This conference brings together a prestigious multi-disciplinary panel of scholars who combine a range of approaches to the study of the neoclassical period in Irish and European art and architecture. This period, corresponding to the ‘long century’ between the early eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries, saw the development and establishment of the defining styles and principles of much of early modern art and architecture. The conference will consider and appraise the manner in which neoclassical principles and knowledge were translated into practice and adopted by the artists, designers, builders and decorative artists of the neoclassical period. A unifying theme addressed by many of the speakers will be the implementation of neoclassical principles through the primary influence of architecture. The conference will further explore the influence of neoclassicism as a dominant style on material culture in late eighteenth/early nineteenth century Europe including in Ireland. In this particular regard the conference will address the manner in which neoclassical principles found their way into the design and production of interiors, sculpture, textiles, furniture, fittings, ceramics and other everyday objects.
