The Courtauld

I have been teaching all aspects of eighteenth-century British art at the Courtauld in London since receiving my PhD in 2010. My courses have been taken by undergraduates, post-graduates and summer school students. See https://courtauld.ac.uk/people/kate-grandjouan

Lecturer, Public Programmes

Picturing the Nation: American Painting 1760-1910

Summer School – Online Monday 20 June – Friday 24 June 2022

Setting out from the settler worlds of colonial Philadelphia and concluding in the metropolis of the early 20th century – New York – this course will survey a crucial period in the development of an American art. A central – if elusive question – will be the role that art plays in the invention of national traditions. From the 19th century, critics, curators and scholars promoted the idea of a uniquely national art, arguing that environments specific to America were conditioning certain types of subjects and shaping the recurrence of particular styles. Yet painters lived in transatlantic worlds: global travellers, they were astute at inserting themselves into new contexts and bringing international developments back home. Weaving together local, national and international frameworks, this course investigates the definition of American art, drawing attention to a central relationship between art, history and national identity.

More information on this course can be found here: https://courtauld.ac.uk/short-courses-2022/summer-school/summer-school-online/picturing-the-nation/

Global Britain: Painting, Printmaking and Patronage

Summer School – Online Monday 26 – Friday 30 July 2021

A course investigating the rich artistic legacies of the eighteenth century when British society, powered by the twin forces of imperial expansion and consumer revolution, was radically transformed. The course concentrates on the media of paint and print and it aims to investigate the energy – and friction – generated by this early modern meeting of the local and global. Artistic production and consumption will be examined from a variety of angles and within different contexts – the court and the city, the studio, the print shop and the exhibition room. We will be thinking about Britons in Europe and Europeans in Britain, about colonial identities and imperial contexts. The key question (and topical question in the Brexit era of ‘Global Britain’) is what was British about British art in the eighteenth-century?

September 2019: Battle Grounds: 18th-century British Art and its Interpretation: a three-day course exploring the interpretation of eighteenth-century art structured around the ‘Politics of Class’, ‘The Global Turn’ and ‘The Digital 18th century’ with visits to Tate Britain, National Maritime Museum and the Prints and Drawings Study Room, British Museum. See https://courtauld.ac.uk/event/battlegrounds-eighteenth-century-british-art-and-its-interpretation

Associate Lecturer, Undergraduate & Postgraduate teaching

2019-20: Printmaking in an age of Revolution: a BA2 (Level 5) Constellations seminar course examining the role that printmaking played in the development of European art c. 1760-1830. Techniques studied included etching, engraving, mezzotint, stipple, lithography and colour printing. Artists studied included James Barry, William Blake, Francisco Goya, Theodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, John Martin and John Constable

2018/9: Graphic Satire in Eighteenth-Century Britain c.1688-1815, a BA3 (Level 6) Special Option course tracing the history of visual satire in print and paint, as an art form that provided a vehicle for laughter, morality, political commentary and propaganda. Artists studied included Romeyne de Hooghe, William Hogarth, Samuel Grimm, Philippe de Loutherbourg, Thomas Rowlandson James Gillray and Richard Newton. Publishers studied included Charles Mosley, George Bickham, Matthew and Mary Darly, Hannah Humphrey and William Holland.

2012/3: Sets and Series in Early Modern and Contemporary Painting: MA course with T.J. Clark, Visiting Professor: a course examining the concept of painting in series. Works studied included Paolo Veronese‘s Four Allegories of Love (c. 1595), The Seven Sacraments (1648-50) by Nicholas Poussin, A Rake’s Progress (1733-5) and Marriage à la Mode (1745) by William Hogarth and the October 18 series (1977) by Gerhard Richter. The concept was to address the meaning of a single work when it was conceived to be seen within a group.

2011/2: Painting in Britain c.1713-1832 a BA2 (Level 5) period course examining the development of the visual arts in eighteenth-century Britain and understood in their social and political contexts.  

2010-12: Reading Hogarth: a BA 2 (Level 5) ‘Texts and Contexts’ course exploring writing and the production of meaning in William Hogarth’s historiography

2011-13 Hogarth in London Collections: a BA1 course examining William Hogarth’s paintings and prints in public collections.