Art of Mary Linwood
Embroidery, Installation, and Entrepreneurship in Britain, 1787-1845

By (author) Dr. Heidi A. Strobel

ISBN13: 9781350428126

Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Format: Paperback / softback

Published: 26/06/2025

Availability: Not yet available

Description
The Art of Mary Linwood is the first book on Leicester textile artist Mary Linwood (1755-1845) and catalogue of her work. When British textile artist and gallery owner Mary Linwood died in 1845 just shy of 90 years old, her estate was worth the equivalent of £5,199,822 in today’s currency. As someone who made, but did not sell, embroidered replicas of famous artworks after artists such as Gainsborough, Reynolds, Stubbs, and Morland, how did she accumulate so much money? A pioneering woman in the male-dominated art world of late Georgian Britain, Linwood established her own London gallery in 1798 that featured copies of well-known paintings by these popular artists. Featuring props and specially designed rooms for her replicas, she ensured that her visitors had an entertaining, educational, and kinetic tour, similar to what Madame Tussaud would do one generation later. The gallery’s focus on picturesque painters provided her London visitors with an idyllic imaginary journey through the countryside. Its emphasis on quintessentially British artists provided a unifying focus for a country that had recently emerged from the threat of Napoleonic invasion. This book brings to the fore Linwood's gallery guides and previously unpublished letters to her contemporaries, such as Birmingham inventor Matthew Boulton and Queen Charlotte. It also includes the first and only catalogue of Linwood’s extant and destroyed works. By examining Linwood’s replicas and their accompanying objects through the lens of material culture, the book provides a much-needed contribution to the scholarship on women and cultural agency in the early 19th century.
Acknowledgements List of Plates List of Figures Introduction 1. Embroidery, Education, and Commerce: Linwood’s Early Years 2. The Pantheon and Hanover Square Exhibitions 3. Portraiture, Publications, and Promotion 4. The Leicester Square Gallery: Performing British Patriotism 5. Of Students and Studying: The Academic Tradition and the Scripture Room 6. Linwood’s Legacies Appendix: Catalogue of Linwood’s Textiles Notes Bibliography
  • Textile artworks
  • Individual artists, art monographs
  • Professional & Vocational
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List Price: £28.99