ART HISTORY
CAREER AND EXPERTISE
A regular contributor to BBC1's 'Fake or Fortune?' (see MEDIA), Anthea Callen FRSA is Professor Emeritus, Australian National University, Canberra, and Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture, University of Nottingham, UK.
First trained as a painter and print-maker, Callen then embarked on a career in art history. She spent two years in Paris on research fellowships based at the Sorbonne (British Institute), first for a Research MA in Art History (University of Leicester), then a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Lecturing first at the University of Warwick, she has held Chairs at De Montfort University, the University of Nottingham and the Australian National University, Canberra. She has served on key international and national academic and scholarly bodies (see CV). Callen has received many major awards and fellowships, most recently a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship (2016-18) and in 2026 the Sir William Dobell Chair at CAHAT, ANU, for research on 'Circulating Empire Eugenics'.
Anthea Callen is widely published and a world renowned specialist on Impressionism, landscape painting and the history of nineteenth-century artists’ methods, materials and techniques. Her major study, The Art of Impressionism: Painting Technique and the Making of Modernity Yale University Press, 2000, is now available digitally on Yale's A&Aeportal. Her book on landscape painting practice, The Work of Art: Plein-Air Painting and Artistic Identity in Nineteenth-century France (Reaktion Books, 2015) is distributed in the USA by the University of Chicago Press. (see BOOKS). Callen regularly collaborates with museum conservators and curators in the study of historical materials and methods, and serves as a professional expert for exhibitions, on specialist panels, and in the media. Callen also writes exhibition catalogue essays, book chapters, and articles in scholarly journals. Her most recent publications focus on Still Life.
As a feminist Callen has long been interested in gender, sexualities, race and visual representation of the human body. Her major book Looking at Men: Art, Anatomy and the Modern Male Body, spans the visual cultures of art and medicine to examine the modern male body, masculinity, and power c.1780 to 1920 (Yale, 2018). She considers the male gaze on the female body in The Spectacular Body: Science, Method and Meaning in the Work of Degas, (Yale 1995), and is preparing an augmented version of this book for the Yale A&Aeportal. In 1979 Callen authored the groundbreaking book Angel in the Studio: Women in the Arts and Crafts Movement, published in the USA as Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement. A frequent visiting professor, international and national speaker, Callen has given public lectures, plenary talks and research papers in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, and Japan (see AGENDA).
First trained as a painter and print-maker, Callen then embarked on a career in art history. She spent two years in Paris on research fellowships based at the Sorbonne (British Institute), first for a Research MA in Art History (University of Leicester), then a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Lecturing first at the University of Warwick, she has held Chairs at De Montfort University, the University of Nottingham and the Australian National University, Canberra. She has served on key international and national academic and scholarly bodies (see CV). Callen has received many major awards and fellowships, most recently a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship (2016-18) and in 2026 the Sir William Dobell Chair at CAHAT, ANU, for research on 'Circulating Empire Eugenics'.
Anthea Callen is widely published and a world renowned specialist on Impressionism, landscape painting and the history of nineteenth-century artists’ methods, materials and techniques. Her major study, The Art of Impressionism: Painting Technique and the Making of Modernity Yale University Press, 2000, is now available digitally on Yale's A&Aeportal. Her book on landscape painting practice, The Work of Art: Plein-Air Painting and Artistic Identity in Nineteenth-century France (Reaktion Books, 2015) is distributed in the USA by the University of Chicago Press. (see BOOKS). Callen regularly collaborates with museum conservators and curators in the study of historical materials and methods, and serves as a professional expert for exhibitions, on specialist panels, and in the media. Callen also writes exhibition catalogue essays, book chapters, and articles in scholarly journals. Her most recent publications focus on Still Life.
As a feminist Callen has long been interested in gender, sexualities, race and visual representation of the human body. Her major book Looking at Men: Art, Anatomy and the Modern Male Body, spans the visual cultures of art and medicine to examine the modern male body, masculinity, and power c.1780 to 1920 (Yale, 2018). She considers the male gaze on the female body in The Spectacular Body: Science, Method and Meaning in the Work of Degas, (Yale 1995), and is preparing an augmented version of this book for the Yale A&Aeportal. In 1979 Callen authored the groundbreaking book Angel in the Studio: Women in the Arts and Crafts Movement, published in the USA as Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement. A frequent visiting professor, international and national speaker, Callen has given public lectures, plenary talks and research papers in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, and Japan (see AGENDA).