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…

Berger Prize Short List 2013

The William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2013
Short List
[books published in 2012: for Long List go to www.britishartjournal.co.uk home page, William MB Berger Prize in menu on right-hand side]
The Prize, worth £5000 to the winner, will be awarded at a reception in London on Thursday 4 July 2013

• Basil Spence, Buildings and Projects

Louise Campbell, Miles Glendinning and Jane Thomas, eds.
RIBA Publishing
ISBN 978-1859463093, 
hb £46, pp368


• Wall Paintings of Eton 

Emily Howe, Henrietta McBurney, David Park, Stephen Rickerby, Lisa Shekede

Scala, 8 November 2012

ISBN 978-1-857-59787-5

hb £35, pp192, colour 210

• Japanned Papier Mâché and Tinware c1740-1940

Yvonne Jones

The Antique Collectors Club, 4 May 2012

ISBN 978-1-85149-6860

hb £45, pp336, 360 ills

• The London Square 

Todd Longstaff-Gowan

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 20 April 2012

ISBN 978-0-300-15201-2

hb £30, pp304, b/w 160, colour 100

• George Stubbs: 1724-1806 Science into Art 

Editor Herbert W Rott 

Prestel Publishing Ltd, 29 February 2012

ISBN 978-3-79135170-4 English edition

hb £35, pp240,b/w 12, colour 153

• James Wyatt Architect to George III 

John Martin Robinson

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 21^st May 2012

ISBN 978-0-300-17690-2

hb £50, pp400, b/w 170, colour 150

Robin Simon is Paul Mellon Lecturer

in  British Art 2013

He gave the Paul Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery, London, each Monday 14 January–11 February.
The theme was British art and the theatre, with the title 'Painters and Players from Hogarth to Olivier'.
Details on the National Gallery website
Robin Simon was joined by actor William Chubb for the first four lectures, and for the final lecture by soprano Alison Pearce and Paul Wynne-Griffiths, piano. The music included works by Handel, Arne and Linley.
The lecture series was repeated at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven,  10-24 April 2013, when Robin Simon was joined by the actor Bruce Altman for the first four lectures and by actor Alex Kramer for the fifth lecture.

Motya Charioteer

Motya Charioteer at the British Museum
I have a question. Where's willy? Think about it. More to follow…

Terry Friedman is Berger Prize Winner 2012

Terry Friedman is the winner of the £5000 William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2012 for his book The Eighteenth Century Church in Britain published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press. 


The prize was presented by Sir Timothy Clifford at a reception held at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London on the evening of Thursday 5 July. The book was, in the opinion of the assessors, ‘quite simply definitive’. It seemed incredible, several thought, that ‘one man could do it’. It was ‘a revelation of the sheer variety of architecture involved’, all organized ‘with the utmost care and lucidity’. It seems to be, they said, ‘an exhaustive treatment’ of a very understudied but major subject, and yet it ‘opens up entirely new fields for further research and discussion’.


Sir Timothy quoted the assessors' remarks about the other books on the Short List of six:

John Zoffany RA: Society Observed edited by Martin Postle, was the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name, at Yale and the Royal Academy, published by the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and the Royal Academy of Arts, in association with Yale University Press. It was, in the assessors’ opinion, ‘fantastic, wonderful, with an excellent cast of contributors’. ‘Exciting’, with ‘lots of new material’, obviously at ‘the cutting edge of research’, and ‘beautifully produced’. It ‘shows the way forward for almost endless research into this underestimated artist’. ‘This is the Zoffany who captures the imagination’.

The English Castle by John Goodall, published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press, was, the assessors said, an instance of ‘an individual scholar taking an enormous subject and making it both clear and exciting’. ‘The extraordinary clarity of the exposition was brilliantly complemented by splendid photographs and invaluable diagrams of all kinds’. ‘The captions alone are brilliant’ while ‘the text with its many technical terms is not only easy to read but a great pleasure’. It was, they thought, ‘definitive’.

Inigo Jones: The Architect of Kings by Vaughan Hart, published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press, was ‘a model for a monograph on any architect’, a ‘focused effort at providing both a national and international context to Jones’s architecture’. The book was ‘full of stimulating ideas’, ‘fresh and exciting’, and ‘the author is at pains to confront several contentious issues – and he does so with vigour’, and puts forward ‘any number of ingenious and original interpretations’.

Johan Zoffany: 1733-1810 by Mary Webster was also published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press. This was ‘truly the achievement of a lifetime’, a book that has been some forty years in the making, and it was ‘well worth the wait’. It was, the assessors felt, not only ‘extremely successful as a biography’ but also ‘hugely enjoyable’ with its subject ‘emerging from the shadows in all his eccentricity and brilliance’. The ‘excellent illustrations’ were considered by several of the judges almost as valuable as the ‘mass of historical material so very well marshalled and presented’. ‘A great book’.

Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination by Scot Mckendrick, John Lowden & Kathleen Doyle, published by British Library Publishing, accompanied the magnificent exhibition of the same name. It was, said the assessors, ‘exactly the kind of exhibition that the British Library ought to put on, and the book amply complemented an extraordinary show’. The illustrations are ‘stunningly’, ‘jaw-droppingly’ beautiful. ‘If anything it left one wishing for more’.

Sir Timothy reported that the assessors wished especially to note the outstanding nature of a few of the many titles which can be seen on the Long List, notably the pioneering study by Gwen Yarker of portraiture in Dorset, Georgian Faces – Portrait of a County; the book (in Dutch) of the Stanley Spencer exhibition in Rotterdam by Alied Ottevanger; and the catalogue raisonné of William Nicholson by Patricia Reed, Wendy Baron and Merlin James.

The assessors were: Timothy J. Standring, Gates Foundation Curator of Painting & Sculpture, Denver Art Museum; Robin Simon, Editor, The British Art Journal; Rosemary Hill, sometime Fellow, All Souls’ College, Oxford, and independent scholar; Katherine Eustace, Editor of the Sculpture journal; Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures; Angus Trumble, Senior Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art

Berger Prize 2012

The William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2012
Short List (books published in 2011) (Long List below)

The Eighteenth Century Church in Britain

Terry Friedman

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press

ISBN 978-0-300-15908-0, £60, pp 496, 520 bw, 185 col

The English Castle

John Goodall

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press

ISBN 978-0-300-11058-6, £45, pp480, 100 bw, 250 col

Inigo Jones: The Architect of Kings

Vaughan Hart

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300141498, £35, pp336, 130 bw, 100 col

Royal Manuscripts:  The Genius of Illumination

Scot Mckendrick, John Lowden & Kathleen Doyle

British Library publishing

ISBN 9780712358156, £40, pp448, 300 col

John Zoffany RA Society Observed

Martin Postle, ed

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, & Royal Academy of Arts, London, in association with Yale University Press, New Haven & London

ISBN 9781907533266, £40 hb, £24.95 pb, pp 320, 5 bw, 225 col

Johan Zoffany: 1733-1810

Mary Webster

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies for British Art by Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300162783, £40, pp416, 175 bw, 180 col

The award of the prize, worth £5000 to the winner, will be made at an evening  reception on 5 July 2012 at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London. It will be presented by Sir Timothy Clifford. Past winners and details of the prize can be found at this link

The William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2012

Long List (books published in 2011)

Georgian Faces. Portrait of a County

Gwen Yarker

Dorset County Museum

Dorset Natural History & Archaeological Society

ISBN 978-0-900341-05-2, pp111, 100+ col & bw

The Eighteenth Century Church in Britain
Terry Friedman
Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press
ISBN 978-0-300-15908-0, £60, pp 496, 520 bw, 185 col

Stanley Spencer Schilderkunst tussen hemel en aarde (Stanley Spencer Painting Between Heaven and Earth
Alied Ottevanger
WBOOKS www.wbooks.com
ISBN 978 90 891 0306 2, Euros 39,50, pp169, 100+ col

Roma Britannica. Art Patronage and Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-century Rome
David R Marshall, Susan Russell, Karin Wolfe, eds
The British School at Rome, London
ISBN 978 0 904152 55 5, £35 (pb), pp374, 158 bw, 52 col

William Nicholson. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings

Patricia Reed, Wendy Baron, Merlin James

Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300170542, £95, pp672, 640 col, 90 bw

Rossetti: Painter and Poet

JB Bullen

Frances Lincoln Ltd

ISBN 978-0-7112-3225-9, £35 hb, pp272, 180 col & bw

Strawberry Hill

Anna Chalcraft & Judith Viscardi

Frances Lincoln Publishers

ISBN 9780711231849, £20 pb, pp160, 100 col

Imperial Landscapes: Britain’s Global Visual Culture 1745-1820

John E Crowley, author

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300170504, £45, pp320, 115 bw, 135 col

Art for the Nation: The Eastlakes & the Victorian Art World

Susanna Avery-Quash & Julie Sheldon

Yale University Press

ISBN 9781857095074, £27, pp 304, 14 bw, 28 col

The English Castle

John Goodall

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press

ISBN 978-0-300-11058-6, £45, pp480, 100 bw, 250 col

Mysterious Wisdom: The Life & Work of Samuel Palmer

Rachel Campbell-Johnston

Bloomsbury Press

ISBN 978-0-7475-9587-8, £25 pp400, 15 col

The Cult of Beauty

Stephen Calloway & Lynn Federle Orr, eds

V&A Publishing

ISBN 9781851776283, £40, pp288, 250 col

Inigo Jones: The Architect of Kings

Vaughan Hart

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300141498, £35, pp336, 130 bw, 100 col

English Drawings & Watercolours 1600-1900

Christopher Baker, author

National Galleries of Scotland

ISBN 9781906270353, £125, pp464, 460 col

Public Sculpture of Bristol

Douglas Merritt & Francis Greenacre with Katherine Eustace

Liverpool University Press

ISBN 9781846316388, £30 pb, £60 hb, pp306, 350 bw

The New Painting of the 1860s

Allen Staley

Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300175677, £50, pp438, 150bw, 200 col

Turner and the Elements

Ortrud Westheider and Michael Philipp, eds

Hirmer Publishers

ISBN 3777440019, £39.95, pp256, 10 bw, 150 col

Empire To Nation: Art, History and the Visualization of Maritime Britain 1786-1829

Geoff Quilley

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300175684, £40, pp304, 100 bw, 40 col

John Constable: Oil Sketches from the V & A

Mark Evans

V&A Publishing

ISBN 9781851776269, £25, pp144, 120 col

Canterbury Cathedral Priory: In the age of Becket

Peter Fergusson, author

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre by Yale University Press

ISBN 978-0-300-175691, £50, pp288, 100 bw, 50 col

Royal Manuscripts:  The Genius of Illumination

Scot Mckendrick, John Lowden & Kathleen Doyle

British Library publishing

ISBN 9780712358156, £40, pp448, 300 col

John Zoffany RA Society Observed

Martin Postle, ed

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, & Royal Academy of Arts, London, in association with Yale University Press, New Haven & London

ISBN 9781907533266, £40 hb, £24.95 pb, pp 320, 5 bw, 225 col

Writing The Lives of Painters: Biography & Artistic Identity in Britain 1760-1810

Karen Junod

Oxford University Press

ISBN 9780199597000, £63, pp 272, 25 bw

The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857:

Entrepreneurs, Connoisseurs & the Public

Elizabeth A Pergam

Ashgate Publishing

ISBN 9781409418306, £70, pp396, 53 bw, 12 col

John Martin Apocalypse

Martin Myrone, ed

Tate Publishing

ISBN 978 1 85437 889 7, £30, pp240, 100+ col

An Artists’ Village: GF Watts & Mary Watts at Compton

Mark Bills

Philip Wilson Publishers

ISBN 9780856676963, £19.95, pp176, 100+ bw & col

Francis Bedford, Landscape Photography & Nineteenth Century British Culture

Stephanie Spencer

Ashgate publishing

ISBN 9781409408536, £60, pp212, ill bw

Watercolour

Alison Smith, ed

Tate publishing

ISBN 9781854379139, £24.99, pp192, 150 col

Stanley Spencer and the English Garden

Steven Parissien, ed

Paul Holberton Publishing

ISBN 9781907372124, £16.99, pp96, 50 col

John Piper in Kent & Sussex

Nathaniel Hepburn, ed

Mascalls Gallery

ISBN 978-0956767608, £20, pp 128, ill col

Johan Zoffany: 1733-1810

Mary Webster

Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies for British Art by Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300162783, £40, pp416, 175 bw, 180 col

Constable and Salisbury: The Soul of Landscape

Timothy Wilcox

Scala Publishers

ISBN 978 1 85759 679 3, £25, pp196, 138 bw & col

Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven

Ian Dejardin et al

Philip Wilson Publishers

ISBN 9780856677083, £45, pp216, 40 bw, 196 col

Lost and Found: Wright of Derby’s View of Gibraltar

John Bonehill, Janet M Brooke, David de Witt & Barbara Klempan

Agnes Etherington Art Centre

Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

ISBN 9781553392583, £38.99, pp 66, ills col

Court on Canvas: Tennis in Art

Ann Sumner, ed

Philip Wilson Publishers

ISBN 9780856677069 (pb), £20, pp176

Hope: The Life & Times of a Victorian Icon

Nicholas Tromans, author

Watts Gallery

ISBN 9780956102270, £10

Gainsborough’s Landscapes

Susan Sloman, author

Philip Wilson Publishers

ISBN 9780856676970, £14.99, pp 120

John Craxton

Ian Collins, author

Ashgate Publishing

ISBN 9781848220690, £35pp 186 bw 47 col179

Meetings in Marrakech

Vincenza Russo – Editorial Coordination

Skira Editore

ISBN 9788857212418, pp 76 ill 50