2013 Attingham Course: French Eighteenth-Century Studies
From The Attingham Trust:
Attingham Course: French Eighteenth-Century Studies
The Wallace Collection, London, 14–18 October 2013
Applications due by 12 July 2013
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French Eighteenth-Century Studies is a new course organised by The Attingham Trust on behalf of the Wallace Collection. Based at Hertford House, this intensive, non-residential study programme aims to foster a deeper knowledge and understanding of French eighteenth-century fine and decorative art and is intended primarily to aid professional development. A day at Waddesdon Manor, Ferdinand de Rothschild’s former country house, will help broaden the scope of the course still further.
The academic programme will provide privileged access to the world-class collections of furniture, paintings, sculpture, textiles, metalwork and porcelain in these two collections. The group will be limited to fifteen people to allow for detailed, object-based study, handling sessions and a look at behind-the-scenes conservation.
Study sessions and lectures will be led by Dr. Christoph Vogtherr, Director of the Wallace Collection, and the relevant curatorial staff; other international authorities and the curators at Waddesdon will provide further specialist teaching. The Course Director is Dr. Helen Jacobsen, Curator of French eighteenth-century Decorative Arts at the Wallace Collection.
Exhibition | Des couleurs et du papier: France, Allemagne, Italie
From the Bibliothèque Mazarine:
Des couleurs et du papier: France, Allemagne, Italie (1700–1850)
Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, 2 April – 7 June 2013
Curated by Nadine Férey-Pfalzgraf, Florine Levecque, and Marc Kopylov
À la croisée de l’imagerie populaire et des papiers de tenture, un foisonnant univers graphique a vu le jour dans les ateliers des cartiers, dominotiers et graveurs d’images entre 1700 et 1850.
Les papiers dominotés imprimés à la planche de bois et rehaussés au patron, ont souvent servi de couverture d’attente aux livres brochés ; aussi, éphémères et fragiles, sont-ils rarement parvenus jusqu’à nous, quelques objets attestant également de leur utilisation dans les arts mobiliers ou décoratifs. En revanche, les papiers dorés gaufrés ou dorés vernis d’outre-Rhin, appréciés des relieurs pour habiller les gardes des livres de grande valeur, ont été plus largement conservés, protégés à l’intérieur des volumes.
Fort prisés au 18e siècle, ces papiers assuraient le succès des artisans les plus talentueux, qui n’hésitaient pas à signer leur production, cas rare à une époque où l’anonymat était de rigueur dans les petits métiers : on connaît ainsi les ateliers Sillé au Mans, Sevestre Leblond à Orléans, « Les Associés » à Paris ; Leopold à Augsbourg et Eckart à Nuremberg ; Bertinazzi à Bologne et Remondini à Bassano, qui finit par occuper une position de quasi monopole en Italie.
Panorama significatif des productions françaises, allemandes et italiennes au 18e siècle, l’exposition présente une sélection de papiers provenant des fonds de la Bibliothèque Mazarine et de la Médiathèque Louis Aragon du Mans, complétés par des prêts de collectionneurs privés. Elle prolonge et illustre les travaux pionniers d’André Jammes, et les recherches récemment publiées par Christiane et Marc Kopylov (Éditions des Cendres). Elle doit aussi susciter de nouvelles découvertes.
Community Libraries: Connecting Readers in the Atlantic World
From the University of Liverpool:
Dr Mark Towsey has been awarded £36,225 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop a two-year international research network on Community Libraries: Connecting Readers in the Atlantic World, 1650-1850. Together with his partners at Loyola University Chicago, the Newberry Library (Chicago), and the Dr Williams’s Library (London), Mark will host three workshops on the cultural history of libraries in the long eighteenth century, seeking to establish a dynamic, longer-lasting, multi- and interdisciplinary research forum to investigate the role of libraries in shaping communities in the past.
The first event, to be held at the Liverpool Athenaeum Library in August 2013 or January 2014 will explore the role of libraries in the Atlantic World; the second, to be held in Chicago in June 2014, will workshop the use of digital technologies in deepening our understanding of historic reading communities and the social impact of the printed word; the third, to be held in London in January 2015, will assess the role of libraries in community formation, asking whether historical models of library provision and administration can be adapted to meet the challenges faced by community libraries in the digital age, and in an age of financial austerity.
Further information on the network, its aims and objectives, and its planned activities, will soon be found on the History department’s research projects webpage. If you would like to find out more about the network, or would like to take part, please contact the project leader on Towsey@liv.ac.uk.
YCBA Building Conservation Project 2013
Yale Center for British Art
Building Conservation Project 2013
This summer and fall the Yale Center for British Art will complete the first phase of a major building conservation project. Beginning in June and continuing through early January 2014, the Center will refurbish its Study Room and areas used by the departments of Prints and Drawings and Rare Books and Manuscripts.
During the renovations, the second- and third-floor galleries will be closed and there will be no access to the Prints and Drawings and Rare Books and Manuscripts collections from June 4 through August 30. Beginning in September, access to the collections, which will remain in the building, will be by appointment only. Requests for appointments and materials will require at least two weeks’ notice. Center staff will make every effort to accommodate the needs of faculty, students, and scholars. The Reference Library will keep normal hours, although there will be periods of disruption.
Records of both departments’ collections are available via an online search on the Center’s website. Orbis, the online catalogue of the Yale Libraries, provides access to material from Rare Books as well as other Yale departments. The Yale Finding Aid Database offers detailed descriptions of the Rare Books Department’s archival collections, along with other archives at Yale.
The permanent collection will remain on view in the fourth-floor galleries. It is expected that normal services in the Study Room will resume by early January 2014. Details will be circulated as they become known.
Contact details
Requests for materials from the departments of Prints and Drawings and Rare Books and Manuscripts should be made at least two weeks in advance by e-mailing ycba.prints@yale.edu
For questions about Prints and Drawings collections:
Gillian Forrester, Curator of Prints and Drawings, gillian.forrester@yale.edu
For questions about Rare Books and Manuscripts collections:
Elisabeth Fairman, Senior Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, elisabeth.fairman@yale.edu
Inquiries about the Reference Library:
Kraig Binkowski, Chief Librarian, kraig.binkowski@yale.edu
New Book | A Taste for China
From Cambridge UP:
Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins, A Taste for China: English Subjectivity and the Prehistory of Orientalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-0199950980, $74.
Challenging existing narratives of the relationship between China and Europe, this study establishes how modern English identity evolved through strategies of identifying with rather than against China. Through an examination of England’s obsession with Chinese objects throughout the long eighteenth century, A Taste for China argues that chinoiserie in literature and material culture played a central role in shaping emergent conceptions of taste and subjectivity.
Informed by sources as diverse as the writings of John Locke, Alexander Pope, and Mary Wortley Montagu, Zuroski Jenkins begins with a consideration of how literature transported cosmopolitan commercial practices into a model of individual and collective identity. She then extends her argument to the vibrant world of Restoration comedy-most notably the controversial The Country Wife by William Wycherley-where Chinese objects are systematically associated with questionable tastes and behaviors. Subsequent chapters draw on Defoe, Pope, and Swift to explore how adventure fiction and satirical poetry use chinoiserie to construct, question, and reimagine the dynamic relationship between people and things. The second half of the eighteenth century sees a marked shift as English subjects anxiously seek to separate themselves from Chinese objects. A reading of texts including Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Jonas Hanway’s Essay on Tea shows that the enthrallment with chinoiserie does not disappear, but is rewritten as an aristocratic perversion in midcentury literature that prefigures modern sexuality. Ultimately, at the century’s end, it is nearly disavowed altogether, which is evinced in works like Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.
Eugenia Jenkins is Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University.
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction: ‘China’ and The Prehistory of Orientalism
1. The Cosmopolitan Nation, ‘Where Order in Variety We See’
2. The Chinese Touchstone of the Tasteful Imagination
3. Defoe’s Trinkets: Fiction’s Spectral Traffic
4. ‘Nature to Advantage Drest’: The Poetry of Subjectivity
5. How Chinese Things Became Oriental
6. Disenchanting China: Orientalism and the English Novel
Afterword: Rethinking Modern Taste
Call for Papers | Georgian Pleasures
From Bath Spa University:
Georgian Pleasures
Holburne Museum, Bath, 12–13 September 2013
Proposals due by 30 April 2013
Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
–Voltaire
This interdisciplinary two-day conference jointly sponsored by takes the diversity of the experience of Georgian Pleasures as its theme and invites new and established academics, period performers and musicians to come together for a lively cross-disciplinary conversation exploring the conceptualization and practice of pleasure globally in the long eighteenth century. Georgian pleasures were myriad. Some were exclusive — specific to certain classes, ages or genders —others were inclusive and/or overlapping. High life or low life, licit or illicit, private or public, domestic or commercial — there were pleasures to suit all tastes and circumstances. This conference aims to explore what it was that people of the period enjoyed and what we, as academics, re-enactors and period performers, can learn about society and culture from a better appreciation of pleasure, Georgian-style. The conference will take place in Bath’s recently refurbished Holburne Museum, itself the centre-piece of Sydney Gardens, the last of Bath’s famous Georgian Pleasure Gardens.
We welcome proposals (approx. 200 words) for individual papers or individual/group performances. Panels of three papers with chair and commentator are also welcome. All proposals should be sent to the Centre for History and Culture at Bath Spa University (email historyandculture.bsu@gmail.com) by 30th April, 2013.
Potential themes include:
- Alehouses to Almacks: the pleasures of high / low life
- Urban and rustic: the pleasures of location
- Leisure, pleasure and consumption: the delights of the spa
- Female and male: gender and pleasure
- Pleasures of the imagination: music, theatre, opera & the arts
- Dangerous and illicit pleasures
- Continental pleasures
- Spas
Conference sponsors:
Centre for History & Culture, Bath Spa University: Dr Roberta Anderson, Dr Elaine Chalus, Dr Matthew Spring
Regional History Centre, University of the West of England: Dr Steve Poole
For further information, contact historyandculture.bsu@gmail.com
Darby English to Lead Clark’s Research and Academic Program
Press release (24 April 2013) from The Clark:
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute today announced the appointment of Darby English, associate professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago, to serve as the next Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program (RAP). English will lead the program’s international agenda of intellectual events and collaborations and will oversee the Clark’s library and its active residential scholars’ program, all based on the Institute’s 140-acre campus.
“Darby English brings a dynamic perspective to the work of the Clark’s Research and Academic Program, rooted in his knowledge of the field of art history—both its traditions and its new critical perspectives,” said Michael Conforti, director of the Clark. “He will build upon the Clark’s extraordinary record of accomplishment achieved during Michael Ann Holly’s fourteen years as director.”
In June 2012, Michael Ann Holly announced plans to conclude her tenure as Starr Director in the summer of 2013. Holly is widely recognized for her leadership in conceptualizing and pioneering RAP’s international series of programs and events. She will remain active in numerous Clark programs and activities in Williamstown and New York.
“The Clark is both a meeting ground and a forum for exchange and debate,” said English. “The Research and Academic Program is fueled by the international scholars who come to Williamstown as Fellows and as participants in its scholarly programs and by its many collaborations with academic programs across the world. I couldn’t be more thrilled by this opportunity to enhance the Clark’s long-established reputation for intellectual leadership in the field.”
Dr. English graduated from Williams College in 1996 with a degree in art history and philosophy and earned a doctorate in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester in 2002. He has served on the University of Chicago’s faculty since 2003, teaching modern and contemporary art and cultural studies. He served as the assistant director of the Research and Academic Program from 1999 through 2003. (more…)
Call for Papers | Prisons of Stone, Word, and Flesh
Prisons of Stone, Word, and Flesh: Medieval and Early Modern Captivity, ca. 400-1800
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 21 February 2014
Proposals due by 1 November 2013
We invite submissions for a one-day interdisciplinary symposium to take place at Brown University on February 21, 2014, hosted by the Cogut Center for the Humanities and sponsored by the Department of French Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Medieval Studies Program, and the Department of History. Our theme will be “Prisons of Stone, Word, and Flesh: Medieval and Early Modern Captivity.” Professor Adam Kosto (History, Columbia University), author of Hostages in the Middle Ages (Oxford University Press, 2012), will serve as the keynote speaker.
If, following the thought of Michel Foucault and others, the prison is an essentially modern invention, how can we best conceptualize captivity in the time beforehand? Historical records of the medieval and early modern period (roughly 400-1800 AD) offer countless examples of human bondage, including the capture and detention of prisoners of war and the voluntary submission of hostages, as well as evolving forms of punitive incarceration. During the same time, art and literature are replete with depictions of imprisonment, often employed as a master metaphor for concepts like erotic love or mankind’s enslavement to the Devil and the body. Being held against their will even seems to have been something of a rite of passage for numerous medieval and early modern authors (such as Marco Polo, François Villon, Charles d’Orléans, Thomas Malory, and Cervantes) who found in various forms of captivity the time and inspiration necessary to create some of the most enduring works of western literature.
Submissions are sought from graduate students, faculty members, and other scholars in fields including—but not limited to—history, literature, languages, philosophy, religious studies, art and architectural history, and music. Particularly welcome are submissions which offer new methodological or theoretical approaches to issues of medieval and early modern captivity, or which examine the relationship of captivity to cultural production and/or intercultural exchange. Papers should be no more than twenty minutes in length and should be in English. Please send a 250-word abstract, along with brief contact information, to John Moreau, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in French Studies and Comparative Literature, at John_Moreau@Brown.edu. The submission deadline is November 1, 2013.
Slow Down and Look for the 4th Annual Slow Art Day
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From ARTInfo:
Kyle Chayka, “Slow Art Day Fights Visual Grazing With a Deep Dive into Museums,” ARTInfo (17 August 2012).
A 2001 study showed that visitors to the Metropolitan Museum looked at individual works of art for an average of just 17 seconds at a time, a visual habit called ‘grazing’. Even the most iconic artworks in the world can’t seem to hold our attention: The Louvre discovered that visitors look at the Mona Lisa for just 15 seconds on average [link to James Elkins,”How Long Does It Take to Look at a Painting,” The Huffington Post (6 November 2010).] In the age of the moving image and endlessly updated World Wide Web, works of art in more traditional media don’t get the focus they deserve. Slow Art Day, a three-year-old initiative currently ramping up for its 2013 event, is looking to change all that with an orchestrated long art-viewing session at museums around the world.
The full article is available here»
Conference | London and the Emergence of a European Art Market
From The National Gallery:
London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, c.1780–1820
The National Gallery, London, 21-22 June 2013
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The French Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic Wars instigated a sweeping redistribution of art throughout Europe. Large volumes of valuable objects – often entire collections, from monasteries, churches, and palaces – were widely dispersed via auction and private treaty sales. Networks of agents provided the infrastructure for the circulation of art works and sales information across borders, which promoted a flourishing international art market.
This two-day conference seeks to examine the role of London in this developing market by shedding new light on the mechanisms of the art trade that connected major European centres around 1800. Scholars from a range of disciplines and countries will discuss broad research questions such as:
• Did the long-term effects of the political turmoil in France alter the existing networks of dealers and connoisseurs?
• What would have been the motivations to ship art works to distant cities?
• How sophisticated was the auction catalogue as economic tool and literary genre in various countries?
• Is it really possible to talk about a European art market or were there still relatively independent local markets?
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F R I D A Y , 2 1 J U N E 2 0 1 3
10.00 Registration
10.30 Nicholas Penny (The National Gallery), Welcome and introduction
10.35 Christian Huemer (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles) and Maximilian Schich (University of Texas, Dallas), What’s in the data? Visualising the Getty Provenance Index®
Session 1: Collections
Moderator: Adriana Turpin (Institut d’Etudes Supérieures des Arts / University of Warwick)
11.00 Camilla Murgia (Université de Neuchâtel), Collecting patterns for London: From private museums to commercial art galleries
11.25 Break with refreshments
11.45 Wendy Wassyng Roworth (University of Rhode Island), Angelica Kauffman: The acquisition and dispersal of an artist’s collection, 1782–1825
12.10 Elodie Goëssant (Université Paris-Sorbonne IV), A surprising art auction: The George Watson-Taylor sale in 1823
12.35 Discussion
1.00 Lunch break
Session 2: Agents
Moderator: Gail Feigenbaum (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)
2.00 Julia Armstrong-Totten (Independent Scholar, Los Angeles), From jack-of-all-trades to professional: The development of the early modern picture dealer in 18th-century London
2.25 Sarah Bakkali (Université Paris X Nanterre), The Trumbull sale of 1797: Players in the Paris-London art market during the French Revolution
2.50 Carole Blumenfeld (Palais Fesch-Musée des Beaux-arts d’Ajaccio), Pierre-Joseph Lafontaine (1758-1835) and the formation of European private collections
3.15 Break with refreshments
3.45 Maria Celeste Cola (Sapienza Università di Roma), Thomas Hope and Gioacchino Marini: Roman agent ‘de’ signori inglesi’
4.10 Ana Maria García Fernández (Universidad de Oviedo), Spanish art dealers in the United Kingdom
4.35 Discussion
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S A T U R D A Y , 2 2 J U N E 2 0 1 3
10.00 Registration
10.30 Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Getty Research Institute), Welcome and introduction
Session 3: Information
Moderator: Hans Van Miegroet (Duke University)
10.35 David Ekserdjian (University of Leicester), William Buchanan’s Memoirs of Painting (1824) and his observations on the art trade during the Napoleonic period
11.00 Bénédicte Miyamoto (Université Paris Sorbonne-Nouvelle), British buying patterns at auction sales, 1780–1800: Did the influx of European art have an impact on the British public’s preferences?
11.25 Break with refreshments
11.45 Steven Adams (University of Hertfordshire), ‘Noising things abroad’: Sales catalogues and the construction of value in the early 19th-century art market
12.10 Rebecca Lyons (Christie’s Education, London / University of Glasgow), Marketing and selling the collection of Welbore Ellis Agar in 1806
12.35 Discussion
1.00 Lunch break
Session 4: Artworks
Moderator: Susanna Avery-Quash (The National Gallery)
2.00 Hans Van Miegroet (Duke University) and Dries Lyna (Radboud University Nijmegen), International art dealer networks and triangular arbitrage between Paris, Amsterdam and London
2.25 Guido Guerzoni (Università Luigi Bocconi, Milan), Italian exports of works of art to the United Kingdom
2.50 Peter Carpreau (M – Museum Leuven), The Getty Provenance Index® under examination: The taste for 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting in London (1780–1820)
3.15 Break with refreshments
3.45 Olivier Bonfait (Université de Bourgogne, Dijon), London around 1800: An international art trade or a globalised art market?
4.10 Discussion
4.30 Roundtable
Moderator: Nicholas Penny (The National Gallery)
Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Getty Research Institute)
Guido Guerzoni (Università Luigi Bocconi, Milan)
Patrick Michel (Université Lille 3)
Michael North (Universität Greifswald)
Enfilade 
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