Yale Center for British Art Announces Spring Publications

NEW HAVEN, CT (February 5, 2026) — This spring, the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) publishes two richly illustrated volumes that reflect the museum’s ongoing commitment to fostering new perspectives and scholarship on British art. Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850, and Gwen John: Strange Beauties demonstrate the range of the YCBA’s program—from examining the museum’s deep holdings of art made in Asia at the height of England’s imperial expansion to revisiting the life and legacy of one of the twentieth century’s most compelling painters.

Painters, Ports, and Profits draws on the YCBA’s rich historical collection to examine the vibrant creative exchanges among artists working in India, China, and Britain, which gave rise to significant material and technical innovation during the East India Company’s era of ruthless expansion. Edited by curators Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer, this beautifully illustrated book presents new research from an international group of scholars, curators, and conservators.

Gwen John: Strange Beauties offers the first comprehensive survey in forty years on the work of the Welsh painter, with new scholarly attention to her connection to European modernism and the feminist perspective given voice in her singular depictions of interior life. Replete with more than two hundred exquisite reproductions, the volume is edited by Rachel Stratton and Lucy Wood, with contributions by Helena Anderson, Rebecca Birrell, Lauren Elkin, Cecily Langdale, Fiona McLees, Anna Gruetzner Robins, and Orin Zahra. The YCBA holds the most important collection of John’s work outside the United Kingdom.

Both titles are published by the YCBA and distributed by Yale University Press. They are available through the YCBA’s Museum Bookshop as well as other major booksellers.

Publication Details

Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850

Edited by Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer
Contributions by Mark Aronson, Tim Barringer, Swati Chattopadhyay, Soyeon Choi, Anita Dey, Gillian Forrester, Navina Najat Haidar, Richard R. Hark, Emma Hartman, Brooke Krancer, Margaret Masselli, Kalyani Madhura Ramachandran, Romita Ray, Yuthika Sharma, Marcie Wiggins, Winnie Wong, Tom Young
280 pages | 9.00 × 10.60 in. | 214 color and black-and-white illustrations | $65
ISBN 9780300286540 | Publication date: January 6, 2026

Painters, Ports, and Profits tells the story of the remarkable creative exchanges that coincided with the rise of the East India Company between 1750 and 1850. Originally envisioned as a trading corporation—moving cottons, fruits, opium, silks, spices, tea, and more—the Company became an aggressive agent of British imperialism. Against this volatile backdrop of colonial expansion and exploitation, British, Indian, and Chinese artists forged new relationships and produced innovative works of art. Scholarship on this period often separates Indian, Chinese, and British artists; Painters, Ports, and Profits instead foregrounds the vital interactions between their practices. Artistic experimentation with papers, pigments, and other materials produced works of astonishing beauty and variety. Compelled by new subjects and techniques, these artists, many now unknown, had a profound effect on visual and material culture within and beyond Asia.
                 
Edited by curators Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer, Painters, Ports, and Profits features more than one hundred objects drawn primarily from the YCBA’s extensive collection, including architectural drafts, burnished opaque watercolors, hand-colored aquatints, small- and large-scale portraits, and a spectacular thirty-seven-foot-long scroll depicting the city of Lucknow. An international group of scholars, curators, and conservators provide rich commentary based on new research.

This publication coincides with the exhibition Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850 at the YCBA, on view January 8 – June 21, 2026. 

Gwen John: Strange Beauties

Edited by Rachel Stratton and Lucy Wood
Contributions by Helena Anderson, Rebecca Birrell, Lauren Elkin, Cecily Langdale, Fiona McLees, Anna Gruetzner Robins, and Orin Zahra
272 pages | 8.75 × 10.50 in. | 205 color illustrations | $65
ISBN 9780300286571 | Publication date: February 24, 2026

Gwen John: Strange Beauties reframes the work of an artist long admired for her evocative, acutely observed paintings of women. Born in Wales in 1876, John studied at London’s Slade School of Art before moving to Paris, where she would remain until her death in 1939. Throughout her career, she returned repeatedly to the same subjects in painting, working up multiple versions of compositions with variation in detail, color, and technique. If her oils represent the height of her achievement, it is her works on paper that reveal the full scope of her artistic ambition—from delicate landscape sketches to impromptu figure studies to vibrantly colored still lifes. 

Accompanying the first comprehensive survey of John’s work in forty years, Gwen John: Strange Beauties gathers the artist’s oil paintings together with her drawings and watercolors, many published here for the first time. Nine original essays bring new scholarly attention to John’s complex vision, shedding light on her contributions to British art, her critical engagements with European modernism, and both the material and spiritual aspects of her practice.

Gwen John: Strange Beauties is published by the YCBA in association with Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales. The publication coincides with the exhibition Gwen John: Strange Beauties, which will be on view at Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd–National Museum Cardiff February 7 – June 28, 2026. It will then travel across Britain and the US, with presentations at the National Galleries Scotland, Edinburgh, August 1, 2026 – January 4, 2027; the YCBA February 18 – June 20, 2027; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, July 30 – November 28, 2027. 

About the Yale Center for British Art

Opened in 1977 through the generosity of Yale graduate and philanthropist Paul Mellon, the Yale Center for British Art holds the largest and most significant collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. The collection spans more than five centuries and is the foundation for a museum uniquely focused on the histories, legacies, and shifting contexts of British art. Housed in a celebrated modernist building designed by Louis I. Kahn, the museum is situated on the Yale University campus in the city of New Haven. It is free and open to all.

Download the media kit here. 

Press Contacts

Yale Center for British Art
ycba.press@yale.edu | +1 203 432 2856

Hanna Gisel, Hanna Gisel Communications
hanna@hannagisel.com | +1 716 866 5302