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Review of CECS Postgraduate Conference 11th June 2011

Placing Faces: the Portrait and the Country House in the Long Eighteenth Century

By Sam Smith

Art history sure does make for better conferences than English lit. You can while away the stuffy hours staring at digital images of paintings holed up many miles away in some under-visited country house, unfairly (or not!) forgotten by the world at large. Or at least you can intend to do so and then someone like Kate Retford starts speaking and ruins the whole thing by being interesting.

Dr. Retford’s paper, entitled The Topography of the Conversation Piece - A Walk around Wanstead, took for its subject The Tylney Family in the Saloon at Wanstead House, a conversation piece by Joseph Francis Nollekens made for Richard Child, the absurdly rich owner of Wanstead House. Dr. Retford demonstrated through meticulous reasoning and research that the painting was an accurate depiction of the interior. She continued by showing us through the open door at the back Nollekens’ image into a Hogarth of an adjacent room made ten years earlier. From here she took us outside into the magnificent grounds that would have been visible from the saloon window and that are described in Flora Triumphant and in an engraving. Dr. Retford argued that her own tour of Wanstead, achieved through pictures and poetry, in many ways closely paralleled the experience of contemporary visitors to Wanstead: a tour that would have allowed them – and now allows us – a glimpse into the world of one of the centuries richest men.

Following Dr. Retford was Leslie E. Johansen. Also speaking on the theme of the portrait and estate, Johansen gave a paper entitled A Look into the Prospect Beyond: The Portrait and the English Designed Landscape. As closely as the previous paper had followed standard art historical methodologies was as far as Johansen’s papers differed from them. Coming from the Council of British Archaeology she determined to take the room through a variety of canvases and into the actual landscape that had inspired them, revealing the hoax that images of landscapes often are. Through archaeological methods Johansen determined to show that, at places such as Boyton Hall, the wealthy – but not too wealthy – used painted imagery to redefine themselves through semi-fictional representations of their estates. The paper highlighted the need for art history to engage with fast developing archaeological technology that can accurately map the sites of the past. Importantly though Johansen never lost sight of the need to interpret archaeological findings through academic study and methodologies in order to better understand not simply what but why events occurred and occur.

Following the mid-morning break came perhaps the most expected treat of the day: Desmond Shawe-Taylor’s George IV as a Collector of full-length Portraits. Shawe-Taylor is not only an art historian of great repute but also Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, which grants him full access to the Royal collection. He used the contents of George IV’s collection to demonstrate how the creation of an artistic canon controlled valuing and collection. To start with he told us how the King had paid a jaw-dropping and bank-vault-emptying 1500 guineas for The Young Thief by Paulus Potter. The painting itself is a genre-piece – then considered the lowest of art forms – of an extraordinarily lowly subject: without Potter’s signature the piece could only have hoped to occupy wall space in a country tavern. From here Shawe-Taylor showed, through the work of Joshua Reynolds, that when a name from the canon was united with a high style –Reynolds’ ‘grand manner’ – the effect on valuing and collecting was immense: an artist could gain admittance to the canon through association with another artist’s style. Besides style Shawe-Taylor also showed the importance of subject matter when considering public display as the majority of the works the King displayed to all visitors in his palace were military portraits, creating for himself a more masculine identity. Ultimately the paper displayed that the art world was controlled by various interconnected factors found both within the art itself but also outside it. Looking through recent arts news it is clear that the concerns of early nineteenth century Britain remain today. A minor work by George Stubbs has just sold for over £22 million, doubling the record for a Stubbs, clearly demonstrating the effect that a canonical name can have on art collectors and subsequently the market: one shudders to think how much a major work by Stubbs, such as Whistlejacket, would make should – God forbid – it ever be sold at auction.

Up next was Professor Marcia Pointon paper simply entitled The Woburn Abbey Portraits. Someone like Professor Pointon would probably struggle to give a bad talk and her trip through the Woburn collection in the first half of the eighteenth century was brilliantly done: indeed the only bad thing that could be said about the paper was the title lacked something in imagination. She demonstrated with ease how the collection was built up from family members and persons of national historic importance and the resonances this had with the family’s contemporary situation and how their collection helped to define themselves. This aside the real highlight of her talk was an all-too-brief discussion of Isaac Whood, whose work frequented the Woburn walls. Whood is a little known copyist/portraitist whose life and works still await reappraisal. Research into them would surely reveal complicating factors in modern discussions of ‘copies’ and the general assumption of their inferiority – with Shawe-Taylor’s talk in mind it would also give greater insight into how canons of artists, styles and subject matter operated early in the eighteenth century. It was Pointon’s discussion of Whood that sparked the most questions of the day and, alongside contributions from the room, her answers led to a sense of bewilderment that he has managed to slip into relative obscurity.

So it was with the feeling of work to be done the conference broke for the bustle, noise and sandwiches that never fail to nicely fill a long lunch hour.

Post-lunch and a few chairs previously filled were left empty and mores the shame for those that had somewhere else to be. The subject for the afternoon was ‘Gendered Displays.’ First up was Professor Gill Perry giving a paper entitled Dirty Dancing at Knole: Portraits of Giovanna Baccelli and the Performance of 'Public Intimacy. Perry spanned centuries in her talk, starting with Virginia Wolfe’s description of Knole as ‘a gay old woman.’ The focus of the paper though was a plaster statue of dancer Giovanna Baccelli commissioned and displayed by her then lover and owner of Knole, John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset. Perry showed how the placing of the statue and its subsequent relation to the interior of the house – specifically the changing views offered by the staircase – defined its meaning. Based on a relatively simple premise Perry brilliantly transcended the boundaries her subject seemed to set by revealing a series of in-jokes that surrounded the statue and its reading by contemporaries. By showing how a statue and architecture (plus a little insider knowledge) came to define each other and the men and women that used the space, Perry brought a specific period and relationship to life. No doubt the laughter that punctuated her talk was not so different from the laughter that used to echo around Knole itself.

The final talk of the day was given by York PhD student and co-organiser Jordan Vibert, Lady Anne Stanhope and Sir Francis Blake Delaval at Ford Castle: Female Sociability, Military Masculinity and the Seven Years’ War. The paper utilized a variety of sources alongside a close reading of the portrait itself to explore the expression of public roles in private contexts. Through the portrait the paper showed not only the blurring of the lines of public and private but also of femininity and masculinity as Lady Anne attempted to transcend the passivity thrust upon females during the seven years war, a time of masculine activity. Vibert’s paper was the perfect conclusion to the day uniting themes of gender and privacy and adopting various methodologies but maintaining art history at its heart.

In the end the real test of a conference is whether or not the sum is more or less than its parts. As filled as it was with fascinating arguments, brilliant interpretations, and nice light-hearted jokes Placing Faces did offer more than this. In a relaxed and well-organized setting the presenting scholars gave papers with ease and questions and doubts could be raised and explored with friendliness, as well as intellectual vigour. The diversity of ideas at a conference can sometimes have negative results by stopping any discussions that relate papers to each other, but the structure of the day, as well as the speakers themselves turned the diversity into a positive way to discuss broader themes. In the end then the day must be given over to the two organizers, Hannah Lyons and Jordan Vibert, both postgraduates at York, who brought together a stellar line-up and ensured the day flowed smoothly and logically from beginning to end.

Sam Smith, CECS Summer 2011