Jenny Alexander appeared this week in the first episode of Phil Spencer's Stately Homes. With Phil she looks at the masons' marks on the Roman Stair and at original documents from the archive. The programme, first shown on 9th August, is available for viewing for a limited time on the Channel 4 website: Episode 1 - Burghley House.

Emeritus Professor Louise Campbell has worked with Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum to research the subject of the forthcoming exhibition, Concealment and Deception: The Art of the Camoufleurs of Leamington Spa 1939-45. The exhibition tells the story of the camouflage establishment based in Royal Leamington Spa during World War 2. The Civil Defence Camouflage Establishment was founded at the start of the war with Nazi Germany to develop camouflage for strategically important installations like factories, power stations and airfields. Later, in 1941, the CDCE was expanded to include a Naval Camouflage Section and renamed the Camouflage Directorate. The exhibition presents the work of the camouflage staff - often known as 'camoufleurs' - against the backdrop of life on the 'Home Front', and will display an important group of paintings, watercolours and drawings by artists such as Mary Adshead, Dorothy Annan, Stephen Bone, Louis Duffy, Evelyn Dunbar, Eric Hall, Cedric Kennedy, Edwin La Dell, Colin Moss and James Yunge-Bateman.

Concealment and Deception: The Art of the Camoufleurs of Leamington Spa 1939 - 1945

Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, 22 July – 16 October 2016

Congratulations to History of Art visiting lecturer Jo Bannister who has had a picture accepted for this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Her work is a large scale intaglio print entitled I Thought I Saw an Angel. Jo teaches Practical Art and has recently restructured the module following the purchase of the Department's own printing press.

Royal Academy of Arts

Summer Exhibition 2016

13 June — 21 August 2016

Why did Paul Cézanne describe Delacroix’s palette as ‘the most beautiful in France’? Professor Paul Smith explores Delacroix’s theories on colour and how his approach had a profound influence on the artists associated with the rise of modern art.

Play Delacroix's Colour.

Dr Rosie Dias has worked with staff at Compton Verney to create an exhibition displaying the history of the Shakespeare Gallery which opened in 1789 on Pall Mall. Using Shakespeare as a vehicle for the development of a national form of history painting, the print publisher John Boydell commissioned prominent painters, sculptors and printmakers of the day, including George Romney, Henry Fuseli and James Northcote, to produce works depicting scenes from all of Shakespeare's plays. The exhibition includes examples of this work, as well as a digital reconstruction of The Shakespeare Gallery as it looked in 1796.

Professor Michael Rosenthal will speak on 'Augustus Earle: Seeing Straight' at the Tate Britain conference Artist and Empire: New Dynamics which begins this week.

Tate Britain’s major conference marks the opening of the exhibition Artist and Empire. Scholars, curators and artists from around Britain and the world consider art created under the conditions of the British Empire, its aftermath, and its future in museum and gallery displays.

Members of the Department have worked with Compton Verney and the Hart Silversmith Trust to create a new exhibition: The Hart Silversmiths: A Living Tradition. The exhibition explores the work of silversmith George Henry Hart (1882-1973) and three generations of the Hart family, all of whom continue Arts and Crafts traditions. Much of the research for the exhibition was carried out by Dr. Sarah Walford and undergraduate student Pip Shergold. The exhibition is related to the research project Ashbee and After: Drawing in the Silversmiths’ Workshop, directed by Professor Michael Hatt. The exhibition closes 13th September 2015.

English Heritage has just added the churches of St John Willenhall and St Chad Wood End to its listed buildings register. With the recent listing of St Oswald Tile Hill (added to list in October 2014) this means that all of Basil Spence’s churches in Coventry are now protected.

They were nominated by Louise Campbell, supported by the Twentieth Century Society.
In assessing them, English Heritage’s inspector drew heavily on research done in 2004-8 by the Basil Spence project team based at Warwick http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/arthistory/research/projects/basil_spence 

The Minister’s decision about whether to list Spence’s Hyde Park Cavalry Barracks in London is now pending – see
http://www.c20society.org.uk/news/concern-over-the-fate-of-hyde-park-barracks/

The major international exhibition co-curated by Michael Hatt of the Department of History of Art has travelled from the United States to London, and opens today at Tate Britain.

Sculpture Victorious: Art in an Age of Invention, 1837-1901 has been organised by the Yale Center for British Art, in partnership with Tate Britain. See earlier news item.

Members of the Department of History of Art have assisted with captions for an exhibition at the Palazzo Ducale, Venice.

The Henry Moore Institute Library in Leeds is currently showing the display Henry Hugh Armstead's Royal Academy: A Sculptor's Career in Late Victorian Britain which has been curated by Desiree de Chair, PhD candidate in the History of Art department. The display is on until 14 December 2014.