The  Centre for Art History and Art Theory at the School of Art and Design is proud to announce that Associate Professor David Hansen has won the 2018 William M.B. Berger Prize for British Art History.

At a ceremony at London’s Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House on Thursday, art historian and television personality Bendor Grosvenor presented Dr Hansen with the prize, awarded for the catalogue of the 2017 National Portrait Gallery exhibition ‘Dempsey’s People.’ Also in attendance were the Director of the NPG, Angus Trumble, and the Hon. George Brandis QC, the Australian High Commissioner.

‘Dempsey’s People ‘ is an account of the life and work of an itinerant early 19th century journeyman portraitist. Centred on a portfolio of 52 watercolours of the provincial urban poor, the catalogue also provides rare and remarkable details of the lives of individual members of the Regency underclass.

The Berger Prize, established in 2001 by the Berger Collection Educational Trust and the British Art Journal, is the premier accolade in the field of British art history. Selected from a long list of 46 titles and a shortlist of six, ‘Dempsey’s People ‘ beat entries by distinguished art historians from both sides of the Atlantic, and established art publishers such as Yale University Press, Oxford University Press, Getty Publications and Thames & Hudson.

Dr Hansen is the only author to have been shortlisted twice for the Prize, the previous occasion being 2004, for ‘John Glover and the Colonial Picturesque.’