Third Annual Janson-La Palme Lecture to Address Animals as Metaphor in Romantic Art, March 30

Chestertown, MD, March 9, 2006 — Washington College is pleased to present the 2006 Janson-La Palme Annual Distinguished Lecture in European Art History, "Unbridled Passions: Animals in Romantic Art," a lecture by Robert Rosenblum, Henry Ittleson, Jr., Professor of Modern European Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Stephen and Nan Swid Curator of Twentieth-Century Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The talk will be held Thursday, March 30, 2006, at 4:30 p.m. in the Casey Academic Center Forum. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

Professor Rosenblum's lecture will explore artists' changing attitudes towards animals, both domestic and wild, during the Romantic era, from 1760 to 1830. Whether in depictions of horses and dogs or lions and snakes, such major artists as Stubbs, Géricault, and Delacroix used animals as metaphors of everything from a harmonious state of nature to the unleashing of savage forces, mirroring the turbulence of their own emotions.

The author of some 20 books and exhibition catalogues, Professor Rosenblum has taught at Columbia, Yale, Princeton, and Oxford Universities, and at the Freie Universität, Berlin. His most recent books include Introducing Gilbert and George (2004), 1900: Art of the Crossroads with MaryAnne Stevens and Ann Dumas (2000), On Modern American Art: Selected Essays (1999), and The Paintings of August Strindberg: The Structure of Chaos(1995). Professor Rosenblum is the recipient of many academic and professional awards and was recognized in 2004 for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism by the International Association of Art Critics/USA and in 2005 with New York University's Distinguished Teaching Award. He was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1999 and Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 2002.

The Janson-La Palme Distinguished Lecture in European Art History was established by Washington College Professor Emeritus Robert J. H. Janson-La Palme and his wife, Bayly, to bring internationally known scholars on European art to campus for public lectures and presentations. In his retirement, Dr. Janson-La Palme remains active in historic preservation, participates in national and international conferences in his field, and frequently contributes toRenaissance Quarterly. The inaugural lecture in the series, held in March 2004, featured Nicholas Penny, Senior Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art, on "Painting and the Third Dimension in Italian Renaissance Art." In 2005 the series hosted Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a leading historian of Hispanic art of the early modern period (1400-1700).