Morna O'Neill | Wake Forest University (original) (raw)
Books by Morna O'Neill
This book charts a geography of the art market and the art museum in the early 20th century throu... more This book charts a geography of the art market and the art museum in the early 20th century through the legacy of one influential dealer. Born in Ireland, Hugh Lane (1875–1915) established himself in London in the 1890s. With little formal education or training, he orchestrated high-profile sales of paintings by the likes of Holbein, Titian, and Velázquez and described his life’s work as “selling pictures by old painters to buy pictures by living painters.” Lane assembled a collection of modern art for the Johannesburg Art Gallery, amassed a collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings for Cape Town, and gave his own collection of modern art to the National Gallery in London. He also donated paintings to the National Gallery of Ireland, where he was named director in 1914. Each chapter in this revelatory study focuses on an important city in Lane’s practice as a dealer to understand the interrelationship of event and place.
Vesna Pavlovic's Lost Art: Photography, Display, and the Archive, 2017
Although numerous studies have explored the Edwardian period (1901–1910) as one of political and ... more Although numerous studies have explored the Edwardian period (1901–1910) as one of political and social change, this innovative book is the first to explore how art, design, and performance not only registered those changes but helped to precipitate them. While acknowledging familiar divisions between the highbrow world of aesthetic theory and the popular delights of the music hall, or between the neo-Baroque magnificence of central London and the slums of the East End, The Edwardian Sense also discusses the middlebrow culture that characterizes the anonymous edge of the city. Essays are divided into three sections under the broad headings of spectacle, setting, and place, which reflect the book’s focus on the visual, spatial, and geographic perspectives of the Edwardians themselves.
Walter Crane (1845-1915) was one of the most important, versatile, and radical artists of the 19t... more Walter Crane (1845-1915) was one of the most important, versatile, and radical artists of the 19th century: a painter, decorator, designer, book illustrator, poet, author, teacher, art theorist, and socialist. Crane's astonishingly diverse body of work challenged the establishment, both artistically and politically. In this original and carefully researched new study, Morna O'Neill presents a fascinating portrait of an artist who used his talent and energy to dismantle the traditional boundaries between fine art and decorative art, between elite art and popular art, and between art and propaganda. O'Neill reconsiders Crane's politics and reintegrates it with his art, allowing Crane to emerge in this book as a unique figure, an artist who translated "art for art's sake" into "art for all."
Articles by Morna O'Neill
Home Subjects is a research working group focused on the display of art in the private sphere. Br... more Home Subjects is a research working group focused on the display of art in the private sphere. British houses and interiors have become the focus of tremendous academic energy during the past five years. The prevailing art-historical narrative, that British art developed primarily in relationship to a growing number of public institutions and exhibitions that captured viewers’ imaginations, is compelling but has overlooked the persistence of a cultural ideal premised on the significance of private and domestic interiors as essential spaces for exhibiting and experiencing art. This working group explores an alternative narrative of the development of British art by reconsidering the relationships between domesticity, display, and modernity in the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Especially relevant during this period is a capacious understanding of notions of “home,” as ideas about domesticity circulated within the United Kingdom and British Empire through decorative strategies adopted from or adapted to different colonial contexts. We maintain a blog featuring posts on current research, exhibitions and resources that may be of interest to scholars working in this field.
We intend to explore the complicated set of expectations governing the production, acquisition, and/or commissioning of artworks intended for private display as well as their installation in private spaces, including:
--easel painting and its relationship to the domestic interior
--decorative arts, their status as works of art and relationship to interior decoration
--collecting, taste, and the uses and reception of rooms and interiors
--the relationship between private and public modes of display and decoration
For more information please visit homesubjects.blogspot.com.
Can there be such a thing as “Arts and Crafts” painting? This article will address that question ... more Can there be such a thing as “Arts and Crafts” painting? This article will address that question by interrogating the points of connection between Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts object. Taking its cue from William Morris’s reflection on the “English Pre-Raphaelite School” from 1891, this article examines the interplay between painting and design in both Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts movement. It addresses the ways in which paintings depicted decorative art, as well as the aspiration of decorative art to the symbolic potential traditionally associated with painting. It is my contention that Pre-Raphaelite painting unleashed a radical possibility for decorative art: the Arts and Crafts belief in the political agency of things.
Journal of Victorian Culture, 2012
Victorian Literature and Culture, 2007
WITH WALTER CRANE, marginality is a question of medium. For his contemporaries, Crane's artistic ... more WITH WALTER CRANE, marginality is a question of medium. For his contemporaries, Crane's artistic practice embodied the ethos of Arts and Crafts eclecticism, apparent in this view of his studio from 1885 ( ): watercolor, oil painting, tempera, sculpture, design, and illustration vie for our attention. As the painter Sir William Rothenstein recalled, "Crane could do anything he wanted, or anyone else wanted" (292). As an artist, designer, andcrucially -a socialist, Crane disregarded the traditional distinctions between high art and popular culture. With a history of art constructed along the fault lines of media, school, and style, Crane's diverse artistic practice and radical politics defy easy categorization. And this is precisely the point: his work requires the viewer to think across media, to move from the margins of wallpaper and illustration to the center of painting and back again. Or perhaps it is more fruitful to think of this process as one of inversion, placing wallpaper at the center and painting at its margins. According to Homi Bhabha, it is this "disjunctive temporality" (151) of the margins that allows cultural identity and political solidarities to emerge. The forging of political solidarities through art was the crux of Crane's project, and the disruption of established cultural hierarchies signaled the central role of art in political agitation. Visible on the right margin of photograph of Crane's studio (see ), the watercolor Pandora from 1885 ( ) provides an ideal starting point for an exploration of the ways in which socialist politics move from the decorative margins to the very heart of Crane's art, a process enabled by the artist's politicized reinterpretation of classical mythology.
Reviews by Morna O'Neill
Digital Humanities by Morna O'Neill
“Home Subjects,” a research working group which aims to illuminate the domestic display of art in... more “Home Subjects,” a research working group which aims to illuminate the domestic display of art in Britain. Our goal is to examine the HOME as a place to view and exhibit works of art within the historical context of the long 19th century. We are seeking scholars whose work touches on this broad topic to join the conversation. Our goal is to explore the display of art in all media, especially the decorative arts and their interaction with the “fine arts.” Domestic display also hinges on the related subjects of collecting, marketing, and even new developments in architecture, to name only a few of the directions this research could take.
“Home Subjects” was founded by Melinda McCurdy (The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA), Morna O’Neill (Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, and Anne Nellis Richter (Independent Scholar and part-time faculty, American University, Washington, DC).
“Home Subjects” has been sponsored by the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute with support made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Web resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Conferences by Morna O'Neill
Speakers: Nicholas Tromans Emilie Oléron Evans Stephen Caffey Call for Papers: Recent schola... more Speakers:
Nicholas Tromans
Emilie Oléron Evans
Stephen Caffey
Call for Papers:
Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of the house itself and notions of “domesticity” as important touchstones in British culture. At the same time, art historians have tended to focus on a history of British art premised on the display of art in public; according to this important narrative, British art developed in relationship to the public sphere in the 18th century. Art institutions and exhibitions asserted the importance of the display of art in forming audiences into publics in cultural and political terms. Such efforts continued in the “exhibition age” of the 19th century, when display of artwork in museums, galleries, and special exhibitions solidified the important role given to art in articulating a public sphere. This narrative overlooks the continuation of older paradigms of display, especially those premised on the private and domestic audience for works of art. We aim to explore this “counter-narrative” of the home as the ideal place to view works of art, a view which permeated all areas of art and design and which persisted throughout the nineteenth century, despite the prevailing narrative of the development of public museums. Also at stake in this project is a reconsideration of domesticity and its relationship to modernity. Important recent scholarship has illuminated some of the ways in which entrenched narratives of modernity and artistic modernism were defined in opposition to the domestic sphere. In a typical avant-garde gambit, artists distinguished works of art from objects of interior decoration by rejecting the private and the domestic. This session aims to bring together scholars whose work addresses this topic in order to posit a new trajectory for modernity, one that can be traced through the private, domestic sphere.
Media by Morna O'Neill
In Dublin in the early 20th century, Hugh Lane fights to establish a public modern art gallery to... more In Dublin in the early 20th century, Hugh Lane fights to establish a public modern art gallery to show the work of living artists until his untimely death on the Lusitania.
Initial release: May 18, 2018 (Ireland)
Director: Thaddeus O'Sullivan
Screenplay: Mark O'Halloran
Cinematography: Kate McCullough
Producers: Jane Doolan, James Mitchell, Sheila Ahern
Papers by Morna O'Neill
Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 23, 2004
CAA.reviews, Dec 22, 2011
This book charts a geography of the art market and the art museum in the early 20th century throu... more This book charts a geography of the art market and the art museum in the early 20th century through the legacy of one influential dealer. Born in Ireland, Hugh Lane (1875–1915) established himself in London in the 1890s. With little formal education or training, he orchestrated high-profile sales of paintings by the likes of Holbein, Titian, and Velázquez and described his life’s work as “selling pictures by old painters to buy pictures by living painters.” Lane assembled a collection of modern art for the Johannesburg Art Gallery, amassed a collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings for Cape Town, and gave his own collection of modern art to the National Gallery in London. He also donated paintings to the National Gallery of Ireland, where he was named director in 1914. Each chapter in this revelatory study focuses on an important city in Lane’s practice as a dealer to understand the interrelationship of event and place.
Vesna Pavlovic's Lost Art: Photography, Display, and the Archive, 2017
Although numerous studies have explored the Edwardian period (1901–1910) as one of political and ... more Although numerous studies have explored the Edwardian period (1901–1910) as one of political and social change, this innovative book is the first to explore how art, design, and performance not only registered those changes but helped to precipitate them. While acknowledging familiar divisions between the highbrow world of aesthetic theory and the popular delights of the music hall, or between the neo-Baroque magnificence of central London and the slums of the East End, The Edwardian Sense also discusses the middlebrow culture that characterizes the anonymous edge of the city. Essays are divided into three sections under the broad headings of spectacle, setting, and place, which reflect the book’s focus on the visual, spatial, and geographic perspectives of the Edwardians themselves.
Walter Crane (1845-1915) was one of the most important, versatile, and radical artists of the 19t... more Walter Crane (1845-1915) was one of the most important, versatile, and radical artists of the 19th century: a painter, decorator, designer, book illustrator, poet, author, teacher, art theorist, and socialist. Crane's astonishingly diverse body of work challenged the establishment, both artistically and politically. In this original and carefully researched new study, Morna O'Neill presents a fascinating portrait of an artist who used his talent and energy to dismantle the traditional boundaries between fine art and decorative art, between elite art and popular art, and between art and propaganda. O'Neill reconsiders Crane's politics and reintegrates it with his art, allowing Crane to emerge in this book as a unique figure, an artist who translated "art for art's sake" into "art for all."
Home Subjects is a research working group focused on the display of art in the private sphere. Br... more Home Subjects is a research working group focused on the display of art in the private sphere. British houses and interiors have become the focus of tremendous academic energy during the past five years. The prevailing art-historical narrative, that British art developed primarily in relationship to a growing number of public institutions and exhibitions that captured viewers’ imaginations, is compelling but has overlooked the persistence of a cultural ideal premised on the significance of private and domestic interiors as essential spaces for exhibiting and experiencing art. This working group explores an alternative narrative of the development of British art by reconsidering the relationships between domesticity, display, and modernity in the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Especially relevant during this period is a capacious understanding of notions of “home,” as ideas about domesticity circulated within the United Kingdom and British Empire through decorative strategies adopted from or adapted to different colonial contexts. We maintain a blog featuring posts on current research, exhibitions and resources that may be of interest to scholars working in this field.
We intend to explore the complicated set of expectations governing the production, acquisition, and/or commissioning of artworks intended for private display as well as their installation in private spaces, including:
--easel painting and its relationship to the domestic interior
--decorative arts, their status as works of art and relationship to interior decoration
--collecting, taste, and the uses and reception of rooms and interiors
--the relationship between private and public modes of display and decoration
For more information please visit homesubjects.blogspot.com.
Can there be such a thing as “Arts and Crafts” painting? This article will address that question ... more Can there be such a thing as “Arts and Crafts” painting? This article will address that question by interrogating the points of connection between Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts object. Taking its cue from William Morris’s reflection on the “English Pre-Raphaelite School” from 1891, this article examines the interplay between painting and design in both Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts movement. It addresses the ways in which paintings depicted decorative art, as well as the aspiration of decorative art to the symbolic potential traditionally associated with painting. It is my contention that Pre-Raphaelite painting unleashed a radical possibility for decorative art: the Arts and Crafts belief in the political agency of things.
Journal of Victorian Culture, 2012
Victorian Literature and Culture, 2007
WITH WALTER CRANE, marginality is a question of medium. For his contemporaries, Crane's artistic ... more WITH WALTER CRANE, marginality is a question of medium. For his contemporaries, Crane's artistic practice embodied the ethos of Arts and Crafts eclecticism, apparent in this view of his studio from 1885 ( ): watercolor, oil painting, tempera, sculpture, design, and illustration vie for our attention. As the painter Sir William Rothenstein recalled, "Crane could do anything he wanted, or anyone else wanted" (292). As an artist, designer, andcrucially -a socialist, Crane disregarded the traditional distinctions between high art and popular culture. With a history of art constructed along the fault lines of media, school, and style, Crane's diverse artistic practice and radical politics defy easy categorization. And this is precisely the point: his work requires the viewer to think across media, to move from the margins of wallpaper and illustration to the center of painting and back again. Or perhaps it is more fruitful to think of this process as one of inversion, placing wallpaper at the center and painting at its margins. According to Homi Bhabha, it is this "disjunctive temporality" (151) of the margins that allows cultural identity and political solidarities to emerge. The forging of political solidarities through art was the crux of Crane's project, and the disruption of established cultural hierarchies signaled the central role of art in political agitation. Visible on the right margin of photograph of Crane's studio (see ), the watercolor Pandora from 1885 ( ) provides an ideal starting point for an exploration of the ways in which socialist politics move from the decorative margins to the very heart of Crane's art, a process enabled by the artist's politicized reinterpretation of classical mythology.
“Home Subjects,” a research working group which aims to illuminate the domestic display of art in... more “Home Subjects,” a research working group which aims to illuminate the domestic display of art in Britain. Our goal is to examine the HOME as a place to view and exhibit works of art within the historical context of the long 19th century. We are seeking scholars whose work touches on this broad topic to join the conversation. Our goal is to explore the display of art in all media, especially the decorative arts and their interaction with the “fine arts.” Domestic display also hinges on the related subjects of collecting, marketing, and even new developments in architecture, to name only a few of the directions this research could take.
“Home Subjects” was founded by Melinda McCurdy (The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA), Morna O’Neill (Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, and Anne Nellis Richter (Independent Scholar and part-time faculty, American University, Washington, DC).
“Home Subjects” has been sponsored by the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute with support made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Web resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Speakers: Nicholas Tromans Emilie Oléron Evans Stephen Caffey Call for Papers: Recent schola... more Speakers:
Nicholas Tromans
Emilie Oléron Evans
Stephen Caffey
Call for Papers:
Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of the house itself and notions of “domesticity” as important touchstones in British culture. At the same time, art historians have tended to focus on a history of British art premised on the display of art in public; according to this important narrative, British art developed in relationship to the public sphere in the 18th century. Art institutions and exhibitions asserted the importance of the display of art in forming audiences into publics in cultural and political terms. Such efforts continued in the “exhibition age” of the 19th century, when display of artwork in museums, galleries, and special exhibitions solidified the important role given to art in articulating a public sphere. This narrative overlooks the continuation of older paradigms of display, especially those premised on the private and domestic audience for works of art. We aim to explore this “counter-narrative” of the home as the ideal place to view works of art, a view which permeated all areas of art and design and which persisted throughout the nineteenth century, despite the prevailing narrative of the development of public museums. Also at stake in this project is a reconsideration of domesticity and its relationship to modernity. Important recent scholarship has illuminated some of the ways in which entrenched narratives of modernity and artistic modernism were defined in opposition to the domestic sphere. In a typical avant-garde gambit, artists distinguished works of art from objects of interior decoration by rejecting the private and the domestic. This session aims to bring together scholars whose work addresses this topic in order to posit a new trajectory for modernity, one that can be traced through the private, domestic sphere.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Sep 23, 2004
CAA.reviews, Dec 22, 2011
19, Nov 10, 2021
In response to the popularity of this edition, the publisher Smith, Elder and Co. released a lavi... more In response to the popularity of this edition, the publisher Smith, Elder and Co. released a lavishly illustrated edition in late 1868 to capitalize on the Christmas gift book market. It featured seventy-nine illustrations after works by various artists and photographers. When scholars have turned their attention to the Queen's journal, they have produced rich and sophisticated discussions of gender, monarchy, and celebrity, especially as they relate to royal domesticity in the Scottish Highlands. Yet these readings have rarely extended to the illustrated version of the text. This article will consider the conjunction of monarchy, the Scottish Highlands, and illustrated print culture in the illustrated Leaves through two different types of images: steel-plate engravings after watercolours by the artist Carl Haag and wood engravings after watercolour sketches of Highland games by the Swedish artist Egron Lundgren. Each positions the male Highlander as a central figure in constructing the dynamic of royal family life, sovereignty, and empire. Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose have recently explored what it meant for the British to be 'at home with the Empire' , asking 'was it possible to be "at home" with an empire and with the effects of imperial power or was there something dangerous and damaging about such an entanglement?'. In the course of this article, I argue that these illustrations constructed the male Highlander as a site of familiarity within the bounds of the nation, while simultaneously signalling his otherness and proximity to the more far-flung reaches of empire. As a result, Leaves is as much about empire as it is about domesticity, even as it eschews direct references to current events of the period that directly threatened both.
British Art Studies, Nov 30, 2015
Can there be such a thing as "Arts and Crafts" painting? This article will address that question ... more Can there be such a thing as "Arts and Crafts" painting? This article will address that question by interrogating the points of connection between Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts object. Taking its cue from William Morris's reflection on the "English Pre-Raphaelite School" from 1891, this article examines the interplay between painting and design in both Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts movement. It addresses the ways in which paintings depicted decorative art, as well as the aspiration of decorative art to the symbolic potential traditionally associated with painting. It is my contention that Pre-Raphaelite painting unleashed a radical possibility for decorative art: the Arts and Crafts belief in the political agency of things.
The Art Book, Nov 1, 2009
CAA.reviews, Jun 23, 2011
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004
Choice Reviews Online, 2011
Walter Crane (1845-1915) was one of the most important, versatile, and radical artists of the 19t... more Walter Crane (1845-1915) was one of the most important, versatile, and radical artists of the 19th century: a painter, decorator, designer, book illustrator, poet, author, teacher, art theorist, and socialist. Crane's astonishingly diverse body of work challenged the establishment, both artistically and politically. In this original and carefully researched new study, Morna O'Neill presents a fascinating portrait of an artist who used his talent and energy to dismantle the traditional boundaries between fine art and decorative art, between elite art and popular art, and between art and propaganda. O'Neill reconsiders Crane's politics and reintegrates it with his art, allowing Crane to emerge in this book as a unique figure, an artist who translated "art for art's sake" into "art for all."
British Art Studies, 2015
Can there be such a thing as "Arts and Crafts" painting? This article will address that question ... more Can there be such a thing as "Arts and Crafts" painting? This article will address that question by interrogating the points of connection between Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts object. Taking its cue from William Morris's reflection on the "English Pre-Raphaelite School" from 1891, this article examines the interplay between painting and design in both Pre-Raphaelite painting and the Arts and Crafts movement. It addresses the ways in which paintings depicted decorative art, as well as the aspiration of decorative art to the symbolic potential traditionally associated with painting. It is my contention that Pre-Raphaelite painting unleashed a radical possibility for decorative art: the Arts and Crafts belief in the political agency of things.
Britain and the World, 2011
Revisiting the Past in Museums and at Historic Sites
In his “Lectures on Art” delivered at the University of Oxford in 1870, the Victorian art critic ... more In his “Lectures on Art” delivered at the University of Oxford in 1870, the Victorian art critic John Ruskin put forth his theory that art is connected to all aspects of life, emphasizing his belief that “the art of any country is the exponent of its social and political virtues.” 1 It is in lecture 3, “Th e Relation of Art to Morals,” that Ruskin touches on art and industry, taking the latter term in its broadest sense to mean production, the making of things. He concludes with a call to let “order and kindness” guide “this great Imaginative faculty,” since art is nothing less than an “inheritance of the past, grasp of the present, authority over the future.” 2 Th is realization leads him to a pithy formulation: “Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.” 3 Th e conjunction here of art and politics is not accidental, as Ruskin had long pondered questions of labor, economics, and individual agency. Th is pronouncement would be taken up not only by the ar...
Journal of Design History, 2007
... Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 3031. Much of this work is indebted to Guy Debord&a... more ... Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 3031. Much of this work is indebted to Guy Debord's conceptualization of 'spectacle' in Society of the Spectacle, F. Perlman & J. Supak (trans), Black and Red, 1977. ↵16 I borrow the phrase ...
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
QueenVictoria published her first Highland memoir in 1867, a sentimental narrativeof royal life d... more QueenVictoria published her first Highland memoir in 1867, a sentimental narrativeof royal life dedicated to Prince Albert entitled Leaves from the Journal ofOur Life in the Highlands. Inresponse to the popularity of this edition, the publisher Smith, Elder and Co.released a lavishly illustrated edition in late 1868 to capitalize on theChristmas gift book market. It featuredseventy-nine illustrations after works by various artists andphotographers. When scholars have turnedtheir attention to the Queen’s journal, they have produced rich andsophisticated discussions of gender, monarchy, and celebrity, especially asthey relate to royal domesticity in the Scottish Highlands. Yet these readings have rarely extended tothe illustrated version of the text. This article will consider the conjunctionof monarchy, the Scottish Highlands, and illustrated print culture in theillustrated Leaves through two different types of images: steel plate engravings after watercolors bythe artist Carl H...