AGM AND ANNUAL LECTURE
Professor Elizabeth Emery: Women Dealers and Collectors of
Japanese Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris
Monday, 21 September, 2020
Keynote Lecture at 5.30PM (BST)
AGM will follow directly after the lecture
ONLINE
Museums, libraries, and web sites celebrate the names of Philippe Sichel, Siegfried Bing, and Hayashi Tadamasa as “great dealers of Japanese art” and present them as the pioneers of the nascent Japan trade in France. In contrast, the names of Louise Chopin Desoye, Marie Antoinette Schlotterer Malinet, and Florine Ebstein Langweil have been largely lost to history, even when they informed and complemented the work of these better-known men. This lecture uses newly discovered archival material to emphasize the participation of women in the nineteenth-century Paris market for Japanese antiquities. It will raise questions about the socio-economic structures and stereotypes that have led to their disappearance and strategies for recovering their histories.
Elizabeth Emery is Professor of French at Montclair State University (New Jersey, USA). She is the author of books, articles, and essay anthologies related to the reception of medieval art and architecture in nineteenth-century France and America (Romancing the Cathedral: Gothic Architecture in Fin-de-siècle French Culture with SUNY Press in 2001 and Consuming the Past: The Medieval Revival in Fin-de-Siècle France with Laura Morowitz for Ashgate Press in 2003, for example). Recent works explore the links among early photography, journalism, and celebrity culture (Photojournalism and the Origins of the French Writer House Museum (1881-1914) with Ashgate Press in 2012 and En toute intimité…Quand la presse people de la Belle Epoque s’invitait chez les célébrités with Parigramme, 2015). A new book, Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France (1853-1914), written under the auspices of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, will be published imminently by Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
To register for this lecture email events@societyhistorycollecting.org.