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Department of History of Art

 

Biography

I am the Graham Robertson Research Fellow at Downing College. Before coming to Cambridge, I held a two-year Hanseatic Scholarship from the Alfred Toepfer Foundation at the Humboldt University in Berlin. I completed my doctorate at the University of Oxford in 2018.

Research

My research centres on modern art in Europe, with a particular focus on France. I seek to challenge interpretations of the history of art that are founded on supposed modernist ideals such as instantaneity and masculine mastery over the subject. Alongside looking closely at artworks, I take critical approaches to artists’ writings, artistic self-fashioning, and art criticism. Other interests include gender, the environment, and continental philosophy.

My first book, Pierre Bonnard Beyond Vision, is forthcoming with Yale University Press in spring 2022, and presents a revised understanding of Pierre Bonnard’s practice as a painter, draughtsman, and photographer. 

I am currently beginning a new project that rethinks French art and its discourses from the end of the Second World War to the late 1960s. I am also working on smaller projects relating to the process of looking at art, and on artists' writings.

Publications

Key publications: 

Monograph

Pierre Bonnard Beyond Vision. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. 

Peer-reviewed journal articles

‘Pierre Bonnard’s Books: An Interpretation.’ Source: Notes in the History of Art 40, no. 4 (Summer 2021): 261–68

‘Pierre Bonnard’s Books: A Catalogue with an Introduction.’ Source: Notes in the History of Art 40, no. 3 (Spring 2021): 186–97. 

‘New Light on Pierre Bonnard’s Wife and Model Marthe.’ The Burlington Magazine 162, no. 1406 (May 2020): 412–19. 

Book chapter

‘Painting the Present after Impressionism: Pierre Bonnard and Time’s Continuous Duration.’ In Time on a Human Scale: Experiencing the Present in Europe, 1860-1930, edited by Allegra Fryxell and Julian Wright. Proceedings of the British Academy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Graham Robertson Research Fellow, Downing College
Dr Lucy  Whelan

Affiliations

Classifications: