I am an independent Art History scholar, concentrating on British landscape painting. I have a Doctorate in Art History from the University of London gained at Birkbeck College.
This is a site to showcase my research in the History of Art and especially to promote my book: "John Constable and the Theory of Landscape Painting".
This is published by Cambridge University Press and is about the ideas underlying Constable's picture making and how his art aspires to the front rank of European landscape and is very far from being the simple representation of individual views of nature as is often suggested. His was an intellectual art.
Research
My research interests at present are in developing further some of the insights set out in the Constable book, with the following projects in hand. For more on these see the Research page.
-I have in draft a Journal paper on Constable's positioning of his art in relation to that of Joshua Reynolds
-I also have an outline of a book on the Art Theory of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. He was one of Britain's original thinkers in the realm of aesthetics applied to visual art. But his unique contribution has not been fully treated so far. I point to some of his lines of thought in the Constable book but I want to take the partial treatment further. I am looking for a publisher interested in commissioning a book on Shaftesbury.
-A third theme that I am contemplating for a new book is the way that British landscape painting and painters, from the early eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries, took on the best aspects of the art of the classicising Southern and the atmospheric Northern traditions of landscape. I am also seeking a publisher willing to take on this project. |
