I am an art historian who specializes in eighteenth-century France. I received my PhD in art history from the University of Michigan in 2012, and an MA in art history from Williams College in 2005. I was previously a postdoctoral fellow at The School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design. I am currently an assistant professor of art history at TCU in Fort Worth, TX.

My research focuses on the interaction between evolving conceptions of social relationships and the production of visual and material culture. My current book project investigates how artists’ portraits relate to changing and often-contradictory ideas of friendship in the eighteenth century. It examines works by a variety of artists that resist academic ideals of portraiture, including pastel portraits, small medallion drawings, caricatures, group portraits, and hybrid genre-portraits, within the context of eighteenth-century discussions about friendship. By eschewing a monographic focus on one artist or medium, I provide a more holistic view into the networks of cultural production outside the official structures of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture that have long been the focus of art historical study. I focus on the creation, exchange, and display of portraits alongside three philosophical ideals of friendship—disinterestedness, equality, and masculinity—to demonstrate how works of art resulted from and generated new ideas about friendship in a period of political, economic, and social change. By combining close attention to the form and function of portraits with contemporary commentary and recent discussions of friendship in cultural history, sociology, and gender studies, I draw attention to other factors that shaped portrait production and amity between artists.

I’ve taught survey courses covering visual and material culture from prehistory to the mid-nineteenth century, as well as graduate and undergraduate lectures and seminars focused on the history of art, decorative arts, and fashion of eighteenth-century France.

Please feel free to contact me at jfripp at gmail dot com.

Images: François-Hubert Drouais, Family Portrait (detail), 1756, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; François Boucher, The Milliner (detail), 1746, Nationalmuseum Stockholm; Nicolas Lancret, The Four Times of Day: Morning (detail), 1739, National Gallery of London 

This work by Jessica Fripp is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.