at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 

until 18 February 2024 

Our visual experience of the Victorians is profoundly based on the development of photography - which was initially monochrome, if not always black and white - and this is enhanced by the well-known photographs of Queen Victoria herself, who spent the last forty years of her life in mourning. As a result, we are perhaps not so aware of the era's love of colour. This was enriched by new artistic movements and exciting fashions, all born aloft by developments in science. 

In what promises to be one of the most visually stunning exhibitions of the year, the Ashmolean Museum will chart this Colour Revolution with paintings by artists including the Pre-Raphaelites and Turner, objects designed by William Morris's burgeoning Arts and Crafts movement.  While confirming our expectations with one of Queen Victoria's black mourning dresses, there are also some of the first colour 'photograms', not to mention a display drawn from the 1862 International Exhibition. This showcase for everything new, and everything that Britain had to offer - a successor to the more famous 'Great Exhibition', embodied the most recent developments in colour theory, to the extent that they even permeated the structure in which the exhibition was housed.

Please remember, I do not record my talks.