law
March 9 March 2016, 18.00–20.00 Research Seminar The Stuff of Radio: Material and Spatial Cultures of Sound in Inter-War England Elizabeth Darling
11 March 2016, 12.30–14.00 Research Lunch With Dots and Rays: Autochrome Photography and Artistic Expression in Britain Caroline Fuchs
17 March 2016 Conference Animating the Georgian London Town House National Gallery
PMC Profile
Jessica Feather Over the past year, the PMC has welcomed two new Postdoctoral Fellows. This October, Jessica Feather joined Hana Leaper, our Editorial Assistant Postdoctoral Fellow, in our growing team of in-house research staff. Sarah Victoria Turner, our Deputy Director for Research, found out how Jessica is settling in.
Jessica, you are the first Allen Fellow at the PMC, named in honour of our former Director, Brian Allen. First of all, congratulations! What projects are you working on? Jessica Feather — Thank you Sarah! I’ve been working on two main research projects. One explores the history of the summer exhibitions at the Royal Academy in preparation for a major exhibition on the subject. The other examines the collecting and display of art in the country house.
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And what were you doing before you came to the PMC? JF — I was completing my PhD, and before that I worked as Curator of Works on Paper at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
nineteenth-century objects but talked about them in a later context which has made me very aware of the fluidity of “period” boundaries, something which I think really helps my work on two chronologically diverse research projects.
Tell us more about your PhD research. Does it relate to the projects you are working on as part of the Allen Fellowship? JF — In a broad sense, yes. My thesis focused on the reception of historic and contemporary watercolour in the fin-de-siècle and early twentieth century. I examined shifting identities associated with watercolour in this period through a series of case studies exploring critical writing, exhibition and museum culture, and individual collectors. I am drawing on these interests for my work on both research projects. My thesis was unusual in the sense that I used eighteenth- and
It would seem like you are settling into life at the PMC well. What's made the biggest impression on you so far about Centre? JF — The energy and passion of its staff and the dynamic range of activities that are taking place here— plus the endless supply of tea and cake! Well, it sounds like you’ve plenty to be getting on with, Jessica, we’ll let you get back to work!
YCBA Programmes and Events 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 USA
Hoardings at the Yale Center for British Art during the building conservation project
The Yale Center for British Art, will reopen its doors to the public on Wednesday, May 11, 2016, following a closure to conserve its landmark building, designed by the architect Louis I. Kahn. The Center’s galleries and Lecture Hall have been renewed and reconfigured, allowing the renowned collection of more than five centuries of British art to be experienced in the building as Kahn originally envisioned it, while also bringing internal systems, spaces, and amenities to state-of-the-art standards.
In celebration of the reopening, the Center will host extended hours on Wednesday, May 11, and Thursday, May 12, offering special tours, including a behind-the-scenes look at the Center’s painting and paper conservation studios on opening day. On Saturday, May 14, the Center will host a daylong series of programs and activities to welcome the community, featuring gallery tours, musical and dance performances, refreshments, and other activities. Throughout
To stay connected and learn more about the Center’s programs, visit britishart.yale.edu.
the year, the Center will continue to present a rich program of events, including tours of the Founder’s Room, offering insight into the extraordinary collection of the institution’s founder Paul Mellon (Yale College, Class on 1929). Further details about the Center’s reopening plans will be announced in the coming weeks.