Classical culture and the industrial town: antiquity, manufacturing and art in nineteenth-century Birmingham

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Matthews, Clare (2022). Classical culture and the industrial town: antiquity, manufacturing and art in nineteenth-century Birmingham. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis analyses the relationships between classical visual culture and the industrial town through the example of nineteenth-century Birmingham. It investigates how Birmingham engaged with the iconography and traditions of ancient Greece and Rome through civic architecture and sculpture, artistic education and production, and public exhibitions and displays. And it situates these engagements within wider contexts of interpretations of antiquity in nineteenth-century industrial Britain. This is the first scholarly study of how the visual culture of antiquity became intertwined with the activities, concerns, and civic identity, of an industrial town. It explores how classical visual culture was viewed and experienced, and how it was engaged with as public cultural property, during a key formative period for Birmingham as it transformed into a city, a so-called ‘workshop of the world’. In asking what impact the visual culture of antiquity had on shaping and representing the identity of the modern industrial town, it makes an important contribution to the industrial and artistic history of Birmingham. And it challenges understandings of classical culture within nineteenth-century Britain, firstly through its focus on a broad range of visual culture, and secondly through providing new perspectives by investigating its relationship with the industrial town.

Type of Work: Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)
Award Type: Doctorates > Ph.D.
Supervisor(s):
Supervisor(s)EmailORCID
Nichols, KateUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIED
Bradley, MarkUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIED
Licence: All rights reserved All rights reserved
College/Faculty: Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Arts & Law
School or Department: School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music, Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies
Funders: Arts and Humanities Research Council
Subjects: D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain
N Fine Arts > NA Architecture
N Fine Arts > NB Sculpture
N Fine Arts > NK Decorative arts Applied arts Decoration and ornament
URI: http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/12194

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