2/2 Please register for the fifth annual meeting of the
Premodern East Slavic Europe Network at the following
link:
eu01web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
zjr3SBP7Sba0MmGfqe2SDg
1/2 How did diplomacy work across the steppe? Sometimes through objects.
Looking forward to presenting on Bambar’s sabre as a diplomatic gift moving between empires at New Research on Diplomacy in Pre-Modern Eurasia on the 6th of March.
1/2 One sabre. Several empires. From imperial gift to war trophy, Prince Bambar’s blade crossed Russian and Qing worlds, reshaping its meaning each time.
Join me for this research seminar at the Power Institute: 2nd of April, 3:00PM - 4:30PM
Schaeffer Seminar Room and online
Good to see my work with Emma Gleadhill on weeping willows and Napoleon’s memory in Australia being taken up in Dubbo Photo News: www.dubbophotonews.com.au/news/how-nap...
2/2 Many thanks to Richard White and Alison Wishart for including my and Emma Gleadhill’s article in this issue. It was also nice to see it sitting beside the weeping willow near my place, which gives the piece a very local frame.
1/2 Just received the latest issue of History, the magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society, in the mail, with Napoleon’s grave on the cover and our article on Napoleonic willows in Australia inside.
2/2 My favourite part was unwrapping the fabrics; it felt like Christmas, never knowing what would be revealed underneath. These are some of the results from the day. I felt like a kid in a lolly factory
1/2 Yesterday I spent a wonderful day at a plant-dyeing workshop at Hazelhurst Gallery with the artist Nicole Barakat. I’ve wanted to do this for many years, and it was every bit as fun as I imagined.
I have a soft spot for children's books. I had a wonderful time at Pamela Allen's exhibition at the State Library of NSW, and especially liked her images of Sydney.
2/2 Link to download - ekaterinaheath.squarespace.com/publications-1
1/2 New article published! Co-written with
Dr Emma Gleadhill, this piece traces how Napoleon’s wish to rest beneath Australian acacias was replaced by the weeping willow as a symbol of mourning, and how this botanical myth spread across Australia and back to St Helena.
2/2 In recovering her strategies of power, we also recover women’s place in the making of imperial history.
More soon!
1/2 First book proofs!
Women, Gardens, and Agency in Imperial Russia is finally becoming real.
This project asks us to look beyond sovereigns and recognise how a non-regnant consort like Maria Feodorovna used gardens to intervene in politics.
2/2 This work glows with emerald and yellow; it’s so striking, I want to put together an outfit in those shades. The green? A pigment banned in 1900 for its arsenic. Toxic but irresistible.
1/2 Bessie Davidson is another artist who stood out. Forgotten in Australia (she never returned), she made her mark in France with luminous interiors. As a feminist, she elevated overlooked spaces like nurseries and domestic interiors as part of the fight for equality.
This is such a fascinating story! What a tragic waste of a talent.
7/
My favourite work? Portrait of Madame Sze, painted in London. Cool blue tones create a soft, melancholic atmosphere, drawing the eye to Madame’s delicate, porcelain-like features. It’s breathtaking.
6/
In Europe, she succeeded. Justine exhibited her works at the Royal Academy in London and at the Paris Salon. Her style was subtle, precise, and deeply emotive.
5/
This miniature portrait shows one of the children she cared for, painted just before her departure for Europe. She was 43. She had saved up for this voyage her whole life. The self-belief that took!
4/
Living in an increasingly nationalistic Australia as a woman of mixed heritage, Justine supported herself by working as a governess. She studied art in her spare time, quietly building a future that no one had scripted for her.
3/ Justine Kong Sing was born in 1868 in northern New South Wales, the daughter of a Chinese miner and merchant. She had little money, but a lot of determination to become a professional artist. Imagine the odds she was up against.
2/
The exhibition focuses on Australian and New Zealand women who worked in Europe between the late 19th century and the start of WWII. Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing short threads on the artists who moved me most. First up: Justine Kong Sing.
1/
I recently visited the Dangerously Modern exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, and I was completely blown away. So many fascinating women artists were uncovered during its preparation, their stories largely forgotten until now.
8/8 This much-needed book challenges reductive narratives and reframes the role of women artists under Catherine the Great. It marks an important step in building a feminist art history of the Russian Empire.
7/8 Equally telling is the near-total absence of Russian-born women artists. Structural barriers kept them from emerging, leaving the spotlight on foreign-born women—much like Catherine herself.
6/8 Her answer is interesting: Catherine II did not consciously promote women artists. She acquired works recommended by male advisors, reinforcing their gendered biases. As a result, her collection of women’s art was incidental, not deliberate.
5/8 Blakesley’s book pushes back. She gives nuanced biographies of women artists commissioned in Russia in the later eighteenth century and asks: what difference did having a female ruler make for women’s careers?
4/8 That oversimplification shows a wider problem: women artists’ work is too often explained through their relationships with men, patrons, mentors, or family, rather than recognised for their own expertise and agency.
3/8 Twenty years ago, at the Russian Museum, I heard the sculptor Marie-Anne Collot reduced to a romantic anecdote: her model of Peter I’s head supposedly had heart-shaped pupils because she was in love with her mentor, Étienne-Maurice Falconet.
