Anglo-Dutch Empire and Visual Culture in the Atlantic World
Research Lunch – Jake Subryan Richards
- 28 October 2022
- 1:00 – 2:00 pm
- Paul Mellon Centre
This talk explores the hidden connections between the British and Dutch Empires as revealed by several paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through formal and contextual analysis, the talk will investigate how artists have established and challenged visual norms related to Atlantic slavery and freedom.
Listing image caption: Theodorus Netscher, Pineapple grown in Sir Matthew Decker's garden, 1720, oil on canvas, 84.5 x 95.2 cm. Collection of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (357).
About the speaker
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Jake Subryan Richards is a member of the British Art Network’s Emerging Curators Group and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics. Between 2020 and 2024, he is the external curator of a project to investigate how the collections of the University of Cambridge Museums are connected to Atlantic enslavement and empire. Richards’ interests span Dutch and British fine art in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the art of the African diaspora over the past five hundred years. Richards has published research in Past and Present and Comparative Studies in Society and History. His article on anti-slave-trade law won the 2019 Alexander Prize and his PhD thesis was co-winner of the 2021 Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize and Seeley Medal. He is a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker.