• 09/2017 – 10/2024 | University of Oxford, DPhil History of Art (Betreuung: Prof. Dr. Hanneke Grootenboer, Prof. Dr. Geoffrey Batchen)
• 2012 – 2016 | Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, MA Kunst- und Bildgeschichte
• 2011 – 2012 | University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, Erasmus
• 2008 – 2011 | Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg, BA Europäische Kunstgeschichte, Klassische Archäologie
  
  

Kuratorische und wissenschaftliche Tätigkeiten

• Seit 11/2025 | The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, Curator of British Prints and Drawings, 1500–1774
• 02/2024 – 11/2025 | The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, Monument Trust Curator of British Drawings
• 09/2022 – 08/2023 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Met-Getty Paper Project Curatorial Fellow
• 09/2016 – 06/2017 | Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Exzellenzcluster Bild Wissen Gestaltung, Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeit, Projekt: Culture Collaboratory
• 02 – 08/2016 | The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, Anne Christopherson Fellow
• 09/2014 – 05/2015 | National Gallery of Art, Department of Modern Prints and Drawings, Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation Curatorial Intern

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Francesca Kaes über ihre mit dem Wolfgang-Ratjen-Preis 2026 ausgezeichnete Dissertation „The Art of Blotting: Alexander Cozens’s New Method as Intermedial Practice“

This dissertation examines the work of British landscape painter and drawing master Alexander Cozens (1717-86). Its focus lies on the interactions between different media – such as painting and printmaking, as well as image and text – in the work of this artist, both on the level of artistic practice and conceptual thought. I argue that such interactions are the context in which Cozens’s unusual blotting technique, and its theoretical claims about artistic creation and pictorial composition, took shape. Utilising the concept of artisanal epistemology, the dissertation demonstrates that Cozens’s theory of blotting emerged from both his intellectual engagement with contemporary aesthetic debates and his practical engagement with different media both of which were shaped by questions of intermediality.

My analysis begins with a close reading of Cozens’s theory of blotting as articulated in A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (1786). The first chapter demonstrates Cozens’s reliance on empirical epistemology in defining the blot as entirely abstract form. The second chapter juxtaposes the theory with the practice of blotting to show that Cozens’s ideas on the subject changed over the course of his career, from his first publication in 1759 – An Essay to Facilitate the Inventing of Landskips – to the New Method of 1786. Chapter Three traces in detail Cozens’s practice as a printmaker, arguing that his theoretical conception of blotting was conditioned by his practical engagement with different printmaking techniques. The final chapter returns to the theory of blotting, considering it as a technique of pictorial composition that marked a profound departure from earlier notions of invention in painting. Together, the chapters offer not just a new interpretation of Cozens’s remarkable œuvre but raise broader questions about the theorisation of artistic practice and the theoretical potential of prints in shaping aesthetic debates.

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