 Are you ready to go? I think we'll start getting going. I welcome everyone here to the PMC and just to and welcome all of you watching online just to say my name is Mark Hallett. I'm the director of the formal自 Ballmen's Centre and to treat to have you here with us both in person and virtually. This event will be is streamed as I say and it's also going to be recorded for a later release. And just say if you're watching online and would like to ask one of our speakers a question, i ni wedi bod hynny yn y cwnau bod y bydd ymlaen y bydd y bwrdd yn y cwmwyng ymlaen. A'r bobl yn y cwmwyng yma ar y cwmwyng ymlaen, ac yn gallu cael clywed o'r dweud o'i ddefnyddio'r cyfrifennu o'i dweud. Ond, mae'r cyfrifennu ar hynny, mae'r cyfrifennu ar y dwyf am yr ysbyt, a'r cyfrifennu ar y cwmwyng ymlaen, allwn, ar gyfer y cwmwyng ymlaen. Felly yna bod yn cael ei fod yn ei gweithio i'w cwmwyng ymlaen? yma, oherwydd y maen nhw'n cael ei wneud o'r gwleid winners yn gweithio. A sahen nhw'n gweithio, fe ydych chi'n fawr o'r gael ei flynedd hynny. O'r ffair yn bach i gael, maen nhw'n fawr o boblenni, a fod yny'r cyflwyng gymaint, fe yna'r newydd yn daith y maenddeddiad yn y ffair ar y cwylfa'n o'r fwyllteig, ac mae nhw'n fawr o'r fawr o'r pwau pwau cyfeirio ar y sefydliad. Mwr o'r darllen, rydyn ni'n gwneud yn ei fawr o'i bobl yn dd allwn yn siarad am yr enwedig iddo ac yn ddweud yr hynny o gafodd maen nhw ym 18 ac 19 ysbytydd. Llyfoddan nhw'n dryw yn cael ei gael am gyhoedd hwnnw iddo i'r gwellad неid gan ymddiannol, yn gweithio rhaed i'r prob o'r programa arall, rydych chi ymddiannol. Ersig y gallwn gweld yn y cyffredinol, ond y gŷn yr ysbyndon Bwysig Brydychart yn dda i'r gwerthiant y dymas, yn ysbynnu am mewn gwirionedd, cefnod am yr ystod yn deall. Gallwch fynd enghraiffti am yr MC, a yna'r riffwlad ar y program, ac rymdeithas fel ei hwn yn ymweld a'i cynhyrchu arfa, wrth gwrs yn allan, yn ei ysgrifennu i weithio ar gyfer ysgrifennu ac yna'n dau i'r gweithio bwysig ar hyn o gwybod gyda rhywfanaethau a gair. Yr cwyddoedd yn ysgrifennu ar hyn o cymryd ysgrifennu yn rhoi'r arfwedd i'r cyffredinol. Rweithredu i ddechrau, yn ystod, ysgrifennu Eu Sgrifennu padrofin, ac yma nhw wedi'i reoedd Llanu Cymru â i'r ddweud am Llanu Carolin i'r Rhyw Llywodraeth yn 1811, a felly credu'r bobweidio'n digud o fynd o'r ddaig yn lle, rôl, y ffóor a chympath o'r wyebwch. Mae'r cyfl Posigor Martyr Uneddaeth yn y cyflogfyr sy'n ei bod yn mynd i'n mynd i'r rhaid. Ac mae'r cyflog fyddion i'r llyfr i'r drafodol yn yr Ulyidol, i'r ddweud y Rhyw Llywodraeth yn 1782. felly at pethau yn ymellafol yn rhywbeth yn verse. Mae'n mynd i'n ffordd hynny'n bod dim yn ddigon i gyfrifiadau. Mae'n ffordd hynny'n gymhael o'r cyffredigau ond roedd y rhaid ddau'n amlwg yn rhoi yn rŵdd arlaed. Ddiolch i'n du ff耐mian iddyn nhw, ddysgu'r pawr o'r ddarlyddweith ar lawl ym 1818 o'r DUH a'r Ddych yn yr unmar, a dw i'r wych i'n gwybod i'r defnyddio myfaf yw'r enthlaeth, a o y cyd-draeth yn y cyfnod llwyddiant. A'r cerddwn i'r pwylltio anghylch oedd eich hwyl i'r unrhyw o'r newid. Yn y cerddwch Pryd, Nick Robbins, yn cyfnod o'r ddweud o'r cyd-draeth i ddweud o'r rhaglenau. Fy oed o ddweud o'r rhaglenau. Nick rydyn nhw'n cyd-draeth oherwydd yn cyfnod o'r rhaglenau yn compressed yn cael cyffredinol. In our fifth lecture, Nika Elder returned to the Royal Academy for her selection, rereading John Singleton Coppill's remarkable Watson and the Shark exhibiting 1778 as now Sir Chllurin and Sarah on fazer o'r newyddus. Reo rhaid i unrhyw o'r unrhyw o'r newydd, yn enghreifio maen nhw'n cael ei bushau i'r llunas. 1978, yn ysgrifennu gwahanol yn y cifredu cymryd a'r hyn. A'r oed, ond, ac mae'r coleg, mae'r coleg, mae'r coleg, mae'r coleg, mae'r coleg, mae'r coleg, mae'r coleg, ar gyfer y prifysgol ar gyfer y prifysgol ar gyfer y prifysgol, ar gyfer y prifysgol ar gyfer y prifysgol o bodd rydych chi o'r amlwg diolch o David. Fy enw i'n ddod i ysgrifennu'r cyfrydol yn ymgyrch, ysgrifennu'n cyfrifysgol, ac yn y rhai ddedig, yn y moment, y when Wright's Art was being appreciated for its novelty and innovation. I'd like to begin and open things up by asking my fellow panellists, in turn, really about what it was that made you choose the image you focused on in your talk. I'll begin by a couple of us, here in the room, and I will actually turn to the two, Martin. Martin, my own, first of all, what made you decide to choose the nightmare? Mae'r meddwl serio wedi cymaint gael y cyfath落e ofyn am ei hunan. Ac mae'r meddwl sy'n meddwl gysylltu i Bradishon. Ac mae'n meddwl gyda'ch serio yn y casgliadau ac mae'n meddwl gyda'ch meddwl ysbryd iawn. Mae ddiwrch yn meddwl i'r meddwl hyn yn credu ein gewch yn meddwl yn grithgau'r newid, ac mae'n meddwl gyda'ch meddwl ysbryd iawn, ac mae'r meddwl yn mynd i'r gwlad, o ysgolwyr i'w defnyddio ardi, a fel y sgolwyr ac yw'r creueth yn frysgau. Mae'n safbryd i'r dyn nhw a'n argyrchu i gynnwys a ffarn stealadu. Yn y 20 yr yma, eu bod wedi bod pob yn gyfodd mwy o amser, dwy dyn nhw i gynghwy βle Lady, a byddai'r dyn nhw gan y pâ cyntaf yn gilydd y gweithgau yn gylwyr yma yma ar gyfer 2006. Yn yw'r syniadau'r llans, dwy i'n gwych i'w amser, o ddweud yn gwneud o gyda'r ysgolau, ac yn gyfodol ar y llwytu ydw i'w gweithio gylwyddiadau. Ac mae gennym ni'n gweithio'r gweithio, ac ydym ni'n gweithio'n cyd-ddoedd? Felly, mae'r modd i hefyd yn cael ei ddweud y gweithio. Dyna, mae'r digud i'n cyd-ddoedd yn cyd-ddoedd, ac mae'r cyd-ddoedd yn cyd-ddoedd. Mae'r cyd-ddoedd yn cyd-ddoedd yn cael eu cyd-ddoedd, I know hitting 50 and it's hard to believe, but you know turning 50 and that changes your perspective on life, changing role around the same time that I was a curator at the Tate for a long time and as I'm occupied in curatorial roles working with the collection and working displays and exhibitions and then I joined the Paul Menon Centre and the British Arts Network so my own position changed a great deal and there's a chance that we think well how do I think about art history how do I think about curating having a bit of distance on the work that you do as a curator but then also being involved through the work that you do as a curator. So the network and through the work here that we do here in kind of thinking about British art thinking about British art history thinking about British art studies more broadly so that came into play. But then also you know if it's a work which you can see a sliver of it on the screen there. It's a work which is about sex, it's a work which is about violence, it's a work which is about taste and imagination and the way it was received and some quite challenging ways. Arguably it's a painting about race, and it's a painting by an artist who is part of British art history, but who was foreign, it was a Swiss artist or Swiss born. So in that regard you can think well what you might say about the painting now may be different than what I was saying about it 20 years ago or 15 years ago in the light of, you know, all the things which have happened over the last five, six, 10 years, me too, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, and the whole kind of changing world of thinking about British art, thinking about British art history but also thinking about culture, cultural values and social justice. So it felt like an opportunity to revisit a work, which, you know, I know well, which is familiar to many people, but to start casting a new light on that and start kind of rethinking what we might say about a painting which is so familiar and which has such a long and complex reception history. Thanks very much. Martin Pusall, can you talk a bit about what made you choose this particular picture by writer Derby? Yes, well thank you, good evening everybody. I was just speaking last week so you might actually be able to remember my talk. Yeah, well it, as I said at the time, I repeat that now, it relates closely to my current research interests. I wanted to do something that I was really enmeshed in, and this project is a catalogue raisonne of the oil paintings of Joseph Wright at Derby. He's an artist who I've been familiar with for, as part of 40 years, and I've always admired, I've always found him one of the most fascinating and, dare I say, underrated of the major artists of the period, but I've never really gone in deep with Wright. So I wanted to do something that was part of my research world. That's very important to me, but rather than just light on something that I could talk about quite happily. I think the second thing was that the picture itself had just entered a public collection. It had just been acquired and made by Derby Art Gallery. So it wasn't a picture that was very, very familiar to us. We'd seen it in illustrations in books, and I knew it, but it makes a big difference when a picture comes into the limelight and lots of people can get to see it, appreciate it, and get to understand it at first-hand basis because I'm very much a believer that art is a first-hand kind of experience and confrontation. I went up to see it in May when it was launched. And I was also interested because this particular acquisition tells us, helped us understand the ways in which art, which would be the private transitions into the public. I talked a little bit about that at the time. It wasn't a case of, it wasn't simply a gift, it wasn't simply a gift. It came through something called acceptance in you. And I wanted to talk about the way in which artworks find their way into something we sometimes take for granted, but it doesn't actually work like that. I also wanted to pick a work which was a key work in Wright's career, and I think I wanted to talk about this transformative period in Wright's career from the mid-1760s to the late-1760s. So this is before the Royal Academy is actually founded and put it in the context of some of his greatest achievements, those extremely, extremely nocturns. And I felt as my hunch that this had to be somewhere in the Fermanent and had to be related to it. And it helped me draw in some other works that he made during, I think he made during the period, these extraordinary chalk, black and white monochrome works on paper. And I wanted to think about the issues, which can sound rather mundane, about dating. Because sometimes with a work of art, we just accept as a ready-made, oh it was painted in 1763, it was painted in 1768 or whatever, and that kind of gets stuck to it as a label. Sometimes quite literally as a label. And then we start thinking about, you know, there was a moment when it didn't exist, and then there was a moment when it did exist. So I like to kind of imagine it can take myself back to that moment and put it in context. So I think it's also, as Mark said, it's a fascinating image relating to artistic self-perception and self-visualisation. I think it's one of the great self-portraits of the 18th century. And then finally, to take us back to a picture that I might have talked about, when we first discussed the series, I thought, well, I'm definitely going to talk about writer Derby, what is his greatest picture? It's, to my mind, and I think a lot of people agree, it's an experiment with an air pump national gallery. But I thought, let's go for something different, because the buy one, get one free, was on the reverse of the self-portrait, was the oil sketch for the experiment with an air pump. So it led me to think, not only to discuss the two separately, but how they might relate to one another. So there are a lot of different, it was a multi-sided kind of challenge, and I really enjoyed the time that I put into it. When you talk about how we actually prepare talks and the way in our methodologies about how we actually put things together. But it was a very enjoyable and kind of a genuinely refreshing exercise for me, and I hope for others too. Thank you. Can I now turn to, we have two of our speakers, of course, based in the US, and we are now going to ask them for their responses to the same question. Maybe first, Paris, as you began, you kicked off our series. Can you tell us a bit about what made you choose that particular work, the trotter work to launch your exploration of women artists in the period? Yeah, exactly. Can you hear me first of all? Great. I chose the trotter work because I felt like it was really, really representative of the opportunities and challenges that we have in studying women artists from this period more broadly. We know from exhibition catalogs that hundreds, if not thousands of women were exhibiting their art at this time. A lot of them were trying to be professionals, they were listing their names, they were listing their addresses. We know that some of them were selling works or were trying to through different newspaper advertisements, but a lot of the details of what they were doing are only slowly coming to the surface. And a lot of it's simply unrecoverable, you know, with the current information we have. For instance, if we have a Miss Smith who exhibited a portrait of a lady in 1800, we can find a portrait of a lady, it can be signed Miss Smith and we'll never know if that was actually the one she exhibited. And so what's great about the trotter painting is that it was exhibited, we know it was exhibited as portrait of a lady. But because of the status of its sitter, we survived with its kind of attribution and history intact. That said, although we know a lot about the sitter, it's Caroline Lamb, she was an aristocrat, she had a series of notorious affairs, including with Byron. We know very, very little about the artist. And so what this painting represents for me is all of the ways that we can open windows into what was happening for women artists in this period, and a lot of them are very oblique. And some of them are surprisingly direct. And one of the wonderful things about this prompt of choosing a painting and seeing where it can lead you. Let me kind of use this as a launching pad into all these different directions of the ways we can recover, but more than that, you know, really study in depth, what we do know and start to compile that information to recreate what was an incredibly vibrant and active world of women artists, working in isolation but working alongside their male peers and kind of using all the markers and working to achieve all the markers that traditionally convey status and professionalism and that they would have, of which they would have been highly aware. So, the combined relative anonymity of all of the artist, and of the way the portrait was exhibited seemed perfectly symbolic for me, and then the really known quantity of having the painting survive and knowing so much about the sitter showed us how rich all of these artists may have been and many of them likely were that don't survive and so it felt like it really begins to scratch the service and show what was there, and what may be recoverable. Thank you. Nica, can you tell us a bit about what's in the shark. Sure. Like Martin, I really wanted to work on something that was at the heart of my research right now. And so that's work that's very much in progress, but I got to Watson and the Shark actually through Copley's early colonial portraits so I'm an Americanist by training. And then I started working on Copley looking at those early portraits that he did while he was still in the Massachusetts Bay colony and going even further back I got into that project because I had been researching the material culture of slavery. And I noticed all of these fascinating objects and images that were circulating around the time that Copley was prominent in the colonies and so I started thinking about his portraits in relation to the practice and institution of slavery there. And the fascinating thing in that work was that he at that time had not depicted any people of color so all of the portraits were of white sitters. And every time that I was giving a talk on that material and was introduced as giving a talk on Copley and race, someone assumed that I was going to be talking about Watson and the shark. And so after I kind of completed that phase of thinking through Copley's portraits I thought, well let me actually turn to Watson and the Shark and see how I might feel differently about that work how we might be able to see it differently. If we think about Copley's early work as having been invested in race to, despite or in fact because of the fact it was focusing on white sitters. And then as I started working on Watson and the shark, then I was always being like congratulated for my hook spot and taking up such an iconic painting within the American and British canon. Which always was fascinating to me because I think I have started to really try to inhabit Copley's perspective on these works. And so in my mind, what's interesting about working on Watson and the shark today and the reason why I wanted to make it the focus of my talk was because I wanted to think through it before it was this iconic painting. When it was for Copley, his initial foray into history painting when it was an experiment that he wasn't sure was going to pan out. And when he was really trying to do his utmost to make it a painting that would have lasting resonance. Thank you. Thanks very much both turning returning to the room here maybe straight on to you Esther if you could talk a bit about your choice of these two unusual and amazing portraits. Absolutely and thanks Mark for this evening and hi everyone. So, again, like Martin Possell and like Nica, it's a kind of immediate answers that this comes out of some research that I've been doing at the moment which is on the aesthetics of Henry Christophe and his court in Haiti more broadly and I've been writing about those of you who watch my lecture that amazing one of the amazing coins that was made by Thomas Wyam, showing Christophe as a Roman emperor that was sent to Haiti for his behest. And the the two portraits that we looked at flash up in that work as kind of supplementary materials but not the focus so I wanted to use it as an opportunity to to learn more about the portraits themselves. Because unlike the nightmare say they are deeply uncanonical. And while they are known to historians of Haiti and various other in other fields, they are really understudied in the history of British art and very much not on the British art radar so I wanted to use this as an opportunity to shed some light on them to share them with people that might not know them. And to then think about what knowing about them can tell us or shed new light on other aspects of British art so which is why you know this thing about what do they what does it tell us to see them next to Turner at the Royal Academy and what does it, what does their presence there tell us about the Royal Academy as a as an exhibition space. In a way I think perhaps a more interesting answer to this is that I'm really compelled by the way that these works collide both the most traditional kinds of British art history, and the kind of old canon of British art history van dyke Reynolds Lawrence, the tradition of manna portraiture. They collide that they force us to collide that history with, you know, some of the most kind of critical work going on right now in the field of critical race in black history. And, and, and history of the Haitian Revolution. And what I'm interested in is our history that can bridge these things that can both be attentive to our, you know, deeply inherited and well honed history of British art that has been kind of generated over many decades and many generations. And what you might think of as more critical speculative history that has to happen say in the absence of traditional archives. And, and, and it's that bridging that I think is very exciting and that that I want to try and do and and and want to encourage my students to do. Thank you. Yes, and thank you, Mark, and thank you everyone. My story is sort of more contingent and personal in the sense that I've been George Romney the subject of the talk I gave is an artist I've been interested in for a very long time. 15 years ago somehow I worked on a small show about the group portrait of him with William Haley that I started the talk with. And he's Romney has just continued to kind of fascinating me but I think to the, to the point about the kind of history of of British art history it's interesting how he's an artist who sort of comes in and out of focus and artist who in his time was extremely prominent extremely well known extremely successful and then and then has for various reasons come back in and out of focus over time so I think that's always interesting to see why the works that I decided to actually talk about though. I chose partially being quite compelled by them, and it was actually an invitation from Esther a few years ago to talk at a workshop for a project she's working on that made me return to them. The context was actually, you know, after the summer of 2020 when I was still living in the United States and thinking a lot about the role of prisons and society. Those works, when I looked at them again I thought oh actually this could be a way for me to learn myself and to think about the history of the way the penitentiary the way the prison has has functioned and culture and what images do or don't offer us. As a way of pressing back against some of those formations. So that was how I came to those. Thank you all very much indeed. Now can I ask you all to reflect on what you think this particular set of talks tells us about the state of British studies or the study of British art in this period at the moment and what reflectors you might have about. The series as a whole, and the kind of preoccupations of the series. What things to does that shout out to you. We can go around in order or we can maybe move around a bit more flexibly but Martin to start with you. Jumping because I think there's two very simple observations I'd make. And I've got some initial thoughts about that but also be interested to hear what other people think. This series is called Georgian Provocations series two, I think it's late Georgian. I don't think there was anybody talking about tree 1760 material. So there are like two whole George's missing. And I looked at what George provocations series one there was Hogarth Richard Wilson. There was sort of, you know, it wasn't heavily early 1870 but this is very emphatically post 1760. I don't know if that was deliberate in organizing this or does it represent well this is where the work is happening. And if this is where the work is happening, well, why might that be at this moment. And I think I wonder if what makes late Georgian late Georgian if we call it that obviously it's going to old fashioned term. It might be to do with things that were forming in the 18th century, whether we can think about as a kind of cultural field or system for the arts are pretty firmly in place by the 1760s and beyond. You think about art exhibitions, think about art criticism and commentary, think about the Royal Academy that 1768 69. You know there's a kind of institutionalization, and that work is done. It's almost like you can start looking at other things want that once the art world is formed in a particular way by the 1760s. So but I've been interested to know what other people thought about that periodization. The other thing is about genre. Where's the landscape. I think you had Richard Wilson in series one. Probably wasn't a lot of landscape, but actually if you think of where modern modern 18th century British art studies really took off and developed became you know arguably a very exciting kind of field. It was with people working on landscape in the 80s and 90s landscape and property was so squarely in the focus for a long period, including into a period when we when I started to think about empire a bit more. I think a Diane Krebs crits his book which is a kind of landscape based or Jeff Quilley on Hodges. So where's the landscape gone. Okay. Any other thoughts from panellists about what the series has told you about where we are with British art studies right now of this period, or of the late Georgian period. Well, I mean, again, a very simple. Well, first of all, just to respond to you, Martin. I mean, it is interesting to what extent Georgian is a helpful descriptor for us here. Because I imagine that 1818 and the Haitian Revolution doesn't feel very Georgian to lots of people that think about that material, you know, I mean it is technically late Georgian art, and it's late Georgian context, but it's an interesting. And that word Georgian has such particular resonances in the history of the study of British art. And is it a term that's useful to retain. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a nice thought. It's an interesting thought. Again, a really simple observation about the talks was just how wide the spectrum is between the most canonical works and very, very obscure ones like Eliza Trotter's Caroline lamb, for example. And there's this, again, this interesting kind of duality or symbiosis between deep empirical study, like the kind of study that Paris has been doing to just unearth the statistics and, you know, dig back up those names and figures from the Academy catalogs and so on, and Martin your work on, you know, redating like the basic problem of. Have we got our dates right now there's still big questions to ask about works that we thought that we knew those kind of nuts and bolts about. The kind of empiricism but then there's also these critical social history of our critical frames so race, gender, and so on in interest in the poor and the marginalized and the, you know, the incarcerated in your case. And so I don't know this is a question really for you. For anyone else. Is this just a kind of continuation of the seeds that were planted in the 1980s with the arrival of the new art history or is that is there something new going on here are these dynamics ones that are simply kind of the, the late flowering of, of tensions or binaries or. Yeah dynamics that that were that have been established for a long time. I want to respond to that quest that provocation or question from from Esther. Yeah. I think that's that's really interesting and when one of the things that struck me was actually what you would said your goal was with your talk which is to kind of address this collision of, you know what's traditionally been studied with what, you know, else this period. And, you know, perpetuated. And that's one of the things I was most struck by in the talks was that even though a lot of them were really, I think challenging the concept of Georgia and you know in a lot of traditional frameworks. Everything was still kind of tied to these pillars of the ways that we study British art. And I found that fascinating, you know that no one's really challenging. As far as I could tell the basic infrastructure of the discipline but they're changing the ways that it's applied and what it's looking at any of what falls under it, but we're using the traditional tools we're using a lot of the. I mean traditional in a bad way I mean it as it's so established that we, and we believe in it, you know the value to such a degree. That they become pillars that allow for this incredibly wide ranging and diverse set of questions that people decided to pose for the series. In terms of the empiricism. What I can say for the study of gender is it kind of, it does go in these cycles where women or you know concepts of gender, get attention and people kind of acknowledge that women artists existed or something like that. And then it goes away, and then it comes back and it goes away and so maybe this is rebirthing something from the 80s that was rebirthing something from the early 70s and it keeps going and each time, maybe it raised. These artists get raised a little higher above the surface and there's a little more lasting power before they go away again I don't know. But I think a lot of it actually has to do with. At least the empiricism on my end the ability to count, and the ability to, because I've always said with my project I don't think I could have done it before computers and the Internet. I would have loved to have, but it would have taken three times the amount of time, but being able to type up names to have different categories to cut and paste to use Excel. Let me come to, you know, learn in a way that I just wouldn't have been able to without these tools. I think that's a really important point for us all to acknowledge is the transformation of the kinds of work that we're doing thanks to the digital and online resources. Nick, your thoughts on what this series as a whole suggests to you about where we are with the subject. Yeah, I mean, I think one, maybe both sort of chiming with with my own common I actually think of history painting as the kind of key object of study of 18th century British art and maybe that's my misconception, but I actually found it very interesting how history painting kind of haunted continues to haunt a lot of the work that we're doing, even if it's another genres, whether that's portraiture or genre painting. And I also thought it was really interesting and maybe this is just what we do as art historians, but a lot of our papers were about these. Trying to sort of think about ambition in this moment, late Georgian art and also we've always thought of this moment as a kind of a very ambitious moment for British art for kind of establishing various kinds of institutions or ways of working and I found it interesting that we were talking about sort of ambitious projects both projects that sort of succeeded projects that failed projects that succeeded in their time and yet have then receded from view. And so I'm not sure if that is a direction the field is going in but I found it interesting that a lot of a lot of the talks centered on these kinds of gambits almost of artists a kind of wagers that they were or patrons, both artists and patrons. I think it's really just to sort of add just a footnote to that I was curious, not in all of the talk so much but certainly in your talk and in Martin puzzle, and indeed I think you Martin my own. This question of biography also kind of haunting a little bit like what we do with the artist biography and it was fascinating in the questions for example that came up after your talk. People wanted to come back to Romney and Romney's biography and Romney psyche and all of that and that did seem to be something that was in the air for for much of what was being said but not a thing that we were, you know, tackling head on by grabbing the bull by the horns. So that's something to add. Martin puzzle. That would collision that you brought up I think is is kind of key in all this that your portraits definitely didn't. These two portraits that you explored, whether whether they were consciously colliding or not I don't know. I think it was interesting to see that the works that were chosen and selected were works which are kind of gave a new edge to what was going on at the period and obviously I go back to to write a Derby. We look back with the perspective of the benefit and we constructed the history of British art Reynolds games were right with Wilson's often years and etc. But at the time, these, what the exciting thing is, it was being made. I don't know where things were going to power how they're going to pan out. And then I don't think even Joseph right himself knew in 1763 was going to produce these pictures. It was a catalyst that was called Peter Perez bird and then his life changed and then all sorts of other things changed. And I think it's interesting that the works we chose. I'm not sure how big Eliza Trotter is they're not big big pictures. You know, the nightmares not a big picture physically minds not a big picture yours definitely are they look like full lens but they're not which is something we were touching on before they were drawings. So they're not things that were commanding massive spaces in public displays they were important and they gained an important. I'm always fascinated by the fact we talk about exhibitions and exhibitions are important and it was exhibited then it was exhibited then and people saw it. But it was just for a fleeting moment they saw it for a week. And there's sometimes there was no record it just disappears and it goes back into a private collection like my portrait. And it just vanishes and even pictures like the experiment with an air pump and the already my right they disappeared to. Yes to a message and yes to a records. And so I'm fascinated by, you know, we are things have changed digital absolutely I couldn't in any of this without the digital revolution that we've experienced. You know, we spent far too much time looking at computer screens but but but gosh how much we can actually glean from that and the. We've been taught to think laterally in different ways you know wiring has changed because of that you know, and we want, we want instant gratification, you know, if you find the facts at 10 o'clock you want to find the next bit at 11 o'clock you don't write a letter and expect a reply. Two months time. So we're all on a kind of speed dating kind of kind of thing with with this subject. So we weren't looking back I think you know if I go back so 3040 years when I was a student starting out. I would have been surprised and whether the student or attending lectures to have a series of lectures as diverse and different and kind of as colliding as these as these were, you know, because we it's a public lecture course but we're not trying to tell the history of British art. We're not trying to suggest that's the cannon or it's not the cannon and I think what I appreciate is the freedom that people have to explore and the respect that the people are willing to take on this stuff and to think about different methodologies, even though they may not be the way that that we ourselves think we're very open I think that one of the good things we're very open to thinking of the possibilities of stories and narratives. So, so to me, it's, it's been, you know, it's been sort of pushing boundaries back we could I suspect, you know, what question we didn't ask will he hadn't done that what were you talked about. What would you talked about, and I bet we've all come up with half a dozen things. You know, I could have talked about Thomas Buett, for example, who I really have a long time for. Well, that's, that's an entirely different world. You know, I mean, we have so many different ways and so many different so it's a very rich vein, and I would say this because I worked for the formal and century British art that was extraordinary. Just how varied and diverse the field has become in the last 1050 years. Nika, could you tell us a bit about what your reflections are having with oversight over the series as a whole. Before I think a couple of different threads come to mind, I would say, excuse me. One of them is something that I think a few people have touched on tangentially but about. I was really struck that there was simultaneous focus on these major iconic figures, and then this resurrection of like quote unquote minor artists, and throughout that's something that I've been thinking about and it seems to me that. One of the productive issues that brings to the table is not necessarily, you know, sticking with those categories or reevaluating who should fall into which one, but instead it does seem to reflect a broader kind of interest in the figure of the artist in the stories that we tell and I think this goes back to what Esther was saying about biography to this seems to me actually very emblematic of our moment in art history more broadly of really thinking through how do we return artists to art history but in a way that is more equitable and expansive and maybe illuminating and insightful than has been done in the past like this seems like a natural evolution from the post structuralist turn, and so that's been I think just really fascinating to think about and in some ways I think that the parameters of the series to focus on or launch from a singular work of art kind of precipitates that question. But I think it is really getting at something that is that people are thinking about a lot within art history kind of within British studies but beyond as well right now. I just wanted to respond to something that power said about whether or not the talks are using traditional methods or kind of pushing boundaries into new directions and it reminded me of one of the questions that Nick got that you may have asked it but about whether this, you know, corpus of 500 drawings is somehow challenging the ability to produce a coherent interpretation. And so, I think to me that's one of the kind of richest outcomes of this simultaneous exploration of like minor projects by major figures and major projects by minor figures is that it leads us to some of these limit points. I think that the reflection I've got that will have struck maybe some of you watching and online and in person is, is that of the six speakers we've got we've got as it were representatives of one of a certain generation of scholars and curators. If I can say describe both you, the two martins by my side and I certainly include myself in this, who are trained in the British system, and we have actually four speakers from the series, but all of whom have been trained in the states. And that includes Esther, of course, as well, who did her PhD and not other training at Yale, alongside Nick. And so it's really interesting to think about whether the ways in which this field has been transformed by the kinds of approaches taken, not both at Yale but also places like Princeton where Paris studied. And so it's interesting to think about the way in which the field has been shaped and reshaped by the attention that kind of the questions and the methods that have been promoted in the American University system rather than a Bush one. And what that tells us I mean it's interesting from us. At that point of view as a poor man in the center of studies but shot, founded by an American of course scholar, part of Yale University, but based here in London. And so in a sense we've always been an Anglo American institution. But it's interesting to think about the ways in which the field is shifting was changed, thanks partly to the emergence of a group of younger scholars interestingly coming through the American system, rather than the British one I wonder what that tells us. I'm not quite sure what it does, but we're interested to hear people's reflections on that kind of birds eye perspective on the shift in the field. I guess there's something to think about here about the or something to consider here about the, the social and the kind of political environment in which the discipline is formed, and harking back to that question which I think can be, you know, a focus on landscape as in the 80s and 90s and John barrel and Michael Rosenthal and David soul killer so forth a number of really kind of key publications has opened up British art studies 18th century British art studies in a particular way. And the way that retrospectively at least one I think even at the time there's a sense that there were questions about class and property in catches Britain which helped shape that that intellectual work and that kind of intellectual project. So Meron had a different kind of context and maybe you can argue that that wasn't there. I've been thinking about this evening and what we're going to talk about I had a look at a review article that Douglas Fordham did in 2012. So it's now it's 10 years ago now, and he was sort of reviewing the civic humanist tradition and saying well actually we need to be moved beyond that because the blind spots that there were within that civic humanist focus which is going to focus on notions of property and class propriety, which fitted with or which connected with political concerns in Britain in the 70s 80s and 90s. And what he was pointing to there as well, you know the blind spots around empire around slavery around the global. And, and state building. And you think, well, I think that Esther and Nick, I mean, Yale in the, in the years after 2012 actually became a hotbed for some of that thinking which I think is sort of informed informed the series as well. So that kind of that's that shift and what the political and kind of intellectual environment age which might be kind of driving those those points of emphasis or direction. But that Martin that it's no coincidence that that turn to empire, and the global in British art and particularly questions of race within British art has been driven from across the Atlantic. That perspective that that the Atlantic distance gives you on this question of empire is really crucial to that I think. I was also going to add, I mean this is partially specifically for Nica, because I was really struck in her talk that she was reflecting or sort of thinking about this painting, both as a maybe both as an Americanist, whatever that means and as a British art specialist, whatever that means in this period right. Because I think that was part of what was so fresh and exciting about that talk was sort of both thinking about how this, this particular work Watson and the shark and actually remember with my, you know, orals fields and graduate school. You know, there were paintings that I put on both my American art list and my British art list, and they function very differently in those two cannons, what they mean in those cannons. It's Benjamin West work being the other key example and so I thought that was really interesting about how British art, what British art means when it becomes open out to and maybe ways that hasn't always been to scholars trained and other kinds of methodological preoccupation. Paris, Nica, do you want to respond to this, these reflections around this shift. Yeah, Paris maybe. First of all. I was thinking about that to actually kind of where everyone is coming from, as I was listening to the talks and the generational and the, you know, American educational background. And I don't want to just repeat what Esther said so I probably going to defer to her here I think that the American perspective is really really crucial for the Empire conversation. Not that it wouldn't exist otherwise by any means but I think that it. The distance of the Atlantic, as she said, allows for a type of reflection that has then been integrated in an incredibly interesting and fruitful way. I also, I was trained in a history department, which I think is another angle here by by a story and who was trained in Britain and so this cross, you know, Atlantic. All of the directions but it also certainly had me posing different questions. I think then if I had been trained in an art history department or if I was doing my project under the alms of one and I think that the cross disciplinary aspect. Was in was part of many, many people's talks and I wonder about that as part of this moment as well. Because, thank you. Sorry, carry on. No, no, no, that's, that's plenty. Martin, Nico, anyone else about this issue. I'm just going back, you know, because I've got a reasonably long memory in terms of the history of art and trade. I remember when I, when I kind of got going in my 20s. There was always a kind of matching up between the artist and the artist story and so you were the Reynolds person you were the so and so person, you know, as if you had this kind of right of ownership. You were deferred to if that were if you were the person so who was the lily person. These days, it's kind of thankfully it's not really the case even if you're writing as I am proposing to write a catalogue raising that you don't suddenly become the right person, or the wrong person. There was this kind of ownership and I think that that's built out into all sorts of other interesting things about national culture and the ownership of objects and objects in private collections and who has the right to speak and walk the floor, and enter the buildings and the collections I spend a lot of time in private collections, and I really enjoy it in many ways, but I realize I'm entering another stratosphere when I do that. You know, which you're allowed even now the license to speak and talk about certain things in certain places. It's quite interesting that it's, it's kind of residual. And I, you know, I think we can all think of David Salkin and Richard Wilson, you know, having the temerity to maybe offer a slightly different view on the subject be wrapped on the knuckles for doing so perhaps because he himself was Canadian, perhaps because he's talking about a great national figure in British art, but he's actually fascinating as that narrative has unfolded since what it was a 82 one day did that show. So, I think it's, it's fascinating in a way is that the way in which it's kind of unfolded. And I think that we, as I said, kind of lived through it. It's fascinating how we've kind of moved, moved beyond that that you know that the cannon has grown because our attitude to the cannon has changed and I like to think that a lot of people who own pictures who have that kind of right of ownership are actually much more willing to countenance and listen to because it's not going to hurt you I mean if somebody, you know tells you something you might not want to know, except maybe that's not worth as much as he thought it was. That always makes you go out. But I think there's a, there's a much, I would hope that there's a much freer flow in that sense but as I say I public and private. These are objects at the end of the day they have places that are in museums that are in properties. It is still very fundamentally loyal to con assertion in some ways I mean that's what your talk in so many ways. I mean it's about. We're talking about all these changes the discipline has gone through but you know the focus on dating a lot of focus on attribution in the talk about, you know who this picture might be by who it might be dating. I mean, and that idea of you know that that kind of attentiveness that kind of visual comparison analysis was right at the heart of your talk and in many ways it's what's interesting is that you still very much believe that that kind of work is crucial, and that it's not outmoded or I mean, in many ways your talk was promoting, you know, a mode of thinking and approach that's that I think maybe hasn't had the tension. That's true. I don't think you just simply can chuck out the word empirical your own empirosis so therefore you just gather information and have an idea afterwards. That's not the case, because often you do have an idea, and you're testing things out against, you know, but it was interesting talking to thinking about other people when you approach something so that you came across these portraits are not well known. So you had to forge a path through. And obviously things did happen as you did your research. I suspect you didn't know when you started out that they were hung at the RA right next to the Field of Waterloo by JMW Turner. But when you did you thought, hmm, that's worth thinking about. And just to say that, you know, that's what I mean by this absolute need to bridge bridge bridge the empirical and we need to hang on, you know, that work of new catalogue resume that rethink dates, you know, without that kind of base of information Although I also believe that there's lots that can be done and should be done just, you know, just because we don't have archives and we don't have facts in a traditional way doesn't mean that certain stories should just not be done because they don't conform to certain kinds of traditional methodologies, but at the same time, I really believe that that empirical quote unquote empirical work for one type of better term is absolutely fundamental and has to be fought for and done at the same time that we can do this other, you know, more speculative work. I really, really think that and just picking up on something that you said, Martin about the kind of inclusivity or kind of broadness Catholicism of the field. I would say I don't know I think I might speak for others when I say this in in what we're classing as my my generation. But you know, I definitely come from the history of British art and I'm interested in my own debts to the history of British art as a field and I'm very much located in that. You know, to be iconoclastic for a second I also kind of don't care about defending Britishness. I care about where ideas of Britishness come from. But I'm not bothered about defending a kind and delimiting delimiting a field that is called British art and I think that's a big difference. I think it's important I was chatting the other just very briefly I was chatting the other night about your hands off me. I was talking to people a little bit about the history of the appreciation of the understanding as often and it's extraordinary way into the 20th century. And it goes right away from when he first arrived in England right in 20th century. He's kind of not one of us, as if it matters. He's not born and bred. He's not Reynolds he's not Gainsborough. And then the other thing is which is I still find shocking. Well, he's kind of Jewish as well. He was Roman Catholic, but it goes on and on and on it goes through and through and you find critic after critic after writer just chucking this stuff in. Because if that's a way as a sort of way of explaining, you know, a waterhouse said well, you know, a lot of time for waterhouse great scholar. But you know, someone like that said well, all those things he would kind of iterate and say well, he's kind of fundamentally lazy. Intellectually lazy, which I found extraordinary that you can throw those things out, because you're educated within a British kind of way of thinking and the British system. Nica, I think Nica, because yeah you're you're taking all of this from your perspective, as you said as an American, it's those very interesting. Well, I want to just kind of pick up actually on a couple of things that Esther was saying so you know the first about kind of not not feeling a loyalty to upholding any kind of idea of British sharp but interrogating that very category. I think is something that is thankfully kind of endemic within the field of American art right now to and so the this idea that it's no accident that this approach to empire comes out of US training. I think can be extended to say that it's also no accident that it's happening in the US right now. And that's because there is such an interest in thinking about a more a broader conception of the Americas that extends well beyond the continental United States and really encompasses, you know, to full continents and so I think that is a lot of what is kind of drawing. If I may make a huge generalization what is it like contributing to the growth and interest in what we might call British art studies in the US is the fact that there seems to be room for redefining that into something like Atlantic studies so that it's neither about British art or American art but it's really about the political and economic circumstances that brought these regions into conversation. Thank you. I realized with this time I want to certainly want to come to questions from our audience and questions both here and from our online audience to but are there any other questions you wanted to ask of each other and of each other's papers or of connections you've been interested in drawing between them over as you've been watching and listening to them, the talks over the past six weeks. How about starting with you. Well, I thought when I mean we've we've we've already sort of touched on the kinds of sort of technological shifts right that have changed the way that we work, but I also found there was an interesting thread to about thinking as we as we push against and and sort of redefine what this moment in British art is sort of how changes, whether it's new discoveries or new acquisitions or lacunae or absences or transits how museum collecting right and how public collecting has shaped the kinds of stories each of us told in our talks I mean it with the case of my own talk on Romani what's interesting is that actually most of his drawings are concentrated in a couple of different collections so you can go to one place whether that's the Fitzwilliam or the British Art Center in Newhaven and see an enormous group of drawings together and I think that actually changes the way people think about starting to think about them as a kind of mass or as a kind of project, partially because they just happened to be in the same place. So that's just one example but I also thought, you know, again, Paris with your talk, you know, both bringing in a work that's in the National Portrait Gallery but then how you can. How do we fill the things that we don't know which ones they are or haven't yet entered into a kind of public consciousness. And again with Nica the fact that this this this painting that you're talking about is in the Americas and not in Britain and how reintegrating that story has something to do with collection so that was my kind of broad question. I think I sort of echo and reinforce perhaps the point that Esther you brought up about the biographical and the way that that's filtered through. Most of the time I think all of the talks went to a greater or lesser extent. I sort of push it a little bit further say it's obviously because of the format that we have that we sent her on a case we sent her on a single image from a single image you could start talking about a genre. You could start talking about a whole range of images, not frame it not circumscribe it by life. So I think there's something there's some common ground here in the way that we are able to deal with the case, and think about a biography, not as a limiting thing, but as something which actually allows us to understand a position or a kind of literature work my take, in relation to a whole set of circumstances which we understand better now than we did 10 2030 years ago in terms of print culture in terms of exhibitions culture all those sort of structural things about what the Georgian art world or the late essentially art world looks like that work has sort of been done so we have a foundation to move towards the case. Having said that, also looking at the series and thinking about, you know, kind of work which is happening at the moment. Basically there's a focus on the global and that sort of drives. But there's also thinking well, how do we get beyond the case and how do we, how do we start telling bigger stories again. And the diversity which this series represents in which we see in the field is clearly to be celebrated because it means we're going in lots of different directions. But then you also think well, is there a moment when we need to step back and say well, you know what holds this stuff together and what are the big things which which form the common ground. What would the textbook, the history of British art in the long 18th century, what would that textbook be is an interesting position. Absolutely and would it be, would it have to be multi author. It's not an Ellis waterhouse kind of history of painting in Britain and, or even a David Salkin history of British art maybe. What is that textbook that we want to give as a primer to to undergraduate students. Well, and I think that returns to say which could be when I was hearing you Martin talk about that question of ownership or gatekeeping that we've moved on a great deal. I think part of that is to do with exhibitions and museums and galleries as well that they've they've given British art a presence and the sense of ownership is now very dispersed that lots of people feel that they have a stake in whatever British art is. I mean British art perhaps is in some ways less finished you than it was in 2012 or even in the 2000s when take Britain was found and there's a lot of discussion about that. We sort of got beyond that. And we have a lot of tested and diverse claims as to what British art might be and they're allowed to sort of sit and jostle together. So maybe, maybe there isn't the text of the text text but to be written because of the of the variety of claims and investments that that the field of British art as a whole can accommodate at this moment. I realize that we're coming up to seven o'clock so we've got a bit of time now for I've got some more questions I'd like to ask you as one question I really want to ask you all, but we can now turn to my colleague Esme who might be able to pass on any questions that we've received from our online audience but also to invite questions from you here in the room. Maybe we'll start with you Esme has anything come through from our online audience. We have a couple of questions so the first one is from David Salkin. And so in 2004, the late Angela Rosenthal published one of the first interventions into British art history that seriously attempted to bring race into the picture. I'm referring to our art history article entitled visceral culture and the legibility of whiteness in 18th century British portraiture. While listening to the talks in the series I was struck by both by the obvious potential relevance of Rosenthal's arguments to many, even maybe even all of the images that were presented, and by the fact that none of the speakers took up the challenge to address whiteness as a pertinent issue. So this leads me into a double sided question that I like to address to everyone on the panel. Why do you think Rosenthal's, sorry, important provocation seems to have fallen into oblivion. And if you can recall the thrust of her essay, are the ways in which you think that her work might enrich the readings that you have offered. I think Nika should kick us off on that one because I know this is very dear to the heart of your work. Thank you so much for that question I think it's a really important one and I completely see what you mean about the articles relevance to the various talks throughout the series, I have kind of a two part response maybe one related to my own work and then one kind of speaking for the field if I may. In terms of my own work. That article was absolutely pivotal as I was thinking about Copley's early portraits which I argue are in fact about whiteness looking at different factors than Angela had considered but kind of very much informed by her work on British portraiture. One of the things that I was really focusing on in this talk was trying to understand the presence of this black figure. But within the chapter that comes from this talk I will definitely then be pursuing this thread of the way in which that figures blackness is inseparable from the whiteness of the other figures and it really has written on that in relation to Watson and the shark as well. But but yeah it's definitely something that I'll be parsing out kind of in the next iteration of the project, but I think as far as why her take may be. I'm not going to generalize but maybe like sitting quietly at the moment is because, while it was such a critical first step in understanding the role of race in British art kind of globally understood that there has been important and I think it's a very shift to trying to resurrect stories that are both by black authors and of black subjects and that we could probably sit around kind of calling out the whiteness of many of these works of art and artists for a long time, but that in order to truly unify the canon and make it more equitable make it more diverse. We need to shed comparable if not more light on the stories of black actors within the history. That would be that's the guess that I would venture as to why maybe it doesn't play as large a role at the moment. Any other responses from anyone else or does that encapsulate people's thoughts or generally. I think well I would echo what Nica says wholeheartedly I think also, you know what what it's an article I always teach to my students and I think that actually it was sort of under the surface of my talk, not the questions of race but the way that Rosenthal speaks about visceral culture and thinks about the corporeal in the visual field and I think that article has also, I think whether it's a directly, whether the analysis is directly related to race or not has also opened up different ways of thinking about portraiture and the figure and how it signifies so it's such a it's a really important intervention. It's a, it is a very significant issue I just want to mention, obviously with reference to right of Derby I didn't talk about whiteness or blackness in my talk, but in terms of right studies, there has been a very interesting shift and I think one of the key moments in the last 10 15 years was an exhibition at Liverpool, right of Derby in Liverpool, where the issue of race became right to the fore, not just for the, not in terms of the depiction of black people, but the slave trade itself and how invested the people who are buying pictures were and not just in Liverpool. It, it runs as a very strong mark thread through the right of Derby's and I'm busy cataloging his portraits at the moment. And it's, it's terribly important to get to grips with that because I'm doing a lot of biography at the moment, who knew who, who's related to who, and it just comes up time and time and time again. I think people are going back, and I look back to, to, you know, even 1520 years ago, I don't think there'd be issues that people would really be. They might mention it in passing. They might say, as a fact, oh, so and so was trading in this, so and so was trading in that. But it's not ingrained and it's interesting to see now if you go to, there's a debate at the moment I notice in Liverpool about one particular portrait of one of Wright's sitters, one of the first people he painted. He was a very wealthy Liverpool merchant, and there's a very provocative label in the gallery asking people should this work by Joe's and Wright remain on view. I think it should. I think it's very important that works like that remain on view. And those questions are asked, but I think that's not the sort of thing that would even have been broached five or six years ago. Thank you. Any other questions as me. Yeah, I just have one more from Ian Guy. And so Ian says, where does concern for the ampropocene fit into current 18th century British art. Yes, Nick. Maybe we will turn. Yeah, but I think I might have disappointed Martin when I said what I would talk about because I work on landscape and ecology. I'm confused to talk about that for whatever reason. I think it's absolutely crucial and I and I think I think we could say, I'm just running through it I think all of the talks from from the series are absolutely speaking to the ways in which we're rethinking the history of capitalism, rethinking the history of empire rethinking the history of the racialization of bodies all of this is is intimately an extra inextricably connected to the period that we could call the Anthropocene or the capital is seen, or any other number of labels but I think that part of what we're doing here in shifting away from a sort of a traditional idea of a national boundary is thinking about question I mean what you were just bringing up about investments in the slave trade, for example, Martin, how how part of what the Anthropocene story is is also about insisting on the interconnectivity of, you know, British subjects or British artists or to other histories of environmental extraction, and of the kinds of remaking or terraforming of the world that that really accelerated in the late 18th century so the moment we're looking at. So I think it was it was there if not articulated in a lot of the talks. And I'd also just remark that, although we've all been indebted to say the digital turn and the kinds of new technologies that have generated a material term in this discipline. It's a talk that really focused on materials and materiality, you know, as its primary raison d'être, and that is that's a huge part of British art studies right now so that that was non representative, I would say, and that clearly connects to questions of extracted resources and so on. So that's there but not represented by the spectrum of talks in the series. Any questions from here in the in the in the room that you'd like to address to the panel or again questions that the panel would like to address to each other. Any questions that come out from either individual talks from the series, or reflections on the series as a whole we'd love to hear any reflections or responses from your. Yes. Thank you, can you hear me. I wanted to get back slightly away from the historiography back to the to the art and the history itself. And in particular want to think about Lord to raise the subject of the artist and his and there will be his and her geographic and intellectual hinterlands at the time and I'm thinking particularly of Joseph right of Derby. I'll be then being one of the newer major industrial towns in the UK, and also the spin-off branch of the original Lichfield Luna society. And I believe that I don't think that right was actually a member of that, but he was closely related and I think he was a friend or a new Rasmus Darwin and people like that. I wonder if him working in that environment. How that influenced a what he, but will it clearly influence what he paid because he's not a pet. He's a painter literally of the enlightenment in place in paintings like the aura and the experiment of the air pump but generally, how does working in a period when almost everything you held. The rule was actually changing almost on a weekly daily basis. How did that influence him new thing. And how does that apply to the other artists, their geographic areas where they were working. That's a big broad question. It's a big broad question. And final one on that. Why is that. This is simple and it's very related. Why is Joseph right of Derby rather than any other artists of that. Why geography. Yeah, because he was known as Joseph right of Derby at the time. You know, he was identified very much with with Derby itself, and he worked out of Derby and through Derby and yes he did come to London train in London. You're absolutely right. He's hinterland. He wasn't a member of the lunar societies we know, but he knew them all very well and Erasmus Darwin was a close friend he painted his portrait several versions. You know, 1770s and then again in the 1790s. These people were absolutely part of his intellectual and social universe and they were at the heart of it and they wouldn't have seen themselves as peripheral. They were not regional by any stretch of the imagination. And the same things that were happening in other areas of book clubs societies meetings, you know, they were very much at the hub of it. And the Midlands, the rights world, although he did travel. I mean they're interesting. I mentioned he went to Liverpool. But one of the first things he did when he first started going as an artist was visit all these small regional towns. So he goes to Redford, he goes to, you know, he goes to Macclesfield, he goes here and he paints all of the, you know, the people who could afford it and all those places and when you start to put that network together. It's a bit like going back to the other thing I was talking about. It's an absolutely extraordinary network. So his regionality is hugely important for Joseph Wright. Martin, do you want to talk a bit about that? About reading about the local and about networks, the local and whether the digitisation of resources and research has allowed even your own work, not necessarily expressed in the series, but in relation to the students of the Royal Academy, there are particular networks of patrons of masters of streets in which they live up. But there's a kind of an upsurge of very local research. No, no, I think, I think almost a counterpoint, but can I compliment really to the global turn in British Art History, is that we can also localise in an incredibly kind of detailed way, you know, from our desktops often. Perhaps that's one of the things which is playing out in this series, is that there is an expanded perspective on British Art, which may be Atlantic, may be global, but then also that sense of the case, the biographically framed case. But the case is a moment, an instant, a moment of exhibition, a moment of encounter comes through very forcibly as well. Yeah, absolutely the case that digitisation of newspapers and how accessible they are. We know what you can, we can put in a name or an artwork's name or a date and we can just explore across such an array of material. And that material is not just about London, it's not just about the things which have been captured by historians before. It's a very kind of immediate access to a massive raw material, and I feel like when Paris has kind of been working with large data and, you know, I've done a bit of this myself and someone's like this, there's so much stuff there, there is a question going forward, well how do we actually manage this? And what do we do with it, how do we process all the stuff that we can find? I mean, for you, Martin now, in doing a catalogue raisin, the materials that you can access in terms of commentary and newspaper commentary and even kind of sales histories as well, the access to sales catalogs that we have digitally, as well as in libraries and archives, it is present new issues, which I don't think we've really worked through yet. I mean what do we do when we have this much information at hand? It does potentially shift the geographical agenda, it does allow us to see a British art world, which is happening in Philadelphia and in New York and in Leicester, as well as in London. Paris, did you want to say a word or two about this? This issue, both about the kind of mass data and then also the how you can become incredibly specific about networks and locales of some of the artists you've been working on, for instance. Yeah, I would love to. And if you don't mind, I want to first address the question from the audience about geography and connected to what we were talking before about Britishness. Because I think that I was linked to what Martin was saying about, you know, Zofany and the aspersions. But I think it has a lot, it has to do with a lot more than where someone was born. Eliza Trada, who I talked about was Irish, but when we look earlier in the 18th, and we don't know, there's no real commentary on her geography or Britishness or not, but in the mid 18th century, we have two women who are incredibly prominent in London, Angelica Kaufman and Catherine Reid, neither of whom was English. Kaufman was Swiss, Reid was Scottish. And in the press, they're both completely subsumed under the banner of Britannia. They're celebrated for their Britishness. Kaufman is one of Richard Samuel's living muses of Britain. Reid is referred to as the English Rosalba. And so it just transcends place of birth in geographic locality in these really interesting ways that I think have to do with national pride at the time as much as anything else and reception ever since. Angelica Kaufman is often still celebrated as British, and she was not in any way she in fact lived in the capital for, you know, the minority of her life she came to England in 67 or 68 and left in 81. And yet she's taken on this nationalistic identity and so I think that's really important to reflect on and to think about how people were regarded at the time and the ways that that's inflected these mythologies that have to do with geography and as much as anything else. And then in terms of data, I completely agree with what Martin said it's there's almost an overwhelming amount once you start getting into what exists and what one can do with current technology. And what does one do with that it certainly disseminates these these geographic focal points, because you can. You can just explode and expand what you're looking at so quickly and the data actually demands that you do that. If both in terms of, you know, London as a place of artistic production it reinforces and challenges it all at once. But what's in, you know, one of the most interesting things is your question mark which is what are the specific networks that helps you identify. And it's remarkable what you can find through, you know, my own example would be exhibition catalogs but really, you know any source from the time and because what we have an exhibition catalogs let's say our artists addresses from the earlier exhibition catalogs before the Royal Academy, you often have artists who are living with other artists or other exhibitors and so you can start to identify who's working with whom who knows whom who's supporting them and you end up with this incredibly intricate art world where you can even see, you know, one year someone else has entered it and then they're living with someone for a while and then they're down the street from each other and this isn't. This isn't work that I've spent the majority of my time on but the hints of it are just unbelievably promising for really unpacking what's going on on a minute scale again even without so many of the sources that we would normally rely upon surviving. And it's hard to know what to do with all the data and it's hard to even be the, you know, even compile it, but I really believe strongly that it offers so much potential for accessing worlds that are otherwise really seem to be beyond the horizon. And a quick plug the PMC tomorrow is hosting a an online conference devoted to this idea of mass data and what we do and how it's transforming research into British art. Any other question thank you for your question any other questions from the floor here or from our online audience before we bring it to a close. I yeah I have one more question from Catherine so she says thank you for such a fascinating conversation. And so I think this is addressed to everyone so if you could just if you could add just one additional work to the series what would it be and why. Definitely put you on the spot. I'm not going to say an individual work but I will just, you know, fly the flag for print, and we haven't really had a print have we that's been the focus but in my opinion. And something I'm working on as a another project is the absolute centrality of the print medium to this period completely can't be understood without it. And it's not only a place where British art is reproduced and disseminated and commercialized but it's also a site of great artistic experimentation. So that's missing I think in terms of media. Good call. Yeah, I really would back that up and I did mention Thomas Buick earlier but Buick is an extraordinary man and print. Also, in terms of regionality. I think he, if I had to sort of pick another person, another artist another thing. It would be Buick. Thomas Buick or Newcastle. Yeah, workshop was in Newcastle. We lived down the time valley but that's not there. Yeah, yeah, so that's here for Thomas Buick. So Martin's nomination. Nica, what about you? Which work would you choose to add to our mini pantheon of individual choices? Well, let's see I think I have one that would maybe satisfy Esther's desire for print. I was thinking of someone like Cipio Moorhead and the print that he had done of Phyllis Wheatley. I think something that maybe speaks to the way in which a person of color was maybe gravitating towards also minor medium in order to reframe. Some of the ideas about portraiture, for example, that were in circulation at the time, would be really interesting to think about. Any other nominations? I think I would nominate this and it's incredibly obvious Turner. But I would nominate Turner because of the way Turner's name and his art and his self-portrait and the image of the slave ship in particular have been mobilized so often in order to kind of reclaim a late George and British art history as a kind of positive to British cultural identity. And we can tell good stories which seem to connect with current concerns, but there are also limitations to that story as well. And I think revisiting that and thinking about a figure who is genuinely iconic within British culture who we reclaim in very positive ways. But we need to keep under scrutiny in order to make sure that we don't just, that we don't look kind of recirculating complacent views as well. I mean, the way in which Turner's name is being involved and kind of claims about abolition and his own position are worth keeping in, keeping in view. I would add, I would also, I would add a print, but I would add I work, you know, one of the things that I work on in sort of meteorological diagrams and scientific images. So I also think it could have been interesting to throw into the mix an object that is not a work of art. Can I just make say one more thing I think is important to be said here, which is that we've, we've conveyed quite where we've been thinking about British art and the global in this series we've conveyed quite an Atlantic view of things and there is of course really important work happening in the Pacific in British India and I would want to see and it wouldn't be me that would do this work, but I would want to see someone like Holly Shaffer speaking about company painting or art works created in the Indian context, for example, and and and broaden our views eastwards as well as westwards. Great, thank you. We have. Sorry, Paris. I wouldn't say that I would actually do a work that Martin Mayrone included in his talk but didn't send a ton of time on which is a print, and it's the print of Mariah Cosway it's satirical at her easel called Maria costive. And she's in a bedlam sale sale. She's been jailed because she's been painting works that are too fusing and influence. It's a fantastic commentary on, you know, you can talk about history painting and portraiture you can talk about, you know, the role of the imagination, and a lot of the gender issues that emerge around concepts of genius and the imaginary and you can also talk about a lot of the prison issues that came up in next talk, which then of course connects to Mary Wilstone craft and a lot of what she's writing at the time and I think it really would open a fantastic world. Georgia publications three is already taking shape I can see. Can I ask one last question maybe, if I could. Can I just ask you to all of you to reflect on how you write and about whether the form and structure and the rhetoric of your writing. You feel that you're being experimental with that that's changed that the way and mode of writing the language you use the approaches you take. Are you being very, if you look back across the series look back at your own writing, does it follow a kind of classic scholarly formula, we're addressing an individual work of art. Do you feel any of you took a widely different approach to how one would go about the work of interpreting or opening out to work of art, then has been conventional, or do you feel that we should. I think about modes of writing about writing on all of your cases and whether you feel very self conscious or conscious about how you go about writing your pieces. I mean, I can, there's a kind of descriptive answer but it opens up things a little bit more which is when it comes to preparing a lecture preparing a talk. I didn't write initially, I struggled to write and then I realized actually I need to get my slides in order. So I curate. I end up doing the slides first and then writing that actually that they're putting the images in sequence and curating that that what is after all kind of temporal experience of putting slides in order and that's also when you start. We've touched a number of times about digital digital world, and how easily now you remember going to kind of slide libraries and finally digging your side to how now, you know, just before the talk you go arch, I missed an image out, you can put that in. So that kind of digital economy that we're in. And what it allows us to do is to move images around and to grasp images which are often not iconic or not familiar, or not part of the canon, and mobilize them and put them in association with one another. So that's the, you know, it is a visual medium PowerPoint allows us to do to do art history as a visual medium. And, and I mean I think to that point one of, I think it's always, I think one always ends up writing better things that are eventually published if they were first written to be spoken. And it's partially about tone but it's also what you were saying Martin about the staying as close as possible to the objects to the image and sort of. You're going to a lecture and you're reading it back and you're like, what am I going to put on screen now and then you think maybe I just want to talk about that because you're telling a story with images, it's not just the text and so for me I was trying to stay as close as possible to these drawings of which there were just, you know, I talked about maybe 10 or 500. And, and so I think that's what, what the, especially a public lecture offers is that that sense that you want to stay as close as possible to what, what is, what is the visual what is the object. Online panelists, Paris, Nica any thoughts about your writing and your modes of writing. Yeah, I mean, I would definitely echo what Nick was saying that a piece of writing that emerges from a talk is just always so elegantly interwoven with the objects themselves and not in the talk that I gave as part of Georgian provocations but in another piece of writing that I did relatively recently a couple of years ago I did decide to get very experimental I felt well at that point. My dissertation was long done, the book was coming down the pike and let me just try something new, because one of the things that I had really responded to in a colleagues work who does art history but was trained as a historian was just the incredible richness of storytelling in her work and it felt like she was building entire worlds. And I thought, let me see if that is possible, if it is necessary for the work that I was doing, I will say on Copley's portraits, and I wrote an entire article using that kind of approach and methodology, and I felt really good about it at the time. And then I went back to it months later, and I thought this just is not necessary for what I want to say about these paintings and it was a really helpful experiment I will say that the editor to whom I submitted this article very much agreed with me that a lot could be taken out. I'm happy for having done the experiment, it really taught me that the, that art historical writing isn't just about kind of repeating conventions but is intimately tied to the kinds of arguments and interventions and claims that we want to make. Thank you, Paris, did you want to add your thoughts on this. I am first of all of course echo what everyone says I think that when talk when writing comes out of a talk versus the other way around it's so it's always so much more dynamic. That wasn't my path with this talk, because this was so rooted in the book which had been the dissertation and feels deeply academic in a way that I in that that is just permanent to it in a certain way but I will say with my more recent project, about a year ago. I tried to write in a new way, and it was more creative and more experimental and like Nico said it was so much fun. It was a different way of doing it and it's for a different audience it was not for an academic audience. And it's something that now I'm playing with, as I'm putting it in a more. It's a writer form and into chapter form, how to melt that with academic writing and with end notes and whatnot, and it's a challenge but I think it's a really fun and rewarding one. And I'm hopeful that that is something that can actually work as a way forward. And it would be interesting to do a talk. That was an experiment in writing, right and Georgian provocations three or whatnot. I didn't have that be part of it I think. I think it could lead to a really interesting conversation of how we tell the stories we do. And why any other thoughts on modes of writing. I just realized with we're hitting time and I know that we did. We are supposed to finish it off so I know we can have a conversation or leaving but I just think can ask all of you to thank our panelists for a fantastic contributions, both from the states and from here in Bedford Square so many many of you. So I can ask the audience to thank Carol. Thanks so much, Paris. Thanks so much, Nica. Thanks to all of you watching online. It's been great to have you with us, not only tonight but throughout the series as well. There may be a Georgian provocation three coming down the line but we'll have to see. But in the meantime, thanks everyone very much and all of those of you here here in Bedford Square. I invite you to drink next door with us and where we can carry on our conversations in a more relaxed and formal way. Thank you so much for being with us.