Role
Programme Leader for Art History
Programme Co-ordinator for MRes Art History
Qualifications & background
PhD University of Reading 2002
Professional membership
(AAH) Association of Art Historians
(HNA) Historians of Netherlandish Art
(CAA) College Art Association
Teaching interests
ARHI 113 Introduction to Art History
ARHI 112 Art and its Audiences
ARHI 122 Lives and Afterlives of Renaissance Artists
ARHI 217 Art and Gender
ARHI 218/314 Victorian Values
ARHI 230/330 European Art 1750-1800 (Sex, Gender and the Family in the Eighteenth Century)
ARHI 211/212/309/310 Power, Patronage and Ideology: The Italian Renaissance
HIST 259 Research Methods in Visual, Material and Oral History
ARHI 306/315 Dissertation
MALT 504 Travesty and Tradition: Collecting and Connoisseurship in the Eighteenth Century (MA module)
MALT 510 Fictions of Femininity (MA module)
MARE 511 Research Methods in Art History (MRes module)
Staff serving as external examiners
University of Reading, External Examiner for BA (Hons) History of Art and Architecture (2010 -)
Research interests
My main interest is in the reception of the Renaissance and Renaissance artists, 1750 to the present. For me, the reception approach appeals not only because it allows us to identify the historical forces which brought certain artists to light at particular moments long after their lifetimes – often those stellar figures whose status we now take for granted, Van Eyck, Botticelli, Donatello, say – but for what it reveals about the making of art history as a discipline, past and present. Looked at humorously, the peculiarly argumentative nature of art historians across the ages as they have grappled with the meaning of famous works and wrangled the canon into being has kept the subject dynamic. More fundamentally, it is exciting to be working at a time when the practice of art history in all arenas is geared towards highlighting that it is never disinterested. This is particularly the case regarding the old masters, ever made to stand in the modern age for political or cultural agendas outside their own. Thus I enjoy teaching methods courses in the history of art history and the cultures of the museum, as well as period-based modules on the Italian Renaissance and its reception, eighteenth-century France, or art and gender, for example.
Following the publication of a monograph in 2007, Inventing Van Eyck: The Remaking of an Artist for the Modern Age, my current projects include a textbook on reception studies for Routledge; an edited proceedings of the conference, Reinventing the Renaissance;
and a major new book project on the artistic and critical fortunes of Vasari's Lives, Afterlives: Giorgio Vasari and the Rise of Art History in the Nineteenth Century.
Other research
Research degrees awarded to supervised students
Bebhinn Dungan, The Madonna and Eve in Nineteenth-Century British Art (MPhil, 2009)
Melinda Muscato, Victorian Children's Book Illustration and Social Change (MPhil, 2011)
Donato Esposito, The Artistic Discovery of Assyria by Britain and France 1850 to 1950 (PhD, 2011)
Grants & contracts
Educational Programmes Grant, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Awarded November 2009 for international conference, Reynolds Reappraised (University of Plymouth, 8-9 January 2010)
Kress International Travel Fellowship to CAA Los Angeles 97th Annual Conference, Los Angeles
Awarded January 2009
[as part of Reynolds exhibition team]
Publications Grant (Publisher) Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Awarded November 2008 for exhibition catalogue, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Acquisition of Genius (Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, 21 November 2009-21 February 2010)
[as part of Reynolds exhibition team]
Publications Grant (Author) Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Awarded November 2008 for exhibition catalogue, Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Acquisition of Genius (Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, 21 November 2009-21 February 2010)
[single author]
Publications Grant (Publisher) Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Awarded November 2007 for book project,
Inventing Van Eyck: The Remaking of an Artist for the Modern Age
[single author]
Publications Grant (Author) Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Awarded November 2006 for book project, Inventing Van Eyck: The Remaking of an Artist for the Modern Age
Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship (24 months)
Awarded to start Autumn 2003 but superseded by permanent post at Plymouth
Full-time PhD studentship, University of Reading Research Board
Awarded for three years from September 1998
Publications
Books
---Afterlives: Giorgio Vasari and the Rise of Art History in the Nineteenth Century (in preparation)
---Reception Studies and the Visual Arts: In the Eye of the Beholder (London and New York: Routledge, in preparation)
---Inventing Van Eyck: The Remaking of an Artist for the Modern Age (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2007)
Articles and chapters
---‘Sign of the Times: Nationalism and the Politics of the Van Eycks’ Ghent Altarpiece’ (in preparation)
--- ‘Picturing Patriotism: The Image of the Artist-Hero in the Britain and the Low Countries in the Nineteenth Century’, in Dunthorne and Wintle (eds), The Historical Imagination in the Nineteenth Century (in preparation)
---‘Exhibiting the Renaissance 1900-1950: The Institutionalisation of a Canon’, in Bibby (ed), Locating the Renaissance (in preparation)
---‘Artistic Inspirations’, in Prettejohn (ed), The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
---‘Posthumous Fortunes’, in Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Acquisition of Genius (Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, 2009), 161-167
---‘The Artist as a Posthumous Work In Progress: Van Eyck and the Politics of Posterity’, The Low Countries: Arts and Society in Flanders and the Netherlands, 17 (2009), 247-254
---‘The ‘manière Gottique’: Jean-Baptiste Descamps and the Revival of Early Netherlandish Art in Eighteenth-Century France’, in ed. P. Damian-Grint, Medievalism and manière gothique in Enlightenment France, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford Voltaire Foundation, 2006), 300-334
---‘A Note on the Early Reputation of Roger Fry’, Burlington Magazine, 143 (August 2001), 493-499
Review and reference articles
---Review article, ‘Myths and Genealogies of Artistic Biography’, Oxford Art Journal (in preparation)
---Review of John E. Law and Lene Østermark-Johansen (eds), Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance in Journal of the History of Collections, 18 (2006), 294-295
---Crowe, Sir Joseph Archer; and Weale, William Henry James, New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) [2 entries]
Reports & invited lectures
---University of Cambridge: talk for interdisciplinary symposium, 'Canons and Canonicity', attached to Leverhulme Trust Major Project group, Cambridge Victorian Studies Group (2006-2011), May 2010
---Huizinga Instituut, Dutch Research Institute and Graduate School for Cultural History, Winterschool (Royal Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences), 'Literary Canons and Public Space Since 1800', January 2010
---Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium: plenary talk for nineteenth century studies group, December 2009
---National Gallery, London, Study Day, Re-Reading the Renaissance: Vasari and his Legacy, ‘Rewriting the Renaissance: Vasari and his followers’, October 2009
---50th Anniversary Conference, Britain and the Low Countries, University of Sheffield: ‘Picturing Patriotism: The Image of the Artist-Hero in the Nineteenth Century’, in session ‘The Visual Arts and the Historical Imagination’, September 2009
---National Gallery, London, Lunchtime Public Lecture, Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian: ‘Renaissance Faces: Reuniting Van Eyck and his Wife’, April 2009
---CAA 97th Annual Conference, Los Angeles: ‘Sign of the Times: Nationalism and the Politics of the Van Eycks’ Ghent Altarpiece’, in ‘The Object of Netherlandish Art', February 2009
---National Gallery, London, Study Day, Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian: ‘Angels and Insects: Artifice and Invention in Renaissance Portraits’, November 2008
---National Gallery, London, Study Day, Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian: ‘Interpretations of an Iconic Image: The Arnolfini Double Portrait’, November 2008
---Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium: ‘New Romantics: The Image of the Artist-Hero in the Nineteenth Century’, October 2008
---AAH 34th Annual Conference, Location: the Museum, the Academy and the Studio, Tate, London: Invited Respondent to session ‘Locating the Renaissance’, April 2008
---National Gallery, London: Public Evening Lecture and Book Launch, ‘Inventing Van Eyck: The Remaking of an Artist for the Modern Age’, December 2007
---King's College, London, Session chair, Rethinking Late Style: Art, Literature, Music, Film, November 2007
---AAH 31st Annual Conference, Conception: Reception, University of Bristol, ‘True or False? Aesthetics of the Real and Ideal in Van Eyck’s Nineteenth-Century Reception’, April 2005
---Henry Moore Institute, Leeds: Public Evening Lecture on Donatello’s reception to coincide with the exhibition, ‘The Place of Relief in the Time of Donatello’, March 2005
---Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Conference paper (and convenor), ‘Vasarian Mania in the Nineteenth Century’, Reinventing the Renaissance in the Nineteenth Century, September 2004
---AAH 30th Annual Conference, Old or New?, University of Nottingham: ‘The Raphael of Flanders: Realism and Renaissance in Van Eyck’s Nineteenth-Century Reception’, April 2004
---Art History Seminar Series, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford: ‘The Spider Plays the Painter: Concepts of Minuteness in Van Eyck’s Victorian Reception’, January 2003
---Fin-de-Siècle Seminar Series, English Faculty, University of Oxford: ‘Roger Fry and Renaissance Art Criticism at the Fin de Siècle’, November 2002
Conferences organised
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Reinventing the Renaissance in the Nineteenth Century, September 2004
Keynote speakers and respondents included: Michael Ann Holly (Clark Art Institute, Williamstown), Stephen Bann (University of Bristol), Marc Gotlieb (University of Toronto) and Keith Moxey (Barnard College and Columbia University)
Other academic activities
Book and Peer-Review work
Journal of Victorian Culture
Oxford University Press
Oxford Art Journal
Journal of the History of Collections
