The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

NEWSLETTERYale University May 2015 Issue 42

Director of Studies: Mark Hallett Deputy Director of Studies: Martin Postle

Assistant Director for Finance and Administration: Sarah Ruddick Assistant Director for Research: Sarah Victoria Turner

Advisory Council: Iwona Blazwick, Alixe Bovey, David Peters Corbett, Penelope Curtis, Anthony Geraghty, Michael Hatt,

Nigel Llewellyn, Richard Marks, Andrew Moore, Andrew Saint, Shearer West, Alison Yarrington

Company Registered in England 983028 Registered Charity 313838

The Paul Mellon Centre 16 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3JA Tel: 020 7580 0311 Fax: 020 7636 6730 www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

Joseph Wright of Derby, Vesuvius from

Posillipo, c.1788, Yale Center for British

Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Public Lecture Courses at the Paul Mellon Centre

This autumn, the Paul Mellon Centre will be launchingthe first of an annual programme of Public LectureCourses, designed for those who may not have abackground in art or art history but who would like tolearn more about the history of British art.

This year’s inaugural Public Lecture Course, Satire toSpectacle: British Art in the Eighteenth Century will betaught by Mark Hallett, Director of Studies, and MartinPostle, Deputy Director of Studies. Their five lectureswill cover key aspects of eighteenth-century British art,with a particular focus on artists such as WilliamHogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough andRichard Wilson, and on topics such as portraiture,pictorial satire, the Grand Tour, landscape painting andexhibition culture. The lectures will be complemented byweekly readings and discussion sessions.

As an educational charity the Paul Mellon Centrestrives to promote and support academic research intothe history of British art. The Public Lecture Course,which will be free to attend, offers an excitingopportunity to broaden the Centre’s audiences and tocommunicate the newest and most original research onBritish art in an engaging and accessible way.Satire to Spectacle will take place on Thursday evenings

between 5th November and 3rd December 2015 in thenewly refurbished Centre at Nos. 15 & 16 Bedford Square.For more details on the content and schedule of thiscourse, for which there are limited places, please see ourwebsite. If you have any questions, please email NerminAbdulla at nabdulla@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

Enrolment in the inaugural Public Lecture Course willbegin on 30th June 2015.

A new series of lectures,open to the public andheld in our refurbishedpremises at 15-16Bedford Square, is to belaunched this autumn.

Registration for thecourse opens on 30 June 2015

THE PAuL MELLON CENTRE ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES

EXHIBITING CONTEMPORARY ART IN POST-WAR

BRITAIN, 1945-1960

Conference date: 28–30 January 2016 Submission deadline: 09.00am 29 June 2015

A recent wave of new scholarship has highlighted therichness of the exhibition cultures of post-Second WorldWar Britain. Much of this work has focused on individualcase studies or particular events. The aim of thisconference is to place exhibitions of contemporary artwithin the wider cultural field of the period 1945-60 andto pose new questions about what researching exhibitionscan tell us about British art and culture at this time.Please visit our website to see further details and possibletopics for papers.Please submit a proposal (no more than 250 words) forconference papers of 20 minutes toefleming@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

Forthcoming Events

CHALLENGING MATERIAL: JOSHUA REYNOLDS ANDARTISTIC EXPERIMENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Friday 15 May 2015 at the Goodison Lecture Theatre,The Wallace Collection, London

This one-day conference, which accompanies the exhibition

Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint at the Wallace Collection,

is designed to investigate and contextualise the artist's famously

experimental practice. Building upon the technical findings of

the Reynolds Research Project at the Wallace Collection, and

also on a range of recent conservation projects on Reynolds's

paintings, it will explore his distinctive manipulation of paint as

Nigel Henderson, Photograph of Alan Davie and three other people in

an art gallery, [c 1949–c 1956] © Nigel Henderson Estate

Joshua Reynolds, Mrs Mary Robinson, 1783-1784

© The Wallace Collection

a medium. Papers will offer new perspectives on Reynolds's

experimental forms of pictorial composition, narrative and

allusion, and look afresh at the dynamic interactions between

the artist, his sitters and his models in the studio.

As well as focusing on Reynolds's own art in detail, the

conference seeks to place his experimental activities within the

context of wider artistic, cultural and scientific practices of the

eighteenth century.

Confirmed Speakers: Mark Aronson, Helen Brett, John Chu,

Cora Gilroy-Ware, Matthew C. Hunter, Rica Jones, Andrew

Loukes, Martin Myrone, Marcia Pointon, Martin Postle, Sophie

Reddington, Lisa Renne and Iris Wien.

To book tickets and for more information please visit ourwebsite: www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/10

ARTISTS’ MOVING IMAGE PRACTICE IN BRITAIN: FROM1990 TO TODAY

Thursday 5 – Saturday 7 November 2015 at WhitechapelGallery, Zilkha Auditorium

Whitechapel Gallery in collaboration with the Paul Mellon

Centre for Studies in British Art and Film London

Artists’ moving image practice is activated by the context of

the gallery, by temporary architectural environments, the cinema

and the internet, and by social and political performance. Over

the last few decades, this kind of artistic practice, which has its

roots in film, performance and installation art, has become a

phenomenon in its own right and has begun developing a deep

and rich history. This three-day conference held at the

Whitechapel Gallery will explore the ways in which artists in

Britain have played a pioneering role in this history.

Tickets and further details about the conference will beavailable via our website soon.

Call for Papers

THE PAuL MELLON CENTRE DIGITAL ACTIVITIES

The next major digital initiative the Centre has embarkedupon is British Art Studies, an online, open-access andpeer-reviewed journal. Providing an innovative space fornew research and scholarship of the highest quality onall aspects of British art, architecture and visual culturein their most diverse and international contexts, thejournal will reflect the dynamic and wide-rangingresearch cultures of the Paul Mellon Centre and the YaleCenter for British Art, as well as the wider field ofstudies in British art and architecture today. Proposals forinclusion in the first issue of the journal, to be publishedin November of this year, are currently being considered.

The digital has an ever-growingimpact on all areas of work at theCentre, and we continue to invest ina robust infrastructure to supportour role as a hub for art-historicalresearch in the digital sphere. Thisemphasis on digital projects willallow us to continue to assert ourposition as a major research centrefor art-historical scholarship and arepository of important visualresources.

The Centre has partnered withthe London-based companyKeepthinking to help us launch anumber of new online publishingplatforms. Keepthinking are wellestablished as a leading supplier ofdigital design and software solutions,working exclusively for clients in thecultural sector. Their portfolioincludes the Burlington Magazine,Public Catalogue Foundation, British Council, Horniman Museum and National Galleries Scotland. This talentedgroup of designers and software developers is working with us to develop a new website, our flagship online journalBritish Art Studies, and a series of online scholarly catalogues.

A thorough audit of design, content and the structure of our information has resulted in a new website. We feel thiswill better promote our work to as wide an audience as possible, and will help more effectively to articulate our relationshipwith Yale university and the Yale Center for British Art. The responsive template design will adjust the dimensions of thecontent to fit the reader’s viewing device, and bold use of images will provide a more user-friendly experience. The newwebsite will replace our current one in the summer.

Mark Hallett, Sarah Victoria Turner and Hana Leaper discussing the new

online journal, British Art Studies

British Art Studies, our new Journal

A redesigned Website

The new website overview page

In January work began on the refurbishment of number16 Bedford Square and the expansion of the Paul MellonCentre into the adjoining building at number 15. Thoseof you who have passed through Bedford Square willhave noticed the large blue hoarding erected outside thefront of both houses. Inside work goes on apace. Ourcontractor, Sykes & Son Limited, is London’s oldestindependent contractor, established in 1759 as aplumbing and glazing company – ten years before JoshuaReynolds assumed the presidency of the Royal Academyand over twenty years before Bedford Square was built.Sykes’s earliest recorded work was the repair andcleaning of windows at St Clement Danes. Since thenthey have worked at Buckingham Palace, the RoyalCourts of Justice and the Victoria and Albert Museum.At the moment, three months into the job, Sykes havebeen focusing on the basement area of numbers 15 and16, preparing accommodation for archive and librarymaterials as well as dedicated offices for staff. Lateralconnections have also been made between the twobuildings, giving an indication of the expanded spaceavailable. With the assistance of Sykes and our architects,Wright and Wright, we have been looking closely at thefabric of the interior of our new property at number 15,poulticing plasterwork on overpainted cornices, andconsidering options for lighting, paint colours andcarpets. We are also planning in detail the layout of ournew offices, teaching spaces and events spaces, includinga new reception area with display cases, a dedicatedboardroom and a new catering kitchen. Perhaps thehardest decision was to move the staff kitchen from thebasement of number 16 to the ground floor of number15, in order to make way for a new library store.

However, the good news is that the much loved kitchentable is coming with us, and we look forward to enjoyinga cuppa and a slice of cake with friends and colleaguesaround it in the near future. At the moment, although thisis surely tempting fate, the works are proceedingaccording to schedule and we hope to be back in the oldhome – and the new one – by the end of the summer.

Building Works at 15 & 16 Bedford Square

THE PAuL MELLON CENTRE EXPANSION

Above, knocking through between numbers 15 and 16 Bedford Square

Below, Collections staff inspect their future workspace

Whilst the Centre has been temporarily closed to thepublic and our collections material is in off-site storage,Collections staff have had the opportunity to giveundivided attention to developing and continuing anumber of projects.

Many archivists and librarians lament that they wouldlike to complete more cataloguing than they often havethe chance to do, on a day-to-day basis. The expansionproject has enabled Collections staff to dedicate muchmore time to our cataloguing projects, which includecataloguing the Frank Simpson Archive, the John HayesArchive and the William Roberts Archive. The Librarianhas been using this closure period to cataloguepublications for the library collection, further reducingthe already small backlog. The collections of salecatalogues that belonged to Arthur Tooth and Sons andEllis Waterhouse are also being individually logged ontothe library catalogue.

The Peter and Renate Nahum donation ofpublications, received in December 2012, is currently heldin off-site storage in South London. Before the temporaryclosure, careful timetabling and preparation wererequired in order for the Librarian and Archives &Library Assistant to work at the store, during theopening hours of the Public Study Room (PSR).However, whilst we are closed, public assistance duties donot restrict off-site working. Therefore, more visits to logand process this donation have occurred in the last fewmonths. The Librarian and Archives & Library Assistanthave now logged about 1600 books, pamphlets andjournals. There are an estimated 500 more items to belogged and conserved, before all have been integratedinto the Centre’s library collection.

Work on the oral history project, set up by theArchivist and Records Manager a few years ago, alsocontinues. The Archivist & Records Manager is liaisingwith more possible candidates and the freelance oralhistory expert, Liz Bruchet, for the next project. Oncecomplete, the recordings and transcripts will be checked,catalogued and added to our institutional archive. Thereare also a number of archive items that the Archivist &Records Manager and Archives & Library Assistant haveassessed during the period of the expansion project thathave been sent to specialists for conservation, whilst thearchive collections are not being consulted.

The Collections staff have also recently been indiscussions with the digital manager about the newwebsite. We are presently reviewing our current websitefor Collections and rewriting content, as well as addingto it and changing the layout of these webpages. TheCollections webpages will include information on the newfacilities available to readers and guidance on accessingthe Collections materials, as this will have changedslightly once we re-open.

Collections staff continue to assist with relevantexpansion project decisions about the new Collectionsspace such as potential copying facilities for readers andthe layout of the Collections work room.

We have also been writing weekly posts for theCentre’s blog, during the temporary closure. The bloghas been a platform for us to provide some insight intoour work and share enthusiasm about our collectionswith our readers, whilst we are not able to engage withand assist them in a practical way, in the PSR.

If you would like to find out more about any of ouron-going Collections projects briefly discussed here,please visit online: http://blog.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/

THE PAuL MELLON CENTRE COLLECTIONS

Caring for the CollectionsProjects undertaken during the temporary Closure

Recent blog posts available at blog.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

SENIOR FELLOWSHIPS

Ian Campbell, university of Edinburgh, to prepare hisbook Renaissances in Scottish Architecture, c.1370-1745

Stephen Daniels, university of Nottingham, to preparehis book ‘Map-work’: John Britton and the Reform ofTopography in 19th-century Britain

ROME FELLOWSHIP

Caspar Pearson, university of Essex, for research inRome on The renaissance of the Renaissance? Architectureand Urbanism between Italy and England

MID-CAREER FELLOWSHIPS

Alice Correia, university of Salford, to prepare her bookArticulating Contemporary British Asian Art Histories

Manolo Guerci, university of Kent, to prepare his bookGreat Houses of the Strand: The Ruling Elite at Home inTudor and Jacobean London

Matthew Reeve, Queen’s university, Ontario, to preparehis book Gothic Architecture, Aesthetics and Sexuality in theCircle of Horace Walpole c.1740-90

James Rothwell, The National Trust, to prepare his bookPolitics, Diplomacy and 18th-century European CourtCulture: The Ickworth Silver, 1690-1775

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS

William Bainbridge, Durham university, to prepare hisbook Peaks & Pencils: The Dolomite Mountains in VictorianIllustrated Books

Caroline Fuchs, Bavarian State Painting Collection, toprepare her book Colour Values: Autochrome ColourPhotography in Britain

Victoria Horne, university of Edinburgh, to preparearticles and a book ‘Our project is not to add to art history,but to change it.’ The establishment of the UK Association ofArt Historians, 1974-90 and ‘BLOCK Magazine and the“New” Approaches in British Art History’ and PublishingDissent: Radical Periodicals and British Art History, 1979-89

Allison Ksiazkiewicz, university of Cambridge, toprepare her book Archetypes of Nature: VisualizingGeological Landscape during the British Enlightenment

Laura Slater, university of York, to prepare her book Artand Political Thought in Medieval England

Sean Willcock, Queen Mary, university of London, toprepare his book The Aesthetics of Conflict: Art,Photography and Geopolitics in the Victorian Period

JuNIOR FELLOWSHIPS

Andrea Bacciolo, universität Wien, to conduct researchin the united Kingdom for his doctoral thesis TheBarberini and the British Isles. Art and Diplomacy betweenRome and London (1623-1679)

Erin McKellar, Boston university, to conduct research inthe united Kingdom for her doctoral thesis Tomorrow onDisplay: American and British Housing Exhibitions,1940-1955

Laurel Peterson, Yale university, to conduct research inthe united Kingdom for her doctoral thesis The DecoratedInterior: Artistic Production in the British Country House,1688-1745

Allison Young, Institute of Fine Arts, New York, toconduct research in the united Kingdom for her doctoralthesis ‘Torn and Most Whole’: Zarina Bhimji and the‘Culture Wars’ in Britain, 1970-2002

RESEARCH SuPPORT GRANTS

Susan Bean for research on Modeling Cosmos and Colony:India's Clay Sculpture in the 19th Century

Georgina Cole for research on Representations of Blindnessin 18th-century British Art

Christopher Cowell for research on The Cantonments ofIndia: A Hidden Theater of British Rule, 1746-1924

Anne Goodchild for research on The Early andMid-Career Work of Victor Pasmore (c.1929-1969)

Ada Grochowska for research on Woodcarving in Anglo-Dutch Relationships in the Second Half of the 17th century

Sonal Khullar for research on Fertile Grounds: Art,Primitivism, and Postcoloniality in 20th-century India andGreat Britain

JoAnne Mancini for research on Anglo-Spanish Conflictand the Transformation of Art and Architecture

Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani for research on Reforming theCanon of British Modernism: Commonwealth Artists inLondon, 1956-1970

Helen Pierce for research on The Art of the Interregnum

Catherine Sloan for research on Radical Post-WarPedagogies in British Art: Basic Design

Alice Strickland for research on Women Artists of the FirstWorld War: Anna Airy, Flora Lion, Lucy Kemp-Welch,Victoria Monkhouse and Olive Edis

Astrid Swenson for research on The Restoration ofCrusader Architecture in the British Mediterranean

THE PAuL MELLON CENTRE FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS

Fellowship and Grant AwardsAt the March 2015 meeting of the Centre’s Advisory Council the following Fellowships and Grants were awarded:

Over the past few months Martin Postle and Mary PeskettSmith have continued to make visits to regional museumsup and down the country in order to meet curators andmuseum directors and gain an insight at first hand into thechallenges that face them, and to discuss ways in which thePaul Mellon Centre’s grants and fellowships programmecan help support curatorial research, educationalprogrammes and publications. Among the most

interesting and unusual visits was one to the site ofAlexander Pope’s house in Twickenham, now home toRadnor House School, where we were given a tour ofPope’s subterranean grotto. Built in 1720, the grotto is theonly surviving element of Pope’s celebrated villa andgarden. Now sadly dilapidated, the grotto is none the lessan impressive and atmospheric structure, lined withminerals and curious statuary. In 2005 Radnor HouseSchool created a Charitable Trust to preserve the grottoand raise its profile. There is much to be done, not least interms of funding, but it was encouraging to see that thisiconic creation may at last be finding a new lease of life.

In March we paid a visit to the Munnings ArtMuseum, the former home of that much maligned artistand former President of the Royal Academy. under theleadership of the first full-time Director, Jenny Hand, themuseum is clearly going places. In the first instance, thecollection, which contains in total over 600 works byMunnings, has been rehung chronologically throughoutthe house, revealing the artist’s development from hisearly training as a lithographer to his position as thepre-eminent society equine painter. Munnings’simpressive garden studio is being refurbished, completewith an array of palettes, easels and pigments.Investigation is also being undertaken into the museum’sextensive archive that includes, among other fascinatingitems, material relating to Lady Munnings’s Pekinese,Black Knight, including the dog’s bank account. The dogitself is displayed on the first floor in a glass case,together with its pink telephone. Well worth a visit!

Zoe Thomas for research on The Women’s Guild of Artsand the Arts and Crafts Scene in London, c.1880-1930

Emily Turner for research on British MissionaryInfrastructure Development in the Canadian North,c.1850-1914

Frederica Van Dam for research on Flemish MigrantPainters in England between 1560 and 1620

Nicholas Webb for research on Modelling Medieval Vaults:A Digital Analysis of Wells Cathedral Aisles

Dominic Wilkinson and Andrew Crompton for researchon F. X. Velarde: The Modern European Church

EDuCATIONAL PROGRAMME GRANTS

British Film Institute grant towards a series of lecturesand seminars, April 2015: Cinema Born Again

British Library grant towards a workshop, 29 October2015: British Library Prints and Drawings: Image, Evidence,History

university of Exeter grant towards a colloquium, 3-4December 2015: Fancy-Fantasie-Capriccio: Diversions andDistractions in the 18th Century

Gainsborough's House grant towards a conference, 29-30October 2015: The Painting Room: New Research into thePainting Practices of Artists in the 18th Century

Hepworth Wakefield grant towards a conference, 6 June2015: Décor: A Conference

Jerwood Gallery grant towards a study day, Autumn2015: Lowry by the Sea

university of Lincoln grant towards a conference, April2016: Duncan Grant Murals in Lincoln Cathedral:Contemporary Responses and Perspectives

Museum of London grant towards a conference, 11-12September 2015: The Look of Austerity

National Portrait Gallery grant towards a workshop, 21April 2015: George Scharf and the Emergence of theMuseum Professional in 19th-century Britain

university of St Andrews grant towards a workshop,June 2015: Curating Materiality: Feminism andContemporary Art History in the UK

Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, university of Leedsgrant towards a symposium, 29 May 2015: Bohemians andMarginal Communities in the 18th Century: George Morlandin Context

THE PAuL MELLON CENTRE REGIONAL MUSEUMS

Regional Museum Visits

The artist’s studio at the Munnings Art Museum