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William L. Pressly

William L. Pressly

Professor Emeritus, Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century European Art, Art History and Archaeology

Education

Ph.D., , Institute of Fine Arts of New York University

Research Expertise

Early Modern Studies

Curriculum Vitae

William L. Pressly's scholarship is devoted to the art of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, with an emphasis on British painting. His numerous publications include three single-authored books on the eighteenth-century Irish painter James Barry. He has also published on a number of other artists of the "English" School, including William Blake, John Singleton Copley, Henry Fuseli, James Gillray, James Jefferys, John Hamilton Mortimer, Samuel Palmer, John Francis Rigaud, George Romney, Alexander and John Runciman, Gilbert Stuart, J. M. W. Turner, Benjamin West, Joseph Wright of Derby and Johan Zoffany.Outside of British art, he has pubished on Goya and the Surrealists. His most recent book, James Barry's Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art (Cork University Press, 2014) is the first to offer an in-depth anaylsis of these remarkable paintings and the first to demonstrate that the artist was pioneering a new approach to public art in terms of the novelty of his patronage and the highly personal nature of his content. The book arguesthat the murals contain a deeper hidden meaning that has gone unperceived for 230 years, the artist having disguised his message due to its inflammatory nature. It was awarded the 2015 William MB Berger Prize for British Art History.

Professor Pressly has held grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, and Senior Smithsonian Fellowship. Before joining the Maryland faculty in 1987, he had taught at Yale University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Duke University. At Maryland, heserved as Director of Graduate Studies and Chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology.Since 2012 he and his wife Nancy have beenliving in Atlanta,just one and a half blocks from their son and two grandchildren.

Publications

America's Paper Money: A Canvas for an Emerging Nation

Professor Emeritus William Pressly charts the history of paper money in the United States and its role in forging a national identity

Art History and Archaeology

Author/Lead: William L. Pressly
Dates:
Funding Agency:

Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Cover of America's Paper Money by William L. Pressly

The Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1690 became the first government in the Western world to print paper money, the imagery for which initiated an indigenous American art form of remarkable dynamism and originality. After the Revolutionary War, disillusioned by how quickly its promiscuous printing of Continental currency had led to hyperinflation, the U.S. government left it to private institutions such as state-chartered banks to carry on this artistic American tradition. Adorned with a vast variety of images, bank notes soon became the fledgling country’s primary currency. With pressures of the Civil War, the federal government in 1861 began taking charge of the paper-money supply by creating a national currency; simultaneously, the Confederate States of America was creating a competing self-image, making heavy use of bank-note vignettes. Later, collaboration between government engravers and well-known artists on the 1896 Silver Certificates marked the apex of U.S. government currency design. For two centuries, American creativity and technical ingenuity resulted in imagery on paper money that helped create and enhance the nation’s imagined self.

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James Barry's Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art

James Barry's Murals at the Royal Society of Arts is the first to offer an in-depth analysis of these remarkable paintings and the first to demonstrate that the artist was pioneering a new approach to public art in terms of the novelty of the patronage a

Art History and Archaeology

Author/Lead: William L. Pressly
Dates:
James Barry's Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art
Winner of the William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2015. Between 1777 and 1784, the Irish artist James Barry (1741-1806) executed six murals for the Great Room of the [Royal] Society of Arts in London. Although his works form the most impressive series of history paintings in Great Britain, they remain one of the British art world's best kept secrets, having attracted little attention from critics or the general public. James Barry's Murals at the Royal Society of Arts is the first to offer an in-depth analysis of these remarkable paintings and the first to demonstrate that the artist was pioneering a new approach to public art in terms of the novelty of the patronage and the highly personal nature of his content. Ultimately, as this book seeks to show, the artist intended his paintings to engage the public in a dialogue that would utterly transform British society in terms of its culture, politics, and religion. In making this case, the book brings this neglected series into the mainstream of discussions of British art of the Romantic period, revealing the intellectual profundity invested in the genre of history painting and re-evaluating the role Christianity played in Enlightenment thought.

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The Artist as Original Genius: Shakespeare's “Fine Frenzy” in Late-Eighteenth-Century British Art

This book examines the first generation of artists in Britain to define themselves as history painters, and their perception of the work and person of William Shakespeare

Art History and Archaeology

Author/Lead: William L. Pressly
Dates:
The Artist as Original Genius: Shakespeare's “Fine Frenzy” in Late-Eighteenth-Century British Art
This book examines the first generation of artists in Britain to define themselves as history painters, attempting what then was considered to be art’s most exalted category. These ambitious artists, including John Hamilton Mortimer, Henry Fuseli, Alexander and John Runciman, James Barry, James Jefferys, George Romney, John Flaxman, and William Blake, most of whom were born in the 1740s and 60s, were presented with the challenge of how best to compete with the continental old masters when they had only an impoverished native tradition on which to build. They cultivated the concept of the artist as an original genius, a psychological strategy born out of deep-seated anxiety. At the core of this identity formation was the artists’ perception of William Shakespeare, whom they recast as the original genius incarnate. They strove to accomplish in art what they perceived he had accomplished in literature. Theseus’s lines in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy” (V.i.12) personified for them the Shakespeare of their imagining, and this conception of fine frenzy became the touchstone for their artistic identities, profoundly influencing both their lives and their art. This book pays special attention to their self-portraits in which they proclaim this new identity, one that emphasizes the impassioned and extravagant nature of their personal vision and their claims to original genius.

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The French Revolution as Blasphemy: Johan Zoffany's Paintings of the Massacre at Paris, August 10, 1792

Art historians will find Pressly's on two paintingsby Johann Zoffany to be of immense value, as will cultural historians interested in religion, gender, and race.

Art History and Archaeology

Author/Lead: William L. Pressly
Dates:
The French Revolution as Blasphemy: Johan Zoffany's Paintings of the Massacre at Paris, August 10, 1792
William Pressly presents for the first time a close analysis of two important, neglected paintings, arguing that they are among the most extraordinary works of art devoted to the French Revolution. Johan Zoffany's Plundering the King's Cellar at Paris, August 10, 1792, and Celebrating over the Bodies of the Swiss Soldiers, both painted in about 1794, represent events that helped turn the English against the Revolution. Pressly places both paintings in their historical context—a time of heightened anti-French hysteria—and relates them to pictorial conventions: contemporary history painting, the depiction of urban mobs in satiric and festival imagery, and Hogarth's humorous presentation of modern moral subjects, all of which Zoffany adopted and reinvented for his own purposes. Pressly relates the paintings to Zoffany's status as a German-born Catholic living in Protestant England and to Zoffany's vision of revolutionary justice and the role played by the sansculottes, women, and blacks. He also examines the religious dimension in Zoffany's paintings, showing how they broke new ground by conveying Christian themes in a radically new format. Art historians will find Pressly's book of immense value, as will cultural historians interested in religion, gender, and race.

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A Catalogue of Paintings in the Folger Shakespeare Library: "As Imagination Bodies Forth"

This catalogue forms an essential chapter in the history of the development of literary painting and of Shakespearean criticism, in changes in approach to stagecraft, and in the evolution of Shakespeare portraiture.

Art History and Archaeology

Author/Lead: William L. Pressly
Dates: -
A Catalogue of Paintings in the Folger Shakespeare Library: "As Imagination Bodies Forth"
The Folger Shakespeare Library contains the finest collection of Shakespearean art ever assembled. Its two hundred paintings include scenes from Shakespeare's plays, portraits of the actors, and portraits of the playwright and his contemporaries, works that have been painted by artists such as Benjamin West, Henry Fuseli, Thomas Sully, George Romney, and Thomas Nast. This book is the first analysis, history, and catalogue of this important collection. This catalogue forms an essential chapter in the history of the development of literary painting and of Shakespearean criticism, in changes in approach to stagecraft, and in the evolution of Shakespeare portraiture. It is a valuable reference source not only for art historians but for literary and theatrical historians as well.

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James Barry: the Artist as Hero

Catalogue of an exhibition from February 9 to March 20, 1983.

Art History and Archaeology

Author/Lead: William L. Pressly
Dates:
James Barry: the Artist as Hero
Catalogue of an exhibition from February 9 to March 20, 1983.

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The Life and Art of James Barry

A monographic study of the life and art of James Barry, one of Britain's most important painters but who was born in Ireland

Art History and Archaeology | College of Arts and Humanities

Author/Lead: William L. Pressly
Dates:
The Life and Art of James Barry

This book is the first modern study of James Barry, the finest of all painters working in Britain in the "grand manner." Born in Cork, Ireland, Barry settles in London in 1771 after five years of study in France and Italy financed by Edmund Burke. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1773 and appointed professor of painting nine years later. In 1799, however, after fiercely denouncing its policies, he became the first and only artist to be expelled from the Academy. His paintings include several that rank with the nest contemporary work, and his murals at the Royal Society of Arts form perhaps the most important cycle of history paintings in Great Britain.

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