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Issue Overview
ARTICLERedesigning British Art Studies by Editorial Group

Summary In the spirit of enquiry and experimentation, we have created a new platform for British Art Studies. The key drivers for this change have centred on issues of accessibility, equity, and environmental impact.

Summary A case study of Camerawork (1979-1985) thinks through the questions and challenges posed by representing periodicals in exhibitions and publications.

ARTICLEBetween the Easel and the Mural by Robert Burstow

Summary This article is the first sustained examination of Ben Nicholson’s engagement with architectural painting.

Summary Examines how documentary sources provide insight into the identity, voice, and experiences of a Black sitter in an early modern British portrait.

Summary Positions the architectural historian Gavin Stamp as an exemplar of the activist-scholar tradition, and the British New Right.

ARTICLEFamily Matters by Grace Aneiza Ali

Summary A visual essay places Frank Bowling’s Middle Passage (1970) paintings in conversation with Caribbean and Guyanese literary voices.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEAncient Desires Interview between Charwei Tsai
and Rosie Cooper
Sarah Victoria Turner

Summary In this interview, Charwei Tsai discusses the creation of over 200 ceramic vessels during her Wysing Arts Centre residency, drawing connections to Li Yuan-chia’s LYC Museum, and exploring spirituality.

Summary Argues that J.M.W. Turner’s watercolour contains disguised allusion to the Tory government’s persecution of the political satirist William Hone, as well as corruption tied to the Earl of Lonsdale.

Summary Argues that through his self-portraits, L.S. Lowry negotiated the contradiction between his artistic ambitions and pressure to earn a wage in the context of shifting expectations around masculinity in twentieth-century Britain.

ARTICLESailors’ Valentines by Molly Duggins

Summary Victorian shell mosaics known as sailors’ valentines, crafted by Afro-Barbadian women, embodied creolised material culture and served as a form of cultural and economic agency within the colonial tourism industry of Barbados.

ARTICLESugar Time by Emma Bond

Summary Explores how contemporary artists in Scotland, inspired by Kara Walker’s A Subtlety (2014), engage with the persistent legacies of sugar’s violent histories, linking imperial pasts with present artistic and activist expressions.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEOil Aesthetics and Imperial Violence interview between Edwin Coomasaru
and Jala Wahid

Summary Jala Wahid in conversation about her work and the politics that underpin it, discusses imperialist violence, apocalyptic images, monumental conflict, questions of time, and the politics of nationhood.

ARTICLEMonuments Must Fall convened by Edwin Coomasaru

Summary Contributors discuss monuments as sites of social antagonism, examining their roles in colonialism, national identity, and public memory.

Summary This article makes use of multimedia elements such as film, animation, and moving images to better understand the spatial dynamics, display techniques, and creative processes behind the exemplary surviving print room.

ARTICLEIs the Painting a Grave? by Ariel Kline

Summary How is queer eroticism figured in artworks that might also deny it? This article attends to John Everett Millais’s ambivalent proximity to lesbian desire through an analysis of The Vale of Rest (1859) and other works.

ARTICLEThe Rise and Fall of the “Clerks” by Hans C. Hönes

Summary Analyses the debates about the professionalisation of the study of British art, focusing on the activities of the Paul Mellon Foundation for British Art, and its attempts to establish art history as an academic discipline in Britain.

Summary Offers technologies like 3D scanning, printing, CNC milling, and digital remixing as disruptive, but not destructive, analogues to historical reproduction methods such as casting and copying.

ARTICLEThe Expressive Unit of Constructionism by Sam Gathercole

Summary Nigel Henderson’s photographs of Kenneth Martin’s abstract mobiles in a North London children’s hospital suggest a new way of understanding British constructionism.

ARTICLEGreenham Common’s Archival Webs by Alexandra Kokoli

Summary This feature documents the visual cultures of the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common in an “anarchival curatorial experiment”.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEThe Market Woman’s Story by Jacqueline Bishop

Summary A short film explores artist Jacqueline Bishop’s depiction of the market woman, a pervasive, yet overlooked figure in Jamaican and Caribbean art and visual culture, on a set of newly decorated ceramic plates.

ARTICLEBeauty and Revolution by Elizabeth Fisher

Summary Traces the evolution of Gustav Metzger’s aesthetic theories from a period of intense experimentation with materials, technology, and scientific processes in the 1960s to his Remember Nature project in 2015.

ARTICLEInventing Provinciality by Luke Gartlan

Summary Examines photography’s emergence in St Andrews through its ties to the British Empire, with David Brewster’s writings revealing the imperial frameworks behind the technology’s adoption.

ARTICLEDeath and the Found Object by Margaret Iversen

Summary Virginia Woolf’s “Solid Objects” and Maurice Blanchot’s philosophy inspire analysis of Becky Beasley and Lucy Skaer’s art, exploring themes of life, death, and found objects.

Summary Argues that Trinitarian imagery was employed to construct a distinctive memory of the Black Prince, one that served to bolster the claims of his son Richard II.

ARTICLEExit, Pursued by John Kay by Wendy McGlashan

Summary Suggests that John Kay’s satirical portrait of William Forbes of Callendar should be understood as a complex burlesque allusion which engages with prints after European Old Master and contemporary British history paintings.

ARTICLECapturing Futurity by Margaret J. Schmitz

Summary Demonstrates that Langdon Coburn’s experimentation with radical aesthetics began earlier than previously thought and was instigated by his friendship with English science fiction writer H.G. Wells.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEIntroduction by Shalini Le Gall
and Justin McCann

Summary This special issue examines the Thames as a cultural and environmental force, focusing on its impact on nineteenth-century art, industry, and colonial legacies.

ARTICLE“The Surrounding Great Work” by Aleema Gray
and Danielle Thom

Summary This collaborative article explores the lasting effects of the aesthetic and spatial implications of London’s West India Docks, and the ways in which these persist in influencing the site and its communities today.

ARTICLEShips and Souvenirs by Shalini Le Gall

Summary Traces the history of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee through three objects: James McNeill Whistler’s print Tilbury (1887), a photograph taken aboard the HMY Victoria and Albert during the Naval Review, and a Royal Worcester commemorative scent bottle.

ARTICLEPrinted Ecologies by Sarah Mead Leonard

Summary Explores the expression of the pastoral in William Morris’s printed designs, arguing that his patterns are indirect representations of the landscape he most admired: the rural reaches of the Upper Thames.

ARTICLE“The River Seemed Almost Turned to Blood” by Nancy Rose Marshall

Summary Considers representations of a fire that broke out at Cotton’s Wharf in Tooley Street, London, in 1861 as a case study that reveals a debate about the status of Britain as a global power.

Summary Giving voice to women’s presence beneath the surface of James McNeill Whistler’s images, this article suggests how, as “involuntary neighbours”, they made sense of the watery, arterial world of the Thames.

ARTICLEWhistler and Battersea by Jon Newman

Summary Considers the significance of South London for James McNeill Whistler, particularly the line of Battersea factories that he viewed and depicted repeatedly from his home on Cheyne Walk from the 1860s.

ARTICLE“Over London at Night” Jennifer Tucker

Summary Explores how the Thames became a site where gas manufacture and ballooning came together to provide new forms of experience, spectacle, and economic opportunity as well as deadly risk and toxic effluent.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEAnother Crossing by Glenn Adamson

Summary Highlights the work of participants in the exhibition Another Crossing, with an introduction by its guest curator Glenn Adamson.

ARTICLEUnhomely by Iris Moon

Summary The spectres of history and the possibilities of the future haunt this special issue of British Art Studies, which challenges readers to rethink the British decorative arts.

ARTICLEEngland Am I? by Sarah Bochicchio

Summary Explores how the Renaissance may have posed a more malleable, self-assertive antidote to the pressures of twentieth-century fashion, and the systems it upheld.

Summary Looks at the dialogue between microscopical arranged slides that became popular in the second half of the nineteenth century and the design theories of Owen Jones.

ARTICLETarnished Silver by Max Bryant

Summary Describes the approach taken to interpreting, in a gallery setting, a set of silver with a troubling history.

Summary Examines the uses and meanings of white “Cherokee clay”, among Cherokee and British potters, and between their respective political and cultural worlds.

Summary This article reappraises a set of ceramic portrait medallions that served to educate and promote what it meant to be a woman in the late eighteenth century.

ARTICLEClassical Histories, Colonial Objects by Freya Gowrley

Summary Contextualises the production, purchase, and display of specimen tables in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

ARTICLEServing as Ornament by Hannah Lee

Summary Dissects the development of the “blackamoor” as a decorative category through case studies of objects at Ham House, Knole, and Dyrham Park.

ARTICLERuth Ellis’s Suit by Lynda Nead

Summary What can a suit tell us about gender, sex, and class in post-war Britain?

Summary Investigates the transformation of porcelain shards washed up on the beaches of St. Croix from island debris into artworks and decorative objects.

ARTICLEIn the Flesh at the Heart of Empire by Ianna Recco

Summary Discusses how the Cherokee visitors to London became such a spectacle by studying three wax statues that were made in their image.

ARTICLEWild Porcelain by Michelle Erickson

Summary Combines colonial era ceramic techniques and contemporary themes including gun violence, fossil fuel geopolitics, and the influence of big tech.

Summary Curators and academics discuss the challenges of displaying and interpreting race and empire in a decorative arts gallery.

ARTICLEUnpacking Wedgwood interview between Caitlin Meehye Beach
and Roberto Visani

Summary This interview presents a discussion about the artist’s ongoing confrontation with the visual archive of slavery through the cardboard slave kits series.

ARTICLEWhat’s in a Label? convened by Iris Moon

Summary For this feature, curators were asked to revisit and revise an object label they had previously written.

ARTICLEIn Sparkling Company by Christoper Maxwell

Summary A case study considers how gallery design and interpretation can enhance engagement with the colonial histories of glass objects.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEBritish Art after Brexit convened by British Art Studies Editorial Group

Summary Contributors respond to the provocation of correlating art and art history with idea of the “nation”. Responses from Jenny Gaschke, Sarah Gould, Gill Perry, Francesco Ventrella, Kimberly Lamm, Jackson Davidow, Isobel Harbison, Edwin Coomasaru, James Alexander Cameron, Imogen Hart, Corinne Fowler and Alexander Massouras.

ARTICLESlade, London, Asia by Liz Bruchet
and Ming Tiampo

Summary The first part of the Slade, London, Asia feature presents a narrative history that takes the Slade School of Fine Art as the starting point for a global microhistory.

ARTICLESlade, London, Asia by Ming Tiampo
and Liz Bruchet

Summary The second part of the Slade, London, Asia feature brings together materials from multiple institutional and personal archives in Asia and the United Kingdom.

Summary Explores the imaginative purchase of the historical and the antiquarian as Gustav Metzger learned to live, work, and practise as an artist outside the cosmopolitan centre.

ARTICLELady of Silences by Allison K. Young

Summary Considers Zarina Bhimji’s work in relation to surrealist and second-wave feminist artists through her interest in affect, memory, and the symbolic representation of enigmatic childhood and domestic objects.

Summary This feature brings together historians of art and historians of medicine to explore the production and reception of Joseph Maclise’s Surgical Anatomy.

ARTICLEAnatomy in Context filmed by Jonathan Law
with Ludmilla Jordanova
and William Schupbach

Summary Three films discuss the production, use, and circulation of anatomical images and texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Wellcome Collection.

ARTICLEBloodlines by Anthea Callen

Summary Tracks the networks of specialists with whom Maclise was associated, from Cork and the capitals of Scotland, England, and France, across the Atlantic to Philadelphia and Boston.

ARTICLEBlack Apollo by Keren Rosa Hammerschlag

Summary An examination of Maclise’s rendering of the interior and exterior of the Black body considers the relationship between aesthetics and race in mid-nineteenth-century anatomical illustration.

Summary Argues that it is plausible and meaningful to take Maclise’s anatomical illustrations, and the figures depicted therein, as queer objects of queer desire.

Summary Contextualises the collaborative effort behind the publication of Maclise’s The Anatomy of the Arteries within the broader landscape of nineteenth-century anatomical publishing networks.

Summary Traces the US reception of Joseph Maclise’s Surgical Anatomy and outlines its impact on American medical publishing, pedagogy, and practice.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEMillais’s Metapicture by Mark A. Cheetham

Summary Presents a reading of Millais’s painting as a “metapicture” that looked ahead to the planting of the British flag at the North Pole and also to today’s treatment of the Arctic in contemporary art.

Summary Considers John McHale’s writing and art practice as an evolving response to Marshall McLuhan’s media ecology.

ARTICLESpratt’s Flaps by Rebecca Whiteley

Summary Obstetric Tables stood out among midwifery guides of the period for its coloured lithographic illustrations, mobilised by the construction of paper flaps.

ARTICLENecrography convened by Dan Hicks

Summary Contributors respond to the provocation that the concept of object “life-histories” in museums has masked the colonial violence inherent in their collections.

ARTICLERoyal Religion Series by Victor Ehikhamenor

Summary Victor Ehikhamenor’s Royal Religion series fuses Catholic rosaries, coral beads, and bronze statuettes to explore the hybrid history of garments worn by the Benin monarch.

Issue Overview

Summary Examines the afterlife of Aubrey Beardsley in Russia, focusing on his admirers among the World of Art group, led by Sergei Diaghilev, and the circulation of Beardsley’s images through their journal Mir iskusstva.

Summary Contributors consider whether the ecological crisis demands a fundamental transformation in the way art history is structured and taught.

ARTICLEWomen in Fur by Sarah Parsons

Summary The Pitfour photographs illuminate the tension between the early progressive uses of photography, particularly by women, and the often-repressive contexts that shaped their production.

Summary Case studies of the 1961 IUA Congress and Victor Pasmore’s Peterlee project trace the decline of British constructionism amid changing cultural discourses.

ARTICLEMaking a Case by Steve Edwards

Summary Argues that daguerreotypes must be understood as image-thing amalgams, paying particular attention to the construction and marks on their cases and frames.

ARTICLEClimate and Culture Beyond Borders by Worm: art + ecology

Summary Worm: art + ecology curates this feature, showcasing the work of four artists alongside their own practice to explore justice in environmental and climate issues.

ARTICLEMoss Rain Paradox by Angela YT Chan

Summary Moss Rain Paradox is a research project that examines the UK’s imminent water scarcity issues and responds to a spectrum of climate perspectives.

ARTICLEBeyond Interspecies Objectification by Sonia E. Barrett

Summary Explores Sonia E. Barrett’s sculptural interventions using furniture made from tropical hardwoods linked to colonial wealth, which confront and critique dominant narratives of race, gender, and environmental exploitation.

ARTICLEWang Chau Village by Michael Leung

Summary Standing with the Wang Chau villagers resisting eviction by the Hong Kong government, these works capture their collective farming, jackfruit festival, activism, and daily co-learning through paintings, photos, and anecdotes.

ARTICLEDIÁSPORAS QUE LUCHAN by The Bonita Chola (aka Angela Camacho)

Summary Documents and archives the work of Indigenous and Afro-descendant organisers using vibrant, accessible images focused on anti-colonial, climate, and social justice issues.

ARTICLEThe Ecological Imperative by INTERPRT

Summary Investigations that utilise geospatial analysis and architectural methodologies to reconstruct cases of environmental violations.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEAn Early Impresa Miniature by Alexander Marr

Summary Assesses the iconography, attribution, and sitter’s identity of one of the earliest impresa miniatures: Man in an Armillary Sphere (1569).

ARTICLEIntroduction by Catherine MacLeod
and Alexander Marr

Summary Introduction to a special issue reassessing English portrait miniature paintings by Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver.

ARTICLELively Limning by Christina J. Faraday

Summary While John White’s images have often been placed in the long tradition of European watercolours, a more convincing view situates them within the Elizabethan vogue for limning.

ARTICLEGame of Thrones by Karin Leonhard

Summary Examines the symbolic use of playing cards in the creation of portrait miniatures, suggesting they employed courtly imagery to express social affiliations, political loyalties, and ties of affection.

ARTICLENegotiating a Courtship between Courts by William Aslet

Summary Presents the first full-length study of the small book of prayers belonging to Queen Elizabeth I in relation to the miniatures it contained by Nicholas Hilliard of the queen herself and François Hercule, duc d’Anjou.

Summary Provides both a broad context for Nicholas Hilliard’s formative years and offers a plausible scenario as to how he acquired the skills that made him the most successful miniaturist of his generation.

ARTICLEIsaac Oliver and the Essex Circle by Catherine MacLeod

Summary Argues that the patronage of Isaac Oliver by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and his circle was central to both the development of the artist’s practice and to Essex’s campaign for power at court.

ARTICLEPortrait of an Unknown Lady by Polly Saltmarsh

Summary An art-historical and technical analysis of the Yale Center for British Art’s Portrait of an Unknown Lady, proposes an attribution and Princess Mary (later Mary I) as the sitter.

ARTICLEA Very Proper Treatise by Annemie Leemans

Summary Discusses the authorship and audience of England’s first printed recipe book which is entirely dedicated to the practice of limning.

ARTICLESecrets of a Silent Miniaturist by Christine Slottved Kimbriel
and Paola Ricciardi

Summary A collaborative research project by the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Hamilton Kerr Institute sheds light on the materiality of Isaac Oliver’s artistic practice.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEEditorial British Art Studies Editorial Group

Summary This editorial affirms British Art Studies’ commitment to anti-racism by pledging to elevate Black voices, critically examine the entanglement of British art with colonialism and white supremacy, and implement structural changes in publishing practices.

ARTICLELuxury and Crisis convened by Iris Moon

Summary Contributors consider the role that decorative objects, which have long been deemed as “superfluous”, played in shaping and negotiating our political, social, and economic needs, wants, and desires, both past and present.

ARTICLE“The Bold Adventure of All” by Helen Pierce

Summary Considers a series of encounters with printed, painted, and sculpted portraits by a range of viewers with different political and religious inclinations during the 1650s.

ARTICLEThe Social Economics of Artistic Labour by Anna Cooper
and Martin Myrone

Summary Considers a series of encounters with printed, painted, and sculpted portraits by a range of viewers with different political and religious inclinations during the 1650s.

ARTICLEBill Brandt by Martina Droth
and Paul Messier
Robert Hixon
with photography by Richard Caspole

Summary This feature explores the photography of Bill Brandt from the perspective of the physical print, drawing attention to its material qualities and practical functions.

Summary Introduction to a series of texts examining St Stephen’s Chapel at the Palace of Westminster.

ARTICLEVirtual St Stephen’s by Tim Ayers

Summary Siscusses the creation of a digital reconstruction of St Stephen’s Chapel as it appeared in 1360, exploring how virtual modelling serves both as a research tool and a means of public engagement, while reflecting on the methodological challenges and interpretive decisions involved in visualising this lost medieval space.

ARTICLEMapping the Unknown by Anthony Masinton
and James Jago

Summary Examines how varying degrees of historical evidence influenced the digital reconstruction of St Stephen’s Chapel across three periods, highlighting how the modelling process itself reveals both the known and the unknown aspects of the building’s history.

ARTICLEThe Wall Paintings at St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster Palace by Helen Howard
and Lloyd de Beer
David Saunders
Catherine Higgitt

Summary This article presents recent imaging and scientific analyses of mid-fourteenth-century wall painting fragments from St Stephen’s Chapel, revealing insights into their creation techniques, workshop practices, and the historical context of their preservation and display at the British Museum.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEA Visionary Sense of London by Laura Grace Ford

Summary This feature presents an illustrated lecture delivered by artist Laura Grace Ford in conjunction with a conference and exhibition on William Blake at Tate Britain.

ARTICLEBert Hardy by Lynda Nead
and John Wyver

Summary Two short films and an essay explore the aesthetic and historical qualities of Bert Hardy’s wartime and post-war photography for Picture Post.

Summary This essay traces how Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy and his wife Ethel Mairet’s photographs and studies of craft in India and Ceylon in the 1900s relate to Charles and Ray Eames’s 1958 India Report.

ARTICLEReason Dazzled by Matthew Beaumont

Summary Proposes a reinterpretation of Turner’s painting as an attempt to stage a certain crisis in the Enlightenment, at the level both of form and content—the blinding effect of too much light.

ARTICLESigns of a Struggle by Aviva Burnstock
and Sarah MacDougall

Summary Describes a collaborative technical and art-historical study of paintings by Mark Gertler sparked by the discovery through X-radiography of a painted sketch for his masterwork Merry-Go-Round (1916).

ARTICLESkin and Bone by David Hansen

Summary A visual essay explores the interplay between portraiture, politics, class, and race across Britain, Europe, America, and Australia, linking diverse visual and scientific practices.

Issue Overview
ARTICLE“The Assemblage of Specimens” by Samuel Bibby

Summary Explores how three 1976 publications functioned as alternative catalogues for a Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, highlighting the magazine’s role as a key site for art-historical experimentation.

ARTICLEon the side of the disease and not the cure with films by James Richards
introduced by Sarah Perks

Summary This feature showcases new work by James Richards that continues the artist’s investigation into the body and technology, as well as a short essay by curator Sarah Perks.

Summary Investigates the history of the joint exhibition of Jack B. Yeats and William Nicholson at the National Gallery in 1942.

ARTICLEThe Texture of Capitalism by Kirsty Sinclair Dootson

Summary Considers how the industrial production of oil paint became a flashpoint for debates about the effect of capitalist modernity on painting in particular and society more broadly.

ARTICLEThe Ecosystem of Exhibitions by Catherine Roach

Summary Explores how three 1976 publications functioned as alternative catalogues for a Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, highlighting the magazine’s role as a key site for art-historical experimentation.

ARTICLE“The Sense of Nearness” by Katherine Fein

Summary Re-examines Harriet Hosmer’s Clasped Hands, challenging assumptions about the indexicality of life casts and instead proposing a dynamic relationship defined by nearness between cast and subject.

Issue Overview
ARTICLETaking Space for Asian Diaspora Narratives by Annie Jael Kwan

Summary This curatorial essay discusses an experimental performance programme, Being Present, which included three works by three artists from the Asia-Art-Activism Research Network.

ARTICLE26 x 2 = 0 by Bettina Fung | 馮允珊

Summary An artistic intervention originally performed as part of the exhibition Speech Acts at the Manchester Art Gallery in March 2019.

ARTICLELondon, Asia, Exhibitions, Histories by Hammad Nasar
and Sarah Victoria Turner

Summary Introduces this special issue of British Art Studies, the first publication to emerge from the Paul Mellon Centre’s London, Asia research project.

ARTICLEExhibitions, Histories by Sonal Khullar

Summary An introduction to the symposium Showing, Telling, Seeing: Exhibiting South Asia in Britain, 1900 to Now.

ARTICLEWhy Exhibition Histories? convened by Saloni Mathur

Summary Contributors respond to the idea that exhibitions provide an important lens through which to explore the entangled art histories of Asia and Britain.

ARTICLEExhibitions in Print interview between Sharmini Pereira
and Sneha Ragavan

Summary Presents an interview with the founder and director of the non-profit organisation Raking Leaves, which publishes artist books with an emphasis on the geopolitical and cultural contexts of South Asia.

ARTICLECurating the Cosmopolis interview between Iwona Blazwick
and Rattanamol Singh Johal

Summary The curator of Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis in 2001 at Tate Modern looks back at this ambitious exhibition, discussing its development, challenges, and legacy.

ARTICLEUnlearning the Modern interview between David Elliott
and Hilary Floe

Summary An interview with David Elliott discusses his time as director the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, in particular his influential series of exhibitions under the title India: Myth and Reality.

ARTICLEInstant Malaysia by Kelvin Chuah

Summary A personal article reflects on the history, impact, and legacy of the 1973 Instant Malaysia exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, London.

ARTICLE“A Bridge between the Two Worlds” by Sarena Abdullah

Summary Discusses the links between London and Kuala Lumpur during the 1960s and 1970s, through several exhibitions of Malaysian art organised at, or by, the Commonwealth Institute, London.

ARTICLEMapping Decolonisation by Claire Wintle

Summary A close reading of London’s Commonwealth Institute and its intriguing gallery floor plan of 1969, considering the interaction between display, exhibition graphics, and imperial change.

ARTICLEJourneying through Modernism by Lotte Hoek
and Sanjukta Sunderason

Summary Explores the journeys of two key twentieth-century artists from East Pakistan—Zainul Abedin and S.M. Sultan—to and through post-imperial London in the early 1950s.

Summary Focuses on the largely understudied Art of India exhibition held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in London in 1931, which was hailed at the time as the first event of its kind in the West.

Summary Methods and findings from the ongoing research project Articulating British Asian Art Histories focuses on four exhibitions of South Asian women artists during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Summary An artistic intervention originally performed as part of the exhibition Speech Acts at the Manchester Art Gallery in March 2019.

ARTICLEYellow Peril by Nicholas Tee

Summary An artistic intervention originally performed as part of the exhibition Speech Acts at the Manchester Art Gallery in March 2019.

Issue Overview
ARTICLE1964 by Stephen Bann

Summary This feature assembles archival material, text and images in a non-linear fashion to examine the experience of a single year of exhibitions in 1964.

ARTICLETransatlantic Transactions and the Domestic Market by Barbara Pezzini
and Alan Crookham

Summary A case study of art dealer Agnew’s presents a methodological discussion of how digital tools can be used to investigate circulation and transnational exchange in the historical art market.

ARTICLEThe Kitchen Sink Too by Abi Shapiro

Summary This feature reflects on the invisibility of women’s perspectives of domesticity in early post-war art, and the process of working with community groups to develop curatorial research.

ARTICLELetters from the Home Front by Sophie Hatchwell

Summary Explores how Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun’s experience of life on the home front as non-combatants and erstwhile pacifists in Britain informed their work during the Second World War.

ARTICLECumbrian Cosmopolitanisms by Hammad Nasar

Summary Case studies of three works related to the LYC Museum & Art Gallery in Cumbria explore how friendships inform shared practices, generate work, and socialise narratives.

Summary An account of Delia Derbyshire’s work in the 1970s after she left the BBC also includes an unreleased recording from an unfinished project in 1980.

ARTICLEDelia Derbyshire by Caroline Catz

Summary A short film explores the life and creative output of Delia Derbyshire, accompanied by an interview with the filmmaker.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEThe Ballet of the Nations by Impermanence

Summary The first ever staging of Vernon Lee’s 1915 The Ballet of the Nations performed and filmed in 2018 brings the theatre of war to life.

ARTICLETheatres of War by Grace Brockington

Summary An introduction to the Theatres of War special issue

ARTICLEPerforming Pacifism by Grace Brockington

Summary A visual feature exploring the history of the publication of Vernon Lee’s The Ballet of the Nations (1915).

ARTICLEInspirations by Grace Brockington

Summary A visual feature surveying the roots of the experimental theatre movement in Britain before the First World War.

ARTICLELondon’s Little Theatres by Grace Brockington
and Claudia Tobin

Summary A visual feature that examines the history and output of several experimental theatre groups active in London around 1915.

ARTICLEBeyond London & the War by Grace Brockington

Summary A visual feature that follows the fortunes of experimental “little theatres” in Britain into the 1920s.

ARTICLECostumes and Production interview between Ella Margolin
and Pam Tait

Summary Production designer Pam Tait speaks with Ella Margolin about the costumes and set design of Impermanence’s The Ballet of the Nations.

ARTICLEComposing interview with Robert Bentall

Summary Composer Robert Bentall speaks with the British Art Studies editorial team about the score he wrote for Impermanence’s The Ballet of the Nations.

ARTICLEDirecting and Choreography interview with Roseanna Anderson
and Joshua Ben-Tovim

Summary Writers, directors, producers, and dancers Roseanna Anderson and Joshua Ben-Tovim speak about choreographing Impermanence’s The Ballet of the Nations.

ARTICLECinematography interview between Ella Margolin
and Jack Offord

Summary Director of Photography, Jack Offord, talks to Ella Margolin about shooting and lighting Impermanence’s The Ballet of the Nations.

Issue Overview
ARTICLE1973 and the Future of Landscape by Nicholas Alfrey

Summary An exhibition history of Landscape in Britain c.1750–1850 at the Tate Gallery in 1973, looks at how the curators set out to question received ideas about the rise of landscape painting in Britain.

ARTICLEIntroduction by Mark Hallett

Summary Introduces this special issue of British Art Studies, which focuses on landscape imagery as an area of study attracting new kinds of art-historical attention.

ARTICLELandscape Then and Now by Tim Barringer

Summary Explores how landscape art has historically reflected ideological concerns and examines its evolving significance in contemporary global and postcolonial contexts.

ARTICLEFire-Stick Picturesque by Julia Lum

Summary Drawing from scholarship in fire ecology and ethnohistory, this article suggests new approaches to art historical analysis of colonial landscape art.

ARTICLELandscape Now convened by Alexandra Harris

Summary Contributors respond in a wide-ranging discussion on the evolving role of landscape art in contemporary culture, exploring how it intersects with literature, history, and environmental concerns.

ARTICLEGardening the Archive by Hammad Nasar
and David Alesworth

Summary This feature with David Alesworth showcases five details from his recent projects that suggest the range of different questions we may pose to landscapes now.

ARTICLEPaul Nash’s Geological Enigma by Anna Reid

Summary Explores the attunement of Paul Nash’s work to pioneering early to mid-twentieth century geophysical research in England—connections that have not yet been fully recognised.

Summary Traces the life of a representationally elusive and stubborn landscape, the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, through various forms of visual culture.

ARTICLEOn Place and Displacement by Julia A. Sienkewicz

Summary Studying watercolours from the Virginian residence of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, this feature analyses the concept of “displacement” as a contribution to landscape studies.

ARTICLELiquid Landscape by Stephen Daniels

Summary Considers the presence of the pond in the work of two artists: one contemporary and the other a historical English landscape artist, both of whom are attentive to a range of hydrologies.

ARTICLEThe Anthroposcenic by David Matless

Summary Through the “Anthroposcenic”, this article explores how landscape becomes emblematic of processes deemed to mark an Anthropocene epoch.

ARTICLELandscaping Islands by Gill Perry

Summary Drawing on examples of installation, film, photography, and performance, this article explores the significance of the island theme in contemporary British art.

ARTICLEOutside In by Mark A. Cheetham

Summary Examines how eco art, land art, and landscape interact within the Anthropocene, focusing on artists bringing natural landscapes into galleries and institutional frameworks.

ARTICLELines in the Landscape by Corinne Silva
and Val Williams

Summary Presents a new research project by the artist Corinne Silva and the curator and writer Val Williams retracing the footsteps of W.G. Hoskins and F.L. Attenborough for their 1948 guidebook Touring Leicestershire.

ARTICLEThe “Connoisseur’s Panorama” by Greg Smith

Summary This feature with David Alesworth showcases five details from his recent projects that suggest the range of different questions we may pose to landscapes now.

Issue Overview
ARTICLELaboratories of Creativity convened by Elizabeth Prettejohn
and Peter Trippi

Summary Contributors explore artists’ studio-houses as creative spaces that shaped personal identities, artistic collaboration, and cultural influence, extending beyond mere domestic settings.

ARTICLEWhat Do We Want from Artists’ Houses? by Christopher Reed

Summary Contributors explore artists’ studio-houses as creative spaces that shaped personal identities, artistic collaboration, and cultural influence, extending beyond mere domestic settings.

ARTICLEIntroduction by Elizabeth Prettejohn
and Peter Trippi

Summary Introduces a group of articles and features on artists’ houses by considering the Alma-Tademas’ studio-houses, their influence on art, design, and early cinema.

Summary Addresses how Frederic Leighton’s Arab Hall embodies a complex synthesis of Islamic art and British Aestheticism, revealing tensions between historical authenticity and artistic restoration.

ARTICLEThe Atmospherics of Leighton House by Jonathan Law
and Mary Roberts

Summary Five short films made by Jonathan Law with texts selected by Mary Roberts highlight the atmospheric materiality of the studio-home of Frederic Leighton.

ARTICLE“A Door of Hell” by Gregory Salter

Summary This article considers the art of Gilbert and George in relation to the concept of the threshold, placing their work in the context of a pervading sense of crisis in 1970s Britain.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEAubrey Williams by Kobena Mercer

Summary Suggests Williams’s Amerindian focus is best understood in terms of a “hauntological” mode of abstraction critically responsive to the moment of decolonisation.

ARTICLEEditorial by British Art Studies Editorial Group

Summary The editorial to this issue describes work by the journal’s editors on another project, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018.

ARTICLE“As if Every Particle Was Alive” by Damian Taylor

Summary Argues that Constable’s Hadleigh Castle can be understood as fundamentally engaged with scientific ideas arising in contemporary geology and meteorology.

ARTICLEThe Art Game by Michael Clegg

Summary Examines the coverage of the visual arts by the BBC’s Monitor, exploring its place in the evolution of approaches to art on British television and assesses its impact on the post-war art support system.

ARTICLESnapshots from No Man’s Land by Pippa Oldfield

Summary Pippa Oldfield reflects on curating an exhibition of war photography by women and the research involved in recovering the work and experiences of women photographers.

Issue Overview
ARTICLE“The Snob’s Chaldron” by Katherine Gazzard

Summary Examines Alexander Davison’s patronage of history painting, exploring his ambitions for social advancement and the genre’s public–private role in early nineteenth-century Britain.

Summary A short film exploring Paul Nash’s diverse works across media, emphasising interconnected themes of pattern, design, and nature, advocating for a unified interpretation.

ARTICLEA Photobook of the Shimmer Natasha Eaton

Summary Looks at Lionel Wendt’s photography, highlighting the interplay between colonialism, pearl fisheries, coerced labour, and the aesthetic allure of pearlescence and shimmer.

ARTICLEElegant Engravings of the Pacific by Jocelyn Anderson

Summary Describes how illustrations from James Cook’s Pacific expeditions were widely circulated through eighteenth-century British magazines and shaped public perceptions of the Pacific.

ARTICLEArt by the Many by Thomas Crow

Summary Contributors respond to the influence of 1960s London style cults on art, focusing on their innovative blending of fashion, music, and self-expression within broader cultural and social contexts.

ARTICLESeeing Red by Glenn Adamson
with photography by Richard Caspole

Summary This feature explores Clare Twomey’s Made in China installation at the Yale Center for British Art.

ARTICLEThe Famous Women Dinner Service by Hana Leaper

Summary Biographical entries for the women portrayed in Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s set of fifty plates of “famous women” accompany an article that examines the place of this playful work in the artists’ oeuvres.

ARTICLEThe Famous Women Dinner Service conversation between Judy Chicago

Hana Leaper
and Carmen Hermo
filmed by Jonathan Law

Summary Judy Chicago and the Feminist Art Collective discuss their work in a filmed conversation, reflecting on Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s Famous Women dinner service.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEAn Ivory Staff Terminal from Alcester by Sandy Heslop

Summary A “One Object” feature examining the Alcester staff terminal, an eleventh-century walrus ivory crozier head distinguished by its uncommon double-volute form, detailed carvings of Christ’s Passion, and rich symbolism of pastoral authority.

ARTICLEPilgrim Souvenir by Amy Jeffs

Summary A “One Object” feature examining a thirteenth-century tin ampulla depicting the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, highlighting its function as both a wearable container for holy water and a symbol of personal devotion, crafted for pilgrims visiting Canterbury.

ARTICLEEditorial by Sandy Heslop
and Jessica Berenbeim

Summary The editorial to this special issue on medieval art and architecture examines the evolving concepts of invention, visual difference, and historical perceptions of novelty in medieval works.

ARTICLEMedieval Invention and its Potencies by Paul Binski

Summary Medieval invention blended rationality and mystery, with art sometimes perceived as possessing persuasive or supernatural forces, though most often rooted in social conventions, rules, and playful creative processes.

Summary Explores how innovation in English Gothic architecture was shaped by risks, constraints, structural failures, and the relationship between masons and their patrons.

ARTICLEImagining Invention by James Hillson

Summary Scholars have long conflated Gothic architects into a generalised figure – this article critiques that framework and suggests alternatives for understanding medieval designers.

ARTICLECreativity in Three Dimensions by Alexandrina Buchanan
and Nicholas Webb

Summary Analyses the design and construction of Wells Cathedral’s lierne vaults using digital scanning to reveal varied processes and experimentation during construction stages.

Summary A study of the relationship between medieval church porches and the porches of King Solomon, highlighting the inventive ways medieval designers interpreted prototypes from written sources

ARTICLEImagining Place and Moralizing Space by Laura Slater

Summary Examines the significance of medieval “recreated Jerusalem” sites, and specifically the Jerusalem Chamber in the abbot’s house at Westminster Abbey, where Henry IV died in 1413.

ARTICLEThe Englishness of English Sedilia by James Alexander Cameron

Summary Explores why sedilia – the ceremonial seats of the priest, deacon, and subdeacon placed to the south of the altar – became so popular in England, through a consideration of trends in English architecture.

Summary Considers whether the earliest surviving example of side-by-side effigies of a married couple in the British Isles was intended to assert the legitimacy of a claim to the earldom of Menteith.

ARTICLEIn the Vineyard of the Lord by Veronika Decker

Summary Considers the significance of the image of the Tree of Jesse that appears in stained glass in the chapels of New College, Oxford and Winchester College, both founded by William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester.

Summary Argues that the Chichester seal matrix was intentionally designed to reference legal and biblical authority, positioning the cathedral as a “temple of justice”.

ARTICLEResonance and Reuse by Kirsten Collins

Summary Explores the fifteenth-century reinvention of Getty Ms. 101, a late Romanesque picture book that was reconfigured as a devotional manual.

ARTICLEWording the Wound Man by Jack Hartnell

Summary An investigation into the only known English example of a Wound Man image, positioning the picture as a site not just of surgical knowledge but of a broader medico-artistic entanglement.

ARTICLEDisciplining the Digital coordinated by Amy Jeffs

Summary Contributors discuss the potential of 3D modeling for public engagement, research, teaching, and museum display and consider benefits and challenges of digital replicas in preserving, interpreting, and increasing access to objects.

ARTICLEHandling Digital Objects by Lloyd de Beer
and Naomi Speakman

Summary Examines how physical handling sessions and 3D digital reproductions of medieval artefacts—such as the Alcester Crozier and pilgrim badges—demonstrate the growing importance of digital technologies in facilitating scholarly and public engagement with museum collections.

ARTICLEPilgrim Souvenir by Amy Jeffs

Summary A “One Object” feature examining a fifteenth-century badge depicting a hood filled with cherries and its role as a pilgrim souvenir reflecting medieval devotional and cultural practices.

Summary A “One Object” feature examining a fourteenth-century copper-gilt and enamel morse from Warden Abbey, highlighting its significance as both a liturgical vestment clasp and a testament to medieval monastic identity and craftsmanship.

Issue Overview

Summary Explores how free access to the British Museum’s sculpture galleries shaped art education and reinforced middle-class dominance in early nineteenth-century Britain.

ARTICLEBetween a Rock and a Blue Chair by Martin Hammer

Summary Close analysis discloses Hockney’s repertoire of artistic and literary allusions in Rocky Mountains (1965), and the meanings and associations these may have encapsulated.

ARTICLEA “Modern Rendezvous” in London by Bernard Vere

Summary Resituates A Short Flight within the context of aviation in London before the First World War, when 120,000 people attended the meeting at Hendon Aerodrome over the Easter weekend of 1914.

ARTICLELowry and the Local by Anne M. Wagner

Summary What does it mean to draw a slum? Lowry, one of the few artists to take up this question, adopted a notably uninflected manner, descriptive, but not dramatic.

Summary Introducing a feature on the Hereford Screen, one of the most complex and intricate choir screens of the Victorian era.

ARTICLETheology and Threshold by Ayla Lepine

Summary Explores the Victorian revival of choir and rood screens, their theological significance, and artistic evolution, accompanied by three films illustrating their impact on sacred spaces and Christian worship.

ARTICLEThe Hereford Screen: A Prehistory by Matthew Reeve

Summary Examines Skidmore and Scott’s Hereford Cathedral screen, its historical context, and connections to their work at Lichfield and Salisbury, addressing eighteenth-century “improvements”.

ARTICLEThe Medieval Choir Screen in Sacred Space by Jacqueline E. Jung

Summary Reveals the dynamic, mutually reinforcing relations among choir screens, the spaces they inhabited, and the liturgical objects that animated those zones.

ARTICLESound and Vision in the Hereford Screen by Justin Underhill

Summary Describes how digital documentation of Hereford Cathedral and the Hereford Screen has revealed standpoints within the cathedral that would have dramatically impacted the appearance of the screen.

Summary In focusing on the musical culture connected with Hereford Cathedral, this article enriches the interpretation of the restored Hereford Screen in its secular setting at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

ARTICLECollaborations Between Scott and Skidmore by Alicia Robinson

Summary Examines the collaboration between architect George Gilbert Scott and metalworker Francis Skidmore, comparing their metalwork screens at the cathedrals of Hereford, Lichfield, and Salisbury.

Summary Provides a broad narrative of how the screens designed Gilbert Scott and Skidmore for the cathedrals of Hereford, Lichfield, and Salisbury, have been regarded since they were produced.

Summary In this film, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Head of Metals Conservation, Diana Heath, describes her involvement in the intricate conservation and restoration of the Hereford Screen.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEEditorial by British Art Studies Editorial Group

Summary This editorial recaps the journal’s first year of publication, highlighting newly introduced features and looking ahead to upcoming work.

ARTICLENew Brutalist Image 1949–55 by Claire Zimmerman
and Victoria Walsh

Summary Three reels of photographs taken by Nigel Henderson reveal a visual lexicon of New Brutalism that links the 1953 Parallel of Life and Art exhibition and the Hunstanton School project completed in 1954.

ARTICLEThe Temporal Dimensions of the London Art Auction, 1780–1835 by Matthew Lincoln
and Abram Fox

Summary Draws on quantitative methods to explore the gradual emergence of a tightly scheduled auction season in London at the turn of the nineteenth century, focusing on the sale of paintings.

Summary This article and the accompanying reconstruction explore methods for representing lost displays, with an emphasis on visualising uncertainty and the mediated nature of period images.

ARTICLEInsurgent Citizenship by Sean Robert Willcock

Summary Looking at the palliative, diplomatic role played by photographic portraiture following the Indian Rebellion (1857–59), this article assesses how photography engaged with warfare’s social upheavals.

ARTICLE“The Mirror-Like Sea” by Vajdon Sohaili

Summary Analyses Duncan Grant’s mural for the Borough Polytechnic, and the painting’s linkage of naked homosociality to a subtle figuration of desire that echoes E.M. Forster’s “only connect” dictum.

ARTICLESuper-size Caricature Kate Grandjouan

Summary This article re-examines Rowlandson’s ambitious caricature of the French in the context of his training at the Académie Royale in Paris, as well as the rise of public exhibitions and market for comic prints.

ARTICLEExit Theory convened by John Tagg

Summary Contributors discuss whether the current interest in the 1970s will prove anything more than another passing curatorial revival and generate its own inventive forms of practice and theory?

ARTICLEMartin Parr by Martin Parr

Summary A selection of photographs by Martin Parr that have come to define particular notions of what Britishness looks like.

ARTICLEConference Proceedings convened by Sarah Victoria Turner
and Martina Droth

Summary Video-recordings made at the conference Photography and Britishness, held at the Yale Center for British Art in November 2016.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEBritish Sculpture Abroad: An Introduction by Martina Droth
and Penelope Curtis

Summary This special issue examines how British sculpture was promoted, received, and transformed abroad from 1945 onwards, exploring the development and shifting meanings of the national category internationally.

Summary Explores how Herbert Read and others, with the British Council, established an international presence for Moore, Hepworth, and the postwar generation of “the Geometry of Fear”.

ARTICLEHenry Moore’s Exhibition in Yugoslavia, 1955 by Želimir Koščević

Summary Describes how Henry Moore’s 1955 exhibition in Yugoslavia—which travelled to Zagreb, Belgrade, Skopje, and Ljubljana—contributed to the country’s broader cultural liberalisation of the 1950s.

ARTICLEBarbara Hepworth in Brazil by Ana Gonçalves Magalhães

Summary Analyses the reception of Barbara Hepworth’s oeuvre in Brazil, in the context of her participation at the V Bienal de São Paulo.

Summary Studies the impact of the Venice Biennale on the international reputation of British sculpture from 1948 to 1958, examining the impression it made on Italian sculpture during the 1950s.

ARTICLE1984 and Beyond (2005–07) by Gerard Byrne

Summary Gerard Byrne discusses his multi-media installation, 1984 and Beyond, staged amidst the Barbara Hepworth sculptures in Gerrit Rietveld’s Sonsbeek Pavilion.

Summary Analyses the transformation and internationalisation of British sculpture in the 1960s, highlighting generational shifts, new artistic tendencies, and global exchanges.

ARTICLEBritish Constructivist Art by Sam Gathercole

Summary A case study of the British Constructivist Art exhibition, which toured the USA and Canada in 1961 and 1962, highlights the problematic reception of the work in an American cultural context.

ARTICLE“Induced Tension” by Arie Hartog

Summary Looks at the reception of the sculptor Reg Butler in the USA, and the overlooked role of the curator Addison Franklin Page, an important exponent of the American tradition of art education.

ARTICLEHybrid Sculpture of the 1960s by John J. Curley

Summary Explores the genesis and exhibition in the New York of Gerald Laing and Peter Phillips’s sculpture Hybrid, and how it questioned the very parameters implied by the term “British Sculpture”.

ARTICLESight Unseen by Sarah Stanners

Summary Investigates the international reception of Anthony Caro’s sculpture Prairie (1967), emphasising its significant impact in the USA compared to its relative neglect in the United Kingdom.

Summary Charts the development of an artistic dialogue with the “omnipresent” work of Britain’s most globally successful sculptor, Henry Moore, from Toronto to Mexico City, from Chicago to Hiroshima.

ARTICLE1970s: Out of Sculpture by Elena Crippa

Summary In the 1970s, the mobility of British sculpture intensified at a time when the rubric of sculpture and a sense of what was specifically British in the visual arts were verging towards dissolution.

Summary Discusses the Boyle Family’s first international exhibition, contextualising it within European conceptualism and the legacies of high modernism, and the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher.

ARTICLEThe British Avant Garde by Jo Melvin

Summary Considers the relevance of The British Avant Garde exhibition at the New York Cultural Center in 1971 to the reputation and discussion of British artists in the USA, and its impact in Britain.

Summary Explores how the 1976 Arte Inglese Oggi exhibition in Milan navigated tensions between traditional media categories and emerging conceptual practices in British art.

ARTICLEUn Certain Art Anglais, 1979 by Lucy Reynolds

Summary Considers whether the 1979 British Council travelling exhibition to Paris, Un Certain Regard Anglais, was an accurate picture of English art practices at the end of the decade.

Summary Greg Hilty introduces the case studies in his 1980s section of “British Sculpture Abroad”. He also points to two exemplary instances of British sculpture’s expansion onto an ever wider global stage: Tony Cragg in Warsaw in 1988 and Richard Long in Paris in 1989.

Summary This essay examines how sculptural discourse was absent from British art shown outside of Britain in the 1990s, despite the international prominence of two distinct groups of British artists: the so-called Young British Artists (YBAs) and other British artists folded into a postcolonial or identity-based construction.

Summary Examines how Henry Moore’s collaborations with I.M. Pei in the 1970s produced distinctive public sculptures in the USA, integrating biomorphic abstraction with late modern architectural spaces.

ARTICLEThe British Show in Australia, 1985 by Anthony Bond

Summary In 1984–85, The British Show, an exhibition largely made up of New British Sculpture, was curated for Australia and New Zealand. This essay discusses the context and effects of the exhibition on art in Australia. It also seeks to define the sources of originality and innovation of the artists included.

ARTICLEA Quiet Revolution by Mary Jane Jacob

Summary This essay traces the thought processes behind the composition of artists for the exhibition A Quiet Revolution: British Sculpture since 1965 (1987-88). The exhibition introduced American museum audiences to the burgeoning activity in London in the 1980s and which foreshadowed even greater intensity in the following decade.

Summary Julian Heynen discusses a 1991 exhibition of new sculptures by Richard Deacon, presented at Haus Lange and Haus Esters in Krefeld.

ARTICLEExpanding the Field by Nick Baker

Summary This paper shows that sculptors attracted much of the attention that was paid to emerging British artists during the 1980s. The group of young artists represented by the Lisson Gallery and collectively referred to at the time as the “New British Sculptors” were particularly successful in gaining coverage.

ARTICLESensational Cities by John J. Curley

Summary The essay revisits the controversial 1997 exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, arguing that beneath its provocative surface and overt Britishness, it reflects a shared post-industrial sensibility and aligns with the gentrification of urban space in London, Berlin, and Brooklyn at the turn of the millennium.

Summary Richard Flood recounts the curatorial process behind preparing the 1995 exhibition Brilliant! New Art from London, held at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

ARTICLEReal/Life by Kajiya Kenji

Summary The essay examines the reception of the exhibition Real/Life: New British Art in Japan (1998–1999), highlighting its role in shifting Japanese exhibition practices from nationally centred displays to globally engaged presentations of contemporary art.

ARTICLEWith the Void, Full Powers by Rakhee Balaram

Summary Explores how Kapoor’s representation of Britain at the Venice Biennale challenged conventional notions of national identity and artistic categorisation, highlighting the complexities of postcolonial and diasporic influences in British art.

ARTICLEDisorienting the Art World by Jo Applin

Summary Examines Mona Hatoum’s participation in the 1995 4th International Istanbul Biennial, highlighting how her work challenged Western-centric narratives and redefined the global perception of contemporary British art.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEEditorial by British Art Studies Editorial Group

Summary This editorial highlights the journal’s international reach, open-access digital platform, and commitment to expanding British art studies through innovative methodologies.

ARTICLEChanging Subjects by Anne Nellis Richter

Summary Explores how William Cantrill’s 1812 etchings dedicated to the Marchioness of Stafford used genre painting to mediate tensions from the Highland Clearances.

ARTICLEStill Invisible? convened by Patricia de Montfort
and Robyne Erica Calvert

Summary Contributors respond to the provocation that women artists are “still invisible”, examining their underrepresentation in British art and efforts to improve their visibility.

ARTICLECanaletto’s Colour by Roxane Sperber
and Jens Stenger

Summary Examining six paintings from Canaletto’s English period from a technical perspective, this article details changes to the artist’s grounds, painting technique, and palette when working in England.

ARTICLEHigh Art and High Stakes by John Chu

Summary Exploring the 3rd Duke of Dorset’s investment in Reynolds’s experimental paintings, this article views his risky patronage as a high-stakes gamble for social advancement.

ARTICLELooking for “the Longitude” convened by Katy Barrett

Summary An interactive feature explores the “Longitude Problem” through Hogarth’s art, using images and illuminates its role in Georgian visual culture.

ARTICLECarnation, Lily, Lily, Rose and the process of painting by Rebecca Hellen
and Elaine Kilmurray

Summary Technical analysis and archival research uncover new insights into John Singer Sargents’s process in creating Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.

ARTICLEConversations and Chimneypieces by Matthew Craske

Summary This study of conversation piece portraits, argues that they replicated the experience of meetings hosts, replicating the experience of a private greeting tied to the rituals of hospitality.

ARTICLEJohn Singleton Copley and the World of Prints conversation between Jules Prown
and Mark Hallett

Summary An audio-visual conversation addresses Copley’s involvement with prints throughout his career, from his early years in Boston to the sale of his estate after his death in 1815.

ARTICLEYale Center for British Art by David Lewis

Summary This feature presents animated images inspired by the renovation and temporary closure of Louis I. Kahn’s Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.

Issue Overview
ARTICLEArts and Crafts Painting by Morna O'Neill

Summary Examines the interplay between painting and design in both Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts movement, contending that the former unleashed a radical possibility for decorative art.

ARTICLEAbstraction’s Ecologies by Catherine Spencer

Summary Argues that Prunella Clough’s late paintings engage with commodity forms reflecting Britain’s industrial history.

ARTICLEEditorial by *British Art Studies* Editorial Group

Summary The editorial for the inaugural issue of British Art Studies outlining the journal’s methodological approach to publishing art and architectural history.

ARTICLEThere’s No Such Thing as British Art Coordinated by Richard Johns

Summary Contributors respond to the provocation that the concept of “British art” is inherently paradoxical, examining its validity through acts of making, viewing, and categorisation.

Summary Gainsborough and Reynolds were often perceived as rivals—this article argues that Charity Relieving Distress was an attempt to reconcile their approaches through the concept of charity.

ARTICLEPainting that Grows Back by Giulia Smith

Summary Re-evaluates the legacy of Magda Cordell McHale’s proto-feminist artworks, arguing for her important contribution to postwar British art and culture.

ARTICLEHaptic Blackness by Cyra Levenson
and Chi-ming Yang
photo-essay by Ken Gonzales-Day

Summary This collaborative piece explores the double life of an eighteenth-century bust by Francis Harwood, discussing its materiality and racial implications alongside a photo-essay and interview with artist Ken Gonzales-Day.

ARTICLEDeakin discussion between Paul Rousseau
and James Boaden
with films by Jonathan Law

Summary A series of short films discuss the double-exposure images made by the photographer John Deakin in the 1950s and 1960s.

ARTICLEPregnant Wit by Alexander Marr

Summary This article examines the evolving concept of “ingegno” in Renaissance England, exploring its semantic shifts and impact on artists’ ingenuity and social status.

ARTICLEVarieties of Photographic Experience by Kara Fiedorek

Summary Exploring Frederick H. Evans’s cathedral photographs, this article reveals how his preference for lantern slides reflects Swedenborgian mysticism, illuminating the religious stakes of his art.

ARTICLEBritish Art Show 8 by Roger Malbert

Summary This feature examines British Art Show 8, discussing its evolution, curatorial choices, and significance in showcasing emerging trends in British contemporary art.