Lunchtime Lecture: The Material World of the Conversation Piece

Kate Retford will draw on research from her new book (The Conversation Piece, 2017) to explore the intimate ties between the eighteenth-century British conversation piece, and the material world of the Georgian era. One of the key characteristics of these innovative small group portraits, which became fashionable from the late 1720s onwards, was the amount of space and detail they devoted to settings and objects - to the saloons and drawing rooms in which the figures were posed - to the fireplaces, tea tables, ceramics and paintings which surrounded them. This talk will explore the meanings of these painted rooms, and ask: what can they tell us about actual homes of the period?