Search results for ""Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art""

While the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s resulted in the destruction of much of England’s built fabric, it was also a time in which many new initiatives emerged. In the following century, former monasteries were eventually adapted to a variety of uses: royal palaces and country houses, town halls and schools, almshouses and re-fashioned parish churches. In this beautiful and elegantly argued book, Maurice Howard reveals that changes of style in architecture emerged from the practical needs of construction and the self-image of major patrons in the revolutionary century between Reformation and Civil War. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This ambitious and generously illustrated study is an in-depth account of the architectural character of a vast range of eighteenth-century ecclesiastical buildings, including the Anglican parish churches, medieval cathedrals repaired and modified during the period, and Dissenting and Catholic chapels and mausoleums. The first substantial study of the subject to appear in over half a century, Terry Friedman's work explores not only the physical aspects of these buildings but church-going activities of Britons from the cradle to the grave. In addition, fully documented, chronologically sequenced design and construction histories of 272 key ecclesiastical buildings are presented on an accompanying CD-ROM.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This illuminating and original book is the first to examine eighteenth-century British funeral monuments in their social, as well as their artistic, context, looking not only at the sculptors who created the monuments, but also the people who commissioned them and the people they commemorated. Matthew Craske begins by analyzing the relationship of tomb designs to the changing and diverse culture of death in eighteenth-century England, and then explains conditions of production and the shifting dynamics of the market. He concludes with a masterly analysis of the motivations of the people who commissioned monuments, from aristocrats to merchants and professional people. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This collection of writings by specialists from many disciplines explores a wide range of topics relating to English painter George Romney (1734–1802). The contributors to the book address not only Romney’s personality and artistic practice, but also aspects of the cultural context of his work, such as its relation to theater and its diffusion through prints. Key essays discuss the central themes of the artist’s work, his rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and his painting technique. Alex Kidson offers in the introduction a survey of previous writings about Romney and their impact on the artist’s reputation two centuries after his death. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Whistler embarked on a new project in the 1880s, working on a small scale in oil, pastel and watercolor to depict new London subjects and painting portraits of new urban types. This book, the first critical study of Whistler and his Impressionist followers, offers an in-depth analysis of Whistler's art as well as new insights into his modernist project. Using a wealth of primary material, Robins tracks the history of Whistler and his group and shows through testimony and practice that they were formulating an identity as avant-garde artists. This is the first critical study of these Impressionist artists and throws new light on this neglected aspect of British art. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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The religious buildings of the Jewish community in Britain have never been explored in print. Lavishly illustrated with previously unpublished images and photographs taken specially by English Heritage, this book traces the architecture of the synagogue in Britain and Ireland from its discreet Georgian- and Regency-era beginnings to the golden age of the grand "cathedral synagogues" of the High Victorian period. Sharman Kadish sheds light on obscure and sometimes underappreciated architects who designed synagogues for all types of worshipers--from Orthodox and Reform congregations to Yiddish-speaking immigrants in the 1900s. She examines the relationship between architectural style and minority identity in British society and looks at design issues in the contemporary synagogue.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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During the Georgian period there was a remarkable proliferation of seductive visual imagery and written accounts of female performers. Focusing on the close relationship between the dramatic and visual arts at this time, this beautiful and stimulating book explores popular ideas of the actress as coquette, whore, celebrity, muse, and creative agent, charting her important symbolic role in contemporary attempts to professionalize both the theatre and the practice of fine art. Gill Perry shows how artists such as Gainsborough, Reynolds, Hoppner or Lawrence produced complex images of female performers as fashion icons, coquettes, dignified queens or creative artists. The result is a rich interdisciplinary study of the Georgian actress.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Originally constructed in the late 16th century for the notorious Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury, Hardwick Hall is now among the National Trust’s greatest architectural landmarks, with much of its original interior and ornamentation still intact. This splendid publication is the definitive source of scholarship on the remarkably well-preserved exemplar of late-Elizabethan style. Composed of extensive research and newly commissioned photography, this beautifully illustrated book traces the history of the house and its inhabitants through the centuries, showcasing a remarkable collection of portraiture, tapestries, furniture, and gardens, and providing readers with a genuine sense of the house’s environment. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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William Hogarth (1697–1764) was among the first British-born artists to rise to international recognition and acclaim and to this day he is considered one of the country’s most celebrated and innovative masters. His output encompassed engravings, paintings, prints, and editorial cartoons that presaged western sequential art. This comprehensive catalogue of his paintings brings together over twenty years of scholarly research and expertise on the artist, and serves to highlight the remarkable diversity of his accomplishments in this medium. Portraits, history paintings, theater pictures, and genre pieces are lavishly reproduced alongside detailed entries on each painting, including much previously unpublished material relating to his oeuvre. This deeply informed publication affirms Hogarth’s legacy and testifies to the artist’s enduring reputation. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Although numerous studies have explored the Edwardian period (1901–1910) as one of political and social change, this innovative book is the first to explore how art, design, and performance not only registered those changes but helped to precipitate them. While acknowledging familiar divisions between the highbrow world of aesthetic theory and the popular delights of the music hall, or between the neo-Baroque magnificence of central London and the slums of the East End, The Edwardian Sense also discusses the middlebrow culture that characterizes the anonymous edge of the city. Essays are divided into three sections under the broad headings of spectacle, setting, and place, which reflect the book’s focus on the visual, spatial, and geographic perspectives of the Edwardians themselves.Distributed for the Yale Center for British Art and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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The early twentieth century is usually remembered as an era of rising nationalism and military hostility, culminating in the disaster of the First World War. Yet it was marked also by a vigorous campaign against war, a movement that called into question the authority of the nation-state. This book explores the role of artists and writers in the formation of a modern, secular peace movement in Britain, and the impact of ideas about "positive peace" on their artistic practice. From Grace Brockington's meticulous study emerges a rich and interconnected world of Hellenistic dance, symbolist stage design, marionettes, and book illustration, produced in conscious opposition to the values of an increasingly regimented and militaristic society, and radically different from existing narratives of British wartime culture.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This book sets a new standard as a work of reference. It covers British and Irish art in public collections from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, and it encompasses nearly 9,000 painters and 90,000 paintings in more than 1,700 separate collections. The book includes as well pictures that are now lost, some as a consequence of the Second World War and others because of de-accessioning, mostly from 1950 to about 1975 when Victorian art was out of fashion.By listing many tens of thousands of previously unpublished works, including around 13,000 which do not yet have any form of attribution, this book becomes a unique and indispensable work of reference, one that will transform the study of British and Irish painting.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Following in the methodological footsteps of his prize-winning Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society, Richard Wendorf’s new book on British art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is an experiment in cultural history, combining the analysis of specific artistic objects with an exploration of the cultural conditions in which they were created.Themes include an investigation of what happens when a painter dies, the role of writing around and within visual objects, and the nature of evidence in art history. Extended interpretations of some of the most iconic images in British art, including Constable’s Cenotaph, Raeburn’s Skating Minister, Stubbs’s Haymakers and Reapers, and Rossetti’s Prosperpine, Venus Verticordia, and Blessed Damosel, are part of a broader investigation of the ways in which we practice art history today. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Gardens of Court and Country provides the first comprehensive overview of the development of the English formal garden from 1630 to 1730. Often overshadowed by the English landscape garden that became fashionable later in the 18th century, English formal gardens of the 17th century displayed important design innovations that reflected a broad rethinking of how gardens functioned within society. With insights into how the Protestant nobility planned and used their formal gardens, the domestication of the lawn, and the transformation of gardens into large rustic parks, David Jacques explores the ways forecourts, flower gardens, bowling greens, cascades, and more were created and reimagined over time. This handsome volume includes 300 illustrations – including plans, engravings, and paintings – that bring lost and forgotten gardens back to life. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Universally recognized as a brilliant and gifted 18th-century artist, Johan Zoffany (1733-1810) was regarded by Horace Walpole as one of the three greatest painters in England, along with his friends Reynolds and Gainsborough. Yet he has remained without a detailed study of his life and works, owing to the fascinating and complex vicissitudes of his career, now established from widely scattered sources. From being a late-baroque painter at a German princely court to working under the royal patronage of George III and Queen Charlotte, from his serious interest in Indian life and landscape, developed while living near Calcutta, to his attacks on the bloody progress of the French Revolution, Zoffany created pictures that document with incomparable liveliness the worlds and people among whom he moved.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Transport buildings—railway stations, airport terminals, bus and coach stations, motorway service areas, filling stations, and garages—are such a part of everyday scenery they are easily overlooked. This book is the first to take a close look at the architecture of British transport buildings of the twentieth century, a period during which transportation systems, methods, and even purposes underwent enormous change.The contributors to the book consider transport buildings both well known and unfamiliar from a variety of intriguing viewpoints. They explore the design and promotion of the London Underground, the battle between road and rail, the intentions of architects—to glamorize travel, to calm fears, to accommodate huge numbers of travelers—and the political and cultural significance of the transport buildings that have become a major part of modern life. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) was a titanic figure in nineteenth-century British art. The father of British Symbolism and portrait painter of his age, he forged a controversial career that spanned the reign of Queen Victoria. This book, the first in-depth biography of Watts, sheds new light on the pioneering spirit and breadth of mind of the artist.Drawing on Watts’s abundant personal correspondence and diaries and an array of other contemporary documents, the book chronicles the artist’s career and personal life, including his friendships with Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton, William Gladstone, and Alfred Tennyson and his relationships with a series of singular women. The book also examines Watts’s wide reforming zeal and political agenda as well as his role and dealings in the Victorian art world.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Only twenty-five at the time of his death in 1828, young Richard Parkes Bonington nevertheless was a seminal figure in the development of modernism in nineteenth-century French painting. This catalogue raisonné of his oil and watercolor paintings represents the first attempt to establish and present the artist’s complete known oeuvre. Drawing on 25 years of research, Patrick Noon catalogues, analyzes, and reproduces 400 artworks now indisputably attributed to Bonington. Many of these paintings have never before been published. The book sets Bonington’s achievement in the context of the intellectual, social, and artistic ferment of high romanticism in Paris and London, and it shows the profound effect of his style on his friend and contemporary, Eugène Delacroix, and many others. Noon’s detailed and accurate study will inform all future discourse on Bonington and his remarkable legacy.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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It will come as a surprise to many that a wealth of Gothic art and architecture can still be found in Ireland. This groundbreaking book examines for the first time the most westerly expression of Gothic—on the edge of Europe—and traces its development from the beginning of the thirteenth century to the Reformation. Colum Hourihane offers new insights into Gothic Irish art, and he presents a revised view of art in Ireland in the Middle Ages. Brought to Ireland by the Anglo-Normans and religious reform movements, the style was adopted and adapted locally, first appearing in monastic architecture and subsequently in the other arts. The book looks at what survives of Gothic art in Ireland, examines previously unknown material, and discusses such wide-ranging topics as the historiography of the style, its metalwork, iconography, and forms. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg houses a relatively small but choice collection of 16th- to 19th-century British paintings, among them Thomas Gainsborough's vibrant Portrait of a Lady in Blue (c. 1770) and his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds' vast Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents (c. 1786), commissioned by the Russian Empress Catherine II and symbolizing a young Russia's growing strength. 135 paintings—works by artists from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales—are presented in this comprehensive catalogue. Also included are portraits from the famed War Gallery created by English painter George Dawe, who was awarded a prestigious commission to produce more than 300 images of Russian generals for the Gallery of 1812 in the historic Winter Palace, now part of the museum complex. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press and the State Hermitage Museum

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Late nineteenth-century Britain experienced an explosion of interest in sculpture. Sculptors of the “New Sculpture” movement sought a new direction and a modern idiom for their art. This book analyzes for the first time the art-theoretical concerns of the late-Victorian sculptors, focusing on their attitudes toward representation of the human body. David J. Getsy uncovers a previously unrecognized sophistication in the New Sculpture through close study of works by key figures in the movement: Frederic Leighton, Alfred Gilbert, Hamo Thornycroft, Edward Onslow Ford, and James Havard Thomas.These artists sought to activate and animate the conventional format of the ideal statue so that it would convincingly stand in for both a living body and an ideal image. Getsy demonstrates the conceptual complexity of the New Sculptors and places their concerns within the larger framework of modern sculpture. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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London’s modest eighteenth-century houses—those inhabited by artisans and laborers in the unseen parts of Georgian London—can tell us much about the culture of that period. This fascinating book examines largely forgotten small houses that survive from the eighteenth century and sheds new light on both the era’s urban architecture and the lives of a culturally distinctive metropolitan population.Peter Guillery discusses how and where, by and for whom the houses were built, stressing vernacular continuity and local variability. He investigates the effects of creeping industrialization (both on house building and on the occupants), and considers the nature of speculative suburban growth. Providing rich and evocative illustrations, he compares these houses to urban domestic architecture elsewhere, as in North America, and suggests that the eighteenth-century vernacular metropolis has enduring influence.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and in association with English Heritage

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This engaging book is the first full study of the satirical print in seventeenth-century England from the rule of James I to the Regicide. It considers graphic satire both as a particular pictorial category within the wider medium of print and as a vehicle for political agitation, criticism, and debate. Helen Pierce demonstrates that graphic satire formed an integral part of a wider culture of political propaganda and critique during this period, and she presents many witty and satirical prints in the context of such related media as manuscript verses, ballads, pamphlets, and plays. She also challenges the commonly held notion that a visual iconography of politics and satire in England originated during the 1640s, tracing the roots of this iconography back into native and European graphic cultures and traditions. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Boston was both a colonial capital and the third most important port in the British empire, trailing only London and Bristol. Boston was also an independent entity that pursued its own interests and articulated its own identity while selectively appropriating British culture and fashion. This revelatory book examines period dwellings, gravestones, furniture, textiles, ceramics, and silver, revealing through material culture how the inhabitants of Boston were colonial, provincial, metropolitan, and global, all at the same time. Edward S. Cooke, Jr.’s detailed account of materials and furnishing practices demonstrates that Bostonians actively filtered ideas and goods from a variety of sources, combined them with local materials and preferences, and constructed a distinct sense of local identity, a process of hybridization that, the author argues, exhibited a conscious desire to shape a culture as a means to resist a distant, dominant power.Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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For over a millennium, Durham has occupied a central place in English religious history, with its Norman rebuilding (1093–1133) marking it as an internationally significant masterpiece in the history of architecture. Its setting, perched on a peninsula formed by a bend in the River Wear, adds to the visual drama of the building. This monumental volume offers a comprehensive account, with contributions by a team of 30 experts, on the founding, development, building, and decoration of this magnificent and important edifice. The accessible essays gathered here approach Durham Cathedral from a wide variety of fields and vantage points, including liturgy, music, stained-glass decoration, and book collecting. Lavishly illustrated, the book includes both archival and new photography, and reproductions of representations in all media of the cathedral throughout history. Taken together, this landmark publication is a celebration of Durham Cathedral’s enormous historical, spiritual, cultural, and architectural significance.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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A jewel of the University of Oxford, the Sheldonian Theatre stands out among the groundbreaking designs by the great British architect Sir Christopher Wren. Published to coincide with the 350th anniversary of the building’s construction, this meticulously researched book takes a fresh look at the historical influences that shaped the Sheldonian’s development, including the Restoration of the English monarchy and the university’s commitment to episcopal religion. The book explains just how novel Wren’s design was in its day, in part because the academic theater was a building type without precedent in England, and in part because the Sheldonian’s classical style stood apart in its university context. The author also points to a shift in the guiding motivation behind the architecture at Oxford: from a tradition that largely perpetuated medieval forms to one that conceived classical architecture in relation to late Renaissance learning. Newly commissioned photographs showcase the theater’s recently restored interior.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Scholars and enthusiasts alike will revel in this ambitious two-volume catalogue raisonné of Thomas Gainsborough’s portraits and copies of Old Master works. The catalogue contains approximately 1,100 paintings, including nearly 200 works newly attributed to the British master, as well as updated information about his subjects and specially commissioned photography. Each portrait entry includes the biography of the sitter—including several newly identified—the painting’s provenance, and exhibitions in which each work was shown. Gainsborough’s copies after Old Masters, painted in admiration and used to assimilate their style of painting into his own work, are documented here as well. Research includes in-depth analysis of newspaper archives and other printed material to establish the date of a painting’s production, chart the development of the artist’s style, and assess the impression the work made within the context of its time.Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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William Holman Hunt was one of the three major artistic talents of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. Hunt’s work was always characterized by great seriousness of purpose, and his paintings include many of the most beautiful and powerful images of that midcentury explosion of creativity. This catalogue raisonée gives him the attention he deserves.The book includes an introduction that assesses Hunt’s life and artistic practice and discusses his aims, philosophy, and religious beliefs, which shed light on his works. While many of his paintings, with their extraordinary effects of light and color, are immediately accessible, his mature works incorporate symbolism that cannot be fully understood without a detailed knowledge of his intentions, and the catalogue entries thoroughly explore this. The volume presents Hunt’s oils and works on paper in two separate sections, and appendixes provide additional information on his illustrated letters, etchings, published illustrations, sculpture, and furniture. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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When the story of modern art is told, British artists are mentioned infrequently or not at all. In this book, distinguished art historians attempt to explain the marginal position of British modern art by examining the development of the London art world—its institutions and individual artists—over the past two centuries.Chapters discuss artists as diverse as William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, W.P. Frith, Walter Sickert, and Henry Moore and also describe academies, public exhibitions, and commercial galleries throughout the era. Introduced by David Solkin, the volume consists of contributions from Caroline Arscott, Ann Bermingham, John Brewer, Marilyn Butler, Julie Codell, Peter Funnell, John Gage, Charles Harrison, Andrew Hemingway, Ludmilla Jordanova, Ronald Paulson, Martin Postle, and Stella Tillyard.This volume is the first of a new serial publication, Studies in British Art, published for the Yale Center for British Art and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

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This illustrated biography follows Nicholas Hilliard’s long and remarkable life (c. 1547–1619) from the West Country to the heart of the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts. It showcases new archival research and stunning images, many reproduced in color for the first time. Hilliard’s portraits—some no larger than a watch-face—have decisively shaped perceptions of the appearances and personalities of many key figures in one of the most exciting, if volatile, periods in British history. His sitters included Elizabeth I, James I, and Mary, Queen of Scots; explorers Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh; and members of the emerging middle class from which he himself hailed. Hilliard counted the Medici, the Valois, the Habsburgs, and the Bourbons among his Continental European patrons and admirers. Published to mark the 400th anniversary of Hilliard’s death, this is the definitive biography of one of Britain’s most notable artists.Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Taking an interdisciplinary approach that looks at film, television, and commercial advertisements as well as more traditional media such as painting, The Tiger in the Smoke provides an unprecedented analysis of the art and culture of post-war Britain. Art historian Lynda Nead presents fascinating insights into how the Great Fogs of the 1950s influenced the newfound fashion for atmospheric cinematic effects. She also discusses how the widespread use of color in advertisements was part of an increased ideological awareness of racial differences. Tracing the parallel ways that different media developed new methods of creating images that variously harkened back to Victorian ideals, agitated for modern innovations, or redefined domesticity, this book’s broad purview gives a complete picture of how the visual culture of post-war Britain expressed the concerns of a society that was struggling to forge a new identity. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This authoritative and now classic work of reference on the history of British architecture contains biographical information on some 2,000 architects who practiced in England, Scotland, and Wales from the time of Inigo Jones (1573-1652) to that of William Burn (1789-1870) and Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860). This new edition is the fourth of what began in 1954 as A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects 1600-1840. It now includes 62 newly identified architects and about 700 additional building entries.The dictionary lists every building of importance whose architect can be identified, together with such details as dates of erection and demolition, style, and references to illustrations and published descriptions. Besides a concise biography of each architect, the book gives, whenever possible, a brief assessment of the quality of the architect's work. All architectural books published by British architects of the period are listed by author name.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Becoming Gustav Metzger, produced in association with The Gustav Metzger Foundation, is the first publication to examine the little-known formative years of refugee artist and activist Gustav Metzger (Nuremberg, Germany, 1926-London, England, 2017). Generously supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Association for Art History, Becoming Gustav Metzger includes original texts by Stephen Bann CBE (Emeritus Professor, University of Bristol), Andrew Wilson (Senior Curator Modern & Contemporary British Art, and Archives at Tate Britain), Dr. Elizabeth Fisher (Leverhulme Research Fellow, Northumbria University), Mathieu Copeland (independent curator and author of Gustav Metzger: Writings 1953-2016), and the curators. Fully illustrated, it also includes colour reproductions of rarely seen drawings and paintings from this crucial early period, as well as early abstract works on board and cardboard, and a kodak box. Together they chart Metzger’s artistic journey from figuration to abstraction prior to the development of his later radical auto-destructive practice.

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This magnificent catalogue, in three volumes and with nearly 2,000 illustrations, will restore George Romney (1734–1802) to his long-overdue position – with his contemporaries Reynolds and Gainsborough – as a master of 18th-century British portrait painting. The product of impressive and thorough research undertaken over the course of 20 years, Alex Kidson asserts Romney’s status as one of the greatest British painters, whose last catalogue raisonné was published over 100 years ago. In more than 1,800 entries, many supported by new photography, Kidson aims to solve longstanding issues of attribution, distinguishing genuine pictures by Romney from works whose traditional attribution to him can no longer be supported. The author’s insights are guided by rich primary source material on Romney—including account books, ledgers, and sketchbooks—as well as secondary sources such as prints after lost works, newspaper reports and reviews, and writings by Romney’s contemporaries.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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When the motor car first came to England in the 1890s, it was a luxury item with little practical purpose—drivers couldn't travel very far or quickly without paved roads or traffic laws. Thus began a transformation that has affected the architecture, infrastructure, and even the natural environment of the country. Carscapes relates the history of the car's impact on the physical environment of England from its early beginnings to the modern motorway network, focusing especially on its architectural influence.The authors offer a detailed look at the litany of structures designed specifically to accommodate cars: garages, gas stations, car parks, factories, and showrooms. Presenting a comprehensive study of these buildings, along with highways, bridges, and signage, Carscapes reveals the many overlooked ways in which automobiles have shaped the modern English landscape.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, a new generation of painters led by the precociously talented David Wilkie took London's art world by storm. Their novel approach to the depiction of everyday life marked the beginning a trajectory that links the art of the Age of Revolution with the postmodern culture of today.What emerged from the imagery of Wilkie and other early 19th-century British genre painters—among them William Mulready, Edward Bird, and the controversial watercolorist Thomas Heaphy—was a sense that common people were increasingly bound up with the exceptional events of history, that traditional boundaries between country and city were melting away, and that a more regularized and dynamic present was everywhere encroaching upon the customary patterns of the past. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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From coast to coast, the English landscape is still richly studded with castles both great and small. As homes or ruins, these historic buildings are today largely objects of curiosity. For centuries, however, they were at the heart of the kingdom's social and political life. The English Castle is a riveting architectural study that sets this legion of buildings in historical context, tracing their development from the Norman Conquest in 1066 through the civil wars of the 1640s. In this magnificent, compellingly written volume, which includes over 350 illustrations, John Goodall brings to life the history of the English castle over six centuries. In it he explores the varied architecture of these buildings and describes their changing role in warfare, politics, domestic living, and governance.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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The extravagant gardens of the 16th- and 17th-century British aristocracy are well-documented and celebrated, but the more modest gardens of the rural county gentry have rarely been examined. Jill Francis presents new, never-before published material as well as fresh interpretations of previously examined sources to reveal gardening as a practical activity in which a broad spectrum of society was engaged – from the laborers who dug, manured, and weeded, to the gentleman owners who sought to create gardens that both exemplified their personal tastes and displayed their wealth and status. Enhanced by beautiful and compelling illustrations, this book contributes to a broader understanding of early modern society and its culture by situating the activity of gardening within the wider social and cultural concerns of the age, reflecting the anxieties, hopes, and aspirations of people at the time.Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This richly illustrated survey of the history of Irish painting encompasses the entire span from the middle ages to the mid-twentieth century. The book includes both well-known and virtually unknown artists, Irish artists who worked abroad as well as in Ireland, and major foreign artists who came to Ireland and worked there for extended periods. Among the more than 350 works reproduced in full color are many paintings from notable private collections which have not been exhibited to the public.Drawing on the unique combined experience of leading Irish art authorities Anne Crookshank and The Knight of Glin, the book presents an exciting roll call of important Irish painters, from the talented Garret Morphy of the Restoration period to William Scott and Louis LeBrocquy of our own time. Broad in its scope and perceptive in its scholarship, the book is the most complete and beautifully illustrated history of Irish painters available today.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This authoritative book is the most detailed account to date of the Arts and Crafts movement in Scotland. Arts and Crafts ideas appeared there from the 1860s, but not until after 1890 did they emerge from artistic circles and rise to popularity among the wider public. The heyday of the movement occurred between 1890 and 1914, a time when Scotland’s art schools energetically promoted new design and the Scottish Home Industries Association campaigned to revive rural crafts. Across the country the movement influenced the look of domestic and church buildings, as well as the stained glass, metalwork, textiles, and other furnishings that adorned them. Art schools, workshops, and associations helped shape the Arts and Crafts style, as did individuals such as Ann Macbeth, W. R. Lethaby, Robert Lorimer, M. H. Baillie Scott, Douglas Strachan, Phoebe Traquair, and James Cromar Watt, among other well-known and previously overlooked figures. These architects, artists, and designers together contributed to the expansion and evolution of the movement both within and beyond Scotland’s borders.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Providing the first thorough study of sculptural portraiture in 18th-century Britain, this important book challenges both the idea that portrait necessarily implies painting and the assumption that Enlightenment thought is manifest chiefly in French art. By considering the bust and the statue as genres, Malcolm Baker, a leading sculpture scholar, addresses the question of how these seemingly traditional images developed into ambitious forms of representation within a culture in which many core concepts of modernity were being formed. The leading sculptor at this time in Britain was Louis Francois Roubiliac (1702–1762), and his portraits of major figures of the day, including Alexander Pope, Isaac Newton, and George Frederic Handel, are examined here in detail. Remarkable for their technical virtuosity and visual power, these images show how sculpture was increasingly being made for close and attentive viewing. The Marble Index eloquently establishes that the heightened aesthetic ambition of the sculptural portrait was intimately linked with the way in which it could engage viewers familiar with Enlightenment notions of perception and selfhood.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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In this beautifully illustrated study, Paul Binski offers a new account of sculpture in England and northwestern Europe between c. 1000 and 1500, examining Romanesque and Gothic art as a form of persuasion. Binski applies rhetorical analysis to a wide variety of stone and wood sculpture from such places as Wells, Westminster, Compostela, Reims, Chartres, and Naumberg. He argues that medieval sculpture not only conveyed information but also created experiences for the subjects who formed its audience. Without rejecting the intellectual ambitions of Gothic art, Binski suggests that surface effects, ornament, color, variety, and discord served a variety of purposes. In a critique of recent affective and materialist accounts of sculpture and allied arts, he proposes that all materials are shaped by human intentionality and artifice, and have a “poetic.” Exploring the imagery of growth, change, and decay, as well as the powers of fear and pleasure, Binski allows us to use the language and ideas of the Middle Ages in the close reading of artifacts.Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This book charts a geography of the art market and the art museum in the early 20th century through the legacy of one influential dealer. Born in Ireland, Hugh Lane (1875–1915) established himself in London in the 1890s. With little formal education or training, he orchestrated high-profile sales of paintings by the likes of Holbein, Titian, and Velázquez and described his life’s work as “selling pictures by old painters to buy pictures by living painters.” Lane assembled a collection of modern art for the Johannesburg Art Gallery, amassed a collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings for Cape Town, and gave his own collection of modern art to the National Gallery in London. He also donated paintings to the National Gallery of Ireland, where he was named director in 1914. Each chapter in this revelatory study focuses on an important city in Lane’s practice as a dealer to understand the interrelationship of event and place.Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This innovative history of British art museums begins in the early 19th century. The National Gallery and the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in London may have been at the center of activity, but museums in cities such as Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Nottingham were immensely popular and attracted enthusiastic audiences. The People’s Galleries traces the rise of art museums in Britain through World War I, focusing on the phenomenon of municipal galleries. This richly illustrated book argues that these regional museums represented a new type of institution: an art gallery for a working-class audience, appropriate for the rapidly expanding cities and shaped by liberal ideals. As their broad appeal weakened with the new century, they adapted and became more conventional. Using a wide range of sources, the book studies the patrons and the publics, the collecting policies, the temporary exhibitions, and the architecture of these institutions, as well as the complex range of reasons for their foundation.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, the 2nd Duchess of Portland (1715–1785), was one of the wealthiest women in eighteenth-century Britain. She collected fine and decorative arts (the Portland Vase was her most famous acquisition), but her great love was natural history, and shells in particular. Over the course of twenty years, she amassed the largest shell collection of her time, which was sold after her death in a spectacular auction. Beth Fowkes Tobin illuminates the interlocking issues surrounding the global circulation of natural resources, the commodification of nature, and the construction of scientific value through the lens of one woman’s marvelous collection. This unique study tells the story of the collection’s formation and dispersal—about the sailors and naturalists who ferried rare specimens across oceans and the dealers’ shops and connoisseurs’ cabinets on the other side of the world. Exquisitely illustrated, this book brings to life Enlightenment natural history and its cultures of collecting, scientific expeditions, and vibrant visual culture.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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By taking simple ways of looking at sculpture, this book uncovers unexpected affinities between works of very different periods and types. From sundials to mirrors, from graves to way-markers, from fountains to contemporary art, a wide range of illustrated examples expands the definitions of sculpture and proposes that we understand this art as something more fundamental to the way we experience and construct our rites of passage. Penelope Curtis argues that there are some basic functions shared by many kinds of three-dimensional objects, be they more or less obviously sculptural. Even contemporary sculpture, with no apparent purpose, makes use of this deeply embedded vocabulary. Together, the qualities of vertical, horizontal, closed and open are consolidated in the ensemble, which places the viewer at its heart, on the threshold of sculpture and on the threshold of change. This book elides the usual notions of figurative and abstract to think instead about how sculpture works. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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This lavishly produced volume presents a survey and analysis of a fascinating cabinet of curiosities established around 1750 by the Cobbe family in Ireland and added to over a period of 100 years. Although such collections were common in British country houses during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Cobbe museum, still largely intact and housed in its original cabinets, now forms a unique survivor of this type of private collection from the Age of Enlightenment. A detailed catalogue of the objects and specimens is accompanied by beautiful, specially commissioned photographs that showcase the cabinet’s component elements. Reproductions of portraits from the extensive collection of the Cobbe family bring immediacy to the narrative by illustrating the personalities involved in the collection’s development. Scholars contribute commentary on the significance of the objects to their collectors; also included are essays outlining, among other topics, the place of the cabinet of curiosities in Enlightenment society and the history of the Cobbe family. Extracts from the extensive family archive place the collection in its social context. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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The print repertoire of the 16th and 17th centuries in England has been neglected historically, and this remarkable book rectifies a major oversight in the history of English visual art. It provides an iconographic survey of the single-sheet prints produced during the early modern era and brings to light significant recent discoveries from this visual storehouse. It publishes many works for the first time, as well as placing them and those relatively few others known to specialists in their cultural context. This large body of material is treated broadly thematically, and within each theme, chronologically. Portents and prodigies, the formal moralities and doctrines of Christianity, the sects of Christianity, visual satire of foreigners and “others,” domestic political issues, social criticism and gender roles, marriage and sex, as well as numerical series and miscellaneous visual tricks, puzzles, and jokes, are all examined. The book concludes by considering the significance of this wealth of visual material for the cultural history of England in the early modern era.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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