Aesthetic Encounters

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art is an educational charity committed to promoting original, world-class research into the history of British art and architecture of all periods. We collaborate closely with the Yale Center for British Art, and are part of Yale UniversityGuests at in-person events will be asked to wear a mask throughout. Catering, if made available, will be served after the event. For our full Guidance for Events please seeour websiteThe Paul Mellon Centre is aware of its obligations under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and is committed to processing your data securely and transparently.For more information on how the Centre processes personal information seeour privacy policy.For more information on Zoom’s compliance with EU GDPR see:https://zoom.us/gdpr.

Paul Mellon Centre

Join us for a series of talks in Spring 2022 by authors of books recently published by the Paul Mellon Centre

Join us for a series of talks in Spring 2022 by authors of books recently published by the Paul Mellon Centre. Each author will give a glimpse into their project, sharing insights about the process of researching, writing, and publishing their book. There will be two talks of around 20 minutes each, followed by a discussion and Q&amp;A session.In the third of these events, Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Max Donnelly will speak about their research for their book <a href="https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/publications/browse/9781913107185/search/keywords:petra" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Daniel Cottier: Designer, Decorator, Dealer</a> and Andrea Wolk Rager will discuss <a href="https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/publications/browse/9781913107277" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Radical Vision of Edward Burne-Jones</a> (which will be published in May 2022). Together, the authors will consider new approaches to studying art, craft, and design of the nineteenth century and the intersection of art, social and political history for creating richer understandings of the work of the artists and art workers they have researched. The conversation will be chaired by Liz Prettejohn.This event is online only

Daniel Cottier: Designer, Decorator, Dealer

The story of an innovative designer and far-sighted art entrepreneur and the important role he played in the dissemination of nineteenth-century Aestheticism This book follows the phenomenal rise of Daniel Cottier (1838–1891) from an apprentice coach painter in Glasgow to the founder of Cottier &amp; Co., a fine and decorative arts business with branches in London, New York, Sydney, and Melbourne. This gifted designer and brilliant art entrepreneur keenly spotted one of the key aspects of late nineteenth-century bourgeois culture – its focus on family, home, and church – and seized the artistic and commercial opportunities of the building and decorating boom that it created. Cottier was a proponent of the Aesthetic movement, an international trend in the history of culture, art, and design from the mid-1860s to the late 1890s; he understood the era’s desire for beauty and realised the economic possibilities of its commoditisation. Beyond biography, therefore, this book illuminates a significant event of late nineteenth-century cultural history – Aestheticism’s cult of beauty meeting with the bourgeoisie’s financial ability to possess it.

The Radical Vision of Edward Burne-Jones

Challenging the dominant characterisation of Edward Burne-Jones as an escapist who withdrew from the modern world into imaginary realms of his own creation, this groundbreaking book argues that he was engaged in a fundamentally radical defiance of the age, protesting against imperial aggression, capitalist economic inequality, and environmental destruction in the wake of the industrial revolution.
Harnessing the utopian power of embodied aesthetic encounters, Burne-Jones drew inspiration from the medieval concept of dreams as visionary states of transformation. Therefore, his art functioned not as a retreat, but as a vehicle for revolutionary awakening. Often characterised as a painter, this book re-centres Burne-Jones’s practice in the decorative arts, demonstrating that he consistently interrogated the boundaries of artistic media, in keeping with wider debates over the role of the arts in the nineteenth century. The first scholarly monograph solely devoted to Burne-Jones since 1973, The Radical Vision of Edward Burne-Jones offers a thorough re-examination of his work, illuminating his radical defiance of the artistic, social, and political hierarchies of nineteenth-century Britain.

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu is Professor Emerita of Art History at Seton Hall University. She has published widely in the field of nineteenth-century art, particularly on the topic of French Realism. In the last five years, she has also published two books on the artistic relations between China and the West during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and she has become interested in the art market, particularly in Daniel Cottier, the subject of her latest book, co-authored with Max Donnelly. Her textbook, Nineteenth-Century European Art, first published in 2003, is still widely used, not only in the US and Europe but also in China, where it was translated into Chinese in 2014. She is the Managing Editor of <a href="https://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide</a>, an open-access digital journal (www.19thc-artworldwide.org).

Max Donnelly 

Max Donnelly is Curator of Furniture and Woodwork 1800–1900 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he has curated several displays. He practiced and studied fine art in Edinburgh and London before working for dealers in New York and New Bond Street and appearing on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. V&amp;A publications include a chapter on furniture in C.F.A. Voysey: Arts and Crafts Designer (2016), contributions to The Story of Scottish Design (2018), and the book Christopher Dresser: Design Pioneer (2021). Max is co-editor of the monograph Daniel Cottier: Designer, Decorator, Dealer, published by the Paul Mellon Centre (2021), writes for journals including The Burlington Magazine, and has lectured in the UK, Europe, North America, and China. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Trustee of the Decorative Arts Society and the Emery Walker Trust.

Andrea Wolk Rager

Andrea Wolk Rager is the Jesse Hauk Shera Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her PhD from Yale University and held a Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the Yale Center for British Art from 2008 to 2011. In 2012, she served as co-curator with Angus Trumble for the exhibition Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century and co-edited the accompanying catalogue of the same title. Her forthcoming book, The Radical Vision of Edward Burne-Jones, will be published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, distributed by Yale University Press, in the spring of 2022. 

Liz Prettejohn 

Liz Prettejohn is Professor and Head of Department of History of Art at the University of York. Her research is motivated by curiosity about the vexed status of British art within art-historical narratives about modernism and modernity. Her books include The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (2000), Beauty and Art 1750–2000 (2005), The Modernity of Ancient Sculpture: Greek Sculpture and Modern Art from Winckelmann to Picasso (2012), and, for the Paul Mellon Centre, Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting (2007) and Modern Painters, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation from the Pre-Raphaelites to the First World War (2017). She has co-curated exhibitions on Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John William Waterhouse.

Our {communityGuidelinesLink} describe the sort of content we prohibit on Eventbrite. If you suspect an event may be in violation, you can report it to us so we can investigate.

To report other categories of prohibited or illegal content, submit {link}

Aesthetic Encounters

More events from Paul Mellon Centre

Discover more events from Paul Mellon Centre, from Arts to other experiences you might love.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all online events to browse and filter by date, category, and more.

Aesthetic Encounters

More events from Paul Mellon Centre

Discover more events from Paul Mellon Centre, from Arts to other experiences you might love.

More Arts events

Browse more Arts events with different dates, prices, and formats to find your next great experience.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all online events to browse and filter by date, category, and more.