The Writers of Wales Database

LORD, PETER

Peter Lord is an art historian who specialises in the study of the visual culture of Wales. He has particular interests in the artisan painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the imaging of industrial Wales in the first half of the twentieth century, and in the theoretical questions which arise from the study of visual culture in a nation regarded as marginal to the mainstream of western art history. He is the author of a three-volume history of Welsh art - The Visual Culture of Wales (Cardiff, 1998, 2000, 2003).

Peter's latest title, The Meaning of Pictures: Personal, Social and National Identity (University of Wales Press, 2009), was on the 2010 Wales Book of the Year Long List.

Reviews:
With respect to The Meaning of Pictures: Personal, Social and National Identity (University of Wales Press, 2009)

"…This book will be a must-buy for those who know of Lord’s stunning contributions to Welsh culture…illuminating and readable, enlivened by the breadth of his research and scholarship…"
The Western Mail


Selected Publications:
The Aesthetics of Relevance (Changing Wales) (Gomer, 1992)
Artists and Painters (Immel Publishing, 1993)
Gwenllian: Essays on Visual Culture (Gomer, 1994)
Words with Pictures: Welsh Images and Images of Wales in the Popular Press, 1640-1860 (Planet, 1995)
The Francis Crawshay Worker Portraits (Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd Prifysgol Cymru, 1996)
Clarence Whaite and the Welsh Art World (National Library of Wales, 1998)
Diwylliant Gweledol Cymru: Delweddu’r Genedl (University of Wales Press, 2001)
Gweledigaeth Yr Oesoedd Canol: Diwylliant Gweledol Cymru (University of Wales Press, 2003)
Medieval Vision (Visual Culture of Wales) (University of Wales Press, 2003)
The Industrial Society (Visual Culture of Wales) (University of Wales Press, 2004)
Imaging the Nation (Visual Culture of Wales) (University of Wales Press, 2004)
Winifred Coombe Tennant: A Life Through Art (National Library of Wales, 2007)
The Meaning of Pictures: Personal, Social and National Identity (University of Wales Press, 2009)

Contributed to:
Hugh Hughes, 1790-1863: Arlunydd Gwlad (editor) (Gomer, 1995)
 

The Meaning of Pictures: Personal, Social and National Identity (University of Wales Press, 2009)

This book is about Welsh pictures painted between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, and why they matter today. It mainly concerns how pictures are understood by the people who use them – patrons, museum curators, and the general public – rather than by the painters who paint them. It consists of a series of chapters on different aspects of painting, which are unified by a common theme. Individual chapters discuss an eighteenth-century painting, a nineteenth-century genre, a twentieth-century painter, how pictures are valued by museums and the art market, and how, since the 1980s, the Welsh art establishment has fought a reactionary battle against the New Art History movement.

The chapters are unified by their concern with the question of how a tradition of art is created, and what effect a tradition has on how a nation sees itself – and is seen by others. The pictures and painters are discussed in the context of contemporary literature, and the social and political circumstances of their period. Comparisons are made with the experience of other cultures, notably the United States and Ireland.

To purchase this title from gwales.com, please click on its front cover