The Work of Art: Plein Air Painting and Artistic Identity in 19th-century France

Anthea Callen’s lecture considers some of the issues raised in her new book, The Work of Art: Plein air painting and artistic identity in nineteenth-century France. Outlining the reasons for the rise to prominence of landscape painting as a genre in nineteenth-century France, she looks especially at questions of gender identity and why so few of these painters were women. Arguing that the naturalist impulse to work outdoors, before the actual landscape motif, entailed new methods and practices that effectively excluded women, she will show how landscape art became associated with masculinity and male virility. She will focus on the painting of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) and the Impressionists.

Anthea Callen was until June this year Professor of Art (Practice-led Research) in the School of Art, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra. She is also Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture at the University of Nottingham in the UK. She is a widely published scholar of international repute and also a painter. Her expertise in art history, visual culture and the gender politics of visual representation spans the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, notably in France and Britain; her research specialism in nineteenth-century artists’ materials and techniques means she works regularly with museum conservators and curators.