Tate Research Centre: British Romantic Art

The Tate Research Centre for British Romantic Art exists to promote research on British art from around 1750 to 1850. Tate’s collection of British art from this period is among the greatest in the world, including major holdings of works by J.M.W. Turner, William Blake and John Constable, and the Oppé collection of works on paper. The Centre encourages research on these traditional strengths while engaging with the full scope of the collection and the wider field of British art and visual culture.

The Centre hosts seminars, public events, work-in-progress seminars and major conferences. To help realise its programme the Centre also collaborates with museums, universities and scholarly societies.

Convened by Tate curators Greg Sullivan, Amy Concannon and Elizabeth Jacklin, 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.

• The Workshop of John Gibson (1790–1866) and Anglo-Italian Sculpture, an international symposium organised with the Royal Academy and the University of Vienna, 16 December 2016. The event is generously supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.
• The Literary Galleries: Entrepreneurship and Public Art, symposium organised by the centre with Roehampton University as part of the Romantic Illustration Network, 27 February 2015.
• William Hazlitt’s Art Criticism, symposium organised by the Centre and the National Gallery, funded by the Paul Mellon Centre, 8 November 2014. Four essays, based on papers delivered on the day by Susannah Avery-Quash, Luisa Cale, Paul Hamilton and Paul Tucker, are published in Volume 24 of Tate Papers.
• Blake in Europe, two-day author’s workshop, organised with Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, 12 June 2014.
• Tate Britain re-hang scholars morning, focusing on the re-display of Tate’s collection of British art of the period c.1770–1850, May 2013.
• New Perspectives on the Romantic Period, a conference organised and led by Tate’s collaborative PhD students, Tate Britain, 6–7 November 2012.
• Contested Views: Visual Culture and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, a conference supported by the AHRC and the Courtauld Research Forum, Tate Britain, 19–20 July 2012.
• Contested Views: Scholars Morning on Turner’s Field of Waterloo, Tate Britain, 19 July 2012.

• Late Turner: Painting Set Free, Tate Britain, 10 September 2014 – 25 January 2015
• William Blake, changing display of works from Tate’s collection, Clore Gallery
• Turner Collection, changing display of works from the Turner Bequest, Clore Gallery
• John Constable, changing display of works from Tate’s collection
• The Nature of Common Life: drawing the everyday, c.1800–60, Clore Gallery, 28 October 2013
• Landscape in Blake, Clore Gallery, 14 May – 6 October 2013
• Constable’s Cornfield: ‘A Specimen of Genuine English Scenery’?, 25 March – 29 September 2013
• John Martin: Apocalypse, a major exhibition in the Linbury Galleries, 2011–12
• Romantics, Clore Gallery, 2011–12

• William Hazlitt: Through the Eyes of a Critic, curated by Tate Research Centre for British Romantic Art convenors Greg Sullivan and Elizabeth Jacklin, with Professor Ian Balfour

• J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings, Watercolours, an online cataloguing project

• Amy Harris, Sir Francis Chantrey and the Chantrey Bequest, collaborative PhD thesis, supervised by Professor Jason Edwards, York University, Dr Greg Sullivan and Dr Caroline Corbeau-Parsons (Tate Britain).
• Cora Gilroy-Ware, The Classical Nude in Romantic Britain, collaborative PhD dissertation, supervised by Professor Liz Prettejohn, University of York, and Dr Martin Myrone, Tate.
• Hayley Flynn, Landscapes in Blake: Visionary Topographies, collaborative PhD dissertation, supervised by Dr Nicholas Alfrey, University of Nottingham and Dr David Blayney Brown, Tate.
• Marion Martin, Tragic Hope – Sentiment and Critique in the Art of J.M.W. Turner, collaborative PhD dissertation, supervised by Dr Matthew Potter, University of Leicester, and Dr David Blayney Brown, Tate.
• Thomas Ardill, Between God, Art and Mammon, Religious Painting as Public Spectacle in Britain, c.1800–1850, collaborative PhD dissertation, supervised by Professor David Solkin, Courtauld Institute of Art, and Dr Martin Myrone, Tate.

For further information, contact Dr Greg Sullivan (Curator, British Art 1750–1830).