The study of Romanticism has been markedly imbued with a sense of heroism, an epic aura, and a novelistic ethos, ultimately culminating in a pronounced “romanticisation” of that era. However, this standpoint proves insufficient to elucidate the evolution of Romanticism and its impact beyond Europe. While some studies have critically engaged with the nationalist aspects of some variants of European Romanticism, matters pertaining to race, class, expansionism, and colonialism seemed not to belong to the Romantics’ sensitivity, becoming “the monsters hidden in the attic” of Romanticism studies. Scholarship has so far neglected, for example, the role played by the Romantic generation as agents of power actively engaged in the surveying, chronicling, mapping and imaginative rendering of distant territories that either already were or were about to be colonised.

Similarly, practices such as the classification and depiction of flora, fauna, and humans carried out at and beyond the boundaries of Europe in the name of Enlightenment ideals are widely praised, despite the involvement of Romantic sciences in an extensive global inventory project that, for the most part, sought the imposition of a singular and dominant conception of knowledge as part of the Western agenda of modernity.

In light of these observations, the conference seeks to expand the critical examination of late 18th- and 19th-century art and visual culture, including intermedial perspectives. We aim to challenge canonical narratives by delving into the intricate connections with wider socio-political dimensions. These encompass racialism, class, gender, evolution, Imperialism, and colonial power. 

Programme

Thursday, 10 October

15:30   Welcome and Introduction: Mechthild Fend (Goethe University Frankfurt, GER), Miguel A. Gaete (University of St Andrews, SCO), Frederike Middelhoff (Goethe University Frankfurt, GER)

Session One: Picturesque Imperialism

16:00   Dominik Müller (University of Zurich, CHE):
Controlled Variety Imperial Picturesque and the Redeployment of ‘Gothic’ Architecture 

16:45   Rebecca J. Squires (KU Leuven, BER)
:
The Picturesque Delusion: The Eighteenth-Century Picturesque View as Imperialist Mechanism


Friday, 11 October

Session Two: Czechia: Centre, Peripheries, and Beyond 

09:30   Helena Cox (University of York, GBR):
Were Czechs colonisers? Orientalism, Nationalism, and Colonial Tendencies in Collecting Japanese Art in Mid-19th-Century Czech Lands 

10:15   Petra Polláková (Prague National Museum, CZE):
Moonlight Nights of a Miraculous Mandarin  

Session Three: Animals and Empire 

11:30   Ben Pollitt (Courtauld Institute of Art London, GBR) / Janelle Evans (University of Melbourne, AUS):
The Bird that Stole the Sky: First Nations and European Accounts of the Superb Fairywren

12:15   Niharika Dinkar (Boise State University, USA):
The Destruction of Chunee: Animal Performance and Imperial Networks

Session Four: The Tropics and the East 

14:30   Helene Engnes Birkeli (University of Bergen, NOR):
Tropicalizing the Nation: The Caribbean Islands in Bærentzen’s Denmark Reproduced in Pictures (1856) 

15:15   Marte Stinis (University of York, GBR):
Romanticism beyond Europe: Raden Saleh and Dutch Colonialism 

16:30   Gemma Shearwood (University of York, GBR):
Sculpting the Tropics: Legacies of Colonial Romanticism in the East India Company Monuments at Westminster Abbey c. 1763–1806

18:15 Keynote:
Luciana Martins (Birkbeck, University of London): The Romance of Tropical Nature? Vision, Imagination and the Dynamics of Life in Richard Spruce’s Botanical Observations in Amazonia'


Saturday, 12 October

Session Five: The Past and Global Perspectives 

10:00   Elisabeth Ansel (University of Jena, GER):
Race, Colonialism, and Romanticism: Carl Gustav Carus’s Visual Ossianism in a Global Context 

10:45   Luo Yuansheng (KU Leuven, BER):
Aesthetics and Perception: Unveiling Pastness in Charles Frederick Moore’s Xiyang Lou Imagery

12:00   Conclusion