Shock City and Van Dyck and the Making of English Portraiture Published

We are delighted to announce the publication of two new Paul Mellon Centre titles.

In Shock City: Image and Architecture in Industrial Manchester, Mark Crinson challenges the idea that Paris was the ‘capital of the nineteenth century’, looking from the birth of the Industrial Revolution to the height of Manchester’s global significance and the beginning of its decline.

Crinson gives an account of how new relations in the industrial economy were manifested through the spaces and representations of the first industrial city, looking from Manchester’s mills and warehouses to Gothic revival buildings such as John Rylands Library and Manchester City Council’s town hall.

Van Dyck and the Making of English Portraiture by Adam Eaker is a new account of painting in Early modern England centred on the art and legacy of Anthony van Dyck.

Eaker provides an alternative perspective on English art’s historical self-consciousness by recovering the often surprising responses of both writers and painter’s to Van Dyck’s portraits. Looking closely at artworks, texts, and even studio gossip, Adam Eaker traces the reception of Van Dyck’s art by artists like Mary Beale, William Hogarth and Richard and Maria Cosway in order to analyse the frequent claim that Van Dyck founded an English school of portraiture.