Dr Louise Franklin

Louise is Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Art History degree at the Bristol School of Art (BSA). In addition to her work in Art History, she also teaches into the FdA and BA (Hons) Fine Art programmes at BSA. Louise is an art historian, researcher, lecturer and author. She is a scholar of the life and work of the Jewish émigré artist, Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943) and the broader context of interwar European modernism in which he practiced. Her wider research challenges Eurocentricity in the History of Art (as subject and idea) and expands understandings of the diverse global receptions of the European modernists (particularly those of the École de Paris). Louise’s biography of Chaïm Soutine is forthcoming (with Bloomsbury Publishing) in 2025 and she is currently co-authoring a chapter for inclusion in an edited collection - working title: Tree Lines: Arboreal Agency in the Creative Arts, edited by Dr Stephen O'Neill, (Maynooth University, Ireland) - which will bring, for the first time, an ecocritical lens to the study of Soutine’s landscapes. Recent publications and events: Franklin, L. (2023) Refuting the myth of the ‘madman’: Chaïm Soutine’s Harvard Art Museums Archives letters [paper]. In: IABA Europe. Life Writing in Times of Crisis. University of Warsaw, Poland, 5-8 July 2023. Franklin, L. (2022) ‘Familiarity’ breeds content: Wendell Berry, T. J. Clark and arts pedagogy [paper]. In: 2022 Convivium Conference. ‘Inhabiting Memories & Landscapes’: a cross-disciplinary engagement with Wendell Berry. Brecon Cathedral, 12-14 June 2022. Franklin, L. (2022) Galerie Yoshii and Chaïm Soutine: from Paris to Tokyo, and back again. In: Association for Art History Annual Conference 2022. Digital conference, 6-8 April 2022. Franklin, L. (2018) ‘Untitled’: Women’s clothing and ageing femininity in the portraits of Chaïm Soutine. In: Clothing Cultures. 5 (3), pp. 315-332. Franklin, L. (2017) ‘Very strange and crazy but I like it’: the life and work of Chaïm Soutine (1893-1943), Public lecture series, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK, 15. 22 and 29 November 2017.