Mark Hallett

Professor Mark Hallett (born 11 March 1965) is an art historian specialising in the history of British art. He is currently Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

Professor Hallett moved to the Paul Mellon Centre in October 2012, after having spent eighteen years teaching at the University of York, where he was appointed a Professor in 2006. He was Head of the History of Art department at York between 2007 and 2012, and a member of the University’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. He took his undergraduate degree at Cambridge University, graduating in 1986, and studied for a master's degree (1989) and a PhD (1996) at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Yale University in 1990–91.

As an art-historian, Hallett is best known for his writings on eighteenth-century graphic satire, exhibition culture and portraiture, and for his books and catalogues on the artists William Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds. He also co-edited the major online publication, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018 (Paul Mellon Centre, 2018). More recently, he has begun researching and writing on twentieth-century British art.

He has also been involved in curating a number of major exhibitions, including James Gillray: The Art of Caricature (Tate Britain, 2001); Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity (Tate Britain, 2005); Hogarth (Tate Britain, 2007); William Etty: Art and Controversy (York Art Gallery, 2011); Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint (Wallace Collection, 2015); The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Summer Exhibition (Royal Academy, 2018); and George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field (Yale Center for British Art, 2018). In 2019, he co-curated the Tate Britain Spotlight Display Vital Fragments: Nigel Henderson and the Art of Collage.

Books and catalogues

• George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field (ed.), Yale University Press, 2018
• The Great Spectacle: 250 Years of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (co-authored with Sarah Turner), Royal Academy Publishing, 2018
• Court, Country, City: Essays on British Art and Architecture, 1660–1735 (co-edited with Martin Myrone and Nigel Llewellyn), Yale University Press, 2016
• Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint (edited with Lucy Davis), The Wallace Collection, 2015
• Reynolds: Portraiture in Action, Yale University Press, 2014
• Living with the Royal Academy: Artistic Ideals and Experiences in England, 1769-1848 (ed. with Sarah Monks and John Barrel)l, Ashgate, 2013
• Faces in a Library: ‘Sir Joshua Reynolds’s ‘Streatham Worthies’ (The Watson Gordon Lecture 2011), National Galleries of Scotland, 2012
• William Etty: Art and Controversy (ed. with Sarah Burnage and Laura Turner), Philip Wilson Publishers, 2011
• Hogarth (co-authored with Christine Riding), Tate Publishing, 2007
• Eighteenth Century York: Culture, Space and Society, ed. with Jane Rendall, Borthwick Institute, 2003
• Hogarth, Phaidon Press, 2000
• The Spectacle of Difference: Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth, Yale University Press, 1999

Online Publications

• The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018 (co-editor) Paul Mellon Centre, 2018
• "Looking for "the Longitude". British Art Studies. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and Yale Center for British Art

Films and Recorded Lectures

• Vital Fragments: Nigel Henderson and the Art of Collage (12 short films made with Rosie Ram and Jon Law), Paul Mellon Centre, 2019
• Walking the Streets: William Hogarth’s The Four Times of Day (1736-8), Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
• Displaying the Hero: John Singleton Copley’s The Death of Major Peirson (1784), Paul Mellon Centre, 2020
• Making an Impact: Thomas Lawrence’s Arthur Atherley (1792), Paul Mellon Centre, 2020

Articles and Essays

• ‘A Double Capacity: Gainsborough at the Summer Exhibition’, in Christoph Vogtherr (ed.), Thomas Gainsborough: The Modern Landscape, Hamburger Kunstalle, 2018
• ‘Cornucopia: Royal Female Portraiture and the Imperatives of Reproduction’ (co-authored with Cassandra Albinson), in Joanna Marschner (ed.), Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, Yale University Press, 2017
• ‘A monument to intimacy: Joshua Reynolds's The Marlborough Family', in Art History, Vol.31, no. 5, 2008
• 'Reynolds, Celebrity and the Exhibition Space', and numerous catalogue entries, in Martin Postle (ed) Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity, Tate Publishing, 2005
• Reading the Walls: Pictorial Dialogue at the British Royal Academy', in Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 37, no. 4 (2004)
• 'From Out of the Shadows: Sir Joshua Reynolds' Captain Robert Orme', in Visual Culture in Britain, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2004
• 'Manly Satire: William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress' in Bernadette Fort and Angela Rosenthal (eds.), The Other Hogarth: The Aesthetics of Difference, Princeton University Press, 2001.
• 'James Gillray and the Language of Graphic Satire', in Richard Godfrey (ed.) Gillray and the Art of Caricature, Tate Gallery Publications, 2001.
• 'The Business of Criticism: the Press and the Royal Academy Exhibition in Eighteenth-Century London' in David Solkin (ed.) Art on the line: the Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780-1836, Yale University Press, 2001.
• 'The view across the City: William Hogarth and the visual culture of eighteenth-century London' in David Bindman, Frederic Ogee and Peter Wagner (eds.), Hogarth: Representing Nature's Machines, Manchester University Press, 2001.
• 'Painting: Exhibitions, Audiences, Critics, 1780–1830', in An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832, edited by Iain McCalman, Oxford University Press, 1999
• 'The Medley Print in Early Eighteenth-Century London', in Art History, Vol 20, no. 2, June 1997
• 'Framing the Modern City: Canaletto's Images of London', in Michael Liversidge and Jane Farrington (eds.), Canaletto and England, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 1993