British Art
Overview
The British Art Research School
**New e-bulletin and blog launched on 23rd February 2011**
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The British Art research school comprises an internationally unique and significant collection of scholars interested in art in the British isles and historical territories from the late antique to the contemporary periods.
We enjoy particular concentrations of expertise in medieval stained glass, sculpture and architecture; 17th- and early 18th-century architecture; 18th-century painting, sculpture and graphic art; Victorian and Modernist painting, sculpture and architecture; and British art since 1945.
The school considers British art as it has been produced in a diverse array of geographical, cultural and material contexts.
Working from a wide range of theoretical, historiographical and methodological positions, members of the school variously address British art in relation to issues of materiality, iconography, class, gender, sexuality and ethnicity, as also in relation to local, continental, imperial and post-colonial cultures.
The British Art Research School offers a very broad range of options at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and has a sizeable, thriving community of research students.
Scholars connected with the British Art Research School have been responsible for a range of recent, internationally-significant exhibitions, and have published numerous important monographs, articles and essays on the subject.
Staff
Research staff
- Dr Jane Hawkes
Early Christian sculpture - Dr Christopher Norton
High medieval architecture - Professor Richard Marks
Late medieval art - Dr Anthony Geraghty
Wren; 17th-century architecture - Professor Mark Hallett
18th-century art; Reynolds; Post-1945 art - Dr Jason Edwards
Victorian art, especially Aestheticism; Sculpture in England 1830-1918 - Dr Sarah Turner (Director)
European and British modernism; art and visual cultures of the British Empire - Dr Jo Applin
Modern and contemporary art, with a particular focus on sculpture - Dr Kate Nichols
Nineteenth-century art and visual culture; reception of Classical Greece and Rome in Europe; museum studies
Students
Research students
Current students
- Kirsty Breedon
Sculpture in the Circum-Atlantic World: Herbert Ward’s Congolese Bronzes in Europe and America 1884-present - Caroline Good
The Making of a National Art History: British writers on art and the narratives of nation 1660-1735 (part of the AHRC research project: 'Court, Country, City: British Art 1660-1735.') - Sam Hancock
'A new theatre of prospects': Eighteenth-century British Painters and Artistic Mobility - Rosanna Harrison
George Wilson and the Engraved Fan Leaf Design, 1790-1800 - Lucinda Lax
'Telling the Eye a Moral Story': Edward Penny, Genre Painting and the Royal Academy - Arlene Leis
Sarah Sophia Banks: femininity, sociability and the practice of collecting in late eighteenth-century England - Peter Moore
Graphic Art and Empire: British Visual Culture in the Atlantic World, 1660-1735 -
Jackie Riding
Joseph Highmore (1692-1780) - Catherine Spencer
'The Lessons of Anthropology' in British and American Art, 1950-70 - Philippa Turner
Image and Devotion in Late Medieval English Cathedrals - Katie Tyreman
Visualizing: Victorian Women Artists - Emma Watts
British Art - Exhibition and Reception in late 19th Century Australia - Sean Willcock
Consolidating the Colonies: Art and Unrest in the British Empire, c.1855-1880
Recent postgraduates
- Sarah Burnage
Life and work of John Bacon - Carolyn Conroy
The life and work of Simeon Solomon after 1873 - Imogen Hart
Arts and crafts objects - Karin Hiscock
The axis group - John Gledhill
A catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings of Matthew Smith - Philip Kerrigan
British and US botanical illustration - Ariane Mildenberg
Marks, buttons and notes: phenomenology and creative production in Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and Wallace Stevens - Ian Neal
Representations of Reverie: Rossetti, Whistler, Clausen - Lara Perry
Facing femininities: women in the National Portrait Gallery, 1856-1900 - Sam Shaw
'Equivocal Positions': The Influence of William Rothenstein, c.1890-1910 - Michael Walsh
The career and work of C R W Nevinson to 1924
Teaching
Teaching
Undergraduate modules
- The Age of the Cathedrals: Architecture in England 1050-1250
- Church, College & Castle c. 1250-1450
- Architecture & Politics in Stuart England
- Art & the City: Representing Georgian London & York
- Casts and Cultures: The Crystal Palace Sydenham
- Victorian Art
- Modernism 1900-1939
- Image & Word: 19th & 20th Century Interactions between the Visual Arts & Writing
- Sculpture in the Twentieth Century
- The Cultures of Sculpture, 1815-1918
- Painting in Britain
- Popular Propaganda, Satire & Caricature
- The English Country House
- Medieval Stained Glass
- Sculpture in the Circum-Atlantic World
- Stained Glass in the Great Church c. 1170-1350
- The Glory of Gothic: Art for England c. 1400-1547
- The Art of the Insular World c. 600-1066
- The Art of Anglo-Saxon England, c.600-1066
- British Art since the Second World War
- The 'British School': Sculpture in Britain, c.1760-1837
Postgraduate modules
- Art & Imagery in York Minster
- Scrolls and Serpents: The Arts of the Early Insular World (c.600-900 AD)
- The Grand Tour
- Graphic Satire in 18th Century England
- Exhibition: Art & Display in 18th Century England
- Art and Aestheticism in Late Victorian Britain
- Modernism in France & England, 1914-1940
- Glory of Gothic: Art for England c.1400-1547
- Sir John Vanbrugh & Friends: English Architecture, 1660-1736
- English Sculpture 1848-99 and English Sculpture 1900-1939
Events
Forthcoming events:- 23rd February 2011
Ostentation, Exhibition and Decoration: Cultures of Display in Britain from the Medieval to Modern
- 20th May 2011
British Art 1660-1735: Close Readings British Art: Close Readings poster (PDF
, 508kb)
For up-to-date listings and details of all History of Art Department events visit the News and Events page.
Blog
The British Art Research School blog and e-bulletin are edited by History of Art Department PhD students Caroline Good, Catherine Spencer and Sean Willcock. Through the blog and bulletin, we hope to build a community of scholars who are interested in British art studies.The BARS blog contains a wealth of information about current research into the field of British art, including calls for papers, upcoming events, exhibitions and conferences, and listings of current research projects by Phd students and scholars. It is updated very regularly.
An e-bulletin, the British Art Research Quarterly, is sent out electronically to the BARS mailing list. If you would like to join, please email histart-bars@york.ac.uk
British Art Research School Blog
Working Group for the Study of Medieval Sculpture (1100-1550)
May 24th, 2011
Call for Papers: A Transatlantic Collaboration, Paris, 30-31 January 2012: “The Sculptural Medium”
This call for papers concerns the first conference of the Working group for the Study of Medieval Sculpture, which will take place in Paris. (Calls for the papers for the other two events will be announced throughout 2011/12.) In Paris our hosts will be the INHA, the Fondation Singer-Polignac, and the Musée du Louvre. The focus will be on the material aspects of sculpture, and the various methodological approaches developed for sculptural study. One particular axis will be the consideration of American and European traditions and methodologies, including British sculptural practice in the Medieval period.
« Read the rest of this entry »
Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive Exhibition
May 24th, 2011
Photographs by John Minihan, University of York, 16th – 26th June
As part of the major conference Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archives at the University of York, there will be an exhibition of John Minihan’s photographs of Beckett at the Gallery and Demonstration Space at The Ron Cooke Hub .
John Minihan photographed Beckett many times in Paris and London, capturing moments that have become iconic images of twentieth-century culture. A selection of his beautiful photographs, focusing principally on landmark stage productions of Beckett’s work, will be exhibited at the festival.
« Read the rest of this entry »
Call for Papers: Art and Politics in Britain
May 23rd, 2011
A conference of the History of Art Department, University of Cambridge and held at King’s College, Cambridge, 7-8 November 2011
This interdisciplinary conference will explore the relationship between art and politics in Britain from late antiquity to the present. The conference aims to provide a forum for both postgraduate and established scholars who are investigating the ways in which art can function as a tool for political legitimation, a method of political argument, and can express cultural values in material form. « Read the rest of this entry »
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award: Serving the Empire: P&O, Design, Identity and Representation, 1837-1969
May 23rd, 2011
School of Art & Design History, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Kingston University
The School of Art & Design History, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Kingston University, and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich are offering a funded, full-time PhD studentship, tenable for 3 years, commencing October 2011. The studentship is funded through the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards Scheme. The project will be supervised by Professor Anne Massey, Kingston University, and John Graves, Curator of Ship History at the National Maritime Museum. « Read the rest of this entry »
Registration Open – Watching and Being Watched
Registration Open: Watching and Being Watched. Saturday 18th June 2011, 10pm-6pm. Berrick Saul Building and the Bowland Lecture Theatre, University of York.
Registration for the University of York’s Centre for Modern Studies Post-graduate Forum‘s inaugural summer conference is now open. Watching and Being Watched will be a stimulating interdisciplinary exploration of observation and surveillance in the modern period. Papers include the importance of CCTV for homeless people in York and Bristol, the morality of Facebook status updates, computerized watching, aesthetics of resistance in Guy de Maupassant and John William Waterhouse, and a keynote from artist and academic Paula Roush, who writes on surveillance in contemporary art and has recently contributed to the publication Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art (2010)
You can download the full conference schedule. Attendance to the conference is free but registration is essential: please email cmods-pgforum@york.ac.uk with your name, department and institution.
Conference: Beasts in Anglo-Saxon Art
May 17th, 2011
UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, 11 – 12 June 2011.
Following the success of the 2009 conference on ‘Woodlands, Trees, and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World’ held at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, this is an interdisciplinary conference that seeks to examine some of the many ways in which the Anglo-Saxons interacted with and understood the natural world; this time its fauna, both real and imagined. « Read the rest of this entry »
BARS In Focus: ‘John Atkinson Grimshaw: Painter of Moonlight’
May 17th, 2011
John Atkinson Grimshaw, "Boar Lane, Leeds" (1881)
A review of the exhibition currently showing at the Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate
John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893) was a self-taught Yorkshire artist whose works are currently the focus of a free exhibition at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate. ‘John Atkinson Grimshaw: Painter of Moonlight’ takes us through a broadly chronological sweep of the artist’s work in which we see Grimshaw advance from generally lacklustre landscapes indebted to Pre-Raphaelitism (think of a substandard John William Inchbold) to his trademark – and occasionally brilliant – paintings of dimly lit urban life. « Read the rest of this entry »
Painting the Town: York Art Gallery takes to the Streets!
May 16th, 2011
Come along this Saturday the 28th of May to Exhibition Square outside York Art Gallery anytime between 11am-1pm, and 2pm-4pm. All the family welcome!
York Art Gallery will be taking to the streets on Saturday the 28th of May to bring their artworks to a wider public. Matt Jenkins and Jasmine Allen, two PhD students at the University of York, have led a team of students from a group of northern universities to create a range of activities for all the family showcasing the fantastic collections of art available on the city’s doorstep. Designed for people of all ages, visitors will be given the opportunity to engage with art from the gallery in new and exciting ways.
Come along and listen to the sound a Hockney landscape might make, see a wartime scene brought to life through dance, feel how printing blocks were used to decorate the dress of a colonial official, and experience the tragic tale of an eighteenth-century duel fought on York’s New Walk. « Read the rest of this entry »
Call for Papers: Art vs Industry
May 15th, 2011
Leeds City Museum, 23rd and 24th March 2012
Papers are being invited from British Art Researchers to this two-day international and transdisciplinary conference on Art versus Industry at Leeds City Museum, which aims to re-evaluate the intersections between the visual arts and industry in Britain during the long nineteenth century.
The complexity and variety of nineteenth-century industrial culture and responses to it remain under appreciated. The idea that an ‘industrial culture’ might have existed in nineteenth-century Britain seemed paradoxical in the wake of Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society 1780-1950 (1958) and Martin Wiener’s English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (1981). Both suggested a seemingly non-negotiable opposition between culture and industry. They privileged the writings of John Ruskin, and later William Morris, which resisted the incursion of mechanised production into the sphere of the fine and applied arts.
« Read the rest of this entry »
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards at the University of York
Christopher Wood, "Boat in Harbour, Brittany' (1929)
The Department of History of Art is delighted to announce that it has been awarded three fully-funded PhD studentships by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to commence in October 2011.
‘The International Context of the Art of St Ives 1948-60′: supervised by Dr Michael White (University of York) and Dr Chris Stephens (Tate Britain).
‘William Burrell, Thomas & Drake and the Transatlantic Trade in Stained Glass, 1900-1950′: supervised by Sarah Brown (University of York) and Vivian Hamilton (Glasgow Museums).
« Read the rest of this entry »
The current bulletin is also available here: British Art e-bulletin Feb 2011 (PDF , 169kb)
Director
Research schools
- British Art
- Medieval Art and Medievalisms
- Sculpture Studies
- Stained Glass Studies
- Architectural History and Theory
Research clusters