Matthew Craske’s Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Darkness Wins Berger Prize

The annual William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2021 has been awarded to Matthew Craske for his Paul Mellon Centre publication Joseph Wright of Derby: Painter of Darkness. The William MB Berger Prize is awarded by the British Art Journal and was established to recognise the fact that ‘some of the very finest work in art history is being carried out in the field of British art'.

This year Paul Mellon Centre books made up five out of the six shortlisted works. These were:

Christopher Wren: In Search of Eastern Antiquity by Vaughan Hart

The Late Works of J.M.W. Turner by Sam Smiles

Early Irish Sculpture and the Art of the High Crosses by Roger Stalley

London’s New Scene: Art and Culture in the 1960s by Lisa Tickner

The final book on the shortlist, The Edwardians and their Houses by Timothy Brittain-Catlin, had been supported by a Paul Mellon Centre Publication Grant.