Superb Cabinets or Splendid Anachronisms? Anatomy, Natural History and Fine Arts in the London Town House
- Submitting institution
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Glasgow School of Art
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 7246
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- The Georgian London Town House: Building, Collecting and Display
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Visual Arts
- ISBN
- 9781501337291
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This chapter appears in an edited volume on the Georgian London town house. It describes the origins of the London home and museum of Dr William Hunter (1718-1783) and compares this building with the homes of two of Hunter’s contemporaries, his brother, the surgeon, John Hunter (1728-1793) and Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820). The essay originated as a paper delivered at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, in March 2016, at the conference: ‘Animating the Georgian London Town House’. The Georgian London Town House was published in 2019. My research for this chapter generated original archival material relating to the history of these interconnected interiors and exteriors, of the Hunter brothers and Sir Joseph Banks. The essay describes how the material and visual projections of Britain’s imperial ambitions were contained within these domestic interiors; the physical expressions of enlightenment commerce and trade, travel, exploration, art and architecture. The essay reconstructs the collections of gentleman naturalists, acquired over their lifetimes, as representative of a form of early science dominated by a single-minded motivation. Despite suggestions that by the 1770s, these private cabinets had become anachronisms (Gascoigne, 2011), my research suggests that they persisted in an active network of early scientific knowledge into the nineteenth century. They acted as centres to the periphery of scientific experiment and exploration, and the contents of these drawing rooms, libraries, herbariums and galleries were directly and physically connected to the wider realms of street and city, nation and empire. The lasting significance of all three of these men’s homes lies in the formation of collections interconnected with the pedagogical aims of two of the most prominent public institutions with which they were aligned: The Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Arts, providing an original approach to the legacies of London’s town houses.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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