British Art Studies

Launching

January 2016 / No. 2 paul-mellon-centre.ac.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 Senior Research Fellows, Special Projects Hugh Belsey Archives and Library Assistant Elizabeth Einberg Frankie Drummond Charig Eric Shanes Assistant Archivist and Records Manager Jenny Hill Advisory Council Fellowships and Grants Manager Mary Peskett Smith , Whitechapel Gallery Alixe Bovey, Courtauld Institute of Art Digital Manager Christopher Breward, University of Edinburgh Tom Scutt David Peters Corbett, University of East Anglia Events Manager Anthony Geraghty, University of York Ella Fleming Michael Hatt, University of Warwick Richard Marks, Art Historian and Curator Operations Manager Martin Myrone, Britain Lyndsey Gherardi Andrew Saint, English Heritage Education Programme Manager MaryAnne Stevens, Art Historian and Curator Nermin Abdulla Shearer West, University of Sheffield Alison Yarrington, Loughborough University Picture Researcher Maisoon Rehani IT Administrator Board of Governors Zaiba Badrudin Peter Salovey, President of Yale University Finance Officer Ben Polak, Provost for Yale University Barbara Ruddick Amy Meyers, Director of Yale Center for British Art Stephen Murphy, Vice President for Finance and Chief Finance Assistant Financial Officer of Yale University Rashida Nakaddu Editor, Special Projects Guilland Sutherland Photography Director’s Assistant and Office Administrator Martine La Roche Harriet Fisher Receptionist Design Ellie Mayes Cultureshock Media Buildings Officer Harry Smith Editorial Assistant Postdoctoral Fellow Contact us Hana Leaper Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art 16 Bedford Square Brian Allen Postdoctoral Fellow London, WC1B 3JA Jessica Feather United Kingdom T: 020 7580 0311 F: 020 7636 6730 www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk Contents January 2016 — No.2

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

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

2 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 open access, meaning that it is free to use delighted to launch British Art Studies on and enjoy at www.britishartstudies.ac.uk 30 November 2015. In the first week alone without a password or subscription. It is there were two thousand unique users who one of only a few completely open-access accessed the journal’s website from fifty- journals in the field of art history. four countries. This first issue covers a diverse range British Art Studies is a new online and of topics: Renaissance art criticism; the peer-reviewed journal published by the photographic lantern slide; the imagery Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British of charity in eighteenth-century London; Art, London, and the Yale Center for the complex status of painting within the British Art, New Haven. All of its content is 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, co- authored by Cyra Levenson (Yale Center for British Art) and Chi-ming Yang (University of Pennsylvania) with a photo-essay by the contemporary artist Ken Gonzales- Day, 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.

Above: Walter Crane for Jeffrey & Co., At Home, 1872. Tempera on paper, Leeds Museums and Galleries, 4 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 currently touring the UK, we have created British photographer John Deakin. The a dynamic cover of eight art works. A new first Conversation Piece is led by Richard work will load each time you return to Johns (University of York), who has invited the cover of our first issue. In developing a diverse range of academics, curators, the journal, the editorial team has and artists to respond to the provocation, continuously asked the question: what is “There’s no such thing as British art.” it possible to do with a digital journal that Through text, film, and visual work, this might not be possible to do in print? We conversation captures the vivacity and hope that you will find British Art Studies multiplicity of opinions prompted by the to be an exciting, visually stimulating, and subject of “British art”, and a discussion refreshing response to this question. board allows readers to add their own Issue 2 of British Art Studies will be comments to the conversation. published in April 2016. A special issue on The cover of British Art Studies British sculpture abroad, 1950–2000 will represents another collaboration. follow in the summer. More details about how Working with the curators and artists of to submit an article for consideration can also the British Art Show 8 exhibition, which is 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 Our well-established Curatorial Research receipt of applications to our autumn Grants attracted considerable interest round of grants. By 30 September, when once again. Nine awards were made to a that window closed, we had received 222 wide range of institutions, including the ICA, applications for eight categories of award Turner Contemporary, and the Greenwich via our new online grants system. This figure Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College. represented an increase of over 33 percent A full list of awards made by our Advisory compared with September 2014. Council in autumn 2015 is on our website One reason for this large increase in at the following link: paul-mellon-centre. applications was the introduction of the ac.uk/fellowships-and-grants/awarded/ new Digital Project Grant category, offered autumn-2015. for the first time this year. This stimulated On pages 10-13, Peter Moore, who is much interest and resulted in a staggering the Research Curator at Gainsborough’s fifty-three applications. As this was a pilot House, explains how a PMC Curatorial year for this new award, we plan to make Research Grant awarded last year is some modifications to it, including making helping to support a project to research the rubric more precise and structured, and catalogue the museum’s collection of stating which type of projects we are able paintings, drawings, and prints. to support as well as those which would Meanwhile, the spring 2016 round of not come within the scope of this funding awards is fast approaching. This consists stream. One factor which became apparent mainly of our five categories of Fellowship. is that the sustainability and longevity of These Fellowships range from nine-month any digital project is vital for the success of Senior Fellowships to three-month Junior such projects; in most cases institutional Fellowships, the latter normally being support is crucial. Our Advisory Council awarded to non-UK graduate students made six awards for Digital Projects, so we to further their doctoral research in the had to disappoint over forty applicants in United Kingdom. We also offer one Rome this category of award alone. Fellowship based at the British School

6 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 equipment like microphones, turntables how the emergence of the broadcasting and and mixing desks, in order that noise could wireless industry in the wake of the Great become sound, and the nation’s nine million War created a new problem for architects licence holders could be both educated and designers: how to give material form and entertained. Much of my time has been to something as immaterial as sound. My spent deep in the archives, working through research has focused on the architects committee minutes to build up a detailed Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates, and history of events, or analysing personal Raymond McGrath, and their work for the diaries to reconstruct the places in which BBC at Broadcasting House, London (1932), client and architect first encountered for which they designed the majority of each other. The richness of the material the studios, and their subsequent work as means that a project intended to produce wireless set designers for the electronics two articles has become one for a book. manufacturer EKCO Ltd (from 1933 This study will develop our understanding onwards). I have also sought to trace the of how Modernist architects and their personal networks that brought them these patrons shaped a central aspect of English commissions, and their collaborations with modernity—the ways in which the nation broadcasters, engineers, and manufacturers communicated and projected itself during in as they worked, from scratch, to invent the interwar decades.

AD65 wireless set by Wells Coates for EKCO Ltd (1934) January 2016 — No. 2 9 Spotlight on Sudbury 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

12 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 collection- based 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

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 2016 the Paul Mellon Centre is embarking In addition, the project will incorporate on an ambitious flagship research project regular workshops focusing upon aspects entitled “The Country House: Collections of collecting and display, as well as and Display”. The project will aim to evening lectures and post-graduate explore various facets of the collection seminars. Beginning in 2016, the Centre will and display of works of art in the country facilitate scholarly visits to country house house in Britain and Ireland from the collections, with the emphasis upon those sixteenth century to the present day. At digitally photographed by the Centre or the time of writing—in November 2015—we otherwise less familiar to the scholarly are still considering the precise scope community. Invitations to visits will be on and parameters of the project. However, the basis of the relevant research interests one of our core intentions is to create of participants, and our aim is to include a a research portal using the Paul Mellon broad range of scholars and participants. Centre’s collections as a hub, collating and In developing this project, I will be assisted highlighting relevant research material, by Dr Jessica Feather, recently appointed including photographs, catalogues, books, as the first Brian Allen Postdoctoral Fellow and manuscript sources. We also aim to at the Centre.

Opposite: Glyn Philpot, Margaret (Peggy) Crewe-Milnes, Marchioness of Crewe, 1917. 14 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 and individuals, this project asks broader under-explored, site in the construction methodological questions about the ways of art historical narratives in Asia, and in which the art histories of Britain and Asia examines its influence through exhibitions, have been, and are being, written, circulated, patronage, art writing, and art education. and negotiated. This project has been London, Asia also reflects on how the developed in collaboration with Hammad growing field of modern and contemporary Nasar, Head of Research and Programmes at art history in Asia intersects with, and the AAA. It came about after conversations challenges, existing histories of British art. Hammad and I had in light of the “British Art We are not proposing a comparative through its Exhibition Histories, 1760-Now” framework, but rather encouraging new session at the AAA conference in April this perspectives on the entanglements, year at which Hammad gave a paper entitled historic and contemporary, between “Inadvertent Restaging or Exhibitionary London and Asia. By looking at examples of De-colonisation? Migrations: Journeys into particular exhibitions, events, institutions, British Art and the Other Story”.

Above: Envelope of letter from F.N. Souza to Wahab Jaffer, 1975. Courtesy 16 of Wahab Jaffer and Asia Art Archive 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 Planned Events and the PMC will collaborate on a series and Initiatives of discussions, events, and residencies, in addition to archival and digital projects, The first key component for an initial period of three years. We of London, Asia will be the will reach out to the broader community symposium, Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in of interest to shape and realize these Britain, 1900 to Now (30 June–1 initiatives, and anticipate the collaborative July 2016), accompanied by a development of a repository of digitized panel discussion in association with Tate on occasion of the materials, filmed conversations, oral exhibition Bhupen Khakhar at histories, and texts that will be made (2 July). available as resources for the field. A workshop exploring the impact The project is envisaged as a series of of art schools and pedagogic interventions and conversations with no practices on the development of art practice and art-historic specific end point; rather, these initiatives narratives will conclude the and resources are intended to open up three-year project. and fuel generative engagement with an A number of other initiatives area that art historians, curators, and will be developed over the researchers have yet to examine in a course of 2016–18 and will be systematic and critical way. announced regularly on both AAA and PMC websites. THE PUBLIC STUDY ROOM RE- OPENS 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 A second van load of material was four hundred boxes – arrived back from received a week later and this material has off-site storage at the Centre on 8 been shelved in the Library Annex. This October. It took a full three days for the is a new space for library readers (it was movers, working with Collections staff, to previously the staff kitchen!), and thanks unpack and reshelve the material, but the to the wonders of rolling racking, it now final result is very impressive. The shelves houses more books than the Public Study are much less crowded than before—a Room itself. Pamphlets and exhibition result of one of the key aims of the building catalogues have also returned to the project, which is to make more space Centre and these have been filed into the for Research Collections material. Those cupboards in the Public Study Room. of you familiar with the Centre’s Public The majority of library stock has now Study Room will welcome this as a huge been returned and, at the time of writing, improvement: books can now be removed plans are in place to bring back from from the shelves with ease! A time-lapse storage four of the Centre’s most significant video, filmed over two days (at four archive collections—the archives of images per minute) shows the books being Brinsley Ford, Frank Simpson, Oliver Millar, returned to the shelves in the Public Study and Ellis Waterhouse. These are both the Room. It has become quite a hit on Twitter most extensive and traditionally the most and can be viewed here:www.paul-mellon- consulted of the collections so we anticipate centre.ac.uk/whats-on/news/reopening/ that their return will be of particular interest

18 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 The Public Study Room 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 ([email protected]). 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 eighteenth- century 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

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@ 20 paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk for more information.

A Closer Look A Catalogue Raisonné of Francis Towne by Richard Stephens

Maisoon Rehani, Picture Researcher, reports on the progress of the Francis Towne online catalogue raisonné 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 Francis Towne (1740–1816), available to view in digital form. One of the groups of images which has been On the Rhine, undated, pen and watercolour, photographed recently is the collection of Towne’s works at the Huntington 15.2 × 21 cm. The including On the Rhine, which was the very last drawing that the artist made Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical on his 1780–1 Continental tour. High-quality photographs of such works make Gardens, San Marino it possible to appreciate the restricted palette and the distinctive forms of draughtsmanship that Towne was employing in the weeks immediately Opposite: Francis Towne following his visit to the valley of Chamonix in Switzerland, where he had made (1740–1816), The Source of the Arveyron, 1781, ink some of his most famous drawings, such as the Source of the Arveyron. and watercolour on paper, Apart from commissioning new photography, the other element of the 31.10 × 21.2 cm. project that I have really enjoyed has been working closely with Tom Scutt Tate, London (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.

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 art- historians, 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.

Opposite: Installation photograph of Phoebe Unwin: Distant People and Self-Soothing Objects exhibition, Wilkinson Gallery, 24 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.

26 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, Publication date: April Eric Shanes addresses Turner’s intellectual ISBN: 978-0-300-14065-1 Dimensions: 286 × 241 mm complexity and depth, his technical virtuosity, Pages: 552 his personal contradictions, and his intricate Illustrations: 350 colour + 100 b/w illus. social and cultural relations. Shanes draws on Price: £85.00 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.

28 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 Format: 2-Volume Boxed Set as the criticism that greeted Beardsley’s Publication date: May graphic imagery and the gossip it aroused. ISBN: 978-0-300-11127-9 This study explores the subversive Dimensions: 285 × 245 mm challenge that Beardsley’s work posed to Pages: 1104 Victorian moral strictures; at the same time Illustrations: 75 colour + 1145 b/w illus. it contributes significantly to the history of Price: £175.00 art as an agent of cultural change.

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 eighteenth- century 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, Publication date: June including dining, music, and games, ISBN: 978-0-300-21886-2 while closed porches allowed visitors to Dimensions: 279 × 241 mm arrive fully protected from the country’s Pages: 278 harsh weather. These grand houses Illustrations: 80 colour + 80 b/w illus. were arranged in accordance with their Price: £45.00 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.

30 John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent Figures and Landscapes, 1914–1925: The Complete Paintings The Complete Paintings, Volume IX Cumulative Index to Volumes I–IX Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray

The last in a series of books devoted to the The cumulative index to John Singer work of John Singer Sargent, this volume Sargent: The Complete Paintings comprises covers the figure and landscape works that two indexes covering the nine volumes of Sargent produced between 1914 and 1925. the catalogue raisonné: a comprehensive The story begins with the artist painting general index and an index of the titles of with friends on vacation in Austria in the all the works by Sargent that have been summer of 1914, unaware that war was referenced in the catalogue. about to be declared. The following year, Publication date: June he began working in London on his ideas ISBN: 978-0-300-21920-3 for the murals at the Boston Public Library Dimensions: 305 × 248 mm and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Pages: 144 before spending two years in Boston and Illustration: 2 b/w illus. exploring other parts of America. While Price: £25.00 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.

Richard Ormond is an independent art historian and the Publication date: July great-nephew of John Singer Sargent. Elaine Kilmurray is ISBN: 978-0-300-17737-4 research director of the John Singer Sargent Catalogue : 305 × 248 mm Raisonné Project. Dimensions Pages: 352 Illustrations: 194 colour + 106 b/w illus. Price: £50.00

January 2016 — No. 2 31 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 and landscape historian, said that it had for our sister institution, the Yale Center appealed because “garden history is very for British Art, was for the collection to linked to art history”, and having only be accessible to all—that someone with briefly touched on British landscapes little or no experience of art could step during a Master’s degree she wanted to off the street and experience great works learn more. Another participant, who of art for free. This same philosophy has despite a fascination with art history was been applied to the Public Lecture Course, unable to read the subject at university, the Centre’s new education programme. said that she was keen to attend because Designed to appeal to members of the “it’s rare to have a course specifically on public with little to no background in such an important period of painting”. One British art history, this programme is the other participant, a lawyer by profession first of its kind to run at the Paul Mellon but who also has an active interest in Centre and is completely free, so truly galleries and art history, commented that anyone can enrol onto the course and the links between London and British art learn more about British art. were of “particular interest” and that he The response was fantastic. The course hoped to use the knowledge gained from was fully booked within two days. We asked “Satire to Spectacle” when visiting galleries. the participants on the first Public Lecture We hope to continue the Public Lecture Course, “Satire to Spectacle: British Art in Course later this year in the autumn with a the Eighteenth Century”, which was taught new series of lectures. by Mark Hallett and Martin Postle, what it was about this course that attracted their interest. One participant, a garden

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

January 22 January 2016, 9.30-6.30 pm Workshop Rowlandson and After: ‘Abstract Paintings, Sculptures, Mobiles 13 January 2016, 18.00–20.00 Rethinking Graphic Satire Exhibition, A.I.A. Tate Archive, TGA Research Seminar PMC and The Queen’s Gallery, 201011/3/1/35/6, © The estate of Nigel Henderson © The estate of Victor Pasmore Was Concrete Modern? Buckingham Palace Adrian Forty

27 January 2016, 18.00–20.00 15 January 2016, 12.30–14.00 Research Seminar 28–29 January 2016 Research Lunch Manufacturing Giants: A Material Conference Cross Paths and Currents: History of Gogmagog and Cubist and Constructive Work Corineus from the 15th century Exhibiting Contemporary Art in in Wartime St Ives to the present Post-War Britain, 1945–60 Rachel Smith Alixe Bovey

January 2016 — No. 2 33 w

Publications & Events Opposite: Bodleian Laud Misc. 733, fol. 22v. Bodlein Library, University Oxford

Thomas Rowlandson, A York Address to Title: Spencer House, West the Whale. Caught lately off Gravesend. Façade. © Spencer House Limited. Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Photograph by Mark Fiennes. Queen Elizabeth II 2015.

February 19 February 2016, 12.30–14.00 March Research Lunch Peaks and Pencils: Victorian 5 February 2016, 12.30–14.00 Illustrations and Paintings of the 9 March 2016, 18.00–20.00 Research Lunch Dolomite Mountains Research Seminar Primitive Forms and Prospects: William Bainbridge The Stuff of Radio: Material and Geological Landscapes in Spatial Cultures of Sound in Late Eighteenth- and Early Inter-War England Nineteenth-century Britain 24 February 2016, 18.00–20.00 Elizabeth Darling Allison Ksiazkiewicz Research Seminar Renaissances (and Baroque?) in Scottish architecture 11 March 2016, 12.30–14.00 8 February – 27 May 2016 Ian Campbell Research Lunch Display With Dots and Rays: John Cornforth: A Passion for Autochrome Photography and Houses. Material on the town house 26 February 2016, 12.30–14.15 Artistic Expression in Britain from the Cornforth Collection Research Lunch Caroline Fuchs Drawing Room Screening and discussion of Trewyn Studio, a new film on Barbara Hepworth’s 17 March 2016 10 February 2016, 18.00–20.00 studio-museum Conference Research Seminar Helena Bonnett and Jonathan Law Animating the Georgian London Surveying the City: John Town House Britton’s “London Topography”, National Gallery 1820–1840 Stephen Daniels

34 w 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.

And what were you nineteenth-century objects doing before you came but talked about them in to the PMC? a later context which has JF — I was completing made me very aware of my PhD, and before the fluidity of “period” that I worked as Curator boundaries, something of Works on Paper at which I think really helps my the Walker Art Gallery, work on two chronologically Liverpool. diverse research projects.

Tell us more about your It would seem like you are PhD research. Does it settling into life at the PMC Jessica, you are the first relate to the projects you well. What's made the Allen Fellow at the PMC, are working on as part of biggest impression on you so named in honour of our the Allen Fellowship? far about Centre? former Director, Brian Allen. JF — In a broad sense, yes. JF — The energy and First of all, congratulations! My thesis focused on the passion of its staff and the What projects are you reception of historic and dynamic range of activities working on? contemporary watercolour that are taking place here— Jessica Feather — Thank in the fin-de-siècle and plus the endless supply of you Sarah! I’ve been early twentieth century. I tea and cake! working on two main examined shifting identities research projects. One associated with watercolour Well, it sounds like explores the history of in this period through you’ve plenty to be the summer exhibitions a series of case studies getting on with, Jessica, at the Royal Academy in exploring critical writing, we’ll let you get back preparation for a major exhibition and museum to work! exhibition on the subject. culture, and individual The other examines the collectors. I am drawing collecting and display of on these interests for my art in the country house. work on both research projects. My thesis was unusual in the sense that I used eighteenth- and

36 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 In celebration of the the year, the Center will Art, will reopen its doors to reopening, the Center will continue to present a the public on Wednesday, host extended hours on rich program of events, May 11, 2016, following a Wednesday, May 11, and including tours of closure to conserve its Thursday, May 12, offering the Founder’s Room, landmark building, designed special tours, including a offering insight into the by the architect Louis I. behind-the-scenes look extraordinary collection Kahn. The Center’s galleries at the Center’s painting of the institution’s and Lecture Hall have been and paper conservation founder Paul Mellon (Yale renewed and reconfigured, studios on opening day. College, Class on 1929). allowing the renowned On Saturday, May 14, the Further details about the collection of more than Center will host a daylong Center’s reopening plans five centuries of British art series of programs and will be announced in the to be experienced in the activities to welcome coming weeks. building as Kahn originally the community, featuring envisioned it, while also gallery tours, musical and bringing internal systems, dance performances, spaces, and amenities to refreshments, and other state-of-the-art standards. activities. Throughout

To stay connected and learn more about the Center’s programs, visit britishart.yale.edu.