Vauxhall Revisited
Pleasure Gardens and their Publics, 1660–1880
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Francis Hayman
The Wrestling Scene from `As You Like It' c1740–2 Tate |
Tuesday 15 July 2008, 10.00–19.30
Wednesday 16 July 2008, 10.00–17.00
Immortalised by the finest artists, composers and novelists of the day, Vauxhall Gardens opened in 1661, providing Georgian and Victorian Londoners with a summertime retreat, a place to hear music, admire paintings, promenade, drink and seduce. Tourists wondered at the happy confusion of classes and media, and similar resorts sprang up around the country and across the globe.
Vauxhall Revisited will consider the phenomenon of the pleasure garden in all its aspects: design, art, music, fashion, gender and class.
Monday 14 July: Museum of Garden History
19.00 Opening reception in Knot Garden behind museum
(this reception is included in your conference ticket)
20.00-22.00 Concert of Eighteenth and Nineteenth century pleasure garden music
Special price to delegates £10, to book please visit the Museum of Garden History website.
The Linden Baroque Orchestra
Works by Arne, Boyce, Dibdin, etc.
(director Peter Holman).
Philippa Hyde (soprano)
Vauxhall Songs, including works by Balfe, Bishop and Wade
David Owen Norris (piano)
Amanda Pitt (soprano)
Tuesday 15 July: Tate Britain
10.00-10.30 Registration and Tea/Coffee
10.30-10.40 Introduction. Victoria Walsh (Head of Adult Programmes, Tate Britain) Brian Allen (Director, The Paul Mellon Centre)
10.40-11.20 Keynote
John Dixon Hunt (Penn)
'Theatres of Hospitality': The forms and uses of private landscapes and public gardens.
Grounds for Pleasure - Chaired by Stephen Daniels (Nottingham)
11.20-11.40 Michael Symes (Birkbeck)
Pleasure Gardens and the English Landscape Garden
11.40-12.00 Paul Elliott (Derby)
Victorian Provincial Public Parks: the Pleasure Gardens of the Nineteenth Century?
12.00-12.20 Q & A
12.20-13.40 Lunch (not provided)
13.40-14.20 Keynote
Peter Borsay (Aberystwyth)
Pleasure Gardens and Urban Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century
Pleasure Gardens outside London - Chaired by Roey Sweet (Leicester)
14.20-14.40 Jon Stobart (Northampton)
The provincial pleasure gardens of Georgian England
14.40-15.00 Katy Layton-Jones (Liverpool)
'Agreeable elevations' and 'healthful situations': Liverpool's walks and gardens in the long eighteenth century
15.00-15.20 Wolfgang Cilleßen (Frankfurt)
Exoticism & Commerce: Vauxhalls in Pre-Revolutionary Paris
15.20-15.40 Q & A
15.40-16.10 Tea/Coffee
16.10-16.50 Keynote
Aileen Ribeiro (Courtauld)
Transformations: Dress and disguise in Eighteenth century London
Patriotic Visions - Chaired by Martin Postle (Paul Mellon Centre)
16.50-17.10 Eleanor Hughes (Yale)
Guns in the Gardens: Peter Monamy's Supperbox Paintings at Vauxhall
17.10-17.30 Nebahat Avcioglu (Columbia University. Institute of Scholars, Paris)
"Vauxhall Gardens or A Turkish Paradise": Princely Politics and the Architecture of the Other
17.30-17.50 Belinda Beaton (Oxford)
Vauxhall Meets Its Waterloo: Wellington, Heroism and History
17.50-18.10 Q & A
18.10-19.30 Drinks Reception
Wednesday 16 July : Tate Britain
10.00-10.30 Coffee and registration
10.30-11.10 Keynote
Rachel Cowgill (Leeds)
Performance Alfresco: Music-making in English pleasure gardens pre-1880
Divisions on a Ground - Chaired by Simon McVeigh (Guildhall School of Music & Drama)
11.10-11.30 Berta Joncus (St. Anne’s, Oxford)
"To Propagate a Sound for Sense": Music for Diversion and Seduction at Ranelagh Gardens
11.30-11.50 Bonny H. Miller (Washington)
Poetical Essays, Pleasing Strains: Pleasure Garden Music in the Popular Periodical Press
11.50-12.10 William Weber(CalState, Long Beach)
The Evolving Canon of British Vocal Pieces, 1750 - 1890
12.10-12.30 Q & A
12.30-13.30 Lunch (not provided)
An Inclusive Space? Class, Gender and Race - Chaired by Penelope Corfield (Royal Holloway)
13.30-13.50 David Hunter (University of Texas, Austin)
The Real Audience at Vauxhall, 1729 - 1759
13.50-14.10 Hannah Greig (York)
"All Together and All Distinct": Social Exclusivity and the Pleasure Gardens of Eighteenth-Century London
14.10-14.30 LakeDouglas (Louisiana)
Pleasure Gardens in New Orleans, 1810 - 1830
14.30-14.50 Q & A
14.50 - 15.20 Tea/Coffee
Light and Dark - Chair: Marius Kwint (Oxford)
15.20-15.40 Alice Barnaby (Exeter)
Light Entertainment: The Role of Illumination, 1780 - 1860
15.40-16.00 Deborah Nord (Princeton)
Gaslight, Daylight and the Decline of the Carnivalesque: Egan, Dickens and Thackeray
16.00 - 16.20 Margaret MacDonald (Glasgow)
'The evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil': Whistler and Cremorne
16.20 - 16.40 Q & A
16.40 - 17.00 Final comment and discussion: led by John Brewer, (CalTech)
17.00 End of conference
£80 (£60 concessions), booking required
Conference ticket includes entry to the opening reception at the Museum of Garden History on the evening of 14 July.
Delegates will have the opportunity to purchase tickets at a reduced rate of £10.00 for a concert at the Museum of Garden History on 14 July. Please present your conference ticket on the door.
In association with The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Supported by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, University of Southampton, Tate Britain, the Museum of Garden History, The Royal Musical Association, The Music and Letters Trust.

