Dr Billy Rough

Lecturer

Researcher profile

Phone

+44 (0)1334 46 2378

Email

wwr@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Biography

Dr Rough graduated with a PhD in Art History from the University of St Andrews in 2010 and a Postgraduate Diploma in Museum and Gallery Studies in 2016.

He has been employed teaching on the MA Combined Studies Course (formerly the Evening Degree programme) at St Andrews since 2001.

Between 2002 and 2004 he was employed as a Lecturer in Art History at Dundee College of Further Education. In the Museum Sector, he has also been employed as Learning and Engagement Officer with HMS Unicorn in Dundee between 2015 and 2018, before appointment as Operations Manager with HMS Unicorn between 2018 and 2021.

Teaching

Dr Rough is the MA Combined Studies Co-ordinator for the School. This includes managing the delivering of the following modules:

AH1901: Western Art from the Renaissance to the Baroque

AH2901: Art in the Modern Period

Dr Rough also delivers the following MA Combined Studies modules:

AH3901: Walter Richard Sickert and European Art, c.1880-c.1940

AH3902: City, Country, and Society in Nineteenth Century French Art

AH3904: From Hogarth to Sickert: British Painting and the Theatre, 1740- 1930 

AH3905: ‘No day without a line’: The Etching Revival in Britain: 1830-1930

Research areas

With a focus on the relationship between British art and the theatre in the long-nineteenth century, Dr Rough also has an interest in 19^th century printmaking. He has published widely on his research including essays for Tate Britain's 'Walter Sickert' exhibition catalogue (2022), The British Art Journal, The Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, Tate Britain’s Camden Town Group in Context Research Project, and the Tate: In Focus series.

Dr Rough also delivered talks on his research at Tate Britain, Mansfield College, Oxford, the National Galleries of Scotland, Dundee’s Orchar Gallery and the Birmingham and Midlands Institute.

In 2013 he developed the Orchar Collection: Prints project - a website generously supported by the AHRC Cultural Engagement Fund: James Guthrie Orchar – The Orchar Collection: Prints (st-andrews.ac.uk)

Dr Rough welcomes enquiries from potential postgraduate students with interests in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and theatre, and the history of etching in Britain in the 19^th century.

PhD supervision

• Emma Acker
• Renato Trotta

Selected publications

• 'Frightful Catastrophe in Dundee': The Tragedy of Springthorpe's Music Hall

  Rough, B., 1 Jan 2023, History Scotland, 23, 1, p. 18 20 p.

  Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article

• New questions about Sickert's 'Vesta Victoria at the Old Bedford'

  Rough, B., 10 Mar 2023, In: Burlington Magazine. 165, 1440, p. 305-307 3 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• ‘Fun Without Vulgarity’: A brief history of Dundee’s music halls, from the 1840s to the Great War: working, schooling, eating and entertaining

  Rough, B., 1 Dec 2023, A Dundee miscellany. Society, A. H. (ed.). Dundee: Abertay Historical Society, p. 105-140 36 p. (Publications of the Abertay Historical Society; no. 64).

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

• 'The Much-Abused Apostle of Music Hall Art': Sickert and the Stage

  Rough, W. W., 26 Apr 2022, 4 p. London : Tate Publishing.

  Research output: Other contribution

• The Art of Murder: The Strange Case of Walter Sickert and Jack the Ripper

  Rough, B., 21 May 2022, Fortean Times, 419, p. 28-35 8 p.

  Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article

• Open access

  'Matisse has all the worst art-school tricks': Sickert's trash talk

  Rough, W. W., 30 Sept 2021, Online.

  Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article

• A ‘penchant for the dramatic’: Rothenstein and Modern Theatre

  Rough, W. W. & Shaw, S. (ed.), 1 Jan 2015, Tate In Focus, p. 0 0 p.

  Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article

• 'My name is Pistol called...' William Mollison, George Henry and the challenge of theatre portraiture

  Rough, W. W., 1 Dec 2014, In: The British Art Journal. XV, 2, p. 54-58 5 p.

  Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

• The Art of Crossing: Introduction: Kate Downie. Zero to Fifty: The Road Bridge Diaries

  Rough, W. W. & Downie, K., 1 Aug 2014, Kate Downie. Zero to Fifty: The Road Bridge Diaries.

  Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Other contribution

• Prints from The Orchar Collection: Whistler & Others

  Rough, W. W., 18 Apr 2013

  Research output: Other contribution

 

See more publications