The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art - Yale University November 2007 Issue 25 newsletter
A Passion for British Art: Collecting in the 20th Century
Friday 18 January 2008 The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
J. M. W. Turner, “Dort, Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed,” 1817-18, oil on canvas,Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
This one-day conference to be held at the assembled in the twentieth century. Although it Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, encompasses works from many periods and will discuss issues related to the collection of cultures, at the heart of the Mellon collection the late Paul Mellon (1907-1999), and the are pictures from the ‘Golden Age’ of British art, exhibition, ‘An American’s Passion for British from the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth Art, Paul Mellon’s Legacy’, at the Royal Academy century. Among modern private collectors, of Arts, London (20 October 2007 - 27 January however, Mr Mellon was not alone in his 2008). Paul Mellon’s collection, which embraces appreciation of the merits of the British School, paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints, and this conference aims to set his achievement sculptures, rare books and manuscripts is within the global context of modern and among the finest of its kind to have been contemporary collecting.
16 Bedford Square London WC1B 3JA Tel: 020 7580 0311 Fax: 020 7636 6730 www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk Paul Mellon Centre conference A Passion for British Art: Collecting in the 20th Century Friday 18 January 2008, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Conference Programme
Morning session to be chaired by Professor Brian Allen (Director of Studies, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art). Afternoon session to be chaired by MaryAnne Stevens (Director of Academic Affairs, Royal Academy of Arts, London).
09.45 Registration 13.00 Lunch
10.00 Welcome and opening remarks 14.30 Dr Alison Smith by Brian Allen (Curator, Head of Acquisitions, British Art Pre-1900, Tate Britain) 10.15 Professor David Cannadine Modern Collectors of Victorian Art (Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Professor of British History, 15.15 Angus Trumble Institute of Historical Research) (Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Father and Son as Collectors and the Yale Center for British Art) Philanthropists: Andrew W. Mellon From Hubert von Herkomer to Kenneth Clark: and Paul Mellon Compared Buying British Art for Australasia, 1899-1954
11.00 Coffee break 16.00 Tea
11.30 Dr Shelley Bennett 16.30 Louisa Buck (Senior Research Associate, (Contemporary Art correspondent Huntington Library, Art Collections for the Art Newspaper) and Botanical Gardens) From Saatchi to Frieze: the Reception and Henry and Arabella Huntington: Collecting and Acquisition of Contemporary British Art at Cultural Philanthropy in America c.1900 Home and Abroad
12.15 Andrew Wilton 17.15 Closing remarks and discussion (Honorary Curator of Prints and Drawings, Royal Academy of Arts) 18.0 0-19.00 Wine reception Collecting British Watercolours and Drawings in the 20th Century
Full conference fee £40.00 (including coffee, lunch, tea and wine reception)
Student concessions are available at a reduced rate of £20.00
To register for the conference please send a cheque made payable to The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art , to: Lucy Nixon The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art 16 Bedford Square London WC1B 3JA (include a stamped addressed envelope) Tel: 020 7580 0311 Fax: 020 7636 6730 Email: [email protected]
The Paul Mellon Centre Staff Director of Studies: Brian Allen. Assistant Director for Academic Activities: Martin Postle. Assistant Director for Administration: Kasha Jenkinson. Librarian: Emma Floyd. Archivist: Emma Lauze. IT Officer: Maisoon Rehani. Administrative Assistant: Lucy Nixon. Yale-in-London Coordinator: Viv Redhead. Editor, Special Projects: Guilland Sutherland. Special Projects: Elizabeth Einberg, John Ingamells, Mary Peskett Smith. Advisory Council: David Bindman, Julius Bryant, Andrew Causey, Maurice Howard, Joseph Koerner, Sandy Nairne, Lynda Nead, Marcia Pointon, Elizabeth Prettejohn, Duncan Robinson, Michael Rosenthal, Kim Sloan. Company Registered in England 983028 Registered Charity 313838
2 support for scholarship in British Art awards Grant Awards At the November 2007 meeting of the Centre’s Advisory Council, the following grants were awarded: Curatorial Research Grants Research Support Grants
Beazley Archive, University of Oxford to help Adriano Aymonino towards research costs and support a research curator for two years on the project travel in the UK for his doctoral thesis ‘The First Duke to research, catalogue and publish The Arundel and and Duchess of Northumberland: Political Strategies, Marlborough Collections of Engraved Gems and Cameos Patronage and Collecting in the Age of the GrandTour’
National Portrait Gallery to help support a Hugh Brigstocke towards travel and research research curator for the final year of the project to costs in Italy for work on ‘A Catalogue of Drawings research and publish the Gallery’s Catalogue of Later assembled by William Ottley’ Victorian Portraits Patricia Crown towards travel and research costs The Chapter of Peterborough Cathedral to in the USA for a publication on ‘Edward Francis Burney support a research curator for one year to continue the (1760-1848)’ architectural analysis and research on the West Front of Peterborough Cathedral Anne Dulau towards travel and research costs in the UK for an essay on ‘Boucher and Chardin in Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery to help Eighteenth-century Britain’ support a research curator for two years to work on an exhibition and catalogue Sir Joshua Reynolds’s early Richard Hayes towards travel and research costs in patrons and Reynolds’s collection of works on paper the UK for a publication on ‘John Ruskin and the Road to Ferry Hinksey: Secular Volunteerism in Nineteenth- century England’
Educational Programme Grants Ann Smart Martin towards travel and research costs in the UK for her book ‘Banish the Night: National Portrait Gallery ‘Brilliant Women: Illumination and Reflection in Early Modern England Gender and Intellect, Reputation and Representation’ a and America’ two-day interdisciplinary and international conference at the National Portrait Gallery, London, 25-26 April 2008 John Munns towards travel and research costs in the USA for his doctoral thesis ‘The Crucified Body of Royal West of England Academy ‘The Christ: Cross, Passion, Image and Devotion in England, Representation of Night in Art’ a series of public lectures 1066-1215’ and talks at the Royal West of England Academy, March- May 2008 Tania Sengupta towards travel and research costs in India for her doctoral thesis ‘Architecture University of Birmingham ‘Wyndham Lewis: of Governmental and Civic Domains - Colonial Modernity and Critique’ a two-day interdisciplinary Encounter in District Towns, Bengal, British India’ conference at the Birmingham & Midland Institute, 25-26 January 2008 Robert Tittler for travel and research costs in the UK for his book ‘Portraits, Painters and Publics in Post- Reformation England: the Canterbury Experience’
Kaylin Weber for travel and research costs in the UK for an exhibition and publication on ‘Benjamin West and his Aesthetic Environment’
3 support for scholarship in British Art awards
Publication Grants (Author)
Susan Bennett ‘Cultivating the human faculties’: National Galleries of Scotland Viccy Coltman & James Barry (1741-1806) and the Society of Arts Stephen Lloyd (Eds), Henry Raeburn: Critical Reception and International Reputation Jonathan Black & Brenda Martin Dora Gordine: Sculptor , Artist, Designer National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Ted Gott (Ed), Modern Britain: 1900-1960. MasterWorks Gill Clarke Representing the Women’s Land Army from Australian and New Zealand Collections
Hanneke Grootenboer Treasuring the Gaze: National Museums Liverpool Jessica Feather, Intimacy and Extremity of Vision in Eye Miniature Portraits British Drawings and Watercolours in the Lady Lever Art Gallery Stanley Shepherd The Stained Glass Windows of A.W.N. Pugin Public Monuments and Sculpture Association George Noszlopy & Fiona Waterhouse, Public Sculpture of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire
Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton Publication Grants (Publisher) David Beevers (Ed), ChineseWhispers: Chinoiserie in Britain 1650-1930 Ben Uri Gallery/London Jewish Museum of Art Rachel Dickson & Sarah MacDougall (Eds), Southampton City Art Gallery Tim Craven (Ed), Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his circle Robert Bevan and The Cumberland Market Group 1911-1918 Sussex Academic Press Tessa Murdoch (Ed), Berg Books Jenny Graham, Inventing Van Eyck: The Beyond the Border: Huguenot Goldsmiths in Northern Remaking of an Artist for the Modern Age Europe and North America
Four Courts Press Michael McCarthy & Karina Unicorn Press Timothy Wilcox, Laura Knight: O’Neill (Eds), Studies in the Gothic Revival Paintings and Drawings of the Ballet and the Stage
Gallery Oldham Stephen Whittle (Ed), Creative University of Chicago Press Hanneke Tension – British Art 1950-2000 Grootenboer, Treasuring the Gaze: Intimacy and Extremity of Vision in Eye Miniature Portraits Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge Paul Binski & Ann Massing (Eds), The Walpole Society Hugh Brigstocke (Ed), Walpole Westminster Retable: History, Technique, Conservation Society Volume for 200
The next application for Senior, Junior, Postdoctoral and Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellowships, Educational Programme and Research Support Grants is 15 January 2008.
For further details please visit: http://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/support.html or contact the Grants Administrator at [email protected]
4 Paul Mellon Centre publications
London and it shows the buildings can be interpreted correct behaviour, in life and profound effect of his style through reference to in death. Matthew Craske on his friend and classical mythology, looks closely, for the first contemporary, Eugène Renaissance fortifications, time, at tomb sculptures in Delacroix, and many others. and medieval houses. their social context. Noon’s detailed and accurate study will inform March 2008 Hardcover He discusses a large RICHARD PARKES all future discourse on £40.00 number of monuments by BONINGTON Bonington and his ISBN-13: 978-0300119299 many different sculptors, The Complet Paintings remarkable legacy. enriched by a knowledge of Patrick Noon the person commemorated Patrick Noon is Patrick and and the circumstances Only twenty-five at the time Aimee Butler Curator of behind the commission. of his death in 1828, young Paintings and Modern This results in a work of Richard Parkes Bonington Sculpture, Minneapolis great scholarly density and nevertheless was a seminal Institute of Arts. originality that probes the figure in the development motives behind the imagery of modernism in April 2008 Hardcover and the epitaph. He begins nineteenth-century French 360pp. £85.00 by analysing the relationship painting. By birth he was ISBN-13: 978-0300134216 of tomb designs to the Anglo-French, and he changing and diverse culture epitomized the new spirit of death in the eighteenth of internationalism in which SIR JOHN VANBRUGH century, and then explains Constable was honored by Storyteller in Stone THE SILENT RHETORIC conditions of production the Academy in Paris in Vaughan Hart OF THE BODY and the shifting dynamics of 1824; Bonington was there A History of the market. He concludes to witness the event. This engaging and Monumental Sculpture with a masterly analysis of Mediating between the two beautifully illustrated book and Commemorative the motivations of those traditions, he explored the examines the remarkable Art in England, who commissioned potential of watercolour for life and work of Sir John 1720-1770 monuments, including fresh transient landscapes Vanbrugh (1664–1726), by Matthew Craske women and ranging from and drew inspiration not turns businessman, soldier, aristocrats to merchants only from Delacroix but playwright, and the architect This illuminating and original and professional people. also from the work of of some of the most book opens up a neglected This handsomely illustrated Walter Scott and Byron in important country houses corner of eighteenth- book presents a unique his history paintings. of his era. Architectural century art - the funeral history of death, fame, historian, Vaughan Hart, monument. In the last example and attitudes to This catalogue raisonné of examines Vanbrugh’s forty years, studies of the loss, as well as a remarkable his oil and watercolor surviving, destroyed, and satires of early and art history. paintings represents the first unrealized buildings— mid-eighteenth-century attempt to establish and among them Castle England have multiplied, February 2008 Hardcover present the artist’s Howard and Blenheim whereas its funerary £45.00 complete known oeuvre . Palace—outlining the monuments have been ISBN-13:9780300135411 Drawing on twenty-five contemporary political and neglected by all but a years of research, Patrick social events that influenced small group of enthusiasts. Noon catalogues, analyzes, their design and showing This book redresses the A FRAGILE and reproduces 400 how these strikingly original balance and demonstrates MODERNISM artworks now indisputably that tombs and inscriptions Whistler and His attributed to Bonington, are of manifest worth Impressionist many of which have never to the student of Followers before been published. eighteenth-century English Anna Gruetzner Robins value systems, providing as The book sets Bonington’s they do an archaeology of Whistler embarked on a achievement in the context ideal types. Across the new project in the 1880s, of the intellectual, social, and genres of art, there is, working on a small scale, in artistic ferment of high perhaps, no better register oil, pastel and watercolour, romanticism in Paris and of shifting notions of representing new London
5 Paul Mellon Centre publications
SOUTH AND EAST SLAVERY, SUGAR, AND CLERKENWELL THE CULTURE OF Volume 46 REFINEMENT Picturing the British NORTHERN West Indies, 1700-1840 CLERKENWELL AND Kay Dian Kriz PENTONVILLE Volume 47 This highly original book asks new questions about Clerkenwell is one of the paintings and prints most varied, intricate and associated with the British subjects and painting richly historic districts of development, its patterns of West Indies between 1700 portraits of new urban England's capital city. Its land-use and its street and1840, when the trade in layout are witnesses to an types. This book is the first choice for study by the sugar and slaves was the critical study of Whistler unbroken history, going Survey of London is a mark back to monastic most active and profitable. and his Impressionist both of its age-old foundations. Within the In a wide-ranging study of followers and offers an in- fascination and of its compass of the present scientific illustrations, scenes depth analysis of Whistler's contemporary appeal. Today volumes, the Survey of of daily life, caricatures and London brings together the art as well as new insights Southern Clerkenwell, just landscape imagery, Dian Kriz into his modernist project. riches of the area, aiming to north of the City, has omit nothing of significance, analyses the visual culture of Anna Gruetzner-Robins become a fashionable old or new. In so doing, it refinement that shows how Whistler location. It houses many in has created a practical accompanied the brutal formed an avant-garde the creative industries, its record, in words and group around himself and restaurants and bars are images, of enduring value sought out followers who and usefulness for planners, thronged, and its population residents, historians and the included Elizabeth has been rising for two wider public. These volumes Armstrong Forbes, decades. Northern are the latest in the parish Mortimer Menpes, Clerkenwell, by contrast, has series published, at regular Theodore Roussel, Walter long been acknowledged as intervals over the past Sickert and Sidney Starr, to hundred years, by the having some of London's Survey of London. They emulate his art and best Georgian housing and mark several new proselytise on his behalf. urban landscapes. There is departures for the Survey. Their reminiscences and also an intriguingly mixed They are the first to have writings provide new quarter beyond the Angel photographs integrated information about with the text alongside the and Pentonville Road, handsome architectural Whistler's art, while their reaching north into drawings for which the own little-known work, Islington. The two parts of series is famed. They also process in which African much of which is published Clerkenwell are covered make widespread use of slaves transformed 'rude' here for the first time, is a separately in these two colour images for the first sugar cane into pure white time. testimony to its persuasive interlinked volumes, which crystals. These works effect. Using a wealth of variously imagine Britain's are available either South and East Clerkenwell primary material, Caribbean colonies as separately or as a pair. Volume 46 April 2008 Gruetzner-Robins tracks the curious, frightening, deadly, 400 pp. 305x235mm. history of Whistler and his Clerkenwell's present pleasurable and even funny 400 illus. £75.00* group and shows, through prosperity is rooted in its for viewers on both sides of past. Its density of ISBN 978-0-300-13727-9 testimony and practice, that the Atlantic. Refinement is they were formulating an Northern Clerkenwell usually associated with the identity as avant-garde and Pentonville metropole and 'rudeness' artists. This is the first critical Volume 47 April 2008 with the colonies. And study of these Impressionist 400 pp. 305x235mm. indeed, many of the artists artists and throws new light 400 illus. £75.00* considered here successfully on this neglected aspect of ISBN 978-0-300-13937-2 capitalised on those British art. characteristics of rudeness- Special price for animality, sensuality and Autumn 2007 Hardcover Clerkenwell volumes savagery that increasingly 256pp 90 b/w + 40 colour 46 & 47 £135.00* came to be associated with Illus £40.00 ISBN 978-0-300-14063-7 all the inhabitants of the ISBN-13:9780300135459 sugar islands. But many of
6 Paul Mellon Centre publications
the images and texts that the art of the Age of domestic projects and form the subject of this Revolution with the sponsoring civic buildings book complicate this postmodern culture of the that promoted their geographical division. Artists present day. charitable image in post- such as the Italian Agostino Reformation society. Brunias, working for a Professor David Solkin is In this beautiful and British colonial administrator Dean and Deputy, elegantly argued book, in Dominica, and Scottish Courtauld Institute of Art. Maurice Howard reveals Academician Joseph Kidd, He is the author of Painting that changes of style in whose brother was a for Money: The Visual Arts and architecture emerged from merchant and local official and vulgar pictorial the Public Sphere in the practical needs of in the north of Jamaica, tradition, with its roots in Eighteenth-Century England construction and the self- produced paintings and seventeenth-century and the co-author and image of major patrons in prints that offered the Flanders and Holland, into a editor of Art on The Line: The the revolutionary century possibility of colonial vehicle for entertaining but Royal Academy Exhibitions at between Reformation and refinement, not just improving narratives which Somerset House 1780-1836 , Civil War, and he shows economic profit and sexual would set new standards of both published by Yale how the transformation of pleasure. truthfulness in their University Press. the country's stock of imitation of nature. But on a buildings was accompanied May 2008 Hardcover Kay Dian Kriz is Associate deeper level, as David by a new language both of 38 4 pp. 295x248mm. Professor of Art History at Solkin shows in this word and of vision, as 100b/w + 150 colour illus. the Department of History provocative yet highly building accounts, £45.00 of Art and Architecture, accessible study, the same government regulation and ISBN 978-0-300-14061-3 Brown University. She is the phenomenon registered the theoretical writing on the author of The Idea of the ambivalent feelings of a one hand and pictorial English Landscape Painter, country in the throes of THE BUILDING OF published by Yale University economic growth, and of ELIZABETHAN AND Press. conflict both at home and JACOBEAN ENGLAND abroad. May 2008 Maurice Howard 288 pp. 256x192mm. 8 0b/w What emerges from the The dissolution of the + 40 colour illus. £35.00 imagery of Wilkie and his monasteries ravaged ISBN 978-0-300-14062-0 colleagues – among them England in the 1530s and William Mulready, Edward resulted in the great PAINTING OUT OF THE Bird and the controversial destruction of the built ORDINARY watercolourist Thomas fabric of the country. It was Modernity and the Art Heaphy – is a widespread also, however, a time in of Everyday Life in sense that the ordinary lives which many new initiatives Early Nineteenth- of the common people are emerged. In the following Century Britain becoming increasingly century, former monasteries David Solkin bound up with the were adapted to a variety exceptional events of of uses in both public and representation on the other At the height of the 'history'; that traditional private buildings: royal directed new ways of Napoleonic Wars, London's boundaries between palaces and country houses, documenting the changed art world was taken by country and city are in the town halls and schools, appearance of the buildings storm by a new generation process of melting away; almshouses and re- in which people lived, of painters, whose novel and that a more regularised fashioned parish churches. worshipped and worked. approach to the depiction and dynamic present is No new towns were built of everyday life critics loudly everywhere encroaching in England, but the urban Maurice Howard is trumpeted as a sign of the upon the customary environment changed Professor of Art History at nation's cultural pre- patterns of the past. In its rapidly to reflect the needs the University of Sussex. eminence. Led by the fascination with the of both national and local precociously talented David compression of space and government. Patrons of January 2008 Wilkie, this highly successful time, early nineteenth- building spent sometimes 256 pp. 275x245mm. artistic movement sought to century British genre wisely, some times 50 b/w + 50 colour illus. transform what was painting locates itself at the extravagantly, in managing a £45.00 generally regarded as a low start of a trajectory linking balance between their own ISBN 978-0-300-13543-5
7 y a l e c e n t e r f o r b r i t i s h art
1080 Chapel Street P.O. Box 208280 New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8280
www.yale.edu/ycba
Full details of the following exhibitions and programs publications can be found at www.yale.edu/ycba, by telephoning The Yale Center for British Art is pleased to announce the following new publications: @ 001 203 432 2800, or by e-mailing ycba.info yale.edu. Joseph Wright of Derby: Art and Life in Liverpool, 1768-1785, edited by Alex Kidson, with contributions by Elizabeth Barker, Martin Hopkinson, Jane Longmore, and exhibitions at the center Sarah Parsons. Co-published by the Yale Center for British Art and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, in association with Yale University Press, New Haven. British Orientalist Painting, 1830–1925 November 2007. 7 February–28 April 2008 Organized by Tate Britain in association with the Yale Center for British Art. Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II, (Studies in British Art, vol. 18), edited by Catharine MacLeod and Julia Marciari Alexander, Pearls to Pyramids: British Visual Culture and the Levant, 1600–1830 with essays by Tim Harris, Sheila O’Connell, Joseph Roach, Kevin Sharpe, Susan 7 February–28 April 2008 Shifrin, Andrew Walkling, Rachel Weil, and Steven Zwicker. Co-published by the Organized by the Yale Center for British Art. Yale Center for British Art and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London. Distributed by Yale University Press. December 2007. A New World: England’s First View of America 6 March–1 June 2008 visiting fellows Organized by the British Museum. January Joseph Wright of Derby in Liverpool Sarah Tiffin, Curator, Asian Art pre-1970, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia 6 May–31 August 2008 “False Nature: British Meditation on the Poison Tree of Java.” Co-organized by the Yale Center for British Art and the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. February–March Mary Roberts, Senior Lecturer, Department of Art History and Theory, touring exhibitions University of Sydney “Visions of the Painter-Traveler: British Orientalist and Ottoman Portraits.” Reflections on a Life with Horses: Paintings by Sir Alfred Munnings from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art March Through 29 March 2008 at the National Sporting Library, Middleburg, Virginia Hanneke Grootenboer, Research Leader, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, University of Amsterdam Paul Mellon’s Legacy: A Passion for British Art “Treasuring the Gaze: Intimacy and Extremity of Vision in Eye Miniature Portraits.” Through 27 January 2008 at the Royal Academy of Arts, London April Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art David Bindman, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Senior Visiting Fellow, Through 13 January 2008 at The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia and Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, University College London Research on subjects including Darwin and British art, and participation in the graduate student symposium scholarly life of the Center.
The Power of Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Morality May–June Saturday, 5 April 2008, 9 am–6:30 pm Mark Phillips, Professor, Department of History, Carleton University Keynote lecture 5:30 pm Research on historical illustration and the visualization of the past in Britain, circa 1740–1850, as part of a larger project on historical representation and This one-day graduate student symposium will explore the aesthetic, political, the problems of distance and meditation in historical narrative. and moral power of beauty. The event concludes with a keynote lecture. The symposium is free and open to the public; advance registration is recommended. guest fellow To register, please email [email protected]. Support for this symposium has been provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. April Jongwoo Jeremy Kim, independent scholar “Royal Academicians and the Crisis of Masculinity in Modern England.”
Benjamin West, Isaac’s Servant Tying the Bracelet on Rebecca’s Arm (detail), 1775, oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection