COLIN HARRISON

Contact
Email: colin.harrison@ashmus.ox.ac.uk
ORCID: 0000-0001-8618-4223
University of Oxford webpages
Green Templeton College

Biography

Colin Harrison is the Senior Curator of European Art in the Ashmolean Museum, where he has worked since 1993.

His main areas of curatorial responsibility are British and French art before 1945, including paintings, drawings, prints, and portrait miniatures; and musical instruments, notably the Hill Collection of bowed instruments.

He is a frequent adviser to the Acceptance in Lieu Panel and the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, administered by Arts Council England.

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Research

Colin's research interests lie widely within the areas of his curatorial responsibility. In particular, he is interested in the education of the artist, exemplified by the teaching practice and influence of John Malchair, the Oxford drawing master in the late 18th century, and John Ruskin a century later.

Among his other interests are topographical representation, especially of Oxford, and the reinterpretation of the past as a means of inventing a radical new language for the present. As the curator of the very extensive Pissarro Family Archive, he has written about Camille Pissarro, the 'father of Impressionism', and his sons.

Teaching

Colin regularly supervises 'object essays' for first-year undergraduates reading the history of art, and extended essays and final-year dissertations in the history faculty.

For historians, modern linguists and those reading English, he offers classes using prints, drawings, and books in the Western Art Print Room to explore aspects of the Enlightenment in France, Romanticism and nature in France and England, and the influence of John Ruskin as artist and critic.