Dr Maddie Hewitson

• PhD University of York
• MA University of York
• BA University of York

I came to Birmingham from the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford where I was a research assistant for the exhibition ‘Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design’ (September 2023 – February 2024). My post was supported by the ERC-funded project, ‘Chromotope: the nineteenth-century chromatic turn’ led by Principal Investigator, Professor Charlotte Ribeyrol (Sorbonne).

I completed my BA, MA and PhD in the History of Art department at the University of York, where I am still a research associate. During my time at York, I was a graduate teaching assistant and associate lecturer. I delivered the department’s first ever MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on the university’s sculpture collection which has enrolled 3,000 students to date as well as modules on Frederic Leighton, nineteenth- century exhibition culture and survey courses on Victorian art.

My research is divided into three intersecting arenas. The first concerns Orientalist visual culture which I analyse through a framework that explores the ways artists engaged with, resisted and rescripted dichotomies between East and West. This was the focus of my PhD thesis which was concerned with the Orientalist paintings, domestic interiors and Islamic art collection of the artist, Frederic Leighton. I explored Leighton’s Orientalism through the lens of global Victorian studies to demonstrate how travel transformed his established interests in biblical art and Classicism against the wider context of British diplomacy and imperial expansion in the Middle East.

My current work builds on similar themes around British art and the Middle East, which was valued by Victorians as the central geography of the Bible. The second strand of my research and the subject of my Leverhulme fellowship is the biblical art of the Victorian period, particularly the themes and subjects shared between the three Abrahamic faiths: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Pushing back against claims of a societal crisis of faith, in the wake of Darwin, palaeontology, and the higher criticism movement, I explore the rich production of religious imagery by painters, sculptors and designers who attempted to offer a reinvigorated interpretation of Scripture that spoke to the modern age.

Underpinning this and my third research interest is the material culture of the Victorian Anglo-Jewish community, who were perceived as a community who existed between categories such as ancient/modern, Oriental/European, and British/foreign. These perceptions and debates fundamentally shaped artistic approaches to visualising the Bible in this moment. I am interested in the Jewish presence of artists, models, patrons and dealers in relation to Victorian biblical painting as well as their role in events such as the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition of 1887, the first exhibition of Jewish material culture organised by British Jews.