Whistler, Collecting and Britain’s Industrial Cities
A public symposium hosted by The Hunterian and History of Art, University of Glasgow
Call for Papers, deadline: Tuesday 1st March 2022 / Event: Tuesday, 12th April 2022
Following on from our previous symposia — ‘Whistler, Nature and Science,’ (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2019) and ‘Whistler Nature and Industry’ (University of Glasgow, online, 2021) — proposals are invited for papers in the final event of the series. We intend this to be an in-person event but two slots will be reserved for remote speakers to deliver their papers over Zoom.
Glasgow’s status as the first British city to purchase Whistler’s art was, arguably, born of the same spirit of enterprise and innovation that made it one of the leading industrial centres of the 19th century world. We invite you to consider Whistler’s relations with Glasgow and other examples of regional industrial cities outside London such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle. We welcome papers that examine such topics as Whistler’s relations with industrialist collectors (William Burrell, F. R. Leyland, James Leathart and others), or with dealers such as Alexander Reid, and that address concepts of regionality in the 19th century. Proposals with an interdisciplinary focus are particularly welcome.
We invite papers that explore the collision or conjunction of art and industry in Whistler’s work through such collecting networks, whether in the form of case studies, or from wider historical, theoretical, or scientific/technological perspectives. We also encourage papers that examine regional links between collectors/dealers/artists and cities/local art markets. In addition, papers may wish to give consideration to the status of Britain’s regional cities as borderlands or outposts of empire, especially in the light of current debates about migration and the slave trade. Alternatively, papers could explore 19th-century technological advances associated with these cities (e.g. communications/transport/engineering), and/or around the home, and their influence on Whistler’s art, especially those that led to the transformation or manipulation of the natural environment.
Papers should be 20 minutes in length. Please email proposals (300 words maximum) to the symposium organisers, Dr Patricia de Montfort and Prof. Clare A.P. Willsdon, by Tuesday, 1 March (EXTENDED DEADLINE). Support for the travel costs of up to two UK-based postgraduate speakers may be available.
Dr Patricia de Montfort, History of Art/Research Curator for Whistler Studies, The Hunterian, School of Culture and Creative Arts, 8 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QH, Scotland, UK.
E-mail: Patricia.de-Montfort@glasgow.ac.uk Tel: + 44 (0)141 330 3268. Fax: +44 (0)141 330 3513
Prof. Clare A.P. Willsdon, Professor of the History of Western Art, School of Culture and Creative Arts, 8 University Gardens, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QH, Scotland, UK.
Email: Clare.Willsdon@glasgow.ac.uk Tel. +44 (0) 141 330 6331. Fax + 44 (0) 141 330 3513
IMAGE: James McNeill Whistler, Shipping at Liverpool, 1867, etching © Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution.