John Malchair: Musician, Artist, and Teacher
- Event type
- Seminar
- Series
- Education in the Long 18th Century
- Address
- IHR Seminar Room N304, Third Floor, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
- Speakers
- Alice Little (Oxford)
- Event dates
- Contact
- ihr.events@sas.ac.uk 020 7862 8740
Alice Little, Oxford
Convenors: Michèle Cohen (UCL Institute of Education & RAIUL), Mary Clare Martin (Greenwich), Mark Burden (Bristol)
Born in Cologne, John Malchair (1730-1812) lived in Oxford from 1760, where he taught drawing and also the violin. In 1791 Malchair completed a treatise, ‘Observations On Landskipp [Landscape] Drawing’, in which he set down some ‘Rules and Examples for the drawing of Landskipp according to the practice at Oxford’. This manuscript, now held at the Ashmolean Museum, is illustrated with many sketches, and has a particular focus on teaching young children.This talk will give examples of some of the rules he set down in his art teaching, detail Malchair’s network of pupils, and describe how Malchair’s unpublished music collection might also be viewed as a teaching resource, particularly the fourth volume, titled ‘The Arrangement’ (now held at the Royal College of Music), which contains an introduction addressed to the reader.
