‘Exercising the ART as a TRADE’: professional women printmakers in England, c1750-c1850

This study is the first to reconstruct and investigate the lives and output of professional women printmakers in England between c1750 and c1850, revealing that they were a significant and growing presence within the London print trade. Drawing upon the large number of understudied prints made and signed by women artists in public and private collections, this thesis takes a series of chronological case studies to fully illuminate the social and artistic contexts in which women printmakers lived and worked. Chapter One traces the etchings made by Angelica Kauffman and Maria Cosway. During their formative years working in London, these two Italian-trained painters creatively exploited the burgeoning market for etchings made by peintre-graveurs. Moving onto women artists who specialised in reproductive printmaking, Chapter Two outlines the significance of the family workshop. Revealing that official apprenticeships in printmaking were largely closed to young women in this period, this chapter seeks to enhance understanding of how the printmaking family offered invaluable training and networking opportunities for women, but also exposes the ways in which household and domestic duties could significantly impact their instruction. Chapters Three and Four conduct a deeper examination of the family home-cum-workshop via two familial case studies. Chapter Three reveals that sisters Letitia and Elizabeth Byrne faced institutional and commercial prejudices when trying to navigate the overcrowded market for landscape and topographical engraving, despite their skills. Chapter Four considers the ways in which Elizabeth Judkins deftly harnessed the new phenomenon of the public exhibition, whilst her niece, Caroline Watson, exploited the most fashionable ‘feminine’ techniques and genres of the day to unprecedented success, becoming ‘Engraver to the Queen’. Finally, Chapter Five explores the conflating experiences of amateur women printmakers in comparison to professionals. It highlights the ways in which several amateur printmakers engaged with the London market, thus revealing the inadequacies of the anachronistic ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ artistic binaries. Together, these chapters show that the experiences of women printmakers in this period were diverse and varied. However, by interrogating their role and status within the London art world, this thesis reveals the critical contribution of women printmakers to the British print trade

The diary of Charles Blagden: information management and the gentleman of science in eighteenth-century Britain

This thesis provides a transcription and examination of the diary of Charles Blagden (1748-1820), physician and secretary of the Royal Society between 1784 and 1797. The diary is here understood as a ‘paper tool’ for managing information, that assisted Blagden’s efforts in fashioning his identity as a gentleman. Informed by a variety of manuscript genres, the diary operated as an aide-memoire, in accordance with eighteenth-century understandings of associationism. Blagden used the diary to advance through patronage and emulation, by cultivating relationships with eminent male scholars—the chemist Henry Cavendish and president of the Royal Society Joseph Banks. The eighteenth century saw the emergence of alternative cultures of advancement that favoured meritocracy and scientific publication over displays of patronage. This thesis reassesses key events in Blagden’s career, in the priority dispute known as the ‘water controversy’ and the Royal Society ‘dissensions’ of the 1780s, as examples where such cultures of advancement conflicted. In building his career, Blagden undertook natural philosophical investigations with his patrons, supported by his diary. This thesis exposes Blagden’s scientific agenda, and his approach to record keeping, as examples of eighteenth-century ‘oeconomy’. Though Blagden had sought the patronage of Banks and Cavendish, this strategy did not furnish him with the gentlemanly status he desired. Dissatisfied by the rate of advancement and reward, Blagden increasingly attached himself to a community of socially elevated women in London in the 1790s, whose lifestyle he emulated in order to pursue his social ambitions, as seen in his diary for the year 1795. Exploring the development of Blagden’s diary reveals the role of a material object in assisting the self-fashioning of the identity of the gentleman of science in Britain, at the end of the eighteenth century

A Grand Tour: A Catalogue of Eighteenth-Century Print Works at Memorial University Libraries

This catalogue highlights forty-seven of the 1,180 eighteenth-century imprints held by Memorial University Libraries. Intended as a general introduction to eighteenth-century literature in its original formats, the work is aimed at students and teachers of book history and bibliography, as well as at the general reader. Consequently, the focus is broad, highlighting the emerging free press, imaginative literature—particularly the novel—travel literature, street literature, illustration, as well as works of religion, philosophy, science, and medicine. The introduction discusses each of the works presented in the catalogue and makes a case for the collection as a whole as representing a range of developments both in eighteenth-century literature and in the book trade. Catalogue entries highlight the physical artifact, offering both description and photographic evidence. Each entry contains information about the author and the content of the work, and attempts to place the work in its literary context

‘National airs’ in the life and works of William Shield (1748-1829)

William Shield (1748-1829) was a successful and respected composer of vocal, chamber and theatre music who performed alongside the greatest musicians of his day, and became Master of the King’s Music, yet has received little scholarly attention. This thesis is the first to present detailed musical analysis of Shield’s compositional approach contextualized by in-depth exploration of his family background, cultural heritage, professional development and social networks. In Chapter 1 I review extant literature and introduce key sources, before extrapolating insights from Shield’s treatises into his professional interests, particularly his ideological and practical approach to ‘national airs’. Chapter 2 demonstrates how I have cross-referenced archival materials to provide a more rigorous, nuanced narrative of Shield’s early life, and identifies musical indicators of his formative experiences in early compositions. Chapter 3 builds on this background with cultural and technical analysis of Shield’s ‘national air’ arrangements, comparing and contrasting his compositional techniques with those of contemporaries. In Chapter 4 I follow a comparative structural overview of Shield’s theatrical works with in-depth analysis of one piece, The Highland Reel, reviewing elements of the published score and wordbook in light of contemporary cultural trends and political events. Chapter 5 expands on the political context for Shield’s career, exploring his relationships with influential, sometimes controversial figures, and analysing how his music reinforced or subverted text to convey overt and hidden reflections of contemporary issues and debates. In Chapter 6 I discuss mechanisms for posthumous transmission and performance of Shield’s compositions, how he has been memorialised, and whether and how his theatre works might be revived and reinterpreted today, concluding with thoughts on potentially fruitful areas for future research

A collector of the fine arts in eighteenth-century Britain: Dr William Hunter (1718-1783)

Fine art, in the form of oil paintings, prints and drawings, accounts for a considerable proportion of the collection formed by the Scottish anatomist, Dr William Hunter. This thesis examines the contexts for the various works of art that were either bought or commissioned by him or were the result of donations and gifts. It covers the period from the 1740s, when Hunter arrived in London until his death in 1783 and follows his collecting activities from their origins in the specialist, anatomical-antiquarian interests of his predecessors in the 1750s to the more elaborate works that were increasingly available to him through his contacts with artists and dealers by the 1770s. This involves placing Hunter within a chronology of collecting during the eighteenth century, a period characterised by an expansion of cultural activity within all the arts. Such a commodification of culture brought with it various implications for the production and reception of the arts that had been predominantly the reserve of the aristocracy. William Hunter was a professional, a new type of Gentleman Connoisseur, whose motivations to collect were inspired by an innate empirical curiosity that dominated the era. Therefore, curiosity as a type of investigative phenomenon is considered in the thesis as the driving force behind the accumulation and calculation of of collectible objects. Hunter's incorporation of a fine art collection within a museum dominated by anatomy and natural history calls for a re-considertation of the place of art derived from the close study of nature during the period. His influence as a teacher and patron of the arts is also re-considered here by a closer examination of the part he played in the community of artists that emerged in London during the 1760s. The thesis employs a methodology that combines the techniques of micro-history, a close cultural-anthropological analysis viewed through a framework of more general, theoretical themes, classicism, antiquarianism and consumerism that seek to impose an understanding on the sheer diversity and range of interrelated ideas that constitute the practice of collecting during the eighteenth century. It reveals that, rather than standing on the periphery, William Hunter played a crucial, if not central, role in the promotion and dissemination of the fine arts in Britain

Experiences of Illegitimacy in England, 1660-1834

This thesis examines attitudes towards individuals who were born illegitimate in England between the Restoration in 1660 and the New Poor Law of 1834. It explores the impact of illegitimacy on individuals' experiences of family and social life, marriage and occupational opportunities, and sense of identity. This thesis demonstrates that illegitimacy did have a negative impact, but that this was not absolute. The stigma of illegitimacy operated along a spectrum, varying according to the type of parental relationship, the child's gender and, most importantly, the family's socio-economic status. Socio-economic status became more significant as an arbiter of attitudes towards the end of the period. This project uses a range of qualitative evidence - correspondence, life-writing, poor law records, novels, legal and religious tracts, and newspapers - to examine the impact of illegitimacy across the entire life-cycle, moving away from previous historiographical emphasis on unmarried parenthood, birth and infancy. This approach adds nuance to a field dominated by poor law and Foundling Hospital evidence, and prioritises material written by illegitimate individuals themselves. This thesis also has resonance for historical understanding of wider aspects of long-eighteenth-century society, such as the nature of parenthood, family, gender, or emotion, and the operation of systems of classification and 'othering'. This thesis demonstrates that definitions of parenthood and family were flexible enough to include illegitimate relationships. The effect of illegitimacy on marital and occupational opportunities indicates how systems of patronage and familial alliance operated in this period, as well as the importance of inheritance, birth or familial connection as measures of social status. Finally, it questions the assumption that condemnation of illicit sex led to community exclusion of the illegitimate child, and calls for more nuanced understandings of how historians measure and define shame and stigma

British artists and early Italian art c. 1770-1845 : the pre Pre-Raphaelites?

This thesis examines the hitherto largely-overlooked multifarious response by British artists to early Italian art which pre-dated the activity of the Pre-Raphaelites and their greatest champion, John Ruskin. The title of this thesis does not endeavour to claim that the artists under examination consciously formed or naturally constituted a group with clearly defined common interests and aims, as was the case with their aforementioned successors. Rather, the collective ‘pre’ Pre-Raphaelites is intended to demonstrate that, contrary to the impression given by the standard scholarship on this area, there were British artists prior to the dawn of the Pre-Raphaelites who found worth in periods of art beyond what was conventionally considered both generally tasteful and also useful for an artist to imitate, and who indeed made many of the important steps which facilitated the Pre-Raphaelites’ rediscovery of early Italian art in the late 1840s. The temporal span of the main investigative thrust of this thesis is, approximately, 1770 - 1845. Its structure is intended to reflect the multiplicity of both the catalysts and then the subsequent responses of British artists to the Italian primitives. The first part of the thesis comprises a number of chapters which offer a broad contextual framework - encompassing analyses of taste, artistic education and historiography - within which the varied activities of the artists explored in the subsequent chapters are set. Parts two and three reveal the very different approaches taken by a series of artists in the decades either side of the turn of the century in their attempts to study, learn from and sometimes emulate the visual lessons of the past. Thus this thesis rescues the often marginalised contributions of a selection of British artists to the resurgence of interest in early Italian art, and demonstrates how fundamental their interpretive filter was for the nature of the quasi-revolution in taste in the last half of the nineteenth century

A Visit (in 1831) To Jeremy Bentham

Upon the death of his father Jeremiah in 1792, Jeremy Bentham inherited the family home in Queen’s Square Place, Westminster. Queen’s Square Place consisted of two houses, and it was in the larger of these two residences that Bentham lived for the next forty years. Bentham referred to his abode as the Hermitage and himself as the Hermit. Despite this apparent reclusiveness, many notable statesmen, politicians, lawyers, and intellectuals visited him, although some equally prominent figures (such as Madame de Staël) were refused an audience. This text is the most detailed account that has hitherto appeared of how Jeremy Bentham lived at Queen's Square Place, his home in Westminster, during his final years. The author, George Wheatley, visited Bentham in March 1831, and stayed with him for approximately three weeks. Six of Wheatley's letters sent to his sister during his stay, as well as six extracts from his journal, and a short commentary on John Hill Burton's 'Benthamiana', were collated and printed privately for the author by P.H. Youngman, Maldon, in about 1853. The resulting volume, 64 pages long and entitled 'A Visit (in 1830) to Jeremy Bentham' has been transcribed and lightly annotated, and is published online here for the first time. The only known copy of the text is in the possession of the Bentham Project. The text also features an editorial introduction by Dr Kris Grint