Print Publications

This year has produced a suite of publications that is particularly remarkable for its chronological scope. Though the Centre has always been keen to publish world-class scholarship on British art of any period, it has traditionally been best known for books on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century subjects. The year 2019–20 expressed the Centre’s new enthusiasm for expanding the list in various ways, particularly into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is a slow process to broaden a list from its original core area in a sustainable and meaningful way, but progress is certainly being made, and this year has seen further evidence of that.

With books that explore the tenth-century Irish high crosses, the thousand-year-old Westminster Abbey and the Roman origins of Oxford Street, we have maintained our tradition of publishing on the early history of British art and architecture.

We have also addressed topics from between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. The emerging ambitions of the Elizabethan court for engagement with the wider world; Christopher Wren’s tracing of the origins of classical architecture to the stonemasons of the biblical East; the power of aquatints to bring knowledge of distant civilisations to eighteenth-century audiences; the cultural and political importance of eye-witness representations of the transatlantic slave trade; and the sensual engagement of Romantic sculptors with Greco-Roman art, have all been among the subjects deftly and sensitively investigated by members of this year’s cohort of exceptional scholars. And extending our reach ever further forward in time, 1960s London received a brilliant and kaleidoscopic exploration as a vibrant hub of artistic practice, and a team of editors and contributing authors investigated the evolution of the moving image from a marginalised medium of British art into one of its most vital areas of artistic practice.

Beyond the publication of our front-list print titles, we are also delighted to have become contributing members of Yale University Press’s Art & Architecture ePortal, which has allowed us the opportunity to make available various important titles from our backlist in innovative new ways.