New Book | Funerary Sculpture in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh
From the author’s website:
James Stevens Curl, Funerary Monuments and Memorials in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh (Whitstable: Historical Publications, 2013), 164 pages, ISBN: 978-1905286492, £40 (hardcover) / ISBN: 978-1905286485, £20 (softcover) — ordering information is available here»
The funerary monuments and memorials in the Church of Ireland (Anglican) Cathedral Church of St Patrick, Armagh, include fine works by celebrated sculptors including Bacon, Chantrey, Farrell, Marochetti, Nollekens, Roubiliac, Rysbrack, and others, yet are not widely known.
Professor Stevens Curl’s comprehensively illustrated book describes and shows all of them, as well as giving details of the artists and their subjects, thereby filling an unaccountable gap in the literature. It is published in two versions; a hardback, limited edition of only 250 numbered signed copies with dust-jacket at £40, and a softback edition at £20 per copy.
James Stevens Curl has held Chairs in Architectural History at two Universities. He is Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture and Design, University of Ulster. He read for his Doctorate at University College London, and in 1991-2 and 2002 was Visiting Fellow at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge.
New Book | Les Biscuits de Porcelaine de Paris
Available from Artbooks.com:
Régine de Plinval de Guillebon, Les Biscuits de porcelaine de Paris : XVIIIe-XIXe siècles (Dijon: Faton, 2012), 331 pages, ISBN: 978-2878441628, 68€ / $125.
Aux biscuits de porcelaine de Paris sont souvent associés de grands noms de porcelainiers, tels Guérhard, Dihl, Gille jeune, Desprez et Nast. Pendules spectaculaires, statues gigantesques, ou bustes à taille humaine, ces figures ou groupes en porcelaine non émaillée sont pourtant assez méconnus ; on les imagine blancs, mais ils peuvent être bleus, noirs, polychromes ou dorés. Le biscuit parisien est de tout son temps très prisé par des amateurs aussi prestigieux que George Washington et le prince-régent d’Angleterre.
Après une présentation des origines de la porcelaine et des techniques de fabrication, Régine de Plinval de Guillebon nous entraîne au cœur de la vie mouvementée de 31 manufactures des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, s’intéressant de près au travail des ouvriers, des artistes et des investisseurs, ainsi qu’au contexte économique général. Une analyse approfondie des formes, des couleurs, ainsi que de l’association du biscuit avec le bronze, l’orfèvrerie et le cristal, permet d’envisager l’évolution du style des biscuits, dont deux cents illustrent cet ouvrage. Un catalogue raisonné des manufactures parisiennes vient compléter cette remarquable étude.
Exhibition | Master Drawings
From The Ashmolean:
Master Drawings
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 25 May — 18 August 2013
Curated by Christopher Brown, Jon Whiteley, and Catherine Whistler
Thomas Gainsborough, Study of a Woman, seen from the back, chalk and stump on paper, 1760-70 (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum)
The Ashmolean announces one of its major summer exhibitions, Master Drawings, as part of the celebrations to mark the founding of the Museum in 1683. The exhibition, drawn from one of the world’s greatest collections of works on paper, will display a selection of the Ashmolean’s treasures of western art including works by Michelangelo and Raphael; Dürer and the artists of the Northern Renaissance; through the centuries to Rubens and Rembrandt; Turner, Degas and Pissarro; up to Gwen John and David Hockney.
Master Drawings will survey seventy-two drawings of all types: figure studies, composition sketches, landscapes and portraits. Many are working drawings; others were made as works of art in their own right. Michelangelo will be represented by a study for the Sistine ceiling, drawn with the robust energy of youth, along with two profoundly poetic works drawn for friends, and a late, contemplative image of the Virgin and the risen Christ. Raphael will be represented by a series of studies ranging from one of his earliest works – a figure of the kneeling Magdalen delicately outlined in silverpoint – to one his last studies, the powerful and famous image of the hands and the heads of two apostles, drawn shortly before his death in 1520.
The history of landscape drawing will be explored from its beginnings with Dürer’s View of the Cembra Valley made in 1494; to watercolour sketches made by JMW Turner from opposite ends of his career. The seventeenth century will be represented in drawings by Rembrandt and Rubens; Guercino; and Claude Lorrain. The story will continue through the following centuries with studies by several of Europe’s greatest draughtsmen: Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Tiepolo, Goya, Ingres, Degas and Cézanne.
A full list of artists included is available here»
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From ACC Distribution:
Jon Whiteley and Catherine Whistler, Master Drawings: Michelangelo to Moore (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2013), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-1854442789, £20.
The collection of drawings in the Ashmolean is one of the greatest treasures of the University of Oxford. It began spectacularly in 1843 when a group of drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo that had previously belonged to the portrait painter, Sir Thomas Lawrence, was bought by subscription. Lawrence’s collection was one of the greatest collections of Old Master drawings ever assembled and its dispersal was much regretted. The Raphaels and Michelangelos, however, were the jewels in its crown. Following their arrival in Oxford, their fame attracted a number of gifts and bequests of drawings and watercolours by Dürer, Claude Lorraine, Brueghel, J. M. W Turner, Henry Moore and many others.
This is a story not only of Old Masters but of benefactors – Francis Douce, Chambers Hall, John Ruskin and their successors – whose different tastes account for the variety of the drawings in the modern Print Room. It is a story also of the curators who bought them. In particular, it is the story of Sir Karl Parker who arrived at the museum in 1934 and left a collection when he retired in 1962 that comprehensively covered the history of the art of drawing in Europe from its origins to the present day. The exhibition, Master Drawings: Michelangelo to Moore, celebrates this history. It includes many of the finest drawings in Oxford, representing the work of many different artists: Raphael and Michelangelo; Dürer and the artists of the Northern Renaissance; Guercino and Rubens; Boucher and Tiepolo; German Romantics; J. M. W. Turner; Degas and Pissarro; the artists of the Ballets Russes; British twentieth-century artists from Gwen John to Hockney; and much else.
Jon Whiteley is a Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Western Art, specialising in paintings, drawings and musical instruments.
Catherine Whistler is a Senior Assistant Keeper in the Department of Western Art, specialising in Italian and Spanish paintings and drawings.
Christopher Brown Announces Retirement Plans
Press release (June 2013) from the Ashmolean:
The Ashmolean has announced that Professor Brown will retire from his post as Director of the Ashmolean on 30 September 2014 after serving in that position for sixteen years. Following a sabbatical year, he will take up a position as a Research Professor in the University for three years until 2018. His work will be on Van Dyck and Rembrandt with the latter to be the focus of an exhibition in the Ashmolean in 2016. He took up the post of Director of the Ashmolean Museum in 1998 and the years of his Directorship have transformed the museum. Visitor figures have risen from 100,000 to over a million during these years. The museum will launch a campaign to create The Professor Christopher Brown Fund which will be used to establish curatorial fellowships at the Ashmolean. The process of finding Professor Brown’s successor will now begin so that his successor will be available to take up the position when he steps down.
Bernard Taylor, Chairman of the Visitors of the Ashmolean has said: “Christopher’s tenure as Director has involved huge positive development for the Ashmolean and he has overseen change on a grand scale with the implementation of architect the late Rick Mather’s wonderful design to transform the museum’s building. Visitor numbers have increased four fold since the opening of the remodelled building, the museum’s scholarly programme has been reemphasised and an ambitious temporary exhibition programme launched. Christopher has been tireless in successfully seeking financial support for the Ashmolean on an international scale. I am delighted that following his retirement, he will remain in Oxford doing his research.” (more…)
Conference | The Eighteenth-Century Gothick
From the symposium website:
Eighteenth-Century Gothick Symposium
University of Oxford, 7 August 2013
The Gothick Revival in eighteenth-century Britain is a multi-faceted phenomenon, simultaneously liminal and mainstream, historical and modern, whimsical and serious. This international and interdisciplinary symposium is supported by the Georgian Group and the University of Oxford, and comes thirty years after the landmark Gothick conference held by the Georgian Group at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It will bring together current high-quality research by scholars and students on the revival and explore its many dimensions.
Conference registration is now open. Further details can be found on the symposium’s website.
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Oleksandr Golozubov, Laughter and Evil in the English Pre-Romanticism
Alice Labourg, The Pictorial Gothic in Ann Radcliffe’s Novels: From Decorative Details to Picturesque Tableaux
Jenny McAuley, English Literature and the Eighteenth-Century Gothic Revival: The Example of Ann Radcliffe
Thomas Willette, Horace Walpole’s Gothick Cellini
Cathryn Spence, King Alfred’s Hall, Cirencester
Oliver Cox, Back in the Summer of ’69 — Alfred’s Castle and Alfred’s Tower
Ruth Musielak, Gothic and Classical: Gothic Ornaments at Marino, Co Dublin
Peter N. Lindfield, Dicky Bateman, Shobdon Church and Kentian Gothic: The Great Mystery
Jonathan Kewley, Eighteenth-Century Gothick in the Regency: The Career of Thomas Brine
Jean-Marie Guillouët, Pursuing Historiographical Myths during the Eighteenth Century: English and Irish Art Historians and the Late Gothic Architecture in the Iberian Peninsula
Dustin Frazier, Samuel Pegge: A Reassessment
James Marsden, Thomas Leland, Gothic Novelist, Gothic Historian and Classical Educator
Philip Aspin, Enlightened Reactionaries? Gothic Revival thought in late Georgian England
Art Market | The Age of Elegance at Ely House
From Mallett:
The Age of Elegance: Treasures from the Eighteenth-Century Town House
Mallett, Ely House, London, 18 June — 20 July 2013
We are delighted to announce a special collaboration between Mallett and the world-renowned Old Masters dealer, Colnaghi. The exhibition will show the importance of the 18th-century town house as a site of display for the finest paintings and furniture. Set in the London showrooms of Mallett, the magnificent former palace of the Bishop of Ely built in 1770 to the designs of Sir Robert Taylor, this special event will show a series of rooms hung and decorated to recreate the splendours of a bygone era.
In the 18th century, the first in the hierarchy of rooms would have been the Saloon, containing the finest gilt furniture and hung with what Lord Chesterfield termed “capital pictures.” Among the works to be displayed in the Saloon of Ely House are Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini’s Sophinsba and Susannah and the Elders, which relate to an important series painted for nearby Burlington House. Still lifes will be featured in the dining room, while the Cabinet will be hung with smaller-scale pictures from the Northern Schools. The entrance hall will be dominated by an equestrian portrait by Louis Rolland Trinquesse, painted for presentation by the sitter Charles Grant to his
kinsman Sir James Grant.
Attributed to Sefferin Nelson (1739-97), after designs by Henry Holland, Giltwood Trophy, ca. 1795
Mallett will present a number of important pieces, including a pair of magnificent commodes, made by Mayhew and Ince for the home of Robert Birch in Donabate, Co. Dublin, and impaled with his coat of arms. Amongst other highlights will be a magnificent pair of giltwood settees in the manner of Thomas Chippendale, a set of twelve armchairs made by François Hervé and supplied to George John 2nd Earl Spencer in 1791, and a giltwood wall trophy attributed to Sefferin Nelson (1739-97) after designs by Henry Holland. This trophy was one of a series made for Carlton House, the former residence of George IV when Prince of Wales.
Carlton House will also be the subject of a special lecture given to accompany the exhibition by Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, on Sunday 30th June (please contact us for details).
The exhibition brochure is available here»
Enfilade Turns Four! Buy an Art Book!
To celebrate Enfilade’s fourth birthday (22 June), I’m encouraging readers to participate in the second annual Buy-an-Art-Book Day! This year I’m happy to announce a special, one-day discount from Ashgate. Many thanks for the kind support. — Craig Hanson
At Ashgate or Lund Humphries, use the promotion code 287Y for a 20% discount on Saturday, June 22. The offer should work internationally, though please bear in mind U.S. timezones.
New Book | Architecture and Statecraft: Charles of Bourbon’s Naples
From Penn State University Press:
Robin L. Thomas, Architecture and Statecraft: Charles of Bourbon’s Naples, 1734–1759 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2013), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-0271056395, $90.
The eighteenth century was a golden age of public building. Governments constructed theaters, museums, hospices, asylums, and marketplaces to forge a new type of city, one that is recognizably modern. Yet the dawn of this urban development remains obscure. In Architecture and Statecraft, Robin Thomas seeks to explain the origins of the modern capital by examining one of the earliest of these transformed cities. In 1737 King Charles Bourbon of Spain embarked upon the most extensive architectural and urban program of the entire century. A comprehensive study of these Neapolitan buildings does not exist, and thus Caroline contributions to this new type of city remain undervalued. This book fills an important gap in the scholarship and connects Charles’s urban improvements to his consolidation of the monarchy. By intertwining architecture and sovereignty, Thomas provides a framework for understanding
how politics created the eighteenth-century capital.
Robin L. Thomas is Assistant Professor of Art History at The
Pennsylvania State University. (more…)
Reviewed | Extravagant Inventions
Recently added to caa.reviews:
Wolfram Koeppe, Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-0300185027, $75.
Reviewed by Michael Yonan; Department of Art History & Archaeology, University of Missouri; posted 6 June 2013.
Once in a while an exhibition comes along that achieves many things. It illuminates past and present, and does so by creating a viewing experience both beautiful and instructive. All the better when such an exhibition also brightens up a blind spot in the history of art. The exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled ‘Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens’ achieved this. Curated by Wolfram Koeppe, Maria Kellen French Curator of European Decorative Arts, the show was a monographic investigation of father-and-son furniture makers Abraham (1711–1793) and David Roentgen (1743–1807), whose workshop in the German town of Neuwied produced furniture for the European elite between 1743 and 1800. By my estimation this was the decorative arts show of the decade, an educationally illuminating and utterly enjoyable museum experience whose rewards far
exceeded, in the words of a colleague of mine, the
opportunity to look at ‘old desks’. . . .
The full review is available here» (CAA membership required)
Exhibition and Book | The Art of Living, Augsburg ca. 1780
The June 2013 issue of The World of Interiors features a remarkable album from the 1780s, believed to the the work of Balthasar Cornelius Koch. It was the subject of a 2010-11 exhibition in Augsburg; the catalogue is available in German.
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Michael Huey, “A Cabinet Curiosity,” The World of Interiors (June 2013): 150-57. The stuff of life, c1780, is laid bare in a handmade album documenting the décor and possessions of a prosperous goldsmith, and his family of servants, in 18th-century Augsburg. From watercolour to scraps of fabric, the enchanting tour, from pantry to salon, literally opens the doors on inner courtyards and armouries. The June issue of The World of Interiors uncovers shoes, nightcaps and lace — but no skeletons — in the closets.
. . . Part pen/ink and watercolour, part découpage (it incorporates copperplate engravings), part scrapbook (it also uses real historical fabrics and papers) and, in a sense, part diary, it records the everyday functions of the rooms of the house in full colour and significant detail. Included are a dining room; five salons (chose from green, white, ladies’, music and tea); five bedrooms (including those for the maids, the maternity room and one for a child); and five public or service spaces (halls, kitchen, pantry), with all their particular floorings, textiles, furnishings and other accoutrements. . . (156).
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From the museum’s website:
Die Kunst zu Wohnen: Ein Augsburger Klebealbum des 18. Jahrhunderts
Deutsche Barockgalerie im Schaezlerpalais, Augsburg, 24 November 2010 — 20 February 2011
Augsburg war seit dem 16. Jahrhundert nicht nur eine Hochburg für den Buchdruck und die grafischeProduktion, hier entstanden ebenfalls sogenannte “Klebealben”. Diese wurden angelegt, um Kindern und Heranwachsenden aus bürgerlichen Familien die Welt zu erklären.
Die Jugendlichen schnitten aus eigens zu diesem Zweck herausgegebenen Bögen historische oder biblische Figuren, Tiere oderberühmte Bauwerke aus und klebten sie in gedruckte Vorlagen ein. Auch andere Druckgrafiken, Buntpapiere oder sogar Stoffe wurden zerschnitten und in die Klebealben eingefügt.
Das hier ausgestellte Klebealbum wurde nach 1780 für die Juwelierstochter Regina Barbara Waltherangelegt. Teile des Albums wie gezeichnete und kolorierte Figuren und Raumsituationen wurdenvermutlich bei dem Zimmerpolier Balthasar Cornelius Koch in Auftrag gegeben. Auf den Seiten blieb aber genügend Platz, so dass Regina Barbara selbst Figuren ausschneiden und einkleben konnte. Das Album stellt “die Kunst zu Wohnen” vor und verschafft den Betrachtern so bis heute einen Einblick in das Leben des Augsburger Bürgertums im
18. Jahrhundert. . .
More from the museum’s website»
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From the publisher:
Georg Haindl, Die Kunst zu Wohnen: Ein Augsburger Klebealbum des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-3422070400, 40€.
Als beliebte Alternativen zu den Puppenhäusern wurden in Augsburg als wichtiger Verlagsstadt des 18. Jahrhunderts so genannte „Klebealben” von liebenden Eltern für ihre Kinder angelegt. Sie zeigen neben zentralen Plätzen Augsburgs auch die Räume idealtypischer Bürgerhäuser, in die ausgeschnittene Darstellungen von Figuren, Möbeln oder Geschirren eingeklebt werden konnten. Als Ressource hierfür dienten nicht nur die Augsburger „Ausschneidebögen”, wie sie von den Verlagen Johann Martin Wills oder Martin Engelbrechts extra für diesen Zweck herausgegeben wurden, sondern auch Modejournale, Buntpapiere, Textilien oder alte Bücher, die zerschnitten wurden.
In der Publikation widmen sich mehrere Autoren einem besonders qualitätsvollen und gut erhaltenen Album, bei dem nicht Kinder, sondern Heranwachsende die Adressaten waren, um ihnen einen perfekt funktionierenden Haushalt vor Augen zu führen. Das Album wurde in den 1780er Jahren vermutlich von dem Zimmerpolier Balthasar Kornelius Koch gefertigt und zeigt durch seine additive Darstellungsweise wichtige Aspekte des bürgerlichen Lebens dieser Zeit in Augsburg – eine unschätzbare kulturhistorische Quelle.
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