Academic staff

In her teaching, Christiana Payne encourages students to engage directly with original works of art in galleries and museums, to examine their physical characteristics, and the materials and techniques used to create them, as well as thinking about their function and meaning within the societies that produced them.

Modules taught

Undergraduate

• U68007 Art in Oxford
• U68023 Field Studies in History of Art
• U68024 Advanced Seminar in History of Art (Field, Forest, Mountain and Wilderness: Landscape Painting in Britain, Europe and America, c. 1790-1850)
• U68080 History of Art Synoptic

Supervision

Research supervision

Christiana Payne has recently supervised students working on the following topics: representations of old age in Britain and America, 1870-1910; the impact on landscape paintings of the inauguration of annual exhibitions in London from 1760; and the male opera singer in nineteenth-century British culture. She is currently supervising a project on the art and writings of Frederic George Stephens (1827-1907). She welcomes enquiries from prospective research students wanting to work on late eighteenth and nineteenth-century British painting, particularly on landscape and genre painting.

For more information on Christiana's research students go to http://www.christianapayne.com/

Her research interests are in nineteenth-century British landscape and genre painting, with a particular emphasis on the representation of the poor and the relationship of art to its social and political context. She has curated exhibitions at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, the Djanogly Art Gallery, University of Nottingham, Penlee House Gallery and Museum, Penzance, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, the Fine Art Society, London, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. With Juliet McMaster, she was co-curator of a new display at Tate Britain, James Clarke Hook and Painters of the Sea (16 December 2006 – 17 February 2008). She worked with Dr Janette Kerr, PRWA, on an exhibition, The Power of the Sea: Making Waves in British Art 1790-2014, which was held at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, April-July 2014, and with Stephen Jacobson and Gemma Brace on a further exhibition at the same venue: Air: Visualising the Invisible in British Art, 1760-2017 (June-September 2017). She is co-curator, with Victoria Partridge, of a new exhibtion at the Higgins Bedford: A Walk in the Woods: A Celebration of Trees in British Art, which opens on 30th September 2017.

Christiana's current research project is on the role of trees and woodland in British and American landscape painting: see http://www.christianapayne.com/blog.

Books

• Brace G, Nee R, Payne C, Fire: Flashes to Ashes in British Art, 1692-2019, Sansom and Company (2019)
  ISBN: 9781911408383
  Abstract

  Fire! traces the representation of fire in British art across the last four centuries.  In turns destructive and creative, fearsome and fascinating, it’s a subject loaded with symbolism, ritual and emotion. Unsurprisingly, the subject of fire has drawn in artists throughout the ages.  It features in the work of major British artists such as J.M.W. Turner, John Martin, J.M. Whistler, Joseph Wright of Derby  and William Blake, who are presented here alongside contemporary work by artists such as Cornelia Parker, David Nash, Mark Wallinger and Douglas Gordon.

  The book looks at the many facets of fire; its ability to express concepts on a human scale, such as warmth, anger and passion; as a storyteller fundamental to religion and mythology; its effects on our language – we talk of burning desires and blazing rows; as a driving force behind the progress of civilisation through science, industry and technology; as a political tool sending visceral message with shocking finality; its contribution to advances in cooking, pottery, metal and glass; as a signifier of absence, the soul, loss and transcendence. Three newly commissioned essays on the subject  explore fire in the process of making and how artists’ approaches to fire have changed over time, recording historical, religious, domestic or natural events as well as exploring fire as a material phenomenon informed by contemporary themes and issues, combining art and science. This book seeks to address the dual nature of fire showing that fire continues to be welcomed and feared in equal measure.

  Accompanies the exhibition held at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, 15 June-1 September 2019.

• Payne, Christiana, Silent witnesses: trees in British art, 1760-1870, Sansom and Company (2017)
  ISBN: 9781911408123
  Website 
• Selborne J, Payne C, William Henry Hunt: country people, Paul Holberton Publishing (2017)
  ISBN: 9781911300236
  Abstract Taking its lead from W.H. Hunt's watercolour The Head Gardener, c. 1825, that is part of The Courtauld Gallery's permanent collection, this focused display will be first to investigate Hunt's depiction of rural figures in his work of the 1820s and 1830s. Consisting of twenty drawings borrowed from collections across the United Kingdom, William Henry Hunt: Country People will bring together watercolours depicting country people in their working or living environments, from farmer and gamekeeper to stonebreaker and gleaner. The representation of these country men, women and children, closely observed, raises questions about their status and way of life at a time of rapid agricultural and social change. These profound changes are also reflected in the literature of the period. William Henry Hunt was one of the most admired watercolourists of the 19th century. Better known as 'Bird's Nest Hunt' for his intricate still lives of flowers, fruit and birds' eggs, he exhibited prolifically at the Old Water Colour Society. His works were sought after by collectors, notably John Ruskin, a serious champion of his work.' William Henry Hunt: Country People is the latest in a series of books accompanying critically acclaimed Courtauld displays, which showcase aspects of the gallery's outstanding permanent collection.Website 
• Payne C, Ed., The Power of the Sea: Making Waves in British Art 1790-2014, Sansom and Company (2014)
  ISBN: 9781908326577
  
• Payne C, John Brett: Pre-Raphaelite landscape painter, Yale University Press (2010)
  ISBN: 9780300165753
  Abstract

  Drawing on a wealth of unpublished sketchbooks, journals, and writings, this essential guide to John Brett (1831-1902) investigates the painter who was seen as the leader of the Pre-Raphaelite landscape school. In addition to exploring the familiar early works, including The Val d'Aosta and Stonebreaker, it provides rich information on his later, less-known coastal and marine paintings. Brett's turbulent friendship with John Ruskin is discussed, as are his relations with his beloved sister, Rosa, and his partner Mary, with whom he had seven children. His fervent interest in astronomy, his love of the sea, and his lifelong pursuit of wealth and recognition are all examined in this reassessment, which concludes with a catalogue raisonne of his works, prepared by his descendent Charles Brett.

• Payne C, Sumner Ann, Objects of affection: Pre-Raphaelite portraits by John Brett, Barber Institute of Fine Arts (2010)
  ISBN: 97810704427358
  Abstract This catalogue concentrates on his portraiture which, following discouragement from John Ruskin, have remained relatively obscure until now.
• Payne C, Where the sea meets the land, Sansom and Company (2007)
  ISBN: 9781904537649
  Abstract The coastline of Great Britain was a powerful magnet for artists in the nineteenth century. Its strong light created ideal conditions for experiments in open-air sketching and photography, and the difficulties of painting the endlessly moving waves presented a constant challenge. It also occupied a crucial place in important debates of the time. Napoleon's planned invasion in the early years of the century focused attention on the coast as a defensive boundary. Coastal geology and marine biology provided much of the evidence used in the disputes over theories of evolution which led to the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859. Meanwhile, the British invention of the seaside holiday gradually worked its way down the social scale. The author explores artists' responses to the coast and looks at the different ways politicians, tourists, theologians, poets and scientists would have viewed the coast. She shows how the images fit into the wider responses to social change and the transformation of religious belief. Special attention is paid to the development of lighthouses and lifeboats, and to the interest in the social organisation of fishing villages, both of which provided important subject matter for artists. Cartoons, photography and book illustrations are considered alongside significant oil paintings and watercolours. Their themes range from satirical humour to the most serious philosophical reflections. The book discusses the work of well-known artists, including JMW Turner, John Constable, William Powell Frith and Winslow Homer, as well as others, such as James Clarke Hook and Henry Moore, whose contributions have been little studied in modern time.Website 

Journal articles

• Payne, C, 'John Constable, John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites'
  British art journal 16 (1) (2015) pp.78-87
  ISSN: 1467-2006
  Website 
• Payne CJER, 'John Brett: a Pre-Raphaelite Imperialist'
  Visual Culture in Britain 16 (2) (2015) pp.154-170
  ISSN: 1471-4787 eISSN: 1941-8361
  Abstract

  From the direct gaze of his early self-portraits in the 1850s to the photographs he took of himself in 1889 as the head of a large family, John Brett was clearly concerned to present himself as a ‘manly’ painter. Eschewing the Bohemian masculinity of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Brett’s later writings, both public and private, show his allegiance to militaristic and imperialistic constructions of masculinity. These are at their purest in his role as ‘captain’ of his yacht, the appropriately named Viking, in the early to mid-1880s, a few years after he painted Britannia’s Realm (1880).  

  Website 
• Payne C, 'A Mild, a Grateful, An Unearthly Lustre: Samuel Palmer and the Moon'
  Burlington Magazine 154 (2012) pp.330-336
  ISSN: 0007-6287
  
• Payne C, 'John Brett's 'Christmas morning, 1866' '
  Burlington Magazine 150 (1269) (2008) pp.813-820
  ISSN: 0007-6287
  Abstract A LARGE PAINTING by John Brett, which has been known for many years as Shipwreck after a typhoon (Figs.10 and 11), has recently undergone restoration at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum in Bournemouth. In the Gallery" s Bulletin for 1929 it was described as a depiction of a sunset in the East, and dated to 1898: The scene is laid in Eastern waters, and some few years ago when the late Rear-Admiral Winnington Ingram (brother of the Bishop of London) was visiting the gallery he gave more attention to this picture than any other, remarking that it was very realistic, and he had often seen similar cloud effects and stormy skies when on duty in the East."That kind of thing" , he added,"is never seen here but is perfectly true out there" . However, one can see very fine wild cloud effects at sunset over the sea from the upper windows of this Museum building.

Book chapters

• Payne, C., 'Picturing Work' in Simonton, D. Montenach, A. (ed.), A Cultural History of Work in the Age of the Enlightenment, Bloomsbury Academic (2018)
  ISBN: not yet known
  Website 
• Payne, C., 'A Breath of Fresh Air: Constable and the Coast' in Ingleby M, Kerr MPM (ed.), Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, Edinburgh University Press (2018)
  ISBN: 9781474435734
  Website 
• Payne C, 'Air: Visualising the Invisible in British Art, 1768-2017. Catalogue of selected loan artworks' in Gemma Brace (ed.), Air: Visualising the Invisible in British Art, 1768-2017, Sansom and Company (2017)
  ISBN: 9781911408130
  Abstract

  The book weaves its way through British art including early experiments with air and studies of clouds, to representations of breath (blowing glass, balloons) and wind instruments to flying creatures (real and imaginary) and wartime skies, before considering the physical possibilities of flight which shifted our perceptions of the landscape, as aerial photography made the view of the earth from above available to wider audiences. Contemporary work introduces new environmental issues to the narrative, making reference to climate change and air-borne disease, as well as considering air as an integral component in the process of making art, to demonstrate how air is everywhere.The beautifully illustrated book includes a number of insightful essays which expand on the exhibition’s interweaving themes looking at the life of breath from a philosophical position; an exploration of our enduring fascination with the pursuit of ‘ballooning’ from the first intrepid flights in the eighteenth century from co-curator Christiana Payne, and a nebulous account of clouds throughout British art from Gemma Brace, attempting to visualise the invisible in words.

  Website 
• Payne C, 'The first balloon flights: art and science' in Gemma Brace (ed.), Air: visualising the invisible in British art, 1768-2017, Sansom and Company (2017)
  ISBN: 9781911408130
  
• Payne C J E R, 'Bewick and Landseer - The Chillingham Cattle in Art' in Paul G. Bahn and Vera B. Mutimer (ed.), Chillingham: Its Cattle, Castle and Church, Fonthill Media Ltd (2016)
  ISBN: 9781781555224
  
• Payne CJER, 'Visions of the Beach in Victorian Britain' in Kluwick U, Richter V (ed.), The Beach in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Routledge (2015)
  ISBN: 9781472457530 eISBN: 9781472457554
  Abstract

  All these paintings focus on beaches, that is, flattish areas of sand or pebbles adjacent to the sea. In the nineteenth century the word ‘beach’ began to take on its modern connotation as a site for holiday-making and leisure. In tourist resorts such as Ramsgate and Pegwell Bay in Kent, the beach was a social space where people prepared to bathe, read novels and newspapers, flirted, rode donkeys, watched entertainers, collected natural history specimens or simply sat out in the open air. In fishing villages, however, the flat beach had a more utilitarian function as the place where boats were pulled up onto the sand, where their catch was unloaded and sometimes where the fish were sold to merchants and the general public. In these locations, such as Cullercoats on the north-east coast near Newcastle, the beach was a different kind of social space, one in which the relationships within a close-knit community were cemented and tested. Here, and on unfrequented rocky beaches in more remote locations such as Cornwall, images of the beach might remind viewers not of holidays but of the symbolism of the seacoast as a metaphor for the fragility of human life and the hope of immortality.
  

  Website 
• Payne C, ''Dreaming of the marriage of the land and sea' :Samuel Palmer and the coast' in Samuel Palmer Revisited, Ashgate (2010)
  ISBN: 9780754667476
  Abstract Varied and deliberately diverse, this group of essays provides a reassessment of the life and work of the popular, but critically neglected nineteenth-century artist Samuel Palmer. While scholarly publications have been published recently which reassess Palmer's achievement, those works primarily consider the artist in isolation. This volume examines his work in relation to a wider art world and analyses areas of his life and output that have until now received little attention, reinstating the study of Palmer's work within broader debates about landscape and cultural history. In Samuel Palmer Revisited, the contributors provide a fresh perspective on Palmer's work, its context and its influence.
• Payne C, 'Images of rural and sea-side life' in Paintings from the Reign of Victoria The Royal Holloway Collection, London, Art Services International (2008)
  ISBN: 9780711229273
  Abstract The catalogue of a touring exhibition which showcases sixty extraordinary paintings illustrating some of the highest achievements in figurative and landscape art of the nineteenth century. Acquired by Thomas Holloway to enhance the women's college he had founded in 1879, the collection includes many of the most visible and praised “modern canvasses” in London in the 1880s. From scenes of contemporary life, as well as historical events, to landscapes, animal studies, and marine subjects, the exhibition illustrates the Victorian belief in art as the ultimate civilizing influence. Art was seen as a teaching tool with visual beauty as its medium, and Thomas Holloway sought out only the best examples, regardless of cost. Included are seminal works by artists such as Sir Edwin Landseer, William Powell Frith, Sir John Everett Millais, David Roberts, and Edwin Long.

Reviews

• Payne C, review of The Collected Letters of Jane Morris, in Burlington Magazine 155 (2013) pp.265-265ISSN: 0007-6287
  
• Payne C, review of Wives and Stunners. the Pre-raphaelites and Their Muses, in Burlington Magazine 155 (2013) pp.265-265ISSN: 0007-6287
  
• Payne C, review of Modernism on Sea Art and Culture at the British Seaside, in Oxford Art Journal 33 (2010) pp.239-241ISSN: 0142-6540 eISSN: 1741-7287
  
• Payne C, review of Sargent and the Sea, in Oxford Art Journal 33 (2010) pp.239-241ISSN: 0142-6540 eISSN: 1741-7287
  
• Payne C, review of Irish Rural Interiors in Art, in Apollo-the International Magazine of Art and Antiques 164 (2006) pp.114-115ISSN: 0003-6536
  
• Payne C, review of Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain, in Apollo-the International Magazine of Art and Antiques 162 (2005) pp.58-59ISSN: 0003-6536
  
• PAYNE C, review of British Landscape Watercolours 1750-1850 - Munro,j, in Oxford Art Journal 18 (1996) pp.91-93ISSN: 0142-6540 eISSN: 1741-7287
  
• Payne C, review of Prospects, Thresholds, Interiors, Watercolours From the National Collection at the Victoria-and-albert-museum - Johnson,l, in Oxford Art Journal 18 (1996) pp.91-93ISSN: 0142-6540 eISSN: 1741-7287
  
• Payne C, review of A Dream of England: Landscape, Photography and the Tourists Imagination, in American Historical Review 101 (1996) pp.488-488ISSN: 0002-8762 eISSN: 1937-5239
  

Other publications

• Payne C, Stafford F, Willsdon C A P, 'Pegwell Bay, Kent - A Recollection of October 5th 1858 ?1858-60 by William Dyce'
  Tate In Focus project (2016) Website 

Conferences

Conferences

Selected conference papers given since 2001

• “The Spectacle of Dress in Victorian Painting”, Locating the Victorians, Science Museum, London, July 2001.
• “Smugglers, Poachers and Wreckers in Nineteenth-century English Painting”, Social Deviance in England and France, Maison Française, Oxford, July 2003.
• “Turner’s Studies of the Waves of the Sea”, Turner 2004: New Perspectives, Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, January 2004.
• “Dreaming of the Marriage of the Land and Sea: Samuel Palmer and the Coast”, Samuel Palmer: a British Romantic Artist Reassessed, Paul Mellon Centre, London, January 2006.
• "The Empty Beach and the Working Beach; John Brett and Walter Langley in the South-west, c. 1870-1900", 'Twixt Land and Sea: The Beach in Literature, Film and Cultural Theory, University of Berne, Switzerland, June 2009.
• "John Brett: A Pre-Raphaelite Imperialist", Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, University of Reading, April 2013. 
• "Constable and the Coast", Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, 1775-1914, Faculty of English, Oxford University, March 2014.
• Keynote address at Underwater Worlds: Aquatic Visions in Art, Science and Literature, Oxford University, September 2015.
• "John Constable, Samuel Palmer, and Tree Portraiture in the 1820s", The Memory of Trees, University of Liverpool, April 2017.

Conferences organised since 2001

• With Leslie Topp and Catherine Whistler, “Making Connections: The Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians”, April 2001, Oxford Brookes University. 
• With Catherine Whistler (Ashmolean Museum), “Displaced Objects: Perspectives from the Museum and the Academy”, Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, Tate Britain, April 2008.
• With Dinah Roe (English and Modern Languages Dept), Colin Harrison (Ashmolean Museum) and Alastair Wright (Oxford University), "Pre-Raphaelitism: Past, Present and Future", Ashmolean Museum and St John's College, September 2013.

Seminar Series organised since 2001

• With Catherine Whistler (Ashmolean Museum) and Alastair Wright (Department of History of Art, Oxford University), History of Art Seminar series, Ashmolean Museum, from 2005.