Animating the 18th – Century Country House
National Gallery, London, UK
5 March 2015
This one-day scholarly conference encourages fresh thinking about 18th-century country houses as environments that were always evolving, animated by interactions between objects and people.
Organised by the National Gallery, Birkbeck (University of London), and the Paul Mellon Centre, the conference is designed for art historians and scholars of 18th-century fine and decorative arts, architecture and garden history – whether based in museums, collections or universities; curators and custodians of historic houses; and the general public interested in historic houses of the period
Panel 1: Buying, Collecting and Display
Chair: Jonathan Yarker
Silvia Davoli, Paul Mellon Centre Research Curator at Strawberry Hill and Susan Walker, Head of Public Services at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University:
Horace Walpole’s strategies as a collector and the movement of objects at Strawberry Hill over fifty years
Karin Wolfe, Research Fellow at the British School at Rome:
New Rome Animates Old Britain: The Contemporary Art Acquisitions Made in Rome by John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter (1648-1700), for Burghley House
Jon Stobart, Professor of Social History at the University of Northampton:
Remaking an English country house: craftsmen, furnishings and taste at Stoneleigh Abbey in the 1760s
Panel 2: The country house as a complete environment
Chair: Sebastian Edwards
Richard Johns, Lecturer in History of Art at the University of York:
Mind the Step: animating the country house staircase
Laurel O. Peterson, doctoral candidate in the History of Art at Yale University:
Decorating for the Decorated: Louis Laguerre’s Murals in the Saloon at Blenheim
Alison Yarrington, Professor of Art History, Dean of the School of Arts at Loughborough University:
Light, camera, action: the 6th Duke of Devonshire and the evolution of Chatsworth
Panel 3: The country house and visitor experience
Chair: Stephen Lloyd
Anthony Geraghty, Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of York:
Experiencing Castle Howard
Stephen Bending, Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton:
Experiencing the Country House Pleasure Garden
Jocelyn Anderson, Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art
Visitors’ Experiences and Travellers’ Writings: The 18th-century Country House as Tourist Attraction