Research Centres
Tate Research Centre: British Romantic Art
The Centre aims to promote research on British art from around 1770 to 1850. Tate's collection of British art of this period, which includes the Turner Bequest, the Oppé collection of watercolours and drawings, and major holdings of the work of William Blake and John Constable, is among the greatest in the world. With a special focus on Blake, Constable and Turner, the Centre offers a programme of events and activities aimed at encouraging research on these artists and on the Romantic era as a whole, as well as the legacy of Romantic art and culture in Britain and around the world.
Sir Charles Locke Eastlake
Haidée, A Greek Girl 1827
The Centre hosts seminars, public events and major conferences. To help realise its programme the Centre also collaborates with the many scholarly societies active in this field and with university departments that specialise in Romantic studies. It welcomes working with individual scholars and aims to provide internships for students.
Convened by Tate curators Dr David Blayney Brown and Dr Martin Myrone, the Centre focuses on the visual arts but seeks to stimulate debate and exchange across a number of disciplines. It welcomes proposals for new projects and events related to Romantic art and culture, broadly defined.
Events in 2009-10 have included:
- Appealing to the Public: William Blake in 2009, conference developed in partnership with Tate Learning, Tate Britain, 25 September 2009.A selection of papers from the event are published in Tate Papers 14
- A one-day workshop, on the exhibition Turner and the Masters, 12 January 2010.
- An evening workshop on the eight newly-acquired works by William Blake, organised with Prof.,a Tristanne Connolly, University of Waterloo, 14 July 2010
- Romantics workshop in the Clore, with guest speaker Prof. David Simpson, University of California, Davis, 24 September 2010
Research Projects:
- J.M.W. Turner: Drawings, Watercolours and Sketchbooks in the Turner Collection, an online cataloguing project
PhD Students:
- Cora Gilroy-Ware, The Classical Nude in Romantic Britain, collaborative PhD dissertation, supervised by Prof Liz Prettejohn, University of Bristol, and Dr Martin Myrone, Tate.
- Hayley Morris, Landscapes in Blake: Visionary Topographies, collaborative PhD dissertation, supervised by Dr Nicholas Alfrey, University of Nottingham and Dr David Blayney Brown, Tate.
- Marian Martin, Turner and German Romanticism: The Influence of German Thought on the Work and Reception of Turner, collaborative PhD dissertation, supervised by Dr Matthew Potter, University of Leicester, and Dr David Blayney Brown, Tate.
Forthcoming events
- Blake and Physiognomy Scholar's Morning, January 2011, to accompany the current display.
- John Martin, a major exhibition in the Linbury Galleries, 2011-12.
- Romantics continues in the Clore Gallery, 2011-12
For further information, please contact the Centre's convenors Dr David Blayney Brown (Curator, Eighteenth & Nineteenth-Century British Art), and Dr Martin Myrone (Curator, Eighteenth & Nineteenth-Century British Art).
Updated September 2009.
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