Susan Bracken

Dr Susan Bracken lectures regularly at the Victoria & Albert Museum and at Ithaca College, London. She is co-convenor of the research seminar ‘Collecting and Display’ at the Institute of Historical Research. Susan is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London, and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars.

PhD University of Sussex, thesis on ‘Collectors and Collecting in England c.1600-c.1650’. MA Courtauld Institute of Art. BA (Hons) History of Art, Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London.

Publications include:
‘Charles I and the Art of Italy in Spain’ in Las copias de obras maestras de la pintura en las colecciones de los Austrias y el Museo del Prado, ed. David Cueto Garcia, Museo del Prado, 2021.
Forthcoming 2025: Joint Editor, with A.M. Galdy and A. Turpin: A Matter of Access, a volume of essays from the conferences of the same name.
Joint Editor with Adriana Turpin: Art Markets, Agents and Collectors: Collecting Strategies in Europe and the United States, 1550-1950, New York and London, 2021.
‘Collectors in England 1580-1630: Evolutions in Taste’ in Painting in Britain 1500–-1630: Production, Influences and Patronage eds.T. Cooper, A. Burnstock, M.Howard and E. Town, 2015.
‘The ambassador and the artist - Sir Dudley Carleton’s relationship with Peter Paul Rubens: connoisseurship and collecting at the court of the early Stuarts’ with Robert Hill, Journal of the History of Collections, 26, 2 (2014) pp.171-191.
‘Copies after Old Masters at Ham House in the Context of Caroline Patronage and Collecting’ in Ham House: 400 Years of Collecting and Patronage, 2013.
Joint Editor, with A.M. Galdy and A. Turpin of Collecting East and West, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2013. A volume of essays from the conference of the same name.
Joint Editor, with A.M. Galdy and A. Turpin of Women Patrons and Collectors, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012. A volume of essays from the conference of the same name.
‘Sir Isaac Wake, Venice and art collecting in early Stuart England: a new document’, with Robert Hill, Journal of the History of Collections, 24, 2, (2012), pp. 183-198.
Joint Editor, with A.M. Galdy and A. Turpin, of Collecting and the Princely Apartment, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2011. A volume of essays from the conference of the same name held in Ottobeuren in July 2007.
‘Lumley Castle and its Inventories’, with Maurice Howard, in Art Collecting and Lineage in the Elizabethan Age: The Lumley Inventory and Pedigree, Roxburgh Club, June 2010.
Joint Editor, with A.M. Galdy and A. Turpin, of Collecting and Dynastic Ambition, Newcastle upon Tyne 2009. A volume of essays from the conference of the same name.
‘The Early Cecils and Italianate Taste’ in The Evolution of English Collecting, ed. E. Chaney, Yale, Studies in British Art, December 2003.
‘Copies of Old Master Paintings in Charles I’s Collection: The role of Michael Cross (fl. 1632-60)’, British Art Journal, vol. III, no. 2, 2002.
‘Robert Cecil as Art Collector’ in Patronage, Culture and Power: the early Cecils 1558 -1612, ed. P. Croft, Yale University Press 2002.
‘A Possible Location for the Holbein Cartoon in the Seventeenth Century’, British Art Journal, vol. I, no. 1, October, 1999.
Catalogue of the exhibition 'Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England1530-1630&39; Tate Gallery, October, 1995-January, 1996. See Catalogue Entries for nos. 67, 119, 134 and the Chronology.