Fair | Art Antiques London, 2014
From the fair’s website:
Art Antiques London
London, 11–18 June 2014
The Albert Memorial and Kensington Gardens once again provide the stunning backdrop to one of London’s most exciting and glamorous art and antique fairs. Held in a beautiful bespoke pavilion opposite the Royal Albert Hall and close to the site of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Art Antiques London brings together leading international dealers and discerning visitors from all over the world, who can buy with confidence at this strictly vetted sumptuous summer showcase for the arts.
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From the fair’s lecture series (with information about each speaker available here) . . .
Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria: A Mirror to the World
Thursday, 12 June, 11:30
Judy Rudoe (Curator of Jewellery and Decorative Arts, The British Museum)
This lecture emerges from the speaker’s recent book co-authored with Charlotte Gere (see biography). The ‘age of Victoria’ is taken in its widest sense to encompass jewellery from across Europe and America, at a time when expanding foreign trade, the new illustrated press and a growing tourist industry brought jewellery from many parts of the world to a wide audience. Queen Victoria played a huge role: what she wore and did had tremendous impact, so what might seem a narrow subject acts as a key to our understanding of the entire Victorian age. Using examples from the British Museum and collections worldwide, Judy Rudoe considers Victorian jewellery against its global background and uncovers what jewellery meant to those who wore it, both literally and metaphorically. She will show how it was used in private and in public to reveal that politics, nationalism and even humour of the period are all embodied in jewellery.
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J.M.W. Turner: The Artist and His House at Twickenham
Thursday, 12 June, 2:30
Catherine Parry-Wingfield (Chairman of Turner’s House Trust)
Turner is rightly one of the most famous names in the history of British art, and remains an inspiration to painters today. Tucked away in Twickenham is a small unknown work by this great artist, not a painting, but a work in three dimensions. Sandycombe Lodge was designed by Turner himself as a country retreat from the pressures of the London art world; his ‘old Dad’ kept house here, Turner sketched, fished the river and occasionally entertained. This talk will explore a little-known side of Turner’s life and work, against the backdrop of the ‘Matchless Vale of Thames’, the beautiful Thames scenery which inspired much of his work. Sandycombe Lodge is now owned by Turner’s House Trust, which is developing plans for major conservation and future use of this beautiful and important building.
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A Matter of Fashion: The Collecting of English Ceramics
Friday, 13 June, 11:30
Anton Gabszewicz (Independent ceramics researcher)
Since the death of Lady Charlotte Schreiber in 1895, English ceramics have been collected with increasing enthusiasm. The founding of the English Porcelain Circle in 1927, under the Presidency of Mrs Radford, brought leading enthusiasts together and since then, through the yearly publication of the ECC Transactions their knowledge has been disseminated to a wider public. Yet the collections the speaker will discuss are markedly varied in their content and in the way they have been assembled. The names form a roll call of the influential collectors of the last 70 years. This lecture identifies those influences and how they informed the taste of succeeding generations.
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Of Soup and Love: The Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens at Winterthur Museum
Friday, 13 June, 2:30
Pat Halfpenny (Independent researcher)
The Campbell Collection of soup tureens is the finest collection of its type in the world. Although this lecture will focus on the magnificent ceramic pieces, they will be set in a context that includes highly prized silver and gilt examples that will help us understand the evolution of high style in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As grand gilded baroque examples, fanciful rococo porcelain, and elegant neoclassical forms will be discussed, the speaker will share some of the changes in social life and dining practices that created the environment in which tureens were first introduced, rose to great prominence, declined, and found new purpose in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
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Early Chelsea Model of a Finch, ca. 1745–49, exhibited by the Brian Haughton Gallery.
Nature, Porcelain and Enlightenment: Early English Porcelain and its Place in the Eighteenth-Century Home
Friday, 13 June, 4:30
Paul Crane (Lecturer, researcher, and dealer)
England in the mid-eighteenth century was a country riveted by an insatiable appetite for knowledge, exploration, and discovery. This forged a new scientific approach which was to spearhead the Age of Enlightenment. Through new eminent publications Science and Nature became the pinnacle of taste and fashion within the Aristocracy, who decorated their homes with this organic natural force. The birth of English porcelain in London in the 1740s provided an opportunity for enlightenment to fuse with the arts. Examples of the production at the porcelain manufactories of Bow, Chelsea, Worcester, and Vauxhall together with the Liverpool factories of Samuel Gilbody, William Reid, and Richard Chaffers will illustrate these natural recreations that were to fill the eighteenth-century home with a totally re-invented Cabinet of Natural Curiosity.
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The Silver Society Study Day: New Silver Projects
Saturday, 14 June, 11:00–6:00
Dirk-Jan Biemond, Michèle Bimbenet Privat, Hazel Forsyth, Christopher Hartop, James Rothwell, Peter Taylor, and Charles Truman
Tickets: £50 society members / £65 non-members. Please note that The Silver Society Study Day is booked separately from the Art Antiques London lecture programme. To book, visit The Silver Society’s website or email events@thesilversociety.org.
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Around the World in 80 Figures: Highlights of the Pauls-Eisenbeiss-Stiftung, Basel
Sunday, 15 June, 11:30
Samuel Wittwer (Director, Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, Berlin-Brandenburg)
Established in 1975 in Basel, the Pauls-Eisenbeiss Foundation is one of the world’s leading collections of eighteenth-century German porcelain figures. The collection concentrates on four leading manufactories (Meissen, Frankenthal, Ludwigsburg, and Höchst) bringing together 750 objects, mainly figures. This treasure trove of German porcelain has been open to the public since 1977. It is not just a collection of important examples of each manufactory; it is a collection cleverly put together in the 1950s and 1960s and is the perfect study base enabling collectors to compare variations of decoration and modelling, discovering unique pieces and also enabling students to gain insight to a wide range of topics such as fashion and social aspects of the eighteenth century. This lecture introduces us to this important collection in a multifaceted way by giving us a general overview as well as concentrating on new aspects of research and details.
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Freedom of Expression: The Fantastic Range of du Paquier Porcelain
Sunday, 15 June, 3:30
Claudia Lehner-Jobst (Art historian and curator, Vienna)
This lecture will pay homage to two personalities: Claudius Innocentius du Paquier, the founder of the first porcelain manufactory in Vienna and his artistic resourcefulness and to one of the first collectors of his work, Marchese Emanuele d’Azeglio whose objects now form the heart of the ceramics collection at the Palazzo Madama in Turin. The speaker will discuss the history of that collection and some outstanding objects in depth.
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A Behind the Scenes Look at Ming: 50 Years that Changed China
Monday, 16 June, 11:30
Jessica Harrison-Hall (Curator of Chinese Ceramics, British Museum and Sir Percival David Collections and Vietnamese Art)
This year the British Museum will open a major exhibition on Ming courts and their international engagement. Ming: 50 Years that Changed China shows how fifty years of the Ming dynasty transformed China in ways which still affect the country we know today. Ming China was thoroughly connected with the rest of the world in these years and absorbed many influences. The staggering wealth of the courts included some of the most beautiful porcelain, gold, jewellery, furniture, paintings, sculptures, and textiles ever made. Many of these objects were undiscovered until recently and have never been shown within the context of China’s multiple courts and of Ming China’s interaction with foreign countries ranging from Mogadishu to Kyoto. This lecture takes a behind the scenes look at the four years of collaborative research and international co-operation which culminate in the exhibition.
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Face to Face: Dame Rosalind Savill in Conversation with the Duke of Devonshirec
Monday, 16 June, 4:00
Where do you find the essential combination of sensibility and pizzazz needed to cherish the traditional and celebrate the innovative in a great country house? The answer is simple: at Chatsworth with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Throughout its history the individual contribution of each generation has enabled it to evolve and flourish, often against huge odds, but the pressures and challenges today are more formidable than ever. Stoker and Amanda Devonshire have spent the last ten years reinventing Chatsworth in a myriad of inspirational ways, giving it a new twenty-first century lease of life, and using their magic touch to turn a possible millstone into a marvel. This discussion will attempt to discover the secrets of their success in bringing a thrilling new edge to Chatsworth. It will touch on the history of the house and its great collections, and will explore their daunting responsibilities and prospects when he inherited in 2004, how their grand plans took shape, the highs and lows of achievement, and the continuing excitement of future projects and dreams. Conversation sponsored by 1stdibs.
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The French Porcelain Society Study Day: Sèvres and China
Tuesday, 17 June, 11:00–5:30
Dame Rosalind Savill, John Whitehead, Juliet Carey, Kee Il Choi, Vincent Bastien, and David Peters
Tickets: £45 Society members / £65 non-members. Please note that The French Porcelain Study Day is booked separately from the Art Antiques London lecture programme. To book, visit The French Porcelain Society’s website or email rmcpherson@orientalceramics.com.
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Porcelain Figures in the Royal Court Pantries in Dresden, Warsaw and Hubertusburg: A Crash-Course in the Hof-Conditorei Inventories
Wednesday, 18 June, 2:30
Maureen Cassidy Geiger (Independent ceramic researcher)
Meissen figures have typically been studied via the work reports in the manufactory archives, which were suspended from 1748 to 1764, or the Japanese Palace inventories. By comparison, the highly detailed inventories of the court pantries of the Saxon-Polish realm have been overlooked as an essential resource for understanding the types and numbers of figures produced for table decoration, especially during the gap in the work reports. This Hof-Conditorei crash course will focus on three inventories taken between 1750 and 1755 at three royal palaces: Dresden, Warsaw, and Hubertusburg.
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Dining Culture in Enlightenment Europe
Wednesday, 18 June, 4:30
Ivan Day (British food historian)
From the town houses of Edinburgh to the palaces of St Petersburg, from the chocolate houses of Madrid to the grand salons of Stockholm, the cuisine and dining protocol of the French ancien regime spread rapidly during the course of the eighteenth century to all of the great European centres, frequently obliterating the native high status food traditions of those who adopted it. In this illustrated lecture, British food historian Ivan Day will examine the dramatic cultural impact that the spread of French court dining protocol had on the non-French speaking aristocratic world. He will not discuss not only the remarkable food itself, with a particular emphasis on the dessert course, but also its mode of service and the glittering material culture it spawned.
New Book | The Life and Times of Quatremère de Quincy
From Palgrave Macmillan:
Louis A. Ruprecht, Classics at the Dawn of the Museum Era: The Life and Times of Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 300 pages, ISBN: 978-1137384072, $95.
Antoine Chrysostome Quatremere de Quincy (1759–1849), arguably the foremost French classicist and art historian of the nineteenth century, is relatively little-known in English language scholarship. Three of his books were translated in the early nineteenth century, none in the twentieth century, and an important collection of two sets of open letters concerning museums, looting and repatriation was just published in 2012.
Quatremère has been unfairly called ‘the French Winckelmann,’ a charge that sticks primarily because so little of his work has ever been translated. In fact, he shows us, not what apish imitation of Wincklemann’s Neoclassicism looked like in the nineteenth century, but rather what these two overlapping disciplines had become in the generation after Winckelmann. Quatremère was formed by three crucial developments that Winckelmann did not and could not know: the French Revolution and its aftermath; Hegelian aesthetics; and the establishment of the museum era in Europe. Quatremère also remained committed to his Roman Catholicism and to the secular values of the early Revolution; in this he is very different than Winckelmann, who converted to Catholicism just before moving to Rome, and who was, according to many who claimed to understand him best, really a ‘closeted pagan’ if he were anything at all. Quatremère wrote eloquently and with deep insight concerning his understanding of the compatibilities between the Classical and Christian vision, an issue that does not figure in Winckelmann’s more intentionally ‘profane’ musings. Ruprecht hopes to show that Quatremère’s true importance emerges only if we situate him in his own times, one generation after Winckelmann, in a very different, and a far more revolutionary and secularizing cultural moment.
Louis A. Ruprecht is William M. Suttles Chair of Religious Studies at Georgia State University.
New Book | The Pathos of the Cross
According the the foreword, the book focuses on the period from 1600 to 1750. From Oxford UP:
Richard Viladesau, The Pathos of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts-The Baroque Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-0199352685, £36 / $55.
The Baroque period was in some senses the beginning of modern Western scientific and intellectual culture, the early budding of the Enlightenment. In the light of a new scientific and historical consciousness, it saw the rise of deism and the critique of traditional forms of Christianity. Secular values and institutions were openly or surreptitiously replacing the structures of traditional Christian society. At the same time, it was a time of religious renewal and of the reaffirmation of tradition. In sacred art, it was the age of of Bernini, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velazquez, and Rembrandt; in church music, the period of Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Handel, Telemann, and Bach. The pathos of Christ’s crucifixion—its power to evoke strong emotions of pity and compassion—was a central element in Baroque theology and spirituality. The sacred arts of the period reflect the centrality of this theme. Many of the works of the period retain their ability to move us emotionally and spiritually centuries later—even though the theology they represent has been challenged and frequently rejected. This volume traces the ways in which Roman Catholic and Protestant theologies of the period continued to proclaim the centrality of cross of Christ to human salvation. In a parallel movement, it illustrates how musical and artistic works of the period were both inspired and informed by these theologies, and how they moved beyond them in an aesthetic mediation of faith.
• Continues the historical theological/aesthetic survey of the first two volumes of this series
• Systematically examines the presence of theological themes in individual works of art and music of the Baroque period
• Is unique in its overview of the interrelationships of art and theology during a significant period of religious development
• Proposes the notion of ‘pathos’ as a means of summarizing the Baroque sensibility with regard to Christ’s passion
Richard Viladesau was ordained in 1969 in Rome for the Diocese of Rockville Centre. He is Professor of Theology at Fordham University, since 1988, and Administrator of Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, Saltaire, New York.
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C O N T E N T S
Foreword
Abbreviations
List of Illustrations
Introduction—The Social Context of the Baroque Period: The Beginnings of Modernity
Part I: The Survival of the Classical Paradigm of the Cross in Roman Catholicism
1 The Theoretical Mediation: The Cross in Baroque Tridentine Orthodoxy
2 The Aesthetic Mediation: The Cross in Baroque Catholic Art
3 The Aesthetic Mediation: The Passion in Catholic Music
Part II: The Cross in Protestant Orthodoxy
4 The Theological Mediation: Baroque Lutheran and Reformed Theology of the Cross
5 The Aesthetic Mediation: The Cross in Protestant Art
6 The Aesthetic Mediation: Protestant Passion Music
Part III: The Challenge to the Orthodox Doctrine of Redemption: The Enlightenment Paradigm
7 Challenges to the Classical Paradigm of the Cross and the Emergence of a New Paradigm of Salvation
Envoi
Appendix 1: Virtual Museum
Appendix 2: Discography—Music of the Passion of the Baroque Era
Bibliography
Index
Notes
Call for Papers | Object Fantasies: Forms and Fictions
As posted at H-ArtHist:
Object Fantasies: Forms and Fictions
Munich, 7–9 October 2015
Proposals due by 31 July 2014
Interdisciplinary Conference of the Junior Research Group Premodern Objects: An Archaeology of Experience (Elite Network of Bavaria / Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich)
In modern understanding, the word ‘object’ signifies something material, spatially defined and functionally determined. These notions are accentuated by the word objectivity, which defines an ideal, systematic mode of grasping objects as ‘subjects’ that presumably operate neutrally and scientifically. In contrast, the Latin word
‘fantasia’ has, since antiquity, signified an apparition or the ability to imagine something that can equally be an image, a concept or, also, an object.
The conference takes the latter alternative meaning, that is, the non-objective experience of objects as well as recent positions of thing studies as the basis for inquiry into the creative act in the reception and construction of objects. How, for instance, do the object fantasies let the borders between object categories or objects and creatures blur? What role do they—equally nourished by illusion and experience—play in the perception and handling of material objects? To what degree do perceptions of and references to objects have a lasting effect on the conception and creation of other material objects or fictional objects in images and texts? And finally: What correlation exists between the creative handling of the objectual, the self-perception of subjects and the concrete and imaginary conditions of their social lives? The conference will pursue these as well as other lines of questioning of different formal as well as fictional possibilities in the creation of objects. Welcome are papers from all fields of human sciences on individual objects, object categories and systems, objects in images and texts, objects with images and script as well as object theories. The travel and accommodation costs of the speakers will be covered. The conference serves as a preparation for an anthology on the same topic. Working languages are English, German, French and Italian. Please send a one page abstract and a short CV by July 31, 2014 to objektfantasien@kunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de.
Exhibition | Satires: Caricatures Genevoises et Anglaises du XVIIIe Siècle
Now on view in Geneva:
Satires: Caricatures Genevoises et Anglaises du XVIIIe Siècle
Musées d’Art et d’Histoire de Genève, 16 May — 31 August 2014
Dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, Genève voit naître plusieurs artistes au talent satirique avéré, tels Jean Huber l’Ancien ou Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer. La France est alors le premier modèle de l’art «sérieux» pour les Genevois, mais ce sont les productions anglaises qui nourrissent leur verve comique et parfois férocement critique à l’égard des mœurs, de la politique ou de la religion de leur temps. Si le lien entre les artistes locaux et leurs illustres contemporains anglais, tel William Hogarth, a souvent été souligné par les historiens de l’art, jamais il n’a été présenté au public sous la forme d’une exposition. Le Cabinet d’arts graphiques se propose de combler cette lacune.
The exhibition flyer is available here»
The press release is available here»
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