Events

Painting, Infrastructure, and Resource Extraction in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

Seminar
Architectural History and Theory Seminar Series
Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)
A mezzotint laid on paper depicting the bridge over chaos in Paradise Lost. An angelic looking figure with wings stands on a bridge opposite a smaller figure. They are in a cavernous space, with a perilous drop from the bridge.

John Martin, The Bridge over Chaos, Paradise Lost, Book 10, Line 312 & 347, 1824/26, mezzotint on laid paper. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown

This lecture will be hybrid. Please book your ticket for attendance in person or online. You will receive access to the online event via email the day before the event.

Abstract

Perhaps no professional artist in the nineteenth century cared more about coal mine ventilation than the British painter John Martin. Although Martin is mainly known for his sublime portrayal of epic narratives on enormous – and enormously popular – canvases, he was also an amateur engineer. This talk uses Martin to explore the pictorial protocols of resource extraction in early nineteenth-century Britain. How might painting have participated in the management of the desired in-flow of resources like water to urban centres but also to the dangerous out-flow of waste, toxic gases, and other perceived threats? 

About Stephanie O’Rourke

Stephanie O’Rourke is a Senior Lecturer in art history at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of Picturing Landscape in an Age of Extraction: Europe and its Colonial Networks (Chicago, 2025) and Art, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism (Cambridge, 2021).

Event details

24 Feb '26
17:15 - 18:30
Join us for the next Architectural History and Theory Seminar Series of 25/26 by Stephanie O’Rourke.
3 Chambers Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1HR
Stephanie O’Rourke
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