Lithographic Portraiture and Facsimile Signatures, c.1800–60
For this Research Seminar, we welcome Dr Tom Young, Courtauld Institute of Art, for a talk on ‘Lithographic Portraiture and Facsimile Signatures, c.1800–60'
Lithographic Portraiture and Facsimile Signatures, c.1800–60
07 Mar 2024, 18:00 – 20:00
Over the first decades of the nineteenth century, a new print portrait format achieved international popularity. This format combined a vignette of the sitter’s likeness with a facsimile reproduction of their signature – a self-assertion of individuality, as well as an indexical trace of agency. My talk will connect the popularity of this format to the development and global expansion of lithographic printing. By surveying the production of signed print portraits in a range of imperial and colonial contexts, it will track how the format communicated political ideas that were used as the basis for domination as well as tools for resistance.
Tom Young is Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Art Histories at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Prior to that, he was a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Warwick, the project curator of the British Museum’s exhibition, Tantra: Enlightenment to Revolution, a curator at Lakeland Arts, and a lecturer at the University of Warsaw. He has held fellowships at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the Huntington Library, and the Yale Center for British Art. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2023. His first book, Unmaking the East India Company: British Art and Political Reform in Colonial India, c.1813–58, was published with the Paul Mellon Centre in 2023. His second book, Lithography and the Modern World, c.1796–1914, is in preparation.
Further information
Ticketing
Open
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes