Research Lunch

9 May 2014
12:30 – 2:30 pm
Seminar Room, Paul Mellon Centre

By 1800, nymphs had long been central to the representation of erotic themes in painting, sculpture and poetry across the continent. As scientific attitudes toward the sexuality of the human body developed in late eighteenth century Britain, the nymph was absolutely central to corresponding changes in the representation of erotic feeling in art. The advent of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars impacted the way artists in Britain depicted the human form, and the eroticism of the nymph was positioned in opposition to ideological and monumental deployments of antiquity that proliferated during this time. Exploring images of nymphs produced throughout the wartime and into the post-war period, this paper will expand upon Bodies of Nature, a BP spotlight display open to the public between April 28th and October 19th, 2014 at Tate Britain.

To book your place please contact the Centre's Co-ordinator Ella Fleming on: [email protected]

About the speaker

Cora Gilroy-Ware’s research explores continuities between historic and contemporary, ancient and modern. Her doctoral project on the surprisingly under-researched classical nude in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century British art led to her first book, The Classical Body in Romantic Britain, and a broader interest in neglected chapters in the history of visual classicism. As a scholar of BIPOC heritage, she seeks to reconcile decolonial approaches with traditional art historical areas of concern. With support from the Henry Moore Foundation, she is currently at work on a second book project on adaptations of Greco-Roman art, particularly marble sculpture, among artists of African and indigenous American descent including Mary Edmonia Lewis, Augusta Savage, Selma Burke, Carrie Mae Weems and Kara Walker. She has curated exhibitions at Tate Britain and the Huntington, and written for the London Review of Books, Apollo, The White Review and other journals.