Professor Anthony Geraghty
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Profile
Biography
BA (Birmingham), MA (Courtauld Institute), PhD (Cantab)
Anthony Geraghty is Professor of the History of Art.
He is an architectural historian, with a specialist interest in Sir Christopher Wren and the architecture of the English Baroque. He has published widely in this area.
He joined the Department in 2002, having previously taught at the Glasgow School of Art in 1998-2002.
Departmental roles
On research leave in 2025-26
Research
Overview
My principal field of research is the architectural history of post-medieval England, with a special focus on Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) and the architecture of the English Baroque (c. 1660-1736). My publications in this area include: a sequence of early articles on Wren's principal draughtsmen; a catalogue of the Wren drawings at All Souls College, Oxford (2007; republished online in 2018); a contextual study of the Sheldonian Theatre, Wren's first building (2013); and a sequence of articles on Castle Howard. I have also written on the historiography of this period, including studies of John Summerson, Howard Colvin and Kerry Downes.
I am currently finishing a large-scale book on the three main architects of the English baroque - Wren, Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor. The book provides a systematic account of their philosophical first principles, and then considers how these first principles were brought to bear on their respective approach to design. More generally, the book explores what happens when the generality of intellectual context is brought to bear on the specificity of architectural form.
I am also interested in French architecture, including the artistic patronage of the Second Empire of Napoléon III. In 2022 I published a book-length study of the artistic patronage of the exiled Empress Eugénie.
Supervision
I have supervised fifteen PhD dissertations on topics ranging from early modern grammar schools to twentieth century Gothic churches.
Publications
Selected publications
- 'Downes, Kerry John (1930-2019), architectural historian and biographer'. Oxford Dictionary of Biography (2023, April 13).
- The Empress Eugénie in England: Art, Architecture, Collecting (Londond: The Burlington Press, 2022).
- ' 'Gothick' and 'solidd': Hawksmoor's work at All Souls reconsidered', in Histories of Universities, 35/1 (2022), pp. 212-38
- 'Castle Howard: The Architecture of the Interior', Art and the Country House,
- ‘Wren and the English Baroque’, in Tabitha Barber, ed., British Baroque: Power and Illusion (London: Tate Publication, 2020 [exhibition catalogue]), pp. 77-87.
- ‘Rebuilding the City Churches after the Great Fire of London: The Case of All Hallows the Great, Thames Street’, co-authored with Mark Kirby, in Paul Barnwell, ed., Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland, 1550-1689 (Stanford: Shaun Tyas, 2020). pp. 95-12.
- ‘Kerry Downes (1930-2019)', The Burlington Magazine, 161 (December 2019), pp. 1075-76.
- ‘Castle Howard and the Interpretation of English Baroque Architecture’, in Mark Hallett, Nigel Llewellyn, and Martin Myrone, eds, Court Country City: British Art and Architecture, 1660-1735 (Studies in British Art, 24), The Yale Center for British Art/The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, pp. 127-49.
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- 'After Colvin's Canterbury Quadrangle' in Airs and Whyte, eds., Architectural History after Colvin (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013), pp. 42-57.
- 'Nicholas Hawksmoor's Drawing technique of the 1690s and John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding', in Helen Hills, (ed.) Rethinking the Baroque (Aldershot, 2011), pp. 125-41.
- 'The "dissociation of sensibility" and the "tyranny of intellect": T.S. Eliot, John Summerson and Christopher Wren', in Salmon, F. (ed.) The Persistence of the Classical: Essays on Architecture Presented to David Watkin (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2008), pp. 26-39.
- 'Sir Howard Colvin' (obituary), The Burlington Magazine, 150, September 2008, pp.613-14
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- 'Robert Hooke's Collection of Architectural Books and Prints', in Architectural History, 47 (2004), pp. 113-25.
- 'Wren's preliminary design for the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford', in Architectural History, 45 (2002), pp. 275-288.
- 'St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough: A Gothic Mausoleum for Napoleon III', Apollo, CXLIII (January 1996), pp. 9-12. Reprinted (in French) in L'Architecture Normande en Europe: Identités et Échanges, ed. by Martin Kew Meade, Marseille 2002.
- 'Edward Woodroofe: Sir Christopher Wren's first draughtsman', in The Burlington Magazine, CXLIII (August 2001), pp. 474-9.
- 'Nicholas Hawksmoor and the Wren City Church Steeples', in The Georgian Group Journal, 10 (2000), pp. 1-14.
- 'Introducing Thomas Laine: Draughtsman to Sir Christopher Wren', in Architectural History, 42 (1999), pp. 240-5.
Teaching
Undergraduate
I currently teach undergraduate courses on 'The English Country House, 1550-1900' and 'Three Roque Architects: Michelangelo, Borromini, Hawksmoor'.
Postgraduate
I teach an MA special subject on Sir Christopher Wren.
External activities
Overview
Recent fellowships and awards include a Senior Research Fellowship at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (2020-21) and a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford (Michaelmas, 2018).
