William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2017 Short List

Elizabeth Einberg

William Hogarth: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings

Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300221749

hb, pp432, bw 120 col 390 £95

‘Exemplary and much more than a catalogue raisonné, full of imaginative and scholarly interpretation, with new pictures to study and familiar ones to understand anew; countless fresh insights.’ ‘A truly magnificent monument to a life’s work, both of the author and of Hogarth!’

Clare Browne, Glyn Davies and MA Michael, eds, with the assistance of Michaela Zöschg

English Medieval Embroidery: Opus Anglicanum

Yale University Press in association with The Victoria & Albert Museum

ISBN 978-0-300222005

hb pp324 bw 100 col 160 £40

‘Stands alone as an outstanding collection of expert contributions to accompany one of the great exhibitions of all time, providing a permanent recreation of the show.’ ‘So much of the exhibition is reproduced and so well, with text and images perfectly balanced.’

James Stourton

Kenneth Clark: Life, Art & Civilisation

William Collins

ISBN 978-0-007493418

hb pp496 bw 2 col 30 £30

‘A delight; a book that brings out the different sides of Clark’s complex character through the most thorough research and perceptive writing.’ ‘I read it with great pleasure and wanted it to go on and on.’ ‘Sober, entertaining, admirable; without glossing over the personal life, Clark emerges as inspirational, very hard-working, even unexpectedly modest.’

Susan Rather

The American School: Artists and Status in the Late Colonial and Early National Era

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre

ISBN 978-0-300214611

hb pp316 bw 80 col 100 £50

‘A highly original and stimulating contribution to our understanding of the period.’ ‘Especially ingenious in its treatment of Benjamin West’s slippery character.’ ‘Paints a picture of an established school that thought of itself as “British” but was ready to move on to being “American”.’

Sacha Llewellyn

Winifred Knights 1899–1947

Lund Humphries in association with Dulwich Picture Gallery

ISBN 978-1-848221772 (HB) 978-1-898519348 (PB)

pp208 bw 11 col 165 £40 hb £25 pb

‘There could not be a better example of how to re-establish a reputation that urgently needed it, a triumph of rehabilitation that will open up a whole group of neglected artists for future study and a tradition that has been “written out”.’ ‘Extraordinary research from scratch.’

David Fraser Jenkins and Hugh Fowler Wright 

The Art of John Piper

Co-published by Unicorn and Portland Gallery

ISBN 978-1-910787052

hb pp 500 col 300+ £45

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‘Beautifully designed and produced and beautifully written, all you could ever need on Piper, covering his life, his art and aesthetic.’ ‘Evokes the character of his painting in wonderful words with a host of images, a superb celebration of a most distinctive voice.’

Long List

Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson

William Rothenstein & his Circle

Ben Uri Gallery & Museum

ISBN 978-0-900157585

hb pp160 bw 6 col 66 £20

Nicholas Stanley-Price, Mary K McGuigan and John F McGuigan Jr

At the Foot of the Pyramid. 300 Years of the cemetery for foreigners in Rome

Casa di Goethe, Rome

ISBN 978-3-930370-40-5

hb pp136, 47 col £18

Elizabeth Einberg

William Hogarth: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings

Yale University Press for The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300221749

hb, pp432, bw 120 col 390 £95

Peter N Lindfield

Georgian Gothic: Medievalist Architecture, Furniture & Interiors 1730–1840

Boydell Press

ISBN 978-1-783271276

hb pp282 bw 59 line ill 11 £50

Mark Ovenden

Johnston & Gill: Very British Types

Lund Humphries

978-1-84822-176-5

pp176 illus £32

David Fraser Jenkins and Hugh Fowler Wright 

The Art of John Piper

Unicorn Press and Portland Gallery

ISBN 978-1-910787052

hb pp 500 col 300+ £45

Niamh O’Sullivan

In the Lion’s Den: Daniel Macdonald, Ireland and Empire

Cork University Press

ISBN 978-0-990468684

pb pp152 bw 33 col 32 €29

Cathy Ross

Revealing the Charterhouse: the Making of a London Landmark

D Giles Limited in association with the Charterhouse

ISBN 978-1-907804984

hb pp224 bw 8 col 150 £29.95

Mark Thompson and Jonathan Black

War in the Sunshine: The British in Italy 1917–18 Through the Eyes of Sydney Carline, Ernest Brooks and William Joseph Brunell

Estorick Foundation

ISBN 978-0-956786869

pb pp92 bw 60 col 29 £14.95

Mary Clark

The Dublin Civic Portrait Collection: Patronage, Politics and Patriotism, 1603–2013

Four Courts Press

ISBN 978-1-846825842

hb pp238 col 93 €36

Michael Symes

The English Landscape Garden in Europe

Historic England

ISBN 978-1-848023574

pb pp160 bw 23  col 93 £25

Marilyn Palmer and Ian West

Technology in the Country House

Historic England

ISBN 978-1-848022805

hb pp272 bw 16 col 210 £60

Julian Holder and Elizabeth McKellar

Neo-Georgian Architecture 1880–1970: A Reappraisal

Historic England

ISBN 978-1-848022355

hb pp256 bw 85 col 65 £50

Jane Fenlon, Ruth Kenny, Caroline Pegum, Brendan Rooney

Irish Fine Art in the Early Modern Period, New Perspectives on Artistic Practice, 1620–1820

Irish Academic Press

ISBN 978-1-911024262 (HB) 978-1-911024354

pp276 col 125 €55 hb €29.95 pb

Elaine Andrews, Margaret Bear, Brian Foss and Paul Liss, ed by Sacha Llewellyn and Paul Liss

WWII War Pictures by British Artists

Liss Llewellyn Fine Art

ISBN 978-0-993088421

pb pp 240 bw 14 col 251 £25

Annabel Jacqueline Setter, Andrew Lambirth, Brian Foss, Michael Barker and William Gaunt, ed by Paul Liss and Sacha Llewellyn

Charles Cundall: A Working Method

Liss Llewellyn Fine Art

ISBN 978-0-956713988 pb pp192 bw 27 col 129 £25

Ian Collins

Rose Hilton

Lund Humphries

ISBN 978-1-848222069

hb pp208 bw 25 col 200 £35

Sacha Llewellyn

Winifred Knights 1899–1947

Lund Humphries in association with Dulwich Picture Gallery

ISBN 978-1-848221772 (HB) 978-1-898519348 (PB)

pp208 bw 11 col 165 £40 hb £25 pb

Desna Greenhow, ed

The Diary of Mary Watts 1877–1904

Lund Humphries in association with Watts Gallery

ISBN 978-1-848222014

hb pp264 bw 22 col 24 £30

James Scott assisted by Claudia Milburn,

with an Introduction by Michael Bird

The Sculpture of Kenneth Armitage

Lund Humphries

ISBN 978-1-848221789

hb pp208 bw 360 col 40 £55

Jeff Rosen

Julia Margaret Cameron’s ‘Fancy subjects’: Photographic allegories of Victorian identity and empire

Manchester University Press

ISBN 978-1-784993177

hb pp336 bw 50 2 tables £75

Hilary Macartney and José Manuel Matilla

Copied by the Sun: Talbotype ‘Illustrations to the Annals of the Artists of Spain’ by Sir William Stirling Maxwell

Museo Nacional del Prado with the collaboration of National Media Museum, University of Glasgow and the support of Banco Santander

ISBN 978-8-415245551 (complete work 2 vols)

hb pp vol I 368,  vol II 144 col 331 €85.50

Sarah Tiffin

Southeast Asia in Ruins: Art and Empire in the Early 19th Century

National University of Singapore

ISBN 978-9-971698492

hb pp316 col 82 SGD 46

Simon Martin

The Mythic Method: Classicism in British Art 1920–1950

Pallant House Gallery

ISBN 978-1-869827892

pb pp128 col 92 £25

Peter Lord

The Tradition: A new history of Welsh art

Parthian Books

ISBN 978-1-910409626

hb pp400 col 405 £50

Neil Chambers with contributions by Anna Agnarsdóttir, Sir David Attenborough, Jeremy Coote, Philip J Hatfield and John Gascoigne

Endeavouring Banks: Exploring Collections from The Endeavour Voyage 1768–1771

Paul Holberton Publishing

ISBN 978-1-907372902

hb pp304 bw 150 £40

Lucilla Burn

The Fitzwilliam Museum: A History

Philip Wilson Publishers

ISBN 978-1-781300343

hb pp256 col 112 £25, $45

John Radcliffe and Mark Lance

George Lance: Victorian Master of Still Life

Philip Wilson Publishers

ISBN 978-1-781300312

hb pp192 pp80 £25, $45

Jovan Nicholson

Winifred Nicholson: Liberation of Colour

Philip Wilson Publishers

ISBN 978-1-781300466

pb pp144 col 110 £17.99 $29.50

Katharine Eustace

Britannia: Icon on the Coin

Royal Mint Museum

ISBN 978-1-869917029

hb pp 144 bw col £35

Roger Brown

Wynford Dewhurst: Manchester’s Monet

Sansom & Company

ISBN 978-1-911408000

pb pp128 bw 15 col 82 £20

Gwen Yarker

Inquisitive Eyes: Slade Painters in Edwardian Wessex

Sansom & Company

ISBN 978-1-908326850

pb pp132 bw 44 col 68 £20

George Tute

George Tute: A Life in Images

Sansom & Company

ISBN 978-1-911408048

hb pp252 bw 50 col 140 £45

Arnika Schmidt

Nino Costa (1826–1903): Transnational Exchange in European Landscape Painting

Silvana Editoriale

ISBN 978-8-836633845

hb pp 256 bw 113 col 88 €70

Emma Chambers

Paul Nash

Tate Publishing

ISBN 978-1-849764919 (PB) 978-1-849764353 (HB)

pp192 col 180 pb £24.99 hb £30

Quintin Colville with Kate Williams

Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity

Thames & Hudson

ISBN 978-0-500252208

hb pp288 col 225 £29.95

Antony Griffiths

The Print before Photography: An Introduction to European Printmaking 1550–1820

The British Museum Press

ISBN 978-0-714126951

hb pp560 col 300+ £60

Anne Robbins, ed, with contributions by Alison Goudie, Sarah Herring, Harriet O’Neill & Christopher Riopelle

Painters’ Paintings from Freud to Van Dyck

The National Gallery Company Limited distributed by Yale University Press

ISBN 978-1-857096118

pb pp96 col 70 £14.95

Jeff Watkin, ed, with contributions from Louise Campbell,

Helen Cobby, Alice Swatton

Concealment & Deception: The Art of the Camofleurs of Leamington Spa 1939–1945

Warwick District Council

ISBN 978-1-872940083

pb pp123 col 84 £8

James Stourton

Kenneth Clark: Life, Art & Civilisation

William Collins

ISBN 978-0-007493418

hb pp496 bw 2 col 30 £30

Susan Rather

The American School: Artists and Status in the Late Colonial and Early National Era

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre

ISBN 978-0-300214611

hb pp316 bw 80 col 100 £50

Eleanor Hughes, ed

Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting

Yale University Press

ISBN 978-0-300221572

hb pp312 col 312 £45

David Adshead and David AHB Taylor et al.

Hardwick Hall: A Great Old Castle of Romance

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre

978-0-300218909

hb pp402 bw 20 col 320 £75

Clare Browne, Glyn Davies and MA Michael, eds, with the assistance of Michaela Zöschg

English Medieval Embroidery: Opus Anglicanum

Yale University Press in association with The Victoria & Albert Museum

ISBN 978-0-300222005

hb pp324 bw 100 col 160 £40

Eric Shanes+

Young Mr Turner: The First Forty Years 1775–1815

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre

ISBN 978-0-300140651

hb pp552 col 350 £85

Mark Hallett, Nigel Llewellyn, Martin Myrone

Court, Country, City: British Art and Architecture, 1660–1735

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre

ISBN 978-0-300214802

hb pp544 col 194 £55

Patricia McCarthy

Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland

Publisher Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre

ISBN 978-0-300218862

--> hb pp272 bw 65 col 132 £45

The Berger Prize 2015

Winner of the £5000 annual prize

William L Pressly
James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art
published by Cork University Press

William L Pressly has won the 2015 William MB Berger Prize for British Art History for his brilliant analysis of the murals in the Royal Society of Arts, London, by the 18th-century Irish painter James Barry

Dr Loyd Grossman CBE (right) presented Professor Pressly with the £5000 prize at a reception last night, Monday 7 December 2015, at the Society of Antiquaries of London

‘Nothing could be more fitting than that this superbly produced book should have been published by Cork University Press, in the city of James Barry’s birth,’ said Robin Simon, the editor of The British Art Journal, which administers the prize. ‘Barry’s strange and wonderful murals, hidden away in the heart of London, are one of the great episodes in British and Irish art and one of the most mysterious. Professor Pressly’s remarkable explanation is a triumph of research and reflection and the book is beautifully written.’

William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2015 Short List

Michael Hall

George Frederick Bodley and the Later Gothic Revival in Britain and America

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

hb col 200 bw 100 pp352

ISBN 978-0300208023 £50

‘A life’s work… a huge achievement… identifies Bodley’s voice… shows that he was not just a follower but took the style forward into Modernism’

Ruth Guilding

Owning the Past: Why the English collected Antique Sculpture, 1640–1840

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

hb col 100 bw 200

pp410 ISBN 978-0-300-20819-1 £55

‘Guilding writes with brio, style and charm… highly informative with unusual illustrations, many of them droll… a most original approach to a well-known subject’

Paul Binski

Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style, 1290-1350

Yale University Press

hb col 175 bw 100 pp448 ISBN 978-0-300-20400-1 £40

‘Binski’s riveting, original account… analyses so well that it was part aesthetics, part technology… how fundamental the style was to the world of Gothic in the most enduring sense’

William L Pressly

James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art

Cork University Press hb col 122 bw 3 pp384

ISBN 978-1-78205-108-4 Euro 49

‘Pressly’s detailed and unusual study throws light upon one of the most extraordinary episodes in British and Irish art, and in a marvellous and inspirational way’

Jane Munro

Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish

Yale University Press in Association with the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

hb col 220 bw 50 pp275

ISBN 978-0-300-20822-1 £40

‘Loved it… a very rich account of the artist’s “significant other”… many insights into the technology of art, the backroom and how the studio held together and functioned… fascinating illustrations’

Malcolm Baker

The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

hb col 100 bw 300 pp420

ISBN 978-0-300-20134-6 £50

‘Crazy title… wonderful book… and we discover where it comes from… Baker shows that sculpture was absolutely central to the period – and this book is now central to our understanding of it ’

Hors concours

Martin Postle, Robin Simon, eds, Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting Yale Center for British Art/Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales/Yale University Press col 280 pp416 ISBN 978-0300203851 £45

Assessors John Wilson (Berger Collection Educational Trust), Robin Simon (The British Art Journal), Andrew Wilton, Rosemary Hill, James Hamilton

Please note Simon Swynfen Jervis and Dudley Dodd, Roman Splendour, English Arcadia… was inadvertently included in this year’s Long List. It will be go forward to next year’s Long List

The Prize of £5000 will be awarded by Dr Loyd Grossman CBE FSA at a reception in central London on the evening of Monday 7 December 2015

The Berger Prize 2014

William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2014

Books published 2013

Winner of the £5000 annual prize

Alex Bremner
Imperial Gothic. Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in The British Empire 1840–1870
Published by Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art


SHORT LIST

William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain
Susan Weber, ed.
Yale University Press for The Bard Graduate Center, New York
9780300196184
hb £60 pp 656, 624 col

The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland: A History

Annette Carruthers

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300109139

hb £60 pp 424, 250bw, 100 col

Houghton Revisited. The Walpole Masterpieces from Catherine the Great’s Hermitage

Thierry Morel, Andrew Moore, et al.

Royal Academy Publications

9781907533730 (Houghton pb) 9781907533518 (RA pb) 

9781907533501 (RA hb), hb £40 pp272, col

Imperial Gothic. Religious Architecture and High Anglican Culture in The British Empire 1840–1870

G A Bremner

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300187038

hb £50 pp384, 230 bw 60 col

The City and The King. Architecture and Politics in Restoration London

Christine Stevenson

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300190229

hb £45 pp 304, 115 bw 23 col

Ham House. 400 Years of Collecting and Patronage

Christopher Rowell, ed

The National Trust

9780300185409

hb £75 pp 536, 36 bw 398 col

LONG LIST

The Reception of Titian in Britain

Peter Humfrey

Brepols

9782503536750, pb €70, pp255, 150 bw, 16 col

Edwardian Opulence – British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

Angus Trumble and Andrea Wolk Rager

Yale University Press/Yale Center for British Art

9780300190250, hb £50, pp420, 30 bw, 350 col

From There to Here: The Art of Michael Buhler

Mary Rose Beaumont, Jane England, John Mack

Agra Publications/Lund Humphries (Ashgate Publishing)

9781848221413 hb £35, pp180, 3bw, 152 col

Roman Fever 1700–1870: Influence, Infection and the Image of Rome

Richard Wrigley

Yale University Press 

9780300190212 hb £45, pp330, 65 bw, 50 col

Elizabeth and her People

Tarnya Cooper with Jane Eade

National Portrait Gallery

978 185514 4651, hb £30, pp 224, 100 col

West Country to Worlds End, The South West in the Tudor Age

Sam Smiles

Paul Holberton Publishing

9781907372520, pb £20, pp120, 50 col

The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making

David Esterly

Duckworth Overlook

9780715645475 hb £16.99, pp288, ill

James Dickson Innes (1887–1914)

John Hoole and Margaret Simons

Lund Humphries

9781848221390 hb £45 (£40.50 web), pp184 2 bw, 166 col

The Painted Closet of Lady Anne Bacon Drury

H L Meakin

Ashgate Publishing Ltd

9780754693973 hb £75, pp410,  31bw, 64col

Stanley Spencer. Heaven in a Hell of War

Amanda Bradley & Howard Watson eds

Pallant House Gallery 

in association with The National Trust

9781869827137 pb £19.95, pp112, 10 bw, 81 col

British Murals and Decorative Painting 1920–1960 

Alan Powers, et al.

Sansom & Co

978-1908326232 hb £40, 352pp, 120/130 col

Art and The Second World War

Monica Bohm-Duchen

Ashgate Publishing (Lund Humphries)

9781848220331 hb £40 (£36 web ), pp288, 30bw, 185col

Two Temple Place

Barbara Bryant

Bulldog Trust

9780957062825 hb £15, pp 96, col

Magnificent Entertainments: Temporary Architecture for Georgian Festivals 

Melanie Doderer-Winkler

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300186420 pp320, 100 bw, 133 col

Anti-Ugly: Excursions in English Architecture and Design

Gavin Stamp

Aurum Press Limited

9781781311233 hb £16.99, pp272, bw

Amy Sawyer of Ditchling, Artist, Eccentric and Lady of Letters

Anne Parfitt-King

Country Books

9781906789886 pb £15, pp186, 6bw, 36 col

William Burgess and The High Victorian Dream

J Mordaunt Crook

Frances Lincoln (revd edn)

9780711233492 hb £45, pp432, bw, col

Eric Ravilious Artist and Designer

Alan Powers

Lund Humphries

9781848221116 hb £35, pp216, col

The Oxford Dictionary of Christian Art and Architecture

Peter & Linda Murray, revised Tom Devonshire Jones

Oxford University Press

9780199680276 hb £35, pp672, ill

Men from The Ministry. How Britain Saved Its Heritage

Simon Thurley

Yale University Press 

9780300195729 hb £18.99, pp224, 100 bw

Gainsborough Cottage Doors – An Insight into the Artist’s Last Decade

Hugh Belsey

Paul Holberton Publishing

9781907372506 pb £25, pp120, 80 col

J M W Turner RA (1775-1851) Masterpieces from the Whitworth Art Gallery

Andrew Clayton-Payne

ACP Publications

9780955948015 hb £25, pp55 17 col

Magnificent Marble Statues: British Sculpture in the Mansion House

Julius Bryant

Paul Holberton Publishing

9781907372551 pb £20, pp144, 90 col

Frank Holl: Emerging from the Shadows

Jonathan Black & Sara Ayres

Philip Wilson Publishers

9781781300107 hb £25, pp144, ill

The Unfinished Monk

Richard Pitcairn-Knowles & Jeremy Howard

Pitcairn-Knowles Publishing

9780955859137 pb £15.99, pp268, ill

Keith Vaughan – Figure and Ground

Colin Cruise

Sansom & Co, in Association with School of Art, University of Aberystwyth

9781908326331 pb £16.50, pp96, ill

Landscapes of London: The City, Country and Suburbs 1660–1840

Elizabeth McKellar

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300109139 hb £45, pp 276, 120bw, 24 col

Alan Sorrell: The Life and Works of an English Neo-Romantic Artist

Sacha Llewellyn & Richard Sorrell, eds

The Fine Art Society/Liss Fine Art

Sansom & Co

9781908326379 pb £25, col

Patrick Reyntiens: Catalogue of Stained Glass

Libby Horner

Sansom & Co

9781908326485 hb £60, pp352 col 

Turner and The Sea

Christine Riding & Richard Johns

Thames & Hudson

9780500239056 hb £35, pp288, 3 bw, 222 col

The Young Van Dyck

Alejandro Vergara and Friso Lammertse

Thames & Hudson

9780500970508 hb £45, pp416, 36 bw, 242 col

Francis Bacon – Five Decades

Anthony Bond

Thames & Hudson

9780500093757 hb £34.95, pp240, 215 col

A is a Critic: Writings from The Spectator

Andrew Lambirth

Unicorn Press

9781906509200 pb£12.99, pp288

Gwilym Prichard  – A Lifetime’s Gazing

Harry Heuser & Robert Meyrick

Sansom & Co

9781908326157 hb £25, pp112, ill

Treasures of the Royal Courts, Tudors, Stuarts and The Russian Tsars

Olga Dmitrieva & Tessa Murdoch

V&A Publishing

9781851777310 hb £30, pp176, col

The Sheldonian Theatre: Architecture and Learning in Seventeenth Century Oxford

Anthony Geraghty

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300195040 hb £35, pp159, 22 bw, 45 col

Ireland and the Picturesque

Finola O’Kane

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300185386 hb £45, pp304, 30 bw, 115 col

The King’s Pictures. The Formation and Dispersal of the Collections of Charles I and his Courtiers

Francis Haskell (Nicholas Penny, Karen Serres, eds)

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

9780300190120 hb £30, pp 260, 40 bw, 80 col

Under the Banyan Tree: Relocating the Picturesque in British India

Romita Ray

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

978030018769 hb £50, pp372, 60 bw, 50 col

Georgians Revealed: Life Style and the Making of Modern Britain

Moira Goff, John Goldfinch, Karen Limper-Hertz and Helen Peden

The British Library

9780712357142 (pb) 9780712357135 (hb) 30 hb; £20 pb, pp168, 150col

Concepts of Creativity in Seventeenth Century  England

Rebecca Herissone & Alan Edward, eds

The Boydell Press

9781843837404 hb £60, pp372

Now the British Library makes 1 million images available

Copyright-free digital material… it's catching…

Following our last report on the Getty's joining in on making digital material freely available for use, the British Library has put 1 million images available for use without restriction on Flickr.

Just follow THIS LINK

In fact, using Flickr is not the brightest and best plan but it's a start, and screen grabs will have to come in handy here if you really want to use any of the images. Still it's a start. MORE please but make it more user friendly. Here is what they said:

'The release of these collections into the public domain represent the Library’s desire to improve knowledge of and about them, to enable novel and unexpected ways of using them, and to begin working with researchers to explore and interpret large-scale digital collections.'

Well, quite…

Getty Museum makes digital content available

Another step in the (copy)right direction…

Following the initiatives of the British Museum, Yale University, the Walters Art Museum, and other institutions honoured in these pages, the director of the Getty, James Cuno, wrote the following on the Getty’s online magazine (http://blogs.getty.edu/iris) 12 August 2013 (excerpted):

"Today the Getty becomes an even more engaged digital citizen, one that shares its collections, research, and knowledge more openly than ever before. We’ve launched the Open Content Program to share, freely and without restriction, as many of the Getty’s digital resources as possible.
The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty’s collections. Today we’ve taken a first step toward this goal by making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.
These are high-resolution, reproduction-quality images with embedded metadata, some over 100 megabytes in size.
Why open content? Why now? The Getty was founded on the conviction that understanding art makes the world a better place, and sharing our digital resources is the natural extension of that belief. This move is also an educational imperative. Artists, students, teachers, writers, and countless others rely on artwork images to learn, tell stories, exchange ideas, and feed their own creativity. In its discussion of open content, the most recent Horizon Report, Museum Edition stated that ‘it is now the mark – and social responsibility – of world-class institutions to develop and share free cultural and educational resources.’ I agree wholeheartedly."

And so, as our readers will know, does The British Art Journal…

Berger Prize Winner 2013: Wall Paintings of Eton

The William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2013 was awarded to Wall Paintings of Eton by Emily Howe, Henrietta McBurney, David Park, Stephen Rickerby, and Lisa Shekede, published in 2012 by Scala, at a reception in London on the evening of Thursday 4 July 2013, held at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. The prize, worth £5000 to be shared among the authors, was presented by Professor Mark Hallett. The assessors said: 'This is a very exciting, major project on the the most important surviving 15th-century wall decoration of the north of the Alps. It also features a major discovery of a 16th-century mural of a school scene that came to light in 2005 in the Head Master’s Chambers. The production was perfect, the scholarship outstanding, the international context explored; the book combines, in the most successful manner, conservation and technical reports with history of great clarity and authority. There was also the romance of the story of the involvement of M.R. James in the preservation of these very important paintings. Congratulations are also due to those who encouraged the project, including the Provost of Eton, Lord Waldegrave, and to the publisher and designer for creating such an attractive, beautifully produced book."

The assessors are:
Timothy J Standring, Gates Foundation Curator of Painting & Sculpture, Denver Art Museum

Dr John Wilson, Director, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego

Dr Rosemary Hill

Andrew Wilton

Dr James Hamilton

Professor Robin Simon, Editor, The British Art Journal

The assessors commented on the other shortlisted books as follows:

Basil Spence, Buildings and Projects

Louise Campbell, Miles Glendinning and Jane Thomas, eds.

RIBA Publishing

This is a tricky moment for Basil Spence: still recent enough to be vulnerable to fashion and taste, the impact of such buildings as Coventry Cathedral, the British embassy in Rome and the University of Sussex still fresh in the memory. But this elegantly produced book is hugely impressive and to the point, filling in much invaluable material and making sense of 20th-century Modernism in Britain and the place of Spence within it. An example to all of how to combine several contribution into a whole, that was the product of a vast amount of research.

Japanned Papier Mâché and Tinware c1740-1940

Yvonne Jones

The Antique Collectors Club

The assessors all agreed that this was a pioneering work, on a subject that no-one knew anything about, but which opened a window onto the interconnecting worlds of art, design and commerce. It was 'wondrous' and in addition an ‘unbelievably beautiful book”' ‘I felt I was being introduced to a world that was new and exciting, in a book that was especially well written.' It might seem to the be last word, but the assessors felt that it really opened the way forward to more research and further publications. A model of its kind.

The London Square

Todd Longstaff-Gowan

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

This was, all the assessors agreed, quite wonderful. The Prize several observed, has often shown how writers outside the academic world are free from boundaries limiting their investigations, for the very good reason that they simply do not care to recognize that they exist. This book therefore moved freely and fruitfully over architecture, design, social history, modern developments, garden history, and more, over a long sweep of time, with endless cross-references and interconnections. It was refreshing, and opened everyone’s eyes to something, the London square, that we think we know but in fact rarely properly reflect upon. There is now simply no excuse… 

James Wyatt, Architect to George III

John Martin Robinson

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Wyatt the destroyer… Not a popular man. A tricky topic… This is a book that has been long in the making and is comprehensive in its scope, arguing for a more positive appreciation of one of the most important but neglected architects in British history. It revealed the range and variety of Wyatt’s inventiveness, his capacity to change and adapt, his sheer professionalism but also, significantly, the beauty of many of his buildings. The illustrations were of the highest quality and altogether the book represents an enduring resource.

George Stubbs: 1724-1806 Science into Art

Herbert W Rott, ed.

Prestel Publishing Ltd

This is the catalogue of an outstanding exhibition that only one of the assessors had been lucky enough to see in Munich. The editor of the catalogue, Herbert Rott, director at the Neue Pinakothek, succeeded in persuading his board to agree to a Stubbs exhibition, with angle towards science, reflected in the title. The exhibition and the book were therefore shaped for a particular audience but both succeeded triumphantly. 'The catalogue is a perfect model of what a catalogue ought to be but so rarely is, these days…' It is especially important in its treatment of the engravings and the scientific aspect of Stubbs’ works. In the event, the exhibition was one of the most successful exhibitions of recent time and in shortlisting this outstanding catalogue the assessors were especially happy to be acknowledging a major initiative in the introduction of Stubbs to a German audience.

Finally, not all books that ought to win prizes are large and the assessors wished especially to commend Ian Waites for Common Land in English Painting 1700-1850 published by The Boydell Press, a most elegantly written book that calmly knocked many entrenched but erroneous notions about British landscape painting firmly on the head, almost in passing…