Edith Coulson James, Francesco Francia and ‘The Burlington Magazine’, 1911–17 Despite recent interest in female scholars working on the Italian Renaissance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Edith Coulson James and her struggle for the proper recognition of the Bolognese artist Francesco Francia have largely been overlooked. Having identified a lost self-portrait by the artist, she sought to publish her findings in ‘The Burlington Magazine’, but the editor, Roger Fry, rejected her attribution and ignored her arguments, which have still not been adequately acknowledged. by maria alambritis
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n the autumn of 1927 the pages of The Burlington Magazine and The Times were witness to a heated debate concerning the most appropriate method of proving the authenticity of a painting. This debate involved three eminent specialists: Roger Fry (1866–1934), the co-founder and former editor of the Burlington and curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Arthur Pillans Laurie (1861–1949), Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and the then editor of the Burlington, Robert Rattray Tatlock (1889–1954). Laurie accused Fry in the Burlington of ‘abandon[ing] his position as an art critic’ by venturing into the ‘region of expert chemical enquiry’ when Fry had suggested that one could detect a forgery by observing anomalous effects of craquelure on the surface of a painting with the naked eye alone.1 Laurie insisted that only observation with a microscope could determine such claims, whereas in a letter in The Times Tatlock remonstrated that although such analyses were ‘sufficient to settle the date of the picture [. . .] we are compelled to continue to base our conclusions on the general impression formed by those skilled and experienced in judging old paintings’.2 There was a fourth opinion added to those of this trio of prestigious male art world professionals. In a short note published in The Times the week following Tatlock’s letter, a Miss Edith E. Coulson James (1860–1936) of Tunbridge Wells suggested that ‘there is yet another kind of evidence that should be considered in trying to determine the age and authorship The research for this article was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and undertaken as part of my Collaborative Doctoral Project PhD ‘Modern mistresses on the old masters: women and the writing of art history, 1860–1915’ with Birkbeck, University of London, and the National Gallery, London. I am thankful to John Barnard and Rosetta Plummer for generously sharing with me their knowledge and personal papers relating to Edith Coulson James and their family history, John Law who provided me with helpful discussion and materials, Maria Grazia Bollini and Patrizia Busi at the Biblioteca
1. Detail from a photograph of Edith E. Coulson James (far left) with her brother’s family. c.1927. Silver gelatin print, 10 by 7.5 cm. (Courtesy John Barnard).
Archiginnasio, Bologna, and Maddalena Taglioli at the Centro Archivistico, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa. I am very grateful to Caroline Elam for her invaluable feedback and encouragement towards publishing this part of my thesis research. 1 A.P. Laurie, A.L. Nicholson and H. Blaker: ‘The identification of forged pictures’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 50 (1927), pp.342–44, at p.343; and R. Fry: ‘The authenticity of the Renders Collection’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 50 (1927), pp.261–67, at p.261. 2 R. Tatlock: ‘Letter: Tests for old masters’, The Times (16th September 1927), p.12.
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