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UPCOMING SYMPOSIA:

 

Picturing Paradise in nineteenth Century

British and American Art: Past, Lost, Regained
Washington DC  • February 2, 2016

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The Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art (ASCHA) is dedicated to the facilitation and promotion of scholarship examining the historical and contemporary relationship between Christianity and the visual arts. ASCHA is dedicated to examining problems that confront the field by identifying scholarly needs and fostering opportunities for the presentation and publication of new scholarship in a safe and respectful environment. ASCHA is a forum for the advancement of research, dialogue, and collaboration in the area of Christianity and the visual arts.

 

Picturing Paradise in 19th Century British and American Art

February 2, 2016

Co-sponsored by the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion

Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D. C.

Elderdice Hall/Kresge Academic Bldg.

4500 Massachusetts Avenue

 

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This symposium examines the persistent and varied theme of paradise in 19th century American and British art. During a period of increasing industrialization and urbanization in the 19th century, territorial expansion and colonization, foliated and landscape imagery found particular resonance as a means of drawing on a past and/or projecting a future paradise to address present concerns as various societies, groups, and individuals pursued explorations of spiritual and social perfection. Building on scholarship on artists like William Blake, John Martin, and the Hudson River School who promote conceptions of “paradise” in their art, the papers expand the scholarly terrain to include new topics that address perceptions and problematics in the idea of “paradise” prevalent in the 19th century.

 

SESSION I

 

1:15-2:45pm

Naomi Billingsley

University of Manchester / King’s College London

Re-viewing Blake’s “Paradise Regained”

 

Alan Wallach

Ralph H. Wark Professor of Art and Art History and Professor of American Studies Emeritus The College of William and Mary

The Politics of Paradise

 

Linda J. Docherty

Bowdoin College

Translating Dante: Isabella Stewart Gardner’s Museum as Paradiso

 

BREAK

2:45-3:00pm

 

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

3:00-4:00pm

Roger Crum

Professor of Art History University of Dayton

Paradise Lost, Eden Remade, and Italy Brought Home as Substance, Sign, and Souvenir

 

BREAK

4:00-4:15pm

 

SESSION II

4:15-5:45pm

 

Kathleen Stuart

Curator of the Berger Collection Denver Art Museum

Samuel Palmer, John Martin, and John Sell Cotman: Visions of Paradise in the Eye of the Beholder?

 

Chris Coltrin

Assistant Professor of Art Shepherd University

Paradise City: The Representation of an Urban Heaven in the Art of John Martin

 

Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt

Assistant Professor of Art and Art History Covenant College

Found or Recovered: Competing Views of Paradise in Late Nineteenth Century Hawaiian Landscape Painting

 

 

RESEARCH   DIALOGUE   COLLABORATION

 

Above: Frederic Edwin Church’s El Rio de Luz (The River of Light) 1877