Flights of Fancy: The Birds of Louis-Denis Armand (1723-1796)

A Françoise and George Selz Lecture on Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture by Mia Jackson (Waddesdon Manor)

In this lecture, Mia Jackson (curator of decorative arts at Waddesdon Manor) will talk about her recent exhibition, Flights of Fancy, the first ever survey of the life and work of the recently rediscovered Sèvres painter Louis-Denis Armand (1723–1796), now celebrated as one of the foremost painters of birds. Very few artisans from the eighteenth century have left us such a detailed biography; over thirty drawings by Armand survive, and research into the drawings and their inscriptions (by Jackson and collaborator Bernard Dragesco) has revealed a wealth of detail about the artist, his life, his work, and even his political opinions.


Mia Jackson has been curator of decorative arts at Waddesdon Manor since 2017. She studied French and Philosophy at the University of Oxford then completed an MA in eighteenth-century French decorative arts at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her doctoral thesis entitled “André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732) and Paper: Prints and Drawings in the Workshop of an Ébéniste du Roi” was completed at Queen Mary, University of London in 2016. She previously worked in the Prints and Drawings Department at the British Museum, the Wallace Collection, and English Heritage. Eighteenth-century France is her area of expertise, in particular the links between works on paper and the decorative arts.