Historians of British Art

summer newsletter 2019

Table of Contents
Letter from the President 2
By Jongwoo Jeremy Kim
HBA 2019 Book Award Longlist 5
HBA 2019 Publication and Travel Grant Awardees 10
British Art Exhibitions: Summer 2019 11
Events and Opportunities 14
Book Review: The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art 17
in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Kate Retford
Review by Kasie Alt
HBA Funding Awards & Officers 22

An affiliate society of the College Art Association (CAA) in North America,

HBA promotes scholarship and other professional endeavors related to
British art and architecture, broadly conceived in terms of place and time.
Letter from the President
By Jongwoo Jeremy Kim, Ph.D.

I am writing to you from Venice, attending the 2019 Biennale May You Live
In Interesting Times. There are two British artists here—Cathy Wilkes
and John Akomfrah, CBE—who examine our connection to all things in
the Anthropocene.

Wilkes’s exhibition in the British pavilion comprises sparse arrangements of odd objects including free-
standing humanoids with swollen bellies and “bean-shaped heads,” rags on the floor, dried and plastic
plants, pictures on the wall, and crockery.1 (Fig. 1) There is also a large, semitransparent box or bed that
Curator Zoé Whitley calls a “sepulchral form.”2 (Fig. 2) As a whole, the installation is described to explore
“inchoate visions of interiors and places of loss” and “the disappearance and dematerialisation of life.”
What really caught my attention, however, were the first few lines of the artist’s introductory text in the
exhibition booklet:

The smallest particle of suffering is the object, and I, the subject who acts upon the object,
am every atom unfolding from the womb. An atom here among us and another atom in a
far away galaxy are inseparable epitomes of the same.

Figs. 1, 2. Installation Views, British Pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, 2019. Photographs by the author.

.
1Adrian Searle, "Should I scream or call social services? Cathy Wilkes at Venice Biennale review," in The Guardian, May 7, 2019,
https://www.theguardian.com (accessed June 29, 2019).
2 https://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/2019-exhibition (accessed June 29, 2019).

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What Wilkes suggests here are astonishing and yet relevant to our “Interesting Times.” Objects we
encounter form units of knowledge, impossibly interconnected transcending the limits of time and space—
as in quantum entanglement. Objects are capable of suffering even when they are small, thus showing signs
of something akin to consciousness. The subject that has the power to exert influence on its physical
surrounding is also only the “smallest particle.” We are “every atom” born of the human but from the
galaxy—as in “we are all stardust.” The cosmic communion seems to be the core of Wilkes’s domestic
drama. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s concept of actants, Jane Bennett points out: “A lot happens to the
concept of agency once nonhuman things are figured less as social constructions and more as actors, and
once human themselves are assessed not as autonoms but as vital materialities.”3

Figs. 3, 4. Installation View, Ghana Freedom, La Biennale di Venezia, 2019. Photographs by the author.

Wilkes’s idea of interconnectedness of the human and non-human is shared by Akomfrah, showing Four
Nocturnes in Ghana’s pavilion. (Fig. 3) In this three-channel video installation, the artist creates a planetary
analogy between endangered species and migrants. Elephants are shown to track across a barren land in
search of food and shelter as men and women carrying bags seek refuge and livelihood across a dessert.
In one critical scene, Akomfrah stills the camera on a migrant in a pink polo shirt, who wears an elephant
mask staring back at the viewer. (Fig. 4) Our destruction of small and large components of the planet—
be they human or non-human—cause universal “suffering.”

In recent years or months, many of us went through—and are still going through—a self-reflexive process
of reassessing what we do. About a year ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education carried an article titled
"There Is No Case for the Humanities." More recently, The Atlantic ran an article titled "The Humanities
Are in Crisis." It doesn’t stop there, however. The world is in disarray. One artist calls our time an "era
of planetary civil war." A U.N. report released about a month ago states that the extinction of one million

3 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 21.

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plant and animal species is imminent. At this critical junction of newly destabilizing human and natural
histories, we're thinking about our discipline at large, our field of expertise, our own research and writing,
what we teach in our classrooms, and what we curate in museums and galleries.

During our CAA session “Climate Change and British Art” earlier this year, five scholars and an artist
examined current debates about art and the politics of ecology, representations of ecological vulnerability
and resilience, and contemporary visuality responding to climate change and the global economy. (Fig. 5)
Nicholas Robbins, Kate Flint, Ian Bourland, Kimberly Rhodes, and Nadja Verena Marcin helped us think
about the history of British art in relation to London’s landscape and atmosphere, Victorian lichen,
horticultural climate control, the ocean in the Anthropocene, and an Atlantic hurricane of 2017. Following
the session, HBA members, Mary Roberts, Timothy Barringer, Julie Codell, and Imogen Hart, held a special
panel discussion entitled "State of Research: History of British Art Now," to examine increasingly volatile
social, political reality of our time and its impact on our scholarship. (Fig. 6)

This is my last letter to you as President of the Historians of British Art. It has been truly an honor to
serve this organization and facilitate critical dialogs. Keren Hammerschlag will be our new President and I
will join the Board of Directors for the next four years. As I am closing this letter, please allow me to
express my sincere gratitude to your support and participation. You are a vital part of our organization’s
success today.

- Jongwoo Jeremy Kim

Associate Professor of Critical Studies / Art History & Theory
The School of Art
Carnegie Mellon University
http://www.art.cmu.edu/people/jongwoo-jeremy-kim/

Figs. 5, 6. Left: “Climate Change and British Art” panel; Right: “State of Research: History of British Art Now”
panel, HBA Business Meeting. Photos taken by Meredith Gamer, CAA Annual Conference, February 2019.

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HBA 2019 Book Prize Longlist:
Books Published in the Field of British Art in 2018

The Historians of British Art annually awards prizes to outstanding books on the history
of British art, architecture and visual culture. The members of the Book Prize Committee
are pleased to present this longlist of nominations for books published in 2018. This list
has room to grow; anyone may nominate a book by emailing the committee chair, and
self-nominations are accepted. There is no limit on the number of books from a single
publisher that may be considered in each category. Winners will be announced in January
2020, in advance of the annual meeting of the College Art Association in February, so that
publishers can market prize-winners there.
HBA considers books in four categories: (1) Single Author, Pre-1600; (2) Single Author,
1600-1800; (3) Single Author, Post-1800; and (4) Multi-authored Volume.
A list of previous winners can be found on the HBA website:
https://historiansofbritishart.org/hba-book-prizes/
Feel free to contact committee chair Matthew Reeve (reevem@queensu.ca) with any
questions or to nominate a book.

Single Author, Pre-1600

John Blair. Building Anglo-Saxon England. Jack Hartnell. Medieval Bodies. London:
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wellcome Trust.

Steven Brindle. Windsor Castle. London: Royal Francis Pryor. Stonehenge: The Story of a
Collections Trust. Sacred Landscape. New York: Pegasus Books.

Laura Cleaver. Illuminated History Books in the Laura Slater. Art and Political Thought in
Anglo-Norman World 1066–1272. Oxford: Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell and
Oxford University Press. Brewer.

Sonja Drimmer. The Art of Allusion: Illuminators Kim Woods. Cut in Alabaster: a Material of
and the Making of English Literature, 1403– Sculpture and its European Traditions.
1476. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania Press. Turnhout: Brepols.

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Single Author, 1600-1800
Aaron Allen. Building Early Modern Edinburgh:
A Social History of Craftwork and Incorporation.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Jocelyn Anderson. Touring and Publicizing
England’s Country Houses in the Long Eighteenth
Century. London: Bloomsbury.
Michael Bath. Emblems in Scotland: Motifs and
Meanings. Leiden: Brill.
Jill Francis. Gardens and Gardening in Early
Modern England and Wales. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press.
Hélène Ibata. The Challenge of the Sublime:
From Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry to British
Romantic Art. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Conor Lucey. Building Reputations: Architecture
and the Artisan, 1750–1830. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Single Author, Post-1800
Jasmine Allen. Windows for the World:
Nineteenth-Century Stained Glass and the
International Exhibitions, 1851–1900.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Celeste-Marie Bernier. Stick to the Skin:
African American and Black British Art, 1965–
2015. Berkeley, CA: U. of California Press.
Colleen Denney. The Visual Culture of
Women's Activism in London, Paris and Beyond:
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Helen McCormack. William Hunter and his
Eighteenth-Century Cultural Worlds: The
Anatomist and the Fine Arts. London:
Routledge.
Peter McNeil. Pretty Gentlemen: Macaroni Men
and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Kevin Sharpe. Image Wars: Promoting Kings
and Commonwealths in England, 1603–1660.
New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press.
Clare Taylor. The Design, Production and
Reception of Eighteenth-Century Wallpaper in
Britain. London: Routledge.
James Taylor. Picturing the Pacific: Joseph Banks
and the Shipboard Artists of Cook and Flinders.
London: Bloomsbury.
An Analytical Art History, 1860 to the Present.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Renate Domen, Empire and Art: British India,
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Sara Dominici. Travel Marketing and Popular
Photography in Britain, 1888–1939: Reading the
Travel Image. Abingdon: Routledge.
Mark Evans. Constable’s Skies. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Single Author, Post-1800, continued
Charlotte Gould. Artangel and Financing British
Art. London: Routledge.
John Holmes. The Pre-Raphaelites and Science.
New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press.
Dominic Johnson. Unlimited Action: The
Performance of Extremity in the 1970s.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Deborah Lewittes. Berthold Lubetkin's
Highpoint II and the Jewish Contribution to
Modern English Architecture. London:
Routledge.
Robert Mills. Derek Jarman’s Medieval Modern.
Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer.
Multi-Authored Volume
Jo Applin, Catherine Spencer, and Amy
Tobin, eds. London Art Worlds: Mobile,
Contingent and Ephemeral Networks, 1960–
1980. University Park, PA: Penn State Press.
Caroline Archer-Parré and Malcolm Dick,
eds. John Baskerville: Art and Industry of the
Enlightenment. Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press
Paul S. Barnwell and Paula Henderson, eds.
Architect, Patron and Craftsman in Tudor and
Early Stuart England: Essays for Malcolm Airs.
Donnington: Shaun Tyas Press.
Rufus Bird and Martin Clayton, eds. Charles II:
Art and Power. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press.
7
James Moore. High culture and tall chimneys:
Art institutions and urban society in Lancashire,
1780–1914. Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Morna O’Neill. Hugh Lane: The Art Market and
the Art Museum 1893–1915. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press.
Deborah Sugg Ryan. Ideal Homes, 1918–39:
Domestic Designs and Suburban Modernism.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Tessa Wild. William Morris and his Palace of
Art: Architecture, Interiors and Design at Red
House. London: Bloomsbury.
Adam Bowett and James Lomax. Thomas
Chippendale 1718–1779: A Celebration of
British Craftsmanship and Design. Leeds: The
Chippendale Society.
Claire Breay and Joanna Story, eds. Anglo-
Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War. London:
British Library.
Melissa E. Buron et al. Truth and Beauty: The
Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters. Munich
and New York: Prestel.
Mungo Campbell and Nathan Flis, eds.
William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern
Museum. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Multi-Authored Volume, continued
Julie Codell and Linda K. Hughes, eds.
Replication in the Long Nineteenth Century:
Remakings and Reproductions. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Caroline Dakers, ed. Fonthill Rediscovered: A
Cultural History. London: UCL Press.
Rosie Dias and Kate Smith, eds. British
Women and Cultural Practices of Empire, 1770–
1940. London: Bloomsbury.
Jonathan P. Eburne and Catriona McAra, eds.
Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-
Garde. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press.
Martin Ellis, Tim Barringer, and Victoria
Osbourne. Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-
Raphaelites to the Arts & Crafts Movement.
London and New York: Prestel.
Margot Finn and Kate Smith, eds. The East
India Company at Home, 1757–1857. London:
University College London Press.
Elisa A. Foster, Julia Perratore, and Steven
Rozenski, eds. Devotional Interaction in
Medieval England and its Afterlives. Leiden: Brill.
Martin Gayford and Mark Holborn, eds.
Lucien Freud. London and New York: Phaidon.
Christopher Gerrard and Alejandra
Guttierrez, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Later
Medieval Archaeology in Britain. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
8
Massimiliano Gioni and Margot Norton, eds.
Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel. London and New
York: Phaidon.
Mark Hallett, ed. George Shaw: A Corner of a
Foreign Field. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Alexandra Harris et al. Tacita Dean:
Landscape, Portrait, Still Life. London: National
Portrait Gallery.
Michael Hill, John Newman, and Nikolaus
Pevsner. Dorset. Buildings of England. New
Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Andrew Moore, Nathan Flis, and Francesca
Vanke, eds. The Paston Treasure: Microcosm of
the Known World. New Haven and London:
Yale University Press.
Susan Owens and Nicholas Tromans.
Christina Rossetti: Poetry in Art. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press.
Lauri Pauli et al. Oscar Rejlander: Artist
Photographer. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Llen Rowley, ed. More than Concrete Blocks
Volume 2: 1940–72: Dublin City’s Twentieth
Century Buildings and Their Stories. Dublin:
Four Courts Press.
Robin Simon and Mary-Anne Stevens. The
Royal Academy of Arts: History and Collection.
New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press.
Multi-Authored Volume, continued

David Solkin et al. Gainsborough’s Family
Album. London: National Portrait Gallery.
Daniel Sutherland and Georgia Toutziari.
Whistler’s Mother: Portrait of an Extraordinary
Life. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Michelle White et al. Mona Hatoum: Terra
Infirma. New Haven and London: Yale
University Press.
Christopher Woolgar, ed. The Elite Household
in England, 1100–1550: : Proceedings of the
2016 Harlaxton Symposium. Harlaxton
Medieval Studies XXVIII. Donnington: Shaun
Tyas Press.

Missing a favorite new book? If you wish to nominate a book

published in 2018—including self-nominations—please contact
Matthew Reeve (reevem@queensu.ca), Book Prize Committee chair.
Winners will be announced in January 2020.

Unknown artist, Skull, Candlestick and Books, undated. Oil on board. Guildhall Art Gallery. Image courtesy City
of London Corporation.

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HBA 2019 Publication and
Travel Grant Awardees
Each year HBA awards two grants: a $600 award to offset publication costs for a book manuscript
or peer-reviewed journal article in the field of British art or visual culture that has been accepted
for publication, and a $750 travel grant designated for a graduate student member of HBA who
will be presenting a paper on British art or visual culture at an academic conference. Applicants
must be current members of HBA who can demonstrate that an HBA grant will replace their
out-of-pocket costs.

This year’s grants have been awarded as follows:

The Publication Grant is awarded to David Lewis, Assistant Professor at the

University of Notre Dame. This grant supports publication costs for his book A.W.N.
Pugin, which will be published by Historic England and the Victorian Society (UK).

Travel Grant: This year the travel grant was awarded to two graduate students:
Katherine Jackson, PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia, and
Avigail Moss, PhD candidate at the University of Southern California.

Applications for the next round of Publication and Travel grants will be due January 15, 2020.
For details on how to apply, please consult the HBA website. All applications should be directed
to the Grants Committee Chair, Kimberly Rhodes, at krhodes@drew.edu.

Membership & Renewal

Fee Structure:
• Student $15
• Professional $25*
• Benefactor $50
• Institutional $100
For inquiries about HBA Membership please contact
Courtney S. Long at treasurer.hba@gmail.com.
* Note: Professional level members can renew their
membership for three years at the reduced rate of $20 by
making a one-time payment of $60.

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British Art Exhibitions: Summer 2019
Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra
Met Breuer (New York City)
Through August 11, 2019

https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/
met-live-arts/oliver-beer-landing

Frank Bowling
Tate Britain (London)
Through August 26, 2019

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-
britain/exhibition/frank-bowling

Deconstructed: The NSLM Sporting

Screen
National Sporting Library and Museum (Middleburg, VA)
Through September 19, 2019

http://www.nationalsporting.org/nslm/exhibition_detail
s/913

Get Up, Stand Up Now: Generations

of Black Creative Pioneers
Somerset House (London)
Through September 19, 2019

https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/get-
up-stand-up-now

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A Tea Journey: From the Mountains
to the Table
Compton Verney Art Gallery (Compton Verney, UK)
Through September 22, 2019

https://www.comptonverney.org.uk/thing-to-do/a-tea-
journey-from-the-mountains-to-the-table/

Hogarth: Cruelty and Humor

The Morgan Library (New York City)
Through September 22, 2019

https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/hogarth

Bridget Riley
Scottish National Gallery (Edinburgh)
Through September 22, 2019

https://www.nationalgalleries.org/exhibition/
bridget-riley

The Unseen World of Charles

Altamont Doyle
Huntington Art Gallery (San Marino, CA)
Through September 23, 2019

https://www.huntington.org/unseen-doyle

Yorkshire Sculpture International

Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Hepworth Gallery
(Wakefield, UK), Leeds Gallery of Art and Henry
Moore Institute (Leeds)
Through September 29, 2019

https://yorkshire-sculpture.org/

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Whistler in Watercolor
Freer|Sackler Galleries (Washington, DC)
Through October 1, 2019

https://www.freersackler.si.edu/exhibition/whistler-
in-watercolor/

Lubaina Himid: Work from

Underneath
New Museum (New York City)
Through October 6, 2019

https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/
lubaina-himid-work-from-underneath

The Invisible Man and the Masque

of Blackness
Cantor Sculpture Garden, LACMA (Los Angeles)
Through November 3, 2019

https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/invisible-man-
and-masque-blackness

Mary Quant
Victoria & Albert Museum (London)
Through February 16, 2020

https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/mary-quant

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Events and Opportunities
Upcoming Events
Lecture: “Bridget Riley”
Scottish National Gallery (Edinburgh), July 31, 2019, 6:30–8:30pm
In this lecture accompanying the exhibition on Bridget Riley at the Scottish National Gallery, Lucy
Askew, Chief Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art, National Galleries of Scotland, will explore
Riley’s work, the origins of her practice and will trace pivotal moments across her acclaimed
career. Tickets are required and cost £14.

Lecture: "Hogarth: Cruelty and Crime"

Morgan Library & Museum (New York, NY), September 12, 6:30pm
In this lecture, Meredith Gamer, Assistant Professor of Art History at Columbia University, will
explore the origins, evolution, and multi-layered meanings of William Hogarth’s The Four Stages
of Cruelty (1751). A tale of neglect and abuse, murder and punishment, the series was—by
eighteenth-century standards—one of Hogarth’s “lowest” works. Paradoxically, however, it is
also one of his most ambitious, for it aims to combat some of our most basic human frailties
through the medium of art. Tickets are required: $15 general admission, $10 for Morgan members,
free for students with valid ID.

Symposium: “What Lies Beneath: Uncovering the Secrets of Early British Portraits”
Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO), September 16, 2019, 8:30am–6:00pm
The Denver Art Museum hosts a symposium on early British pictures in European and American
art collections. Leading scholars will present the results of their recent research, including on the
Berger Collection's renowned group of early portraits. The symposium is ticketed, with a discount
for DAM members.
The speakers for this event are as follows:
• Dr. Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator, Research and 16th Century Collections, National
Portrait Gallery, London, UK: “‘Mynour, the Inglis payntor’: Meynnart Wewyck and the
Anglo-Netherlandish Portrait at the Early Tudor Court”
• Dr. Tatiana String, Associate Professor of Art History, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill: “Masculine Identity in Three Portraits in the Berger Collection”
• Dr. Edward Town, Head of Collections Information and Access and Assistant Curator for
Early Modern Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut: “Hans Eworth’s
Portrait of Edward Fiennes, Lord Clinton and the Cultural Politics of 1550”

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• Jessica David, Senior Paintings Conservator, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven,
Connecticut: “Pattern, Paint, and Pounce: A Technical Study of the Berger Collection’s
Early English Portraits”
• Dr. Maurice Howard, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, Centre for Early Modern
and Medieval Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK: “The Contexts for Paintings:
Images of Wealth, Power, and Profession in Tudor England”

Symposium: “Yorkshire Sculpture International Symposium”

Leeds Beckett University (Leeds, UK), September 20, 2019, 9:30am–4:00pm
Held in conjunction with the Yorkshire Sculpture International, this symposium will critically
reflect on the event with a day of talks by artists, curators, fabricators and educators. It brings
speakers together to explore the work that goes on behind the scenes to develop large scale and
public sculpture for international exhibitions. Tickets are required; prices vary, see website.

Conference: “Art for the Nation: John Ruskin, Art Education and Social Change”
The National Gallery (London), September 20–21, 2019, 10:00am–5:30pm
The National Gallery’s two-day conference will capitalize on new research on Ruskin and expand
on it by looking specifically at Ruskin’s interactions with, influence on, and legacy for the museum
world and art education, with talks structured around four themes: ‘Art Education and Museums’;
‘British Art and Photography’, ‘Language, Writings and Sources’ and ‘Ruskin Today.’ Tickets are
required and cost £45 standard, £35 concessions, £30 members and patrons.

Calls for Papers, Panels, Essays

“Hogarth’s Moral Geography”
Sir John Soane’s Museum (London), November 5, 2019
Abstracts due by July 29, 2019

“Eastern Questions: New Perspectives on British Orientalism”

Watts Gallery (Compton, Surrey) and Royal Holloway, University of London, October 16–17, 2019
Submissions due by July 31, 2019

Princeton University Society of Fellows Postgraduate Fellowships, 2020–2023

Princeton, NJ, 2020-2023; five postdoctoral fellowships available to recent graduates (after
1/1/2018) in the humanities and social sciences
Applications due by August 6, 1919

“Colonial Knowledges: Environment and Logistics in the Creation of Knowledge in British

Colonies from 1750 to 1950”
University of Manchester, February 27–28, 2020
Submissions due by August 23, 2019

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“Art Historical Approaches to Medieval Environments” and more
International Center for Medieval Art Panel, International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMI),
West Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI), May 7–10, 2020
Note: Several other panels at ICMI may be of interest; see conference website
Submissions due by September 10, 2019

51st Annual Meeting: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

St. Louis, MO, March 19–21, 2020
Abstracts due by September 15, 2019

“The Salon and the Senses in the Long Eighteenth Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives”
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, April 2–3, 2020
Abstracts due by September 15, 2019

“The GREEN Conference: Sustainability, Industrialization, and Environmental Knowledge”

INCS (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies) Annual Conference
Los Angeles, CA, March 5–8, 2020
Proposals for papers, panels, roundtables due by September 15, 2019

“Art Historical Approaches to Medieval Environments”

International Center for Medieval Art Panel, International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMI),
West Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI), May 7–10, 2020
Note: Several other panels at ICMI may be of interest; see conference website
Submissions due by September 10, 2019

“Vegetable Avatars: Plants, Identity, and Subjectivity in Literature and the Visual Arts” and more
Northeast Modern Literature Association (NeMLA), Boston, MA, March 5–8, 2020
Note: Several other panels at NeMLA may be of interest; see conference website & list of CFPs
Submissions due on various dates through September 30, 2019; Vegetable Avatars panel by August 15

“Imagining Social Virtues in Medieval and Early Modern England” and more
Renaissance Society of America (RSA), Philadelphia, PA, April 2–4, 2020
Note: Several other panels at RSA may be of interest; see conference website & list of CFPs
Submissions due by August 15

“Radicalism & Reform”

Nineteenth-Century Studies Association (NCSA) Annual Conference
Rochester, NY, March 18–20, 2020
Paper and panel proposals due by September 30, 2019

Huntington Library Quarterly Centennial Essay Prize

Promoting scholarship in British and American studies from the sixteenth through the long
eighteenth centuries; essays need not be based on Huntington Library or Gallery collections.
Submissions due by October 1, 2019

16
Book Review
The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in
Eighteenth-Century Britain. By Kate Retford.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017.
Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for
Studies in British Art. ISBN: 9780300194807.
Review by Dr. Kasie Alt, Assistant Professor of Art History,
Department of Art, Georgia Southern University
Editor’s Note: Kate Retford’s The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in 18th-Century Britain was co-
awarded the 2019 HBA Book Award for single-authored book with a subject between 1600-1800.

In The Conversation Piece: Making Modern Art in Eighteenth-

Century Britain, Kate Retford masterfully argues for a re-
evaluation of this sub-genre of portraiture. The text begins
with a historiography of the scholarship on the genre,
beginning with art collector Sir Philip Sassoon’s 1930
exhibition of “English Conversation Pieces” in London. This
exhibition established several scholarly assumptions that
Retford seeks to re-evaluate: namely, the persistent attempts
to define, limit, and categorize conversation pieces as
primarily mimetic, rather than attend to their aesthetic and
cultural significance. Offering a re-evaluation of this genre of
painting, Retford’s text provides new structures for
approaching and interpreting the conversation piece, and the relationship between Georgian
society and its representation more broadly.

After introducing recent historiography on the conversation piece, Retford turns to the work of
artist and critic George Vertue (1684–1756), who she credits with defining the conversation piece
in the early eighteenth century. Retford considers conversation pieces that fall within the ‘core’
of qualities identified by Vertue: works that are small in scale, detailed, and contain complex and

17
lively narratives. Rather than limiting the genre, this definition identifies the sampling within which
the author is working.

The text is divided into three sections. Section One establishes a variety of qualities common to
conversation pieces and situates them in their social context. Retford begins by arguing for the
modernity of the conversation piece. She notes that in the period, ‘conversation’ meant both talk
and social conduct, drawing on the Latin root. The conversation piece was the ideal vehicle for
expressing the highly-valued qualities of hospitality, conversation, and community in the
eighteenth century. In this section, Retford also considers the materials and methods used to
create these paintings, and their place in the larger consumer and art cultures.

One of the core traditions of conversation pieces was the delineation of il costume, the ‘modes
and manners’ of the time and place. The paintings’ small size and aesthetic treatment, their fine
finish and detailing, were especially well-suited to conveying il costume. This focus on the customs
of contemporary life seems to contradict the emphasis on the general and the search for universal
truth in art prescribed by Joshua Reynolds in his Discourses. Yet Retford deftly weaves her analysis
of conversation pieces’ interest in particulars into the wider field of eighteenth-century aesthetic
theory by establishing that Reynolds’s favored qualities existed on a scale, rather than as forces
diametrically opposed, and that signifying customs, capturing the spirit of the age, was as
important for the history painter as the portraitist.

Fig. 1. Arthur Devis, The John Bacon Family, 1742–43. Oil on canvas, 30 x 51 5/8 inches (76.2 x 131.1 cm). Yale
Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.274. Image courtesy Yale Center for British Art.

Considering conversation pieces in their contexts, Retford offers a convincing re-evaluation of

one of the main critiques of the genre: the stiffness or awkwardness of these works, as identified

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by recent scholars such as John Hayes and Peter De Bolla (for example, see Fig. 1). Rather than
a failure of the artist or sitters, she argues, the formulaic quality of the paintings expressed the
nature of polite society and the conversation as highly ritualized, aesthetic acts (Fig. 2). She
suggests that social rules might become second nature,
but our eyes see only the formula, belying the ‘ease’ seen
by contemporary viewers. Above all, these works
function as signifiers and actors within polite
conversation, rather than authentic views of everyday life.

In Section Two, Retford attends to both exterior and

interior spaces. Here, the slippage between portraiture,
genre painting, landscape painting, and estate views comes
to the fore. Again, the authenticity we search for as
present-day viewers was not necessarily the point of the
work. Rather than authentic documentation, these works
display status and a certain savoir faire. As Retford argues,
repetition and replication of standardized props and
backdrops indicated the sitters’ understanding of and
participation in good taste, and the repetitive nature of
Fig. 2. L. P. Boitard, after B.
these elements would not have troubled the
Dandridge, “To Give or Receive,”
contemporary viewer. Retford notes that scholarship on c. 1737. Engraving. Plate 2 in F.
the conversation piece has not yet fully acknowledged the Nivelon, The Rudiments of Genteel
Behavior (London, 1737). Image
social role of this apparent artificiality. Authenticity was
courtesy archive.org.
signaled by conformation to a type, rather than by a
unique defining quality.

Retford’s first extended analysis of a work depicting an authentic interior is one of the few points
where her vast array of examples weakens the argument somewhat by founding it on a painting
set in a no-longer-extant space, Wanstead House (Fig. 3). Her analysis does go on to demonstrate
the use of works like William Hogarth’s Wanstead House in reconstructing our understanding of
such lost spaces, and she gives ample support and leaves the reader with little room to deny that
the picture is, indeed, ‘authentic’ and useful as documentation for a now-lost space. However, its
placement in her argument, and the rhetoric required to argue this work’s veracity, weaken the
thesis somewhat.

Building on the key concepts presented to this point, Section Three considers the sitters.
Although commonly referred to as family pieces, that term does not today encompass the
richness and diversity of relationships between the people depicted. These works depict
moments in the fluid nature of these kinship relations, an emphasis on the momentary and
particular in line with the core tradition of il costume. Retford argues that conversation pieces act

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within kinship systems, representing as well as reinforcing these relationships through their
patrons’ acts of sitting for, possessing, and displaying these works. This discussion ends by
considering a group of works that seem, on the surface, to belie ‘correct’ social behavior. These
works include, or even focus on, light and ludic moments including unruly children or pets,
innuendos and japes, puns and pranks. By placing these artworks within eighteenth-century
theories of humor, Retford suggests that they serve to lighten and enliven the works as an
essential aspect of hospitality and correct behavior, while also drawing in the viewer to participate
in the joke. More bawdy humor, specifically in depictions of solely male groups, further reinforces
rather than contradicts the concept of polite society, showing the sitters’ awareness of what is
appropriate, when, and in what company.

Fig. 3. William Hogarth, The Assembly at Wanstead House, 1728–31. Oil on canvas. 25 1/2 x 30 inches (64.8 x 76.2
cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art. The John Howard McFadden Collection, 1928, M1928-1-13. Image courtesy
Philadelphia Museum of Art, https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/103800.html.

Throughout, it has been made clear that the conversation pieces Retford considers do not merely
reflect the world, but rather act within it. It is this complexity that makes them as frustrating as
they are fascinating. Retford concludes by once again emphasizing that her work is not intended

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as a checklist to limit, categorize, or clarify exclusions. Rather, she identifies patterns, possibilities,
and further implications within the conversation piece. Drawing all of these threads together,
Retford places this sub-genre of painting in conversation with the wider debates regarding art of
the period, specifically debates over the merits of mimetic paintings versus those in the ‘grand
manner’ championed by Joshua Reynolds. It is exactly the offhanded disregard for the particular
and mimetic that has caused scholars to gloss over and therefore miss out on what Retford has
beautifully elucidated here: the conversation piece as a richly detailed, complex, and rewarding
artifact of eighteenth-century British social exchange.

Call for Reviewers: Summer 2020

HBA has a reviewer scheduled for the

Winter 2020 newsletter, but interested
parties are encouraged to volunteer to
review a recent book for the Summer 2020
newsletter. If you are interested, please
contact HBA Newsletter Editor Caitlin
Silberman at newsletter.hba@gmail.com.
Graduate students and early career
researchers are very welcome!

Edward Collier, A Trompe l'oeil of Newspapers, Letters and Writing Implements on a Wooden Board, c. 1699. Oil on canvas. Image
courtesy Tate Britain.

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HBA Funding Awards & Officers
President
Jongwoo Jeremy Kim
Associate Professor of Critical Studies /
Art History & Theory
The School of Art
Carnegie Mellon University
jongwoo@cmu.edu

First Vice-President
Keren Hammerschlag
Lecturer, Art History and Curatorship
School of Art and Design
Australian National University
keren.hammerschlag@anu.edu.au

Second Vice-President
Jeremy Melius
Assistant Professor
Department of Art and Art History
Tufts University
jeremy.melius@tufts.edu

Treasurer & Membership Chair

Albert Joseph Moore, Midsummer, 1887. Oil on canvas. Image Courtney Skipton Long
courtesy Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum. Acting Assistant Curator
Department of Prints and Drawings
Yale Center for British Art
treasurer.hba@gmail.com
HBA Travel and
Newsletter Editor
Publication Grants Caitlin Silberman
Processing Archivist
Applications due by 1/15/2020 Hennepin History Museum
newsletter.hba@gmail.com
Each year HBA awards two grants: a $600 award to Travel and Publication Grants Chair
offset publication costs for a book manuscript or peer- Kimberly Rhodes
reviewed journal article in the field of British art or visual Associate Professor
culture that has been accepted for publication, and a Art History Department
$750 travel grant designated for a graduate student Drew University
member of HBA who will be presenting a paper on krhodes@drew.edu
British art or visual culture at an academic conference.
Book Prize Chair
Applicants must be current members of HBA who can Matthew Reeve
demonstrate that an HBA grant will replace their out- Associate Professor
of-pocket costs. Applications are not accepted from Department of Art History and Art
institutions. For details on how to apply, please consult Conservation
the HBA website. All applications should be directed to Queen’s University
the Grants Committee Chair, Kimberly Rhodes, at reevem@queensu.ca
krhodes@drew.edu.

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