Nick Pearce

E. Geoffrey Hancock

Despite William Hunter's stature as one of the most important eighteenth-century men of science, and the fact that his collection is the foundation of Scotland's oldest public museum, The Hunterian, until now there has been no comprehensive examination in a single volume of his diverse collections. This volume, comprising essays by international specialists, restores Hunter to a position of prominence among the men whose amassing of specimens transformed our understanding of the natural world. It includes Internet links to the Hunterian's web pages and on-line databases.

The Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting

William Hunter's World

Michael Kenny

The idea of an alliance between Britain and its old Commonwealth colonies has recently made a remarkable comeback in the context of Brexit. Based on belief in a special bond between the English-speaking peoples of the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it has been dubbed the 'Anglosphere' by supporters and 'Empire 2.0' by critics. In this book, leading commentators Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce trace the historical origins of this idea back to the shadow cast by the British Empire in the late Victorian era. They show how leading British political figures, from Churchill to Thatcher, consistently reworked it and how it was revived by a group of right-wing politicians, historians and pamphleteers to support the case for Brexit. They argue that, while the contemporary idea of the Anglosphere as an alternative to European Union membership is seriously flawed, it nonetheless represents an enduring account of Britain’s role in the world that runs through the heart of political life over the last century. Shadows of Empire will be essential reading for everyone interested in British politics and post-Brexit foreign policy.

The Anglosphere in British Politics

Shadows of Empire

This book provides an addition to the small but growing body of literature on the practices of photography in China. Using a collection of a surviving nineteenth century photographs of Beijing held in the collection of the Oriental Museum, University of Durham, the author explores both the cityscape as it was recorded by two Scottish photographers and the interplay of personality and professional identities within the Foreign Legation quarter during a thirty-five year period. Three people are central to the book: the professional photographer John Thomson, the amateur photographer and missionary doctor, John Dudgeon and Stephen Bushell, physician to the British Legation, pioneer historian of Chinese art and original owner of the collection of the photographs. They provide the context and practice and provenance for the photographs and offer insight into the life of the small contingent of Westerners who resided within the walls of China's capital. here for the first time, the former revealed as an important contributor to the development of photography in China, the latter a major influence on the formation and interpretation of a number of important collections of a Chinese art in Britain and America. This book will be of interest to historians of photography, art, architecture and China during the late nineteenth century. [This] erudite study... is of interest not only to art historians, but also to historians of China and of comparative colonialisms.

An Inventory and Description of the Yetts Collection at the University of Durham : Through Peking with a Camera

Photographs of Peking, China 1861-1908

Jane Milosch

The study of provenance—the history of the creation and ownership of an artefact, work of art, or specimen—provides insights into the history of taste and collecting, illuminating the social, economic, and historic trends in which an object was created and collected. It is as much a history of people as it is of objects, and its study often reveals intricate networks of relationships, patterns of activity and motivations. This book promotes the study of the history of collecting and collections in all their variety through the lens of provenance, and explores the subject as a cross-disciplinary activity. Perhaps for the first time in a publication, it draws on expertise ranging from art history and anthropology, to natural history and law, looking at periods from antiquity through the 18th century and the Holocaust era to the present, and materials from Europe and the Americas to China and the Pacific. The issues raised are wide-ranging, touching on aspects of authenticity, cultural meaning and material transformation and economic and commercial drivers, as well as collector and object biography. The book fills a gap in the study of collecting and provenance, taking the subject holistically and from multiple standpoints, better to reflect the widening interest in provenance from a range of disciplinary perspectives. This book will be a service to the field, from established scholars and museum professionals to students of collecting history, cultural heritage, and museum studies.

A Multidisciplinary Approach

Collecting and Provenance

Despite William Hunter's stature as one of the most important collectors and men of science of the eighteenth century, and the fact that his collection is the foundation of Scotland's oldest public museum, The Hunterian, until now there has been no comprehensive examination in a single volume of all his collections in their diversity. This volume restores Hunter to a rightful position of prominence among the medical men whose research and amassing of specimens transformed our understanding of the natural world and man's position within it. This volume comprises essays by international specialists and are as diverse as Hunter's collections themselves, dealing as they do with material that ranges from medical and scientific specimens, to painting, prints, books and manuscripts. The first sections focus upon Hunter's own collection and his response to it, while the final section contextualises Hunter within the wider sphere. A special feature of the volume is the inclusion of references to the Hunterian's web pages and on-line databases. These enable searches for items from Hunter's collections, both from his museum and library. Locating Hunter's collecting within the broader context of his age and environment, this book provides an original approach to a man and collection whose importance has yet to be comprehensively assessed.

Nick Pearce

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