Dr Jane Munro

Keeper, European Paintings, Drawings and Prints

Jane Munro is Keeper of European Paintings, Drawings and Prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum and former Director of Studies in History of Art at Christ’s College, Cambridge. The focus of Jane’s research is on European paintings, drawings and prints from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. In many cases her approach has been interdisciplinary, notably embracing aspects of the History of Science, Philosophy, Psychology, Literature and Geography. She has curated over ninety research-led exhibitions in the UK, Europe, Japan and the USA. Most recently, this has led to collaborations with the Yale Center of British Art, Museé Bourdelle, Paris, Denver Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Fondation Custodia, Paris and the Teylers Museum, Haarlem. She has twice been awarded Apollo Magazine’s International Exhibition of the Year, for Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural History and the Arts (2009, co-curated with Diana Donald) and Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish (2014).

She is a member of the International Advisory Committee of Keepers of Public Collections of Graphic Art. Recently, she collaborated on an AHRC-sponsored Research Network (2016-18), The Art of Friendship in France, from 1789 to 1914 and served on the Advisory Committee for another AHRC-funded project, Exploding Fashion: Cutting, Constructing and Thinking Through Things Central St Martin’s / University of the Arts.

Jane leads Growing Networks, an interdisciplinary series of seminars and workshops funded by the Getty Paper Project that brings together early to mid-career curators of botanical works of art on paper (January to November 2023).

In recognition of her work developing cultural exchange with France, she has been made Chevalier des Arts et Lettres and Chevalier dans l’Ordre national du Mérite.

She is currently developing a project, provisionally entitled ‘Cloth in Action’ that will explore the structural, narrative and semantic role of fabric and textiles in painting, sculpture, photography from Antiquity to the present-day.

Jane's key international loan exhibitions include:

Nature's Way: Romantic Landscapes from Norway. Oil sketches, Watercolours and Drawings by J. C. Dahl and Thomas Fearnley, Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery and Fitzwilliam Museum (1993);

The Dialogue between Painting and Poetry: Livres d’artiste from the Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet, Paris (2001);

Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts (2009; co-curated with Professor Diana Donald);

Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish (2014-15);

Degas. A Passion for Perfection (2017-18);

Hockney’s Eye. The Art and Technology of Depiction (2022, co-curated with Martin Gayford and Martin Kemp);

True to Nature. Open-air painting in Europe 1780-1870 (2020-2022; co-curated with Ger Luijten and Mary Morton).

Publications

Select Publications

Books/exhibition catalogues include:

Philip Wilson Steer, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum and Arts Council, 1986; Gilpin to Ruskin. Drawing Masters and their Manuals (co-editor, with Peter Bicknell), Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1987;

John Bellany in Cambridge, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1991;

James Ward RA, 1769-1859, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1991;

Burne-Jones 1833-1898: Dessins du Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge [ed], Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes and tour, 1992;

British Landscapes from the Fitzwilliam Museum [with David Scrase], Tokyo Shimbun and Brains Trust, 1992;

Nature's Way: Romantic Landscapes from Norway. Oil sketches, Watercolours and Drawings by J. C. Dahl and Thomas Fearnley [ed.], Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, 1993;

British Landscape Watercolours 1750-1850, London, The Herbert Press, 1994 ; John Downman 1750-1824, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1996;

Géricault: Watercolours, Drawings and Prints from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 1998;

The Dialogue between Painting and Poetry: Livres d’artiste from the Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet, Paris, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2001;

French Impressionists, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003;

Chasing Happiness: Maeterlinck, The Bluebird and England, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2006;

Literary Circles: Artist, Author, Word and Image in Britain, 1800-1920 (co-editor, with Linda Goddard), Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2006;

Ethiopian Encounters (co-editor, with Simon Keynes), Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2007;

Sickert, Sargent and Spencer, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2009;

Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts [co-editor, with Professor Diana Donald], Yale University Press, 2009;

John, Orpen, Nicholson, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2011;

Graphite (e-book), Cambridge, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2011;

Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish. Yale University Press and Paris-Musées, 2014;

Watercolour. Elements of Nature, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 2015;

Degas: A Passion for Perfection, Yale University Press, 2017;

True to Nature. Open-air painting in Europe 1780-1870 (co-editor, with Ger Luijten and Mary Morton), Paul Holberton Publishing, 2020;

The Human Touch. Making Art, Leaving Traces (co-editor, with Elenor Ling and Suzanne Reynolds), The Fitzwilliam Museum in association with Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021;

Hockney’s Eye. The Art and Technology of Depiction (co-editor, with Martin Gayford and Martin Kemp), 2022.

Articles, Exhibitions and Book Reviews

The Burlington Magazine, The Spectator, Print Quarterly, Apollo, The Art Newspaper, The National Gallery Technical Bulletin, Master Drawings, Huntington Library Quarterly, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Macmillan Dictionary of Art, The Walpole Society, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Fan Society Journal.