Mark Hallett (art historian)

Professor Mark Hallett (born 11 March 1965)^[1] is an art historian specialising in the history of British art. He is currently Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.^[2]

Career[]

Professor Hallett moved to the Paul Mellon Centre in October 2012, after having spent eighteen years teaching at the University of York, where he was appointed a Professor in 2006. He was Head of the History of Art department at York between 2007 and 2012, and a member of the University’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies.^[3] He took his undergraduate degree at Cambridge University, graduating in 1986, and studied for a master's degree (1989) and a PhD (1996) at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Yale University in 1990–91.

As an art-historian, Hallett is best known for his writings on eighteenth-century graphic satire, exhibition culture and portraiture, and for his books and catalogues on the artists William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds.^[4] He also co-edited the major online publication, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018 (Paul Mellon Centre, 2018). More recently, he has begun researching and writing on twentieth-century British art.

He has also been involved in curating a number of major exhibitions, including James Gillray: The Art of Caricature (Tate Britain, 2001); Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity (Tate Britain, 2005); Hogarth (Tate Britain, 2007); William Etty: Art and Controversy (York Art Gallery, 2011); Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint (Wallace Collection, 2015); The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition (Royal Academy, 2018); and George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field (Yale Center for British Art, 2018). In 2019, he co-curated the Tate Britain Spotlight Display Vital Fragments: Nigel Henderson and the Art of Collage.

Publications[]

Books and catalogues[]

• George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field (ed.), Yale University Press, 2018
• The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (co-authored with Sarah Turner), Royal Academy Publishing, 2018
• Court, Country, City: Essays on British Art and Architecture, 1660–1735 (co-edited with Martin Myrone and Nigel Llewellyn), Yale University Press, 2016
• Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint (edited with Lucy Davis), The Wallace Collection, 2015
• Reynolds: Portraiture in Action, Yale University Press, 2014
• Living with the Royal Academy: Artistic Ideals and Experiences in England, 1769-1848 (ed. with Sarah Monks and John Barrel)l, Ashgate, 2013
• Faces in a Library: ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds’s ‘Streatham Worthies’ (The Watson Gordon Lecture 2011), National Galleries of Scotland, 2012
• William Etty: Art and Controversy (ed. with Sarah Burnage and Laura Turner), Philip Wilson Publishers, 2011
• Hogarth (co-authored with Christine Riding), Tate Publishing, 2007
• Eighteenth Century York: Culture, Space and Society, ed. with Jane Rendall, Borthwick Institute, 2003
• Hogarth, Phaidon Press, 2000
• The Spectacle of Difference: Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth, Yale University Press, 1999

Online Publications[]

• The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018 (co-editor) Paul Mellon Centre, 2018

Films and Recorded Lectures[]

• The Original: William Hogarth's A Harlot's Progress (1732), made with Jon Law, Paul Mellon Centre, 2021
• The Sequel: William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (1733-5), made with Jon Law, Paul Mellon Centre, 2021
• Making an Impact: Thomas Lawrence’s Arthur Atherley (1792), Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
• Displaying the Hero: John Singleton Copley’s The Death of Major Peirson (1784), Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
• Walking the Streets: William Hogarth’s The Four Times of Day (1736-8), Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
• Vital Fragments: Nigel Henderson and the Art of Collage, 12 short films made with Rosie Ram and Jon Law, Paul Mellon Centre, 2019

Articles and Essays[]

• ‘The newspaper man: Michael Andrews and the art of painted collage’, The Journal of the British Academy, volume 8 (2020)
• ‘A Double Capacity: Gainsborough at the Summer Exhibition’, in Christoph Vogtherr (ed.), Thomas Gainsborough: The Modern Landscape, Hamburger Kunstalle, 2018
• ‘Cornucopia: Royal Female Portraiture and the Imperatives of Reproduction’ (co-authored with Cassandra Albinson), in Joanna Marschner (ed.), Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, Yale University Press, 2017
• ‘A monument to intimacy: Joshua Reynolds's The Marlborough Family', in Art History, Vol.31, no. 5, 2008
• 'Reynolds, Celebrity and the Exhibition Space', and numerous catalogue entries, in Martin Postle (ed) Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity, Tate Publishing, 2005
• Reading the Walls: Pictorial Dialogue at the British Royal Academy', in Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 37, no. 4 (2004)
• 'From Out of the Shadows: Sir Joshua Reynolds' Captain Robert Orme', in Visual Culture in Britain, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2004
• 'Manly Satire: William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress' in Bernadette Fort and Angela Rosenthal (eds.), The Other Hogarth: The Aesthetics of Difference, Princeton University Press, 2001.
• 'James Gillray and the Language of Graphic Satire', in Richard Godfrey (ed.) Gillray and the Art of Caricature, Tate Gallery Publications, 2001.
• 'The Business of Criticism: the Press and the Royal Academy Exhibition in Eighteenth-Century London' in David Solkin (ed.) Art on the line: the Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780-1836, Yale University Press, 2001.
• 'The view across the City: William Hogarth and the visual culture of eighteenth-century London' in David Bindman, Frederic Ogee and Peter Wagner (eds.), Hogarth: Representing Nature's Machines, Manchester University Press, 2001.
• 'Painting: Exhibitions, Audiences, Critics, 1780–1830', in An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832, edited by Iain McCalman, Oxford University Press, 1999
• 'The Medley Print in Early Eighteenth-Century London', in Art History, Vol 20, no. 2, June 1997
• 'Framing the Modern City: Canaletto's Images of London', in Michael Liversidge and Jane Farrington (eds.), Canaletto and England, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1993

References[]