April 25 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Thursday April 25, 2024
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
The Robert and Marian Cumming Lecture
Speaker: Dr. Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, Director of Global Premodern Art and Lecturer in French and British History of Art, c.1650-1900, University of Edinburgh, UK
In this talk, Dr. Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth will consider the legacy of one of the greatest women collectors of the 19th century. Lady Charlotte Schreiber was an extraordinary antiquarian, collector, and connoisseur, who dedicated her life to art, history, and cultural philanthropy. A self-taught artist and linguist, she wrote a celebrated translation of the medieval Welsh Mabinogion in the 1830s, sought out works by Holbein and Velázquez in the 1840s, and soon developed a specialist eye for early modern European ceramics.
By the 1850s she was already known as a collector of “old china”, and by 1865 she had dedicated herself fully to “English Ceramic Art”. Charlotte excavated ceramic factory sites, discovered and transcribed archival documentary sources, and scoured the furthest corners of the globe, from Madrid to Capetown, for objects in her particular “collecting line”. After more than thirty collecting trips across the world, she donated thousands of objects to the South Kensington Museum (1884-85), now the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Museum (1887-95), an unprecedented move for a female benefactor.
*No advanced registration required for students. Valid student ID must be presented at the Front Desk upon arrival.
The Music Lesson
Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory, London, Modeled by Joseph Willems, ca. 1765
Soft-paste porcelain, painted in enamels and gilded
Victoria and Albert Museum
Given by Lady Charlotte Schreiber
414:192-1885
About the Speaker
Dr. Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth
Originally from Ireland, Dr. Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth is an art historian, curator, and public engagement practitioner. She is Director of Global Premodern Art and Lecturer in French and British History of Art, c.1650-1900 at the University of Edinburgh. She was previously Curator of Ceramics and Glass 1600-1800 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Dr. McCaffrey-Howarth is currently writing two books, one on the art collector and philanthropist Lady Charlotte Schreiber with Lund Humphries (Spring, 2025), and the other entitled Sèvres-Mania: The Craft of Ceramics Connoisseurship with Bloomsbury Academic (Fall, 2025). She is a proud Trustee of the French Porcelain Society, English Ceramics Circle and the Furniture History Society.