Exercise: Plan a country house refurbishment

For this exercise I must imagine that I’ve been asked to advise on the refurbishment of a country house. The building can be of any period.

I must:

• Limit my scheme to a set of three or four rooms and show these on a ground plan.
• Specify the period and the location of the building.
• Include a thumbnail sketch of the present inhabitants – the people who have commissioned me.
• Include any European paintings or works of art, irrespective of cost, but make choices appropriate to the history of the house and the taste and lifestyle of its occupants.
• Consider if I will have an integrated approach and have common stylistic schemes running throughout; or whether I will vary the style of the rooms to reflect the preoccupations of the principal user?
• My account is illustrated with photos and drawings to complement and enhance the written elements.
• Please see the PDF file for more information: Lucy Dean OCA – Exercise – Plan a country house refurbishment– the bibliography is on page 8 of this PDF file.

Exercise: Room with a view

For this exercise I must choose a painting that has a window as a significant feature – either a view in or a view out. I must start by analysing the image in formal terms, with particular attention to the use of perspective (both linear and aerial or atmospheric perspective) and the overall composition.

How does the artist contrast the worlds on either side of the window? What effect does this create?  An interior that’s safe and secure from the outside world or a yearning for something beyond?

My account is illustrated with photos and drawings to complement and enhance the written elements. Please see the PDF file for more information:Lucy Dean OCA – Exercise – Room with a view– the bibliography is on page 10 of this PDF.

Research point: Trompe l’oeil decorative schemes

For this exercise I must research some of the ways in which trompe-l’oeil has been exploited in works of art, particularly in decorative schemes.

According to the Tate: Trompe-l’oeil is a “French phrase meaning ‘deceives the eye’, which is used to describe paintings that create the illusion of a real object or scene” (Tate, n.d.).

My inspiration for this task was a visit to the Hungarian State Opera House in Budapest in March 2016. Whilst on a tour of the building I encountered the large and expressive fresco of the Apotheosis of Music, 1875-1884, by the German-Hungarian painter Károly Lotz.

My account is illustrated with photos to complement and enhance the written elements.

Please see the PDF file for more information:

Lucy Dean – OCA – Research point – Trompe l’oeil decorative schemes– the bibliography is on pages 12 – 13 of this document.

Study visit: Visit a public interior

In this essay I will examine a public interior of some splendour or intricacy such as a room in a stately home or a town hall for example.

For this task I will focus on the The Vyne Chapel, which is situated within The Vyne stately home in Basingstoke, Hampshire. The Vyne is a magnificent former Tudor palace with illustrious connections to Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I, Jane Austen, Cardinal Wolsey and many more.

I visited the property in July 2015 to discover more and to prepare for this part of the course. I spoke to the House Steward, Dominique Shembry in order to obtain the most up-to-date information regarding the conservation of this important structure.

My account is illustrated with photos to complement and enhance the written elements.

Please see the PDF files for more information:

lucy-dean-510514-assignment-5-visit-a-public-interior-essay– the bibliography is on pages 20-21 of this document.

Exercise: Annotate an interior view

In this essay I will examine a seventeenth-century Dutch interior and a nineteenth-century genre painting.

Where appropriate, I must consider the relationship between the figures and the setting, whether the picture contains a story or narrative, what the interior tells us about the status of its owner and what evidence it gives us about art works that the owner has collected. Also, I must identify if there are any possible symbolic meanings.

I have selected the paintings The Proposition, 1631, by Judith Leyster and Napoleon in the Plague House at Jaffa, 1804, by Antoine-Jean Gros for further study as both artists explore ideas of status, narrative and symbolism in very different ways.

Please see the PDF files for more information:

• lucy-dean-510514-history-of-art-1-exercise-annotate-an-interior-view-napolean-in-the-plague-house-at-jaffa-essay – the bibliography is on pages 13-14 of this document.
•  lucy-dean-510514-history-of-art-1-exercise-annotate-an-interior-view-the-proposition-essay– the bibliography is on pages 12-13 of this file.

Due to the size of the files I have split them to make it easier to follow. Please read both documents for a thorough analysis of the paintings and the periods in which they were produced.