History and the Visual Image

[Valerie Mainz]

As an art historian I am interested in how the visual image makes history and in how history has interpreted the visual image. This is an expanding area in that historians have now become conscious of the fact that visual images like documents such as letters, enrolment lists and drill books, have their own conventions and need to be interpreted. I note that recent discussions in this forum have raised the issue of the spectacle of the soldier so I thought I would just add a few useful weblinks for those interested in obtaining a range of possibly pertinent visual imagery. Of course issues of copyright and the web will remain problematic for some time to come, but I just felt that a useful site like this should have some sort of visual resource option.
Lewis Walpole Library Digital Collection
http://www.library.yale.edu/walpole/collections/digital_collection....
VADS - online resource for visual arts including John Johnson Collection of Political Prints
http://www.vads.ac.uk
And in terms of my own research interests on imagery in French public collections:
http://ww.culture.gouv.fr/documentation/joconde/fr/pres.htm

[Dr Matthew McCormack]

Thanks for these links! I am also interested in the visual representation of soldiers, especially part-time soldiers in satirical prints. So I have found the availability of the British Museum collection online (and excerpts from the Stephens and George catalogue) to be a real boon:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_databas...

[Richard Warren]

May I recommend the (online) Anne S K Brown military collection at Brown University, RI? Search facility at http://dl.lib.brown.edu/askb/. There is a great zoom facility on this site that allows for examination of the image in really impressive detail. Hours of fun ... Search is by keywords, which can be a bit blunt, but with a little patience many treasures can be discovered here. Plenty of British prints of the period in question.

[Valerie Mainz]

Thanks so much for these suggestions - they are very useful and will help to build up a reference library for visual images.