First published in 1999, Chambers explores English etching changed that radically during the nineteenth century. This book looks into the freedom and directness of the etching process became a key plank in a sustained attempt to raise the status of etching in Britain spearheaded by artists such as Francis Seymour Haden and James McNeill Whistler and members of the Etching Club. An Indolent and Blundering Art? Opens with a description of the use of language and art criticism to redefine etching

This book is the seventh in the Readings in Conservation series, which gathers and publishes texts that have been influential in the development of thinking about the conservation of cultural heritage. The present volume provides a selection of more than ninety-five texts tracing the development of the conservation of works of art on paper. Comprehensive and thorough, the book relates how paper conservation has responded to the changing place of prints and drawings in society. The readings include a remarkable range of historical selections from texts such as Renaissance printmaker Ugo da Carpi’s sixteenth-century petition to the Venetian senate on his invention of chiaroscuro, Thomas Churchyard’s 1588 essay in verse “A Sparke of Frendship and Warme Goodwill,” and Robert Bell’s 1773 piece “Observations Relative to the Manufacture of Paper and Printed Books in the Province of Pennsylvania.” These are complemented by influential writings by such figures as A. H. Munsell, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida, along with a generous representation of recent scholarship. Each reading is introduced by short remarks explaining the rationale for its selection and the principal matters covered, and the book is supplemented with a helpful bibliography. This volume is an indispensable tool for museum curators, conservators, and students and teachers of the conservation of works of art on paper.

Why did collectors seek out posters and collect ephemera during the late-nineteenth and the twentieth centuries? How have such materials been integrated into institutional collections today? What inspired collectors to build significant holdings of works from cultures other than their own? And what are the issues facing curators and collectors of digital ephemera today? These are among the questions tackled in this volume-the first to examine the practices of collecting prints, posters, and ephemera during the modern and contemporary periods. A wide range of case studies feature collections of printed materials from the United States, Latin America, France, Germany, Great Britain, China, Japan, Russia, Iran, and Cuba. Fourteen essays and one roundtable discussion, all specially commissioned from art historians, curators, and collectors for this volume, explore key issues such as the roles of class, politics, and gender, and address historical contexts, social roles, value, and national and transnational aspects of collecting practices. The global scope highlights cross-cultural connections and contributes to a new understanding of the place of prints, posters and ephemera within an increasingly international art world.

An overdue study of a groundbreaking event, this is the first book-length examination of the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. Intended to rehabilitate Manchester's image at a heady time of economic prosperity, the Exhibition became a touchstone for aesthetic, social, and economic issues of the mid-nineteenth century. Reverberations of this moment can be followed to the present day in the discipline of art history and its practice in public museums of Europe and America. Highlighting the tension between art and commerce, philanthropy and profit, the book examines the Exhibition's organization and the presentation of the works of art in the purpose-built Art Treasures Palace. Pergam places the Exhibition in the context of contemporary debates about museum architecture and display. With an analysis of the reception of both "Ancient" and "Modern" paintings, the book questions the function of exhibitions in the construction of an art historical canon. The book also provides an essential reference tool: a compiled list of all of the paintings exhibited in 1857 that are now in public collections throughout the world, with an analysis of the collecting trends manifest in their provenance.

Focusing on an era that both inherited and irretrievably altered the form and the content of earlier art production, The Art-Journal and Fine Art Publishing in Victorian England, 1850-1880 argues that fine art practices and the audiences and markets for them were influenced by the media culture of art publishing and journalism in substantial and formative ways, perhaps more than at any other time in the history of English art. The study centers on forms of Victorian picture-making and the art knowledge systems defining them, and draws on the histories of art, literature, journalism, and publishing. The historical example employed in the book is that of the more than 800 steel-plate prints after paintings published in the London-based Art-Journal between 1850 and 1880. The cultural phenomenon of the Art Journal print is shown to be a key connector in mid-Victorian art appreciation by drawing out specific tropes of likeness. This study also examines the important links between paint and print; the aesthetic values and domestic aspirations of the Victorian middle class; and the inextricable intertwining of fine art and 'trade' publishing.

Rooted in the study of objects, British Art in the Nuclear Age addresses the role of art and visual culture in discourses surrounding nuclear science and technology, atomic power, and nuclear warfare in Cold War Britain. Examining both the fears and hopes for the future that attended the advances of the nuclear age, nine original essays explore the contributions of British-born and ?gr?rtists in the areas of sculpture, textile and applied design, painting, drawing, photo-journalism, and exhibition display. Artists discussed include: Francis Bacon, John Bratby, Lynn Chadwick, Prunella Clough, Naum Gabo, Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon, Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Laszlo Peri, Isabel Rawsthorne, Alan Reynolds, Colin Self, Graham Sutherland, Feliks Topolski and John Tunnard. Also under discussion is new archival material from Picture Post magazine, and the Festival of Britain. Far from insular in its concerns, this volume draws upon cross-cultural dialogues between British and European artists and the relationship between Britain and America to engage with an interdisciplinary art history that will also prove useful to students and researchers in a variety of fields including modern European history, political science, the history of design, anthropology, and media studies.