Colloque : “Watercolour and Weather, 1750–1850” (Lausanne, 4-6 juin 2025).
Type : colloque.
Date et horaire : Du 4 au 6 juin 2025.
Lieu : Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Lausanne.
Parallèlement à une résurgence de la peinture de paysage, la période 1750-1850 a été marquée par un intérêt accru pour l’atmosphère tant de la part des artistes que des scientifiques. Cette tendance se reflète particulièrement dans les représentations de variations météorologiques à l’aquarelle. Examinant les interactions entre la technique aqueuse et l’observation météorologique, à travers l’étude d’œuvres allant de dessins scientifiques aux travaux d’architectes ou de peintres célèbres en passant par la documentation coloniale, le colloque questionnera le rôle des arts dans le développement d’une sensibilité pour l’atmosphère.
Simultaneously with a resurgence of landscape painting, the period 1750–1850 in European art witnessed an increased interest in the weather, not only as concerns its momentary states (clouded skies, lightning), but also the broader study of meteorological phenomena and of their unfolding over time. Besides the more radical events—such as storms—that were frequently represented, this period thus developed a keen observation of subtle moments of changing weather, allowing artists to combine varied effects of light. This is true not only of the most famous British painters (Joseph Mallord William Turner, John Constable, Alexander and John Robert Cozens) but also of figures from further afield, such as Giovanni Battista Lusieri, Caspar David Friedrich, and Abraham Louis Rodolphe Ducros.
In close connection to this artistic evolution, the period under scrutiny also witnessed the development of meteorology and climatology as scientific disciplines. This led both to Luke Howard’s classification of clouds (1804) that remains in use to this day, and to the theorisation of the greenhouse effect by Joseph Fourier in 1824. A new consciousness of the atmosphere and of its complexities, leading directly to present concerns regarding climate change, can thus be traced back to this cultural environment.
This conference forms part of a broader research and teaching project at the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva concerning Swiss watercolor artist Abraham Louis Rodolphe Ducros, whose personal collection forms the original nucleus of the Lausanne MCBA Museum. The conference will include a viewing of a selection of his works. Please register for this free event by 3 June 2025 by emailing berangere.poulain@unige.ch.
Programme :
mercredi 4 juin 2025
14.00 Institutional Greetings — Juri Steiner (MCBA)
14.15 Introduction — Bérangère Poulain (Université de Genève) and Desmond Kraege (Université de Lausanne)
14.45 Session 1 | Prelude
• Ulrike Gehring (Universität Trier)
15.15 Session 2 | Discovering Weather
Chair: Camille Lévêque-Claudet
• John Robert Cozens: The ‘man of clouds’ — Timothy Wilcox (Independent Curator, Oxford; Former Curator, British Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum)
• The Depiction of Atmospheric Changes in Piedmontese Watercolour Painting between the 18th and 19th Centuries: Artists, Approaches, and Techniques — Matteo Cappellotto (PhD Student, Università degli Studi di Siena)
16.15 Pause
16.45 Session 3 | Architecture and Weather
Chair: Basile Baudez
• Water, Weather, and Colour in the Roman Architectural Academy — Tracy Ehrlich (Parsons School of Design/The New School, New York)
• Le tonnerre et le pinceau: à propos de quelques orages dans les projets d’architecture de l’Académie royale de Paris — Adrián Fernández Almoguera (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia)
jeudi 5 juin 2025
10.15 Session 4 | Watercolour and Other Media
Chair: Philippe Kaenel
• Painting the Sky in Hand-Coloured Prints — Basile Baudez (Princeton University)
• The Theatre and the Easel: The Depiction of Meteorological Effects in Watercolour Painting and Stage Productions in Georgian England — Segundo J. Fernandez (Independent Scholar and Curator, Tallahassee, Florida)
11.15 Session 5 | Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros
Chair: Christian Michel
• Viewing of a selection of watercolours by A.L.R. Ducros from the MCBA
• Clouds in the Sea: A.L.R. Ducros, Weather, and Pictorial Texture — Bérangère Poulain (Université de Genève) and Desmond Kraege (Université de Lausanne)
12:30 Lunch
14.00 Session 6 | Charting Colonial Weather
Chair: Nicolas Bock
• Verdant Landscapes: Art, Observation, and Sustainability — Mari-Tere Álvarez (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles)
• Atmosphères des contrées canadiennes 1790–1820: De l’esquisse à l’œuvre achevée, l’art de dépeindre les horizons nouveaux par quelques amateurs britanniques — Marie-Claude Beaulieu (Independent Scholar, Montréal; Associate Researcher, CRIHAM – Université de Poitiers)
• Watercolour and the ‘melancholy darkness’ of Caribbean Weather in the 18th Century — Joseph D. Litts (PhD Student, Princeton University)
• Ciels en scène: Les aquarelles brésiliennes d’Hercule Florence (autour de 1830) — Martine Tabeaud (Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne)
16:30 Pause
16:45 Doctoral workshop
vendredi 6 juin 2025
10.15 Session 7 | Watercolour and Science
Chair: Nathalie Dietschy
• Les planches de Luke Howard: l’eau et les « modifications » des nuages — Anouchka Vasak (Université de Poitiers)
• Ecology and Aesthetics in Carus and Friedrich: Two Approaches to Meteorology — Elisabeth Ansel (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena)
• Can Colours in Watercolour Paintings be Considered a Quantitative Climate Archive? — Christian von Savigny (Institute of Physics, Universität Greifswald)
• Volcanic Weather, 1816–1818: Tambora, Turner, and Friedrich — Dewey Hall (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona)
• Painting the Invisible: Representations of Wind Force in Watercolour — Nicola Moorby (Tate Britain, London)
13:00 Lunch
14.15 Session 8 | Revisiting the Masters
Chair: Jan Blanc
• J.M.W. Turner: Storm Chaser — Ian Warrell (Independent Curator, Brighton; Former Curator, Tate Britain)
• ‘A view unequalled in Europe’: John Constable’s Watercolours of Skies Looking over London Painted from his House in Well Walk, Hampstead in the Early 1830s — Anne Lyles (Independent Curator, London; Former Curator, Tate Britain)
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Maxime Georges Métraux (2 mai 2025). Colloque : “Watercolour and Weather, 1750–1850” (Lausanne, 4-6 juin 2025). Groupe de Recherche en Histoire de l'Art Moderne. Consulté le 17 juin 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13uvu