Acknowledgements

Pointon, Marcia

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Acknowledgements

Marcia Pointon

Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England

~~In writing this book, I have benefited from discussions with many scholars who have been exceedingly generous with their time, from the support of several award-making bodies and from the inestimable help of archivists and librarians in Britain and the United States. It is impossible to name all who have provoked me into new thoughts...

Author

Marcia Pointon

PublisherPaul Mellon Centre

PublisherYale University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00062.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-19080

Acknowledgements

In writing this book, I have benefited from discussions with many scholars who have been exceedingly generous with their time, from the support of several award-making bodies and from the inestimable help of archivists and librarians in Britain and the United States. It is impossible to name all who have provoked me into new thoughts on the ever-fascinating topic of portraiture, or who have contributed to my knowledge of specific details of eighteenth-century cultural practice. I would, none the less, like to acknowledge the assistance of: Kathleen Adler, David Alexander, Malcolm Baker, Mavis Batey, Shelley Bennett, Rachel Bowlby, Colin Brooks, Richard Brilliant, J.B. Bury, Major Ambrose Congreve, Patrick Conner, Robin Cormack, Alan Crawford, Kay Diggens, Judy Egerton, Elizabeth Einberg, Sharon Fermor, P.K. Fox, John Furse, Lucy Gent, Tom Gretton, Richard Green, Anthony Griffiths, Vivien Hart, the Earl of Harrowby, John Hayes, Maurice Howard, Ludmilla Jordanova, Vivien Knight, Michael Kitson, David Landau, Alistair Laing, Susan Lambert, Thomas Lange, Major Charles Liddell, Nigel Llewellyn, Ellen Miles, John Murdoch, John Nash, Gabriel Naughton, Nicholas Plumley, Michael Podro, Paul Quarrie, John Martin Robinson, Charles Saumarez-Smith, Dorothy Scruton, Jacob Simon, Patricia Simons, Lindsay Smith, David Solkin, Karen Stanworth, Robert Stewart, Duncan Thomson, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, John Trevitt, Mrs A.H. Tyler, Clive Wainwright, Robert Wark, Giles Waterfield, Ray Watkinson, Joanna Woodall, Michael Wynne.

I owe a particular debt to John Barrell and Alex Potts for reading the draft manuscript of this book and to John Hayes for reading a substantial part of it, as well as for his encouragement with this project over a long period of time. Valerie Vaughan at the National Portrait Gallery Archive has been invariably patient and helpful, and the epilogue to this book could not have been written without the material that she readily, and often at short notice, made available to me. Gillian Malpass, at Yale University Press, has been a model of critical acumen and creative energy; it has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with her.

The support of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has inestimably enhanced the production of this book. During the course of research and writing, I have been extremely grateful for the financial support offered by the University of Sussex, the Leverhulme Trust, the Huntington Library and the Smithsonian Institution. While it was not, in the end, possible to include in this book the research undertaken in Washington under the auspices of the Smithsonian, what I learned while at the Institution’s archives and at the American National Portrait Gallery, has informed many parts of this book.

Some of the material contained in chapters I and VII and in the epilogue formed the basis of the Sir Owen Evans Memorial Lectures at University College, Aberystwyth in 1990. The substance of chapter I, section ii appeared as an article in Art History, June 1984; a version of chapter V will be published in J. Barrell, ed., Painting and the Politics of Culture, Oxford, 1992; a short account based on the material in chapter IV will be published in K. Adler and M. Pointon, eds, The Body Imaged: Representations of the Body in Western Art since the Renaissance, Cambridge, forthcoming.

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BOOKHanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in Eighteenth-Century England

Marcia Pointon

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00062

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-19078

Eighteenth-century England possessed a thriving portrait culture: likenesses of particular individuals exhibited at the Royal Academy or in the interiors of public institutions, such as guildhalls and charity foundations, as well as in private houses, were part of a network of visual communication that encompassed print-collecting, popular performance, and figurative acts of speech.

In this original and stimulating book, Marcia Pointon demonstrates how portraiture provided mechanisms both for constructing and accessing a national past and for controlling a present that appeared increasingly unruly. Through detailed historical analyses of particular aspects of portrait representation – images of criminals, the fashions and rituals around the masculine culture of hair and wigs, the gendering of childhood in celebrated paintings like Penelope with or 'Pinkie' – Pointon establishes the rich and complex ways in which portraiture reflected eighteenth-century England. How 'the head' was hung – whether it be a matter of the disposition of an actual body or the image of that body – was determined by social rules of posture and decorum, by artistic convention and commercial practice, and literally by the ways in which patrons chose to arrange particular portraits on walls – paintings that served ritual and symbolic as well as decorative functions.

Hanging the Head makes a major contribution to our understanding of portraiture as a cultural and political phenomenon in eighteenth-century Britain. It will be of great interest to art historians and to those concerned with the history of material culture, to museums specialists and to all concerned with literature, politics, and visual culture in eighteenth-century England.

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Author

Marcia Pointon

PublisherPaul Mellon Centre

Yale University Press

Print publication date January 1998 (out of print)

Print ISBN 9780300073683

EISBN 9780300249798

Illustrations 291

Print Status out of print

Publisher (out of print)

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