PMC Notes

ive rch ewe ll A an S Bri The

May 2017 / No. 6 p aul-mellon -c e nt re.a c .uk

PMC Staff Director of Studies Mark Hallett Deputy Director for Grants and Publications Martin Postle Deputy Director for Finance and Administration Sarah Ruddick Deputy Director for Research Sarah Victoria Turner Librarian Emma Floyd Archivist and Records Manager Charlotte Brunskill Archives and Library Assistant Frankie Drummond Charig Assistant Archivist and Records Manager Jenny Hill Cataloguer: Auction Catalogues Mary Peskett Smith Digital Manager Tom Scutt

Senior Research Fellow, Special Projects Hugh Belsey

Events Manager Ella Fleming

Advisory Council

Office Manager Suzannah Pearson Education Programme Manager Nermin Abdulla Picture Researcher Maisoon Rehani Finance Officer Barbara Ruddick Editor Emily Lees Editor Baillie Card Fellowships, Grants and Communications Officer Harriet Fisher

Board of Governors

HR Manager Barbara Waugh

Peter Salovey, President of Yale University Ben Polak, Provost for Yale University Amy Meyers, Director of Yale Center for British Art Stephen Murphy, Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer of Yale University

Receptionist Stephen O’Toole

Design

Director’s Assistant & Office Administrator Bryony Botwright Rance

Buildings Officer George Szwejkowski PMC Fellow Hana Leaper Brian Allen Fellow Jessica Feather

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Iwona Blazwick, Whitechapel Gallery Alixe Bovey, Courtauld Institute of Art Christopher Breward, University of Edinburgh David Peters Corbett, University of East Anglia Anthony Geraghty, University of York Richard Marks, Art Historian and Curator Martin Myrone, Tate Britain Andrew Saint, English Heritage MaryAnne Stevens, Art Historian and Curator Shearer West, University of Sheffield Alison Yarrington, Loughborough University

Baillie Card and Harriet Fisher Template by Cultureshock Media Contact us Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art 16 Bedford Square London, WC1B 3JA United Kingdom T: 020 7580 0311 www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

Contents May 2017 – No.6

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Director’s Note The Brian Sewell Archive Acquiring, Cataloguing, and Digitising the Archives: Ellis Waterhouse, Ben Nicolson, and Oliver Millar Introducing the Fellows Lunch Series Making Women’s Art Matter Conference Report College Art Association Conference Report Places of the Mind: British Watercolour Landscapes 1850–1950 Dissertation Workshop Report Publications British Art Studies: Issue 5 PMC Events Calendar Bedford Square Festival Public Lecture Course 2017 Doctoral Researchers Network PMC Profile YCBA Events Calendar

Front cover: Brian Sewell, c. 1970s (AR: TN42)

Director’s Note

As you will soon gather by flicking through its pages, much of this issue of PMC Notes is devoted to some rather exciting news about our archive collections.

First of all, we are thrilled to have acquired the rich and fascinating archive of the famous critic and broadcaster Brian Sewell, who throughout his career managed to inform, enthral, and infuriate in equal measure. His papers confirm the learning and generosity that accompanied his famously acerbic judgements, and reveal the complexities of a career that straddled the worlds of scholarship, television, criticism, and the art-trade.

In this issue, we also showcase the riches of three other archives held at the Centre: those of the distinguished art historians Ellis Waterhouse and Oliver Millar, and that of the remarkable scholar and editor Ben Nicolson, which was recently generously donated to the Centre by his daughter Vanessa Nicolson.

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Brian Sewell’s cancelled passport, 1960s-1970s (AR:TN21)

All these different archives – which are looked after by our superb Research Collections staff - form part of a broader and ever-expanding collection of such materials here at the PMC. We are proud to house the papers of numerous art historians and writers who have made major contributions to our understanding of British art and architecture. These papers provide scholars, researchers, and art-world professionals with a valuable set of resources with which to explore not only the fascinating work and careers of such figures as Sewell, Waterhouse, Millar, and Nicolson, but also the modern historiography of British art itself – the ways it has been thought about, written about, curated, taught, and discussed, from the early decades of the twentieth century to today.

Mark Hallett Director of Studies

May 2017 — No. 6

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Collections

Th e Br i a n Se wel l Ar c h i v e

Charlotte Brunskill, Archivist & Records Manager, and Jenny Hill, Assistant Archivist & Records Manager, report on the latest addition to the Collections held at the PMC, the archive of art critic Brian Sewell.

Photograph of boxes containing the Brian Sewell Archive, with ‘Stormy Weather’ by Zsuzsi Roboz in the foreground, in the stores at the Paul Mellon Centre

The Paul Mellon Centre is delighted to announce the acquisition of the Brian Sewell Archive. The Centre is the only archive repository in the UK formally acknowledged by the National Archives as a collecting institution for the papers of art critics.

Given Sewell’s reputation as “Britain’s most controversial art critic”, the offer of the donation, received in January 2016, was incredibly exciting.

In line with best practice, the Centre never acquires archive material before first reviewing it, so arrangements were made to visit Sewell’s house in Wimbledon. After a day spent delving inside large brown envelopes (Sewell’s preferred method of filing), reading diary entries, browsing correspondence, and looking through photographs, it was evident that the collection would make a fascinating research resource and enhance the Centre’s holdings. Sewell’s extensive library was also offered and those materials not already held at the Centre were taken.

Over the following months the legalities of the acquisition were established and finally, on four of the hottest days of the summer, Research Collections staff returned to Wimbledon to list and pack the material.

When the work was complete, the house contained a mountain of boxes: seventy of archive material and sixty of library material.

They were transported to the Centre by specialist movers in the arts and heritage sector.

With such a large quantity of boxes, it will take some time before the collection is fully catalogued, but staff now have a better understanding of the contents as well as the particular sensitivities involved, and can make material accessible to the public.

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“I seek to amuse, inform, enlighten, encourage and delight...

The core of the Archive comprises a comprehensive run of the articles authored by Sewell. These date from around 1980—when he began as a critic for Tatler—to the end of his life, and include not only the pieces he wrote for the Evening Standard (with whom he was employed from 1984 to his death), but also those he wrote for a wide range of other publications, from Il Giornale dell’Arte to The Oldie. The articles were meticulously organized by Sewell during his life into two main sequences: the largest concerning art and the arts; and a smaller group on any other subject matter. With files titled “Beckham to British Beef” they cover a kaleidoscope of topics!

This near-complete run of the articles

by Sewell presents a valuable resource for anyone studying the cultural landscape and the tastes and preferences—particularly of London—during this period. Some of the articles are accompanied by Sewell’s research notes, as well as correspondence received and exchanged following publication. Together, this material offers a unique insight into the work and processes of a critic, and the private responses to this very public discipline.

His articles and accompanying material fill almost fifty boxes. In complete contrast to their ordered nature, the contents of the remaining twenty boxes are random, diverse, and somewhat chaotic. As Sewell’s health deteriorated towards the end of his life, he began sifting through his papers, and destroying select items. What we were

Sewell, 1933 (AR:TN41) 6

Quotation in design from Brian Sewell’s reply to a question posed by Gabrielle Pugh-Morgan, who asked why he wrote for the Evening Standard, 10 January 2010 (AR: TN23)

presented with on our initial visit is what had survived this process.

Although we had had a cursory glance during the review process, much of the material was packed unseen for transportation. Reading his papers back at the Centre was fascinating. This part of the collection chronicles both the key events and the everyday occurrences of Sewell’s rich and diverse life—from childhood, to school and the Courtauld, the Blunt affair, uncovering fakes and forgeries, research for published and unpublished books, his work as a TV presenter—right through to his final days. In addition, the material documents his friendships, and his passions for travel, dogs, and cars.

From passports to diaries, press-cuttings, postcards, photographs, programmes, and letters, it is all here: the rich tapestry of a life.

As is always the case when working on archive material, one is left wondering why the creator kept some materials when he destroyed others. This question is not easily, if ever, answered, but much of the material relates to the subjects covered in Sewell’s recently published two-volume autobiography: perhaps he brought it together and kept it for this reason? We will never know, but the chapter headings of the books do provide a useful aidememoire to some of the main subjects covered in the archive.

...and sometimes to outrage”

Sewell, c. 1960s (AR:TN43) January 2016 — No. 5 7

Original illustrations sent to Sewell by Phil Tyler, 2010 (AR:TN28b) and Brian Lewis, (AR:TN28d)

Perhaps the biggest surprise are the boxes of correspondence. We discovered that Sewell had an enormous and diverse group of friends and colleagues with whom he corresponded regularly. The archive includes, for example, correspondence with the artist Michael Reynolds (1933– 2008), the painter and art forger Eric Hebborn (1934–1996), and the restaurateur Peter Langan (1941–1988), in addition to key establishment figures and young artists. These letters are often illuminating: the authors discuss their inspirations, aspirations, and frustrations. Viewed together this material reveals much about the networks and complexities of the UK art world from 1950. It also reveals that although publicly sometimes a figure of fun, because of his mannered pronunciation and outspokenness, Sewell’s opinion was valued by scholars and artists alike. He

took his influence as an art critic seriously, sponsoring and nurturing those he thought had talent; supporting projects and ventures he felt were worthwhile. Thanks to his public persona, people felt they knew Sewell; but the archive reveals much about his private side.

All of the images featured in this article are items from the Brian Sewell Archive.

A basic boxlist will soon be made available on the Centre’s website and individuals wishing to consult material should contact Research Collections staff: collections@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk.

A small display, introducing Sewell, and featuring some highlights from the Collection, will open at the Centre on 8 May. 8

Sewell playing with his dogs in Kensington Gardens, c. 1970s (AR: TN44)

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Acquiring, Cataloguing, and Digitising the Archives The Centre holds a wide range of archive collections. Charlotte Brunskill and Georgina Lever, Project Archivist - Oliver Millar Archive, report on three recent projects to improve access.

The Ellis Waterhouse Archive Sir Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse (1905-1985) was Director of the National Galleries of Scotland (1942-52); Director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham (1952-70); and the first Director of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (1970-3).

The Waterhouse Archive contains material collected and compiled throughout his career and reflects, in particular, his interest in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British art. The material was brought to the Centre by Waterhouse when he took up his post here, and formally donated by his widow after his death in 1985.

The Archive has now been fully catalogued, with descriptions available through our online archive catalogue.

The core of the archive comprises over four hundred research files, containing information on over a thousand artists — both well-established and obscure.

Organized alphabetically by name, these files are a rich resource. Alongside correspondence, research, and other written material, they include thousands of black-and-white photographs and images collected from a variety of sources. The majority of these images have been heavily annotated by Waterhouse and contain his (often very frank) opinions on attribution,

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as well as information about provenance, ownership, and subject matter.

The material on Reynolds and Gainsborough is particularly comprehensive, having been compiled during research for his publications Sir Joshua Reynolds (1941) and Gainsborough (1958). The Archive also includes a smaller sequence of research material on public and private collections and collectors in the UK and abroad, as well as Waterhouse’s annotated copy of Graves and Cronin’s catalogue of Reynolds paintings.

The Archive catalogue includes the name of every artist represented in the collection — even where only one image of their work is held — as well as a description of every document. It is fulltext searchable and over one hundred of the items are illustrated.

The Ellis Waterhouse Archive complements materials held at the Getty Research Institute: Waterhouse’s notebooks and research files. The Centre also houses the personal collection of auction house sales catalogues built up, and annotated by William Roberts and later owned by Sir Ellis Waterhouse. This collection contains some rare catalogues as well as many on-the-premises sales, and is presently being catalogued.

Files of correspondence from the Ben Nicolson Archive. Photo by Harriet Fisher.

The Ben Nicolson Archive Lionel Benedict Nicolson (1914–1978) was a British art historian and author and the Centre is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of his archive. Nicolson was the elder son of authors Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West. In 1939, he was appointed Deputy Surveyor of the King’s Pictures under Kenneth Clark. In 1947 he became editor of The Burlington Magazine — a post he held for over thirty years, transforming it from a magazine that had previously focused on collectors as its audience, into a major British scholarly periodical on art history.

The Archive comprises sixteen personal diaries, eight folders of correspondence, and a small amount of reference and research material. The diaries, which sit at the heart of the collection, are a truly fascinating resource. Nicolson was a natural diarist, writing almost every day and with apparent ease and honesty. Most of the diaries cover his formative years, with twelve of the sixteen dating from 1933 to 1939. They partly chart the period when Nicolson was studying modern history at Balliol College (1933–6) and include, for example, something of his experiences with the “Florentine Club” which he founded with friends including John PopeHennessy, and which invited art historians such as Kenneth Clark, Herbert Read,

Clive Bell, and the painter Duncan Grant to discuss art.

They also cover Nicolson’s extensive travels in Europe and the United States, his time studying with Bernard Berenson at I Tatti, his work as an unpaid intern under Clark at the National Gallery, and his studies at Harvard University’s Fogg Museum. There is a separate diary covering his experiences during the Second World War and a final piece covering an infatuation that he had in the late 1960s. Complementing this material is the correspondence from a wide range of friends and acquaintances which mostly dates from the same period and includes, for example, letters from Isaiah Berlin, Lawrence Gowing, and Lucien Pissarro.

The Archive is a particularly exciting acquisition for the Centre as the material covers the period when art history was just emerging as a scholarly discipline in the UK and when life for the privileged classes (to which Nicolson belonged) was about to change forever.

We are very grateful to his daughter, Vanessa Nicolson, for generously donating the Archive to the Centre.

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The Oliver Millar Archive The papers of Sir Oliver Nicholas Millar (1923–2007) were acquired by the Paul Mellon Centre in 2008. Millar was an art historian and curator serving in the Royal Household from 1947 until 1988, becoming Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures in 1972. His specialism was seventeenth-century British painting and his papers are amongst the most significant of the Centre’s Archive collections.

Though the material has always been open for consultation to visitors in person, producing a detailed online catalogue compliant with international standards has always been the long-term aim. We are pleased to report that work on this project has now begun.

In January 2017, archivist Georgina Lever was appointed to work exclusively on the collection for a six-month period. She will catalogue each file in detail and carefully re-package the material for long-term archival preservation.

One of the collection’s highlights is the sequence of forty-six journals Millar kept and carefully indexed, covering the period from 1945 to 2006. They record the paintings he saw in private and public collections worldwide, as well as sales at the major London auction houses. His primary concern was to seek out and enjoy fine paintings. He clearly stood before each picture, scribbling his observations with avid focus.

Entries occasionally include a dismissive or ebullient opinion, or a sketch of a particular detail that caught his eye. With a sixty-year span, the journals chart changes in ownership, theories of attribution, and curatorial trends.

The collection also contains hundreds of research files created by Millar to systematically gather material on major and minor seventeenthcentury artists, from his specialisms Van Dyck and Lely to a mysterious painter known simply as “I.H., Carlisle”. Material includes images; correspondence with collectors, curators, and academics on particular paintings; discussion of styles, regions and attributions; plus a variety of notes and observations. Another sequence contains material prepared for Millar’s section on Van Dyck in England for the publication Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (2004).

All of this material will be catalogued and from July the descriptions will be available to browse and search on the Paul Mellon Centre’s website.

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Oliver Millar Archive, Journal V, page 27, notes on ‘Van Dyck ‘Young General’’ (AR: ONM/1/2/5)

A second strand to this project has been to digitise the indexes to the journals. Millar maintained two volumes, an ‘Index to Journals of Collections, Houses, etc.’ and ‘An Index of Artists’ Names’. These two volumes are now available via the Paul Mellon Centre website.

A driving factor behind this work has been the need to preserve these heavily-used items. With this in mind, we were keen to produce an exact online facsimile of the indexes themselves. Digital access to this information will reduce handling and ensure the long-term preservation of the indexes.

The publication of these digital facsimiles is a new venture for the Centre and throughout the project, we have been mindful of our role as a custodian of personal information. Although the indexes are available to search online, there are no plans to make the journals available in the same way as these contain information about collections in private hands.

Readers will only be able to consult the journals by visiting the Centre and completing a Reader Agreement Form that addresses relevant data protection issues.

If you would like to give us feedback on this digitisation feature, or to consult the Ben Nicolson, Ellis Waterhouse, or Oliver Millar Archives, or any other Research Collection material, please contact: collections@ paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk.

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Grants and Fellowships

Introducing the Fellows Lunch Series Martin Postle, Deputy Director for Grants and Publications, introduces a new lunchtime talk series which aims to showcase the research of recipients of Paul Mellon Centre Fellowships This year sees the inauguration of a new lunchtime seminar, the Fellows Lunch series. The prestigious Paul Mellon Centre Fellowships, which are awarded each spring, provide opportunities for researchers from a variety of academic backgrounds, and from various stages in their careers, to undertake sustained periods of research. As these Fellowships are so central to the mission of the Centre we wish to bring aspects of the related research to a wider audience, within the ambience of Bedford Square. This summer the Fellows Lunch series will comprise of four talks given on Tuesday lunchtimes in May and June 2017. The talks, which will be given by Alice Correia, John Chu, Louise Hardiman, and Rebecca Wade, are all related to Fellowships awarded recently by the Centre, and provide an opportunity for Fellows to discuss topics related directly to their PMC research topics. As with the ongoing series of Friday research lunches, the format will consist of a paper of about 45 minutes followed by questions and discussion. Talks, which are accompanied

Philip Mercier, Margaret Woffingtin, called (detail), oil on canvas, 70 x 91cm. Courtesy of The Garrick Club.

by a sandwich lunch, are free of charge, and tickets can be booked via the Paul Mellon Centre website.

2 May, 12.30 – 14.00 Articulating British Asian Art Histories Alice Correia 30 May, 12.30-14.00 Domenico Brucciani and the wandering Italians of nineteenth-century Britain Rebecca Wade 13 June, 12.30-14.00 “Newly Invented Original Paintings”: Philip Mercier and the Origins of the Fancy Picture John Chu 27 June, 12.30-14.00 Russia and the South Kensington Museum: A case study in collecting and cultural diplomacy Louise Hardiman

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Conference Reports

Making Women’s Art Matter

Paul Mellon Centre Fellow Hana Leaper reports on a conference held at the Paul Mellon Centre this February.

Our conference “Making Women’s Art Matter: New Approaches to the Careers and Legacies of Women Artists” took place at the Centre over three days in early February. It was eagerly anticipated and oversubscribed.

In recent months, there has been a confluence of events and new scholarship on women’s historical and contemporary art, which use a range of approaches, from recovery and rehabilitation, to the use of new artistic responses and critical methodologies. Nadia Hebson (an artist, educator, and scholar based at Newcastle University) and I met at the newly formed “British Women Artists, 1750–1950” network and set about organizing a conference that would highlight these trends. Our intention was to generate a supportive structure for this growing body of work, so that women’s art would no longer be isolated from the mainstreams of art history.

We welcomed a range of new speakers into the Centre for the event, in particular artists for whom critical theory and art history form a vital aspect of their practice.

Curators from a range of institutions and stages in their careers also participated in our panels, discussing possibilities for mounting exhibitions in dynamic and formative ways, and for building collections and the legacies of women artists.

The chairs of our panels were carefully selected for their credentials as artists and scholars whose work engages with the primary issues of the conference. In a new approach for the Centre, they introduced each panel with a short talk about how their own practice related to its themes.

We also asked speakers to introduce themselves as they took to the lectern — an approach familiar to the contemporary artists, but less so to the academics.

In another first for the PMC, Katie Schwab staged the live premiere of her performance piece “Dear. For. To.” in the Public Study Room, which drew together many of the themes of the conference.

Filmmaker Jon Law recorded the proceedings, including a lively final debate, and we hope to call on key participants to write short interpretive texts to accompany this series of films. These pieces will soon be available across a range of platforms.

By sharing our ideas, art, and hopes during the conference, we aimed to avoid the damages of asserting an essential concept of femininity and of removing women artists further from broader contexts. Instead, by connecting archives, bodies of work, themes, and practitioners, we emphasized that these astists’ histories are neither partial nor partisan, but core and key legacies of visual culture. We have been left with many further ideas and questions and view the conference as part of an ongoing collaborative process between organizers, delegates, and all of our current and future networks, colleagues, and students.

Left: Nadia Hebson, 19 NH. Customized Acne Tee (detail), 2013, digital print, 45 by 35 cm. Digital image courtesy of the artist.

Right: Still from a film of the conference produced by Jon Law, 2017.

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College Art Association PMC Editor Baillie Card writes about attending the annual CAA conference, which was held in New York City from 15 to 18 February, 2017.

The College Art Association (CAA) conference is the largest annual gathering of visual arts professionals in the world.

It brings together art historians, artists, critics, curators, conservators, and many others in the field. At CAA 2017 this February, several members of the British Art Studies team at the PMC participated in panels, meetings, and workshops dealing with digital publishing and the digital humanities — an ever-growing theme at such gatherings.

Sarah Turner (Deputy Director, PMC) and Martina Droth (Deputy Director and Curator, Yale Center for British Art), both editors of BAS, together convened a session sponsored by the Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH) on “Editing Journals in a Digital Age.” Its panel of editors of art history journals — two print, two “born digital” — discussed the seismic shifts in academic publishing in the twenty-first century. They shared insights relating to the future of art history journals, their changing roles, shifts in expectations and processes around peer review, and different funding models.

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Our Digital Manager Tom Scutt helped to lead a practical professional development workshop titled “Getting Started with Publishing in Digital Art History,” which gave researchers assistance in planning and trouble-shooting presentations of their scholarship in digital formats. He also attended a lunch, alongside other delegates from universities, museums, and online research catalogues, to speak about recent developments in the “Digital Humanities and Art History.”

The CAA conference is an opportunity for us to work even more closely with our sister institution, the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), based in New Haven, and a lunch reception was hosted by the PMC and YCBA for any attendees with an interest in British art and architecture.

The reception was well-attended and full of conversation, and saw many scholars meet one another for the first time, over some much-appreciated sustenance in the middle of a hectic conference day! We are all looking forward to the next CAA, in Los Angeles in February 2018, to extend the conversations begun in New York.

Current Exhibition

Places of the Mind: British Watercolour Landscapes 1850–1950 PMC Allen Fellow Jessica Feather writes about collaborating with the British Museum on a new exhibition, Places of the Mind. It is open until 27 August and admission is free.

For me, the Prints and Drawings Room at the British Museum is definitely not a place only of the mind. I spent many happy hours over the course of my PhD thesis enjoying the generous welcome of the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. In particular, I benefited from the advice of Dr Kim Sloan, Curator of British Drawings before 1880, who acted as an external adviser for my thesis. Part of my research focused on the role that British Museum curators at the fin de siècle, such as Sidney Colvin and Laurence Binyon, played in promoting a “modern” taste in watercolour through acquisitions made for the Department. In pursuit of this quest, I drew on vast quantities of departmental and institutional archive material as well as the objects themselves to gain a clear sense of how the collection grew throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century.

One rewarding outcome of this collaboration was an invitation to work with Kim on the current British Museum exhibition, Places of the Mind: British Watercolour Landscapes, 1850–1950. The show is intended to showcase the rich depths and quality of the museum’s collection from this period; working on the project has seen me spend many enjoyable afternoons alongside my fellow contributors, selecting from the riches

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of the department’s solander boxes. The exhibition draws on beautiful examples by Victorian artists Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Poynter, and by many well-known twentieth-century artists such as John and Paul Nash, Ben Nicolson, and Henry Moore. It challenges the traditional consensus that the great tradition of British watercolour landscape painting died out in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and that in the twentieth century few major artists painted in watercolour.

The aim was to demonstrate not only that watercolour survived into the twentieth century and that it was used by many artists in a variety of

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new and adventurous ways, but also that it was just one medium of many employed throughout the century from 1850 to 1950 to articulate an artist’s vision of the landscape.

My particular contribution to the exhibition has been to focus on watercolour practitioners and their reception during the period 1890–1920: artists such as Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, John Singer Sargent, and Arthur Melville. As I argue in an essay in the accompanying catalogue, they represented a modern imperative, but one which was linked to a historic tradition of watercolour as well as a distinctive idea of Englishness.

John Singer Sargent, Torrent in the Val d’Aosta (detail), c. 1907, watercolour, 34.5 by 53.2 cm © Trustees of the British Museum

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Outreach

Dissertation Workshop PMC Archives & Library Assistant Frankie Drummond-Charig reflects on the Paul Mellon Centre’s first dissertation workshop.

For students, perhaps one of the most difficult things about producing a thesis is starting the process. With this in mind, colleagues from across the Centre got together to organize a dissertation workshop for art history students. This was held in March, and drew on in-house expertise and resources to provide advice and guidance to those beginning this research and writing journey.

The afternoon was divided into four sessions which dealt with: finding a topic; writing a strong introduction; using archive material for original research; and accessing the Centre’s Research Resources. The event was fully booked, reflecting the heavy demand for such

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guidance. It was attended by BA, MA, and PhD students embarking on their theses and the feedback we received from students at the end of the afternoon was very positive.

The impact of the event, we hope, will be long-lasting. Equipping students with the skills they need to successfully undertake archival research will benefit them (and the archives they go on to use) throughout their careers. Some of these students are the art historians of tomorrow and this event is just one of the ways the Centre hopes to encourage potentially flourishing careers in the field for years to come.

Publications & Events header

Publications & Events

January 2016 — No. 5

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Publications

Sculpture: Vertical, Horizontal, Closed, Open Penelope Curtis

closed

vertical

open

horizontal

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Expansive and lavishly illustrated, this book examines the fundamental similarities shared by all sculpture, regardless of the culture or time-period in which created.

Focusing on a wide range of British examples, of many periods, Penelope Curtis explores crucial sculptural concepts such as the vertical and the horizontal, the closed and the open. In doing so, she elucidates the powerful, and often surprising, properties of objects made in vastly different sociocultural contexts. This book also expands the notion of sculpture to include the objects of everyday life and investigates the ways in which we approach sculpture as an art form.

Stressing the fact that sculpture has been historically linked with rites of passage and moments of change and transformation, this revelatory study argues that the experience of sculpture is a universal and primal phenomenon that cuts across particular historical styles and epochs.

Publication date: September 2017 ISBN: 9780300227222 Dimensions: 240 x 180mm Pages: 320 Illustrations: 290 b/w illus.

John Cheere, Sleeping Nymph/Ariadne (detail), 1766, Stourhead. Š National Trust / David Cousins

Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in Britain, 1900–Now

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British Art Studies

Issue 5 Baillie Card introduces the latest issue of our online open-access journal.

Our latest issue of British Art Studies contains four articles and a multi-authored feature on the Hereford Screen at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It includes multimedia content such as an archival film clip from Hendon aerodrome, four specially-commissioned films made with our contributors, audio clips of choir music, and 3D models of the Hereford Cathedral. Sixteen months since launching British Art Studies, the journal showcases new avenues for presenting scholarly research in innovative and accessible ways.

Our project on the Hereford Screen, a Victorian choir screen designed by George Gilbert Scott for Hereford Cathedral, brings together different authors from the worlds of medieval history, theology, conservation, art history, the digital humanities, and music history, to offer a series of short essays that cumulatively bring the screen and its history to life. We have been developing this feature for two years, alongside its guest editor Dr. Ayla Lepine, through workshops and site visits with contributors. It exemplifies how the journal team and our collaborators often take an active role in developing content.

Alongside these materials, essays by art historians showcase the latest scholarly

research in their respective fields. Martin Hammer writes about David Hockney’s 1965 painting Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians (a painting on view at Tate Britain’s current retrospective) in relation to American visual culture of the time, while Anne Wagner explores a group of drawings made

by L . S. Lowry in Ancoats in 1930, when the neighbourhood was the most notorious slum in Manchester. Bernard Vere unearths new material on the Vorticists and their relationship to flight, and particularly the pilots at Hendon aerodrome, a venue for public entertainment outside of London, while Martin Myrone uses a registry of artists drawing sculptures in the British Museum to analyse the class backgrounds of Royal Academy students in the early nineteenth century.

We are immensely proud of the issue and hope you will read it online at britishartstudies.ac.uk.

Francis Alexander Skidmore and Sir George Gilbert Scott, The Hereford Screen (detail), 1862, Painted wrought and cast iron, brass, copper, timber, mosaics and hard stones. Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Digital image courtesy of Justin Underhill.

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Events

Summer Calendar All events are at the Paul Mellon Centre unless otherwise indicated.

5 May, 8.30-18.30

17 May, 18.00-20.00

Conference

Research Seminar

2 May, 12.30-14.00

A Bigger Picture: New

Curator’s Talk: Enlightened

Fellows Lunch

Approaches to David Hockney

Princesses: Caroline, Augusta,

Articulating British Asian Art

Tate Britain and Paul Mellon

and Charlotte and the Shaping

Histories

Centre

of the Modern World

May 2017

Alice Correia

Joanna Marschner 12 May, 12.30-14.00

3 May, 18.00-20:00

Research Lunch

26 May, 12.30-14.00

Research Seminar

“Don’t Look Back in Anger”: Art

Research Lunch

Curator’s Talk: Opus

at Court in the Aftermath of the

Iconography on the Edge/s:

Anglicanum: Masterpieces of

Barons’ War, 1258-1266

Constructing Space and the

English Medieval Embroidery at

Laura Slater

Sacred in Anglo-Saxon England

the V&A

Meg Boulton

Glyn Davies (Respondent: Paul Binski)

30 May, 18:00-20:00 Fellows Lunch Domenico Brucciani and the Wandering Italians of Nineteenth-Century Britain Rebecca Wade 31 May, 18:00-20:00 Research Seminar Curators’ Talk: “A Great and Noble Design” — Sir James Thornhill’s Preparatory Sketches for the Painted Hall at Greenwich Anya Matthews & Richard Johns

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James Tissot, Holyday, c. 1876, oil on canvas. © Tate London

21 June, 18.00-20.00

27 June, 12.30-14.00

Research Seminar

Fellows Lunch

2 June, 12.30-14.00

Curator’s Talk: The Mythic

Russia and the South Kensington

Research Lunch

Method: Classicism in British

Museum: A Case Study in

“An intense consciousness of

Art, 1920-1950

Collecting and Cultural

the present”: Ruskin, Pater, and

Simon Martin

Diplomacy

June 2017

the Drawing of Modern Life Thomas Hughes

Louise Hardiman 23 June, 12.30-14.00 Research Lunch (two talks)

28 June - 1 July

7 June, 18.00-20:00

Grotesque Bodies: Second

Bedford Square Festival

Research Seminar

World War Figuration in the

Events taking place at the PMC and

Curators’ Talk: Queer British

Work of Robert Colquhoun and

around Bedford Square

Art, 1861-1967

Robert MacBryde

www.bedfordsquarefestival.co.uk

Clare Barlow & Eleanor Jones

Sophie Hatchwell Francis Newton Souza,

13 June, 12.30-14:00

Masculinity, and Migration in the

Fellows Lunch

late 1950s

“Newly Invented Original

Greg Salter

Paintings”: Philip Mercier and the Origins of the Fancy Picture John Chu 16 June, 12.30-14:00 Research Lunch Catholic Emancipation, Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) and the Catholic Association in Print: Satirical Printmaking in Dublin in the late 1820s Carly Hegenbarth

Top: Robert Smirke, Study of Knights Paying Homage to the King (detail), drawing. © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Bottom: Francis Newton Souza by Ida Kar, 1961, film negative © National Portrait Gallery, London

May 2017 — No. 6

29

Bedford Square Festival We are delighted to announce that the Paul Mellon Centre will be taking part in the inaugural Bedford Square Festival taking place in and around the Square between 28th June and 1st July 2017.

The Bedford Square Festival will open the doors of the cultural and educational organisations located in the Square to the public through an exciting programme of events.

The Festival will celebrate the artistic, cultural and literary communities on this historic square. We hope to engage a diverse audience and inspire creative and educational opportunities.

There will be an exciting programme of events, from a performance of Romeo & Juliet by the Shakespeare in the Squares company to talks, walking tours, discussions, screenings, a poetry slam and workshops.

For the full list of events at the festival, please visit www.bedfordsquarefestival.co.uk The festival is a collaborative event organised by: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art The Architectural Association Sotheby’s institute of Art The New College of Humanities Yale University Press Festival Sponsors:

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May 2017 - No. 6

30

Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in Britain, 1900–Now

32

Public Lecture Course

Britain, South Asia: Entangled Histories Education Programme Manager Nermin Abdulla introduces this autumn’s Public Lecture Course.

The PMC’s third Public Lecture Course will explore the entangled histories of Britain and South Asia through art and visual culture and will take place from 28th September to 26th October 2017. It will be convened by Hammad Nasar and Sarah Victoria Turner, the co-leaders of the PMC’s London, Asia project, with lectures by a wide range of expert invited speakers. No prior art historical knowledge is necessary to attend. Each lecture will be accompanied by a discussion led by the course convenors.

The course will take a long view of the cultural relationships between London and South Asia, covering topics from the eighteenth century through to the present day. Places for the Autumn 2017 Public Lecture Course, “Britain, South Asia: Entangled Histories”, will open in August.

Expanding the Public Lecture Course Over the past two years, the popularity of the Public Lecture Course has rapidly increased. As a result, the PMC is pleased to announce that the Public Lecture Course will now take place twice over the academic year, during the autumn and spring terms. Each course will examine a different topic over five weeks and will continue to be held on Thursday evenings, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm. The additional course will allow more people to take part and allow the Paul Mellon Centre to offer its visitors a more diverse range of subjects to explore.

Detail from: Unknown artist, probably Indian, Yellow-eyed Babbler perched on Chinese hat plant, undated, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

May 2017 — No. 6

33

Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in Britain, 1900–Now

Education

Doctoral Researchers Network Nermin Abdulla reports on a new venture for the Centre.

As a result of the successful PMC-supported Early Career Researchers Network, the Paul Mellon Centre is pleased to announce the formation of a new Doctoral Researchers Network for candidates at any stage of a doctoral degree in British art and architecture.

The network will provide a support system for students, staging events and activities that will provide academic and professional development skills. The network will also provide opportunities for members to present ongoing research, network with academics in the field, and find assistance with approaching post-doctoral fellowships and jobs.

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The network will connect members with colleagues all over the country in a supportive and creative environment, aiding them through the process of researching, writing, and publishing their dissertations. There will be no fees for membership and small travel grants will be available for members traveling into London.

Two current doctoral students from universities in the UK will run the network. The convenors will be responsible for organizing events and workshops and communicating with members. The Education Programme Manager and staff at the Paul Mellon Centre will be on hand to assist with finance and administration. Expenses incurred by the convenors in the organization and running of the network will be subsidized by the Paul Mellon Centre.

The Centre is looking for a current UK based student to act as a coconvenor. They must be researching and writing on a topic that relates to British art and architecture from the medieval to the contemporary period. Applicants should also be able to travel to London at least three to four times a year. Interested applicants should contact Nermin Abdulla at nabdulla@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk, with a CV and cover letter by 31st May 2017.

In its aim to support and promote academic research and publishing in British art history, the Paul Mellon Centre is proud to facilitate and support this endeavour, and looks forward to encouraging a new generation of scholars working in this field.

To register your interest in the network please contact: Nermin Abdulla doctoralresearchers@gmail.com For more information please see: http://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/about-drn

Alfred Joseph Woolmer, Interior of the British Institution (Old Master Exhibiton Summer 1832) (detail), 1833, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Centre

May 2017 — No. 6

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PMC Profile

Georgina Lever Baillie Card talks to Georgina Lever, an archivist at the Paul Mellon Centre, about her work on the Oliver Millar collection.

Can you tell us about your role at the PMC? I have joined the PMC to catalogue the papers of Oliver Millar, which are part of the Paul Mellon Centre’s archive. This involves creating a detailed description of each file, packaging the papers into archival folders and boxes, and digitizing key materials. Elsewhere in this issue (pp. 12–13), you can read more about this project and Oliver Millar.

How did you become interested in archival collections?

I used archives and special collections whilst researching my undergraduate dissertation on the illustration of English editions

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of Aesop’s Fables. I felt at home in a study room surrounded by rare books and archives. I have always enjoyed organizing things and quickly realized that being an archivist was the career to pursue! I enjoy the breadth and diversity of material in each collection — no two are the same!

Have you made any unexpected discoveries while working at the PMC? On a personal note, I was pleased to find a book in the library on the Cornish painter Harold Harvey, who is my great-great-uncle. In 2013 I had also spent a day exploring the Yale Center for British Art, Beinecke Library, and Peabody Museum (and Louis’ Lunch — which claims to be the birthplace

of the hamburger), unaware that in a few years’ time I would be working at a prestigious London affiliate of Yale University!

Are there any exhibitions currently showing, which you would like to recommend?

I live very near to where the Crystal Palace once stood in South-East London, and am really interested in its history. There is a small museum in the park full of artefacts that I find endlessly interesting.

I also recently enjoyed “Game Plan”, an exhibition celebrating classic board games and their histories at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green.

YCBA Programmes and Events 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520 USA

Special Exhibitions

Select Center Events

7 April–6 August

6 June, 17:30

Art in Focus: The British Castle-

Exhibition Opening Program

A Symbol in Stone

A Decade of Gifts and

An initiative of the Center’s

Acquisitions

Student Guide program, this

Remarks by Amy Meyers, Director,

exhibition brings together a

Yale Center for British Art

selection of paintings that examine anew the history,

13 June, 17:30

architectural development,

International Festival of Arts &

and literary associations of the

Ideas Lecture

English castle, both real and

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons

imagined.

from the Twentieth Century Timothy Snyder, Bird White

June 1–13 August

Housum Professor of History, Yale

A Decade of Gifts and

University

Acquisitions Forty years ago this year, the Yale

14 June, 17:30

Center for British Art opened to

International Festival of Arts &

the public. In celebration of this

Ideas Lecture

anniversary, a suite of exhibitions

We Thought It Was About the

will showcase the most recent

Economy?

additions to the Center’s

John Dankosky, host of NEXT, on

collection of British art. Offering

WNPR

visitors a behind-the-scenes look at the growth and evolution

17 June, 10:00–14:30

of the collection, the displays

Children’s Film Festival

will feature several groupings of newly acquired works from

23 June, 3pm

artists such as John Golding.

8 July, 2pm Film Screening David Bowie is happening now (2013) Directed by Hamish Hamilton and Katy Mullan (not rated; 95 minutes)

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

Hercules Brabazon Brabazon, Landscape with Industrial Buildings by a River, ca. 1890, gouache on board, Yale Center for British Art, Bequest of Joseph F. McCrindle, Yale LLB 1984 January 2016 — No. 5 E

Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in Britain, 1900–Now

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