Workshop 2: Representations of country house servants
The second workshop took place on 4 June 2024 at Manchester Metropolitan University. The theme was “Representations of Country House Servants”.
Literary scholar Karen Lipsedge (Kingston University, UK) opened the workshop with a paper exploring how the anonymous 1808 novel A Woman of Colour raises questions of race, gender and status (servant/slave). This sparked a lively discussion about the definition and identity of country house servants. This was followed by two very different approaches to representation: Richard Ansell (Birkbeck, University of London, UK) discussed the self-representation of servants who accompanied their masters on the Grand Tour, including some very fine sketch maps and self portraits, whilst Sophie Dunn examined how servants’ character and behaviours were prescribed in different types of conduct manual. In the afternoon, attention switched to visual representations of servants. Kate Retford (Birkbeck, University of London, UK) discussed the unique set of servant portraits at Erddig House in North Wales before highlighting the extraordinary decorative objects produced by one of the servants at the house: Mary Ratcliffe. Johanna Ilmakunnas (Åbo University, Finland) offered a fascinating analysis of the servant portraits painted by the Swedish artist Pehr Hilleström, tracing the recurrence of themes and objects across his output. These two papers highlighted both the realism and symbolism of paintings depicting servants. The workshop ended with Bård Frydenlund (Eidsvoll 1814, Norway) discussing the various stories and myths surrounding a painting depicting a black servant/slave that hangs in Eidsvoll 1814. This brought us back to ideas of identity and definition.