CFP: Early Netherlandish Art in the Long 19th Century (Ghent,
24 – 26 May 18), Ghent, May 24 – 26, 2018
Deadline: Jun 1, 2017
To submit a proposal for consideration, please send a 250 word
abstract, a 100 word bio, and a 1-2 page CV to rediscoveryhna@gmail.com
by June 1, 2017.
Francis Haskell famously argued that the “rediscovery” of early
Netherlandish painting in the nineteenth century was central to the
notions of history and culture that undergirded the rise of the modern
nation-states of Belgium and the Netherlands. This view has been
enriched by recent scholarship on the medieval and Renaissance
revivalist movements that took hold in both countries from about 1840
through the early years of the twentieth century. Yet the complex
relationship between artistic and literary practices of the period and
the emergence of a distinctly northern European history of art remains
largely unexamined, and its implications unacknowledged.
As Léon de Laborde, Camille Lemonnier, Émile Verhaeren, Hippolyte
Fierens-Gevaert, and, slightly later, Johan Huizinga published
pioneering investigations into the world of Van Eyck, Memling, and
Rubens, a similar retrospective spirit animated the artistic
imagination. Painters from Henri Leys to Fernand Khnopff and writers
from Charles De Coster to Maurice Maeterlinck embraced northern
precedents as a key source of inspiration for works that were at once
contemporary and rooted in a rich regional heritage.
This panel aims to explore the interplay between the visual arts and
the nascent field of art history in Belgium and the Netherlands. It
seeks twenty-minute papers which address how artists, critics,
historians, and others working in the Low Countries and abroad
developed diverse perspectives on their past that continue to shape our
understanding of the subject. Papers addressing specific instances of
revivalism and historicism are welcome, as are broader studies of
historiographical and literary trends, which offer insight into how one
era may mediate and even define our vision of another.
Papers must be based on ongoing research and
unpublished. Participants must be HNA members at the time of the
conference.
Panel Chairs: Edward Wouk, Assistant Professor, The University of
Manchester; Alison Hokanson, Assistant Curator, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art
Medieval Art Research 