Name: Kress Lecture: Aquatint Travel Books and the Haptic Picturesque
Start: 2026-06-01T17:30:00-04:00
End: 2026-06-01T18:30:00-04:00
Location: 160 McCormick Rd, Charlottesville, VA 22904-1001, United States

Kress Lecture: Aquatint Travel Books and the Haptic Picturesque

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 𝗞𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲
When London viewers opened elegant folio books like Oriental Scenery or The Costume of China they were not just engaging with visual and cultural difference. They were also seeing an image process that was quite familiar. Polite interest in picturesque sketching meant that many Britons had experience drawing outlines, “dead coloring” shadows, and adding enlivening watercolor touches. This three-stage process also occurred in aquatint printmaking; a finely etched outline was made, broad washes of tone were added, and then strategic watercolor flourishes completed the print. This lecture frames that familiarity as the “haptic picturesque,” which surely sounds like an oxymoron for those who think of the picturesque as a purely visual encounter. Aquatint travel books, which were at their height between 1780 and 1830, took the familiar process of “tinted drawings” to distant lands. These luxury books enabled metropolitan viewers to imagine themselves sketching an Indian market or a Chinese temple. They constructed an empire of imaginative projections. As a term, the haptic picturesque unsettles rigid categories between periphery and center, and it suggests that landscapes of sense and sensibility were also landscapes of tactile sensation.
For further details about this hybrid lecture, including Zoom livestream registration, visit rarebookschool.org/events/2026/06/douglas-fordham-kress-lecture/
𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿
Douglas Fordham is Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia where he currently serves as Department Chair. As a historian of art and the British empire, Fordham is interested in a wide range of visual arts from the seventeenth century to the present in the Anglophone world. He is a co-editor of 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦 (2007) which helped to place empire at the center of the study of British art. His first monograph, 𝘉𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴’ 𝘞𝘢𝘳: 𝘈𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘈𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘺 (2010) examined the relationship of imperial politics to artistic organization in eighteenth-century London. His second monograph, 𝘈𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥𝘴: 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭, 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘌𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦 (2019) considered how the newly discovered medium of aquatint printmaking conditioned the representation of cultures beyond Europe circa 1800. Douglas has worked with the Fralin Museum of Art and the Kluge-Ruhe Collection of Aboriginal Art on a number of exhibitions including Boomalli Prints & Paper: Making Space as an Art Collective (2022). His most recent article, “English Graffiti and the Printed Image,” will appear shortly in the journal 𝘈𝘳𝘵 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺.