Exhibition | Made in York: Inventing & Enlightening the Georgian City
Now on view at Fairfax House:
Made in York: Inventing & Enlightening the Georgian City
Fairfax House, York, 5 May — 12 November 2017
Pioneering ideas, great inventions, ground-breaking discoveries, objects of beauty, innovation, artistry and craftsmanship and the people behind their creation…. These products of York’s age of Enlightenment are as rich as their impact is far-reaching. Made in York celebrates the wealth of this Georgian city’s inventive and enlightened output through the long eighteenth century (1670–1830).
York’s pages of history are strewn with astronomers, mathematicians, horologists, and zoologists through to world-class scholars, celebrated painters, sculptors, architects, and cabinetmakers. This is the story of those people who made this city a crucible for enlightened thought, intellectual creativity, and a centre for exquisite craftsmanship throughout the Georgian age. York nurtured some of the greatest names such as Grinling Gibbons, Thomas Chippendale, Laurence Sterne, John Goodricke, John Flaxman, and Joseph Rose, leaders in each of their metiers. But behind these icons are some lesser-known pioneers; Made in York rediscovers their rich and eclectic legacy and the rare objects and often forgotten triumphs that they have left for future generations. For the first time, this landmark exhibition will be showcased throughout the townhouse, vividly animating both Fairfax House’s beautiful period rooms and its exhibition gallery.
New Book | Chevening: A Seat of Diplomacy
From Paul Holberton Publishing:
Julius Bryant, Chevening: A Seat of Diplomacy (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2017), 96 pages, ISBN: 978 191130 0113, £30.
A welcome introduction to the handsome architecture, splendid decoration, notable collections, and glorious gardens of Chevening, the grand country residence used for several decades by Britain’s Foreign Secretary.
Chevening stands in a magnificent park below the wooded escarpment of the North Downs in Kent. It has a history dating back around 800 years, but the Chevening we see today we see today is almost entirely the creation of seven generations of the Stanhope family, building on the original Inigo Jones house of 1630. For 250 years the Stanhopes served their country as soldiers and statesmen, and at Chevening as patrons of architecture and art. This new guide highlights the contributions of the Earls and Countesses Stanhope to the building, furniture, pictures, gardens and landscape of Chevening. It also gives a short account of the family in the wider world in order to set their creations in context.
The decoration and architectural features of each of the rooms—from the Entrance Hall with its spectacular swirling staircase of c. 1721 to the sumptuous Tapestry Room with its rare Berlin tapestries woven by Huguenot craftsmen in 1708—are described and illustrated, and significant and unusual works of art highlighted, such as important portraits by Allan Ramsay, Thomas Gainsborough, and Sir Thomas Lawrence.
The Estate consists of some 3,000 acres, and the gardens include a lake, maze, parterre and a double-walled hexagonal kitchen garden. The history of the garden is explored, from the extensive landscaping in the formal style by the 1st and 2nd Earls in the early 18th century, to the naturalistic style created in 1775–78—much of the character of which survives today—to the re-formalizing in the 19th century, with the creation of the ‘Italian’ gardens, a maze and hedged allées. The wonderful restoration of recent decades and the replanting to the designs of Elizabeth Banks is celebrated with new photography.
Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Chevening Act coming into effect with the death of the last Earl Stanhope and the 300th anniversary of his family’s acquisition of the Chevening estate.
Julius Bryant is Keeper of Word and Image at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Call for Participation | Objects in Motion
British Art Studies Open Call for Participation: Objects in Motion
A digital publishing initiative by British Art Studies and the Terra Foundation for American Art
Proposals due by 1 September 2017
Postage stamp commemorating the Anglo-American Exposition, London, May to October 1914.
We invite proposals from academics, museum scholars, and artists to participate in a new digital publishing initiative supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and the peer-reviewed, open-access journal British Art Studies (BAS), which is jointly published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Yale Center for British Art. This initiative calls for a series of interdisciplinary articles and features centered on the broad theme of “Objects in Motion” to appear in future issues of BAS.
The movement of objects and ideas across cultures represents a growing field of art historical research. The aim of this series is to explore the physical and material circumstances by which art is transmitted, displaced, and recontextualized, creating new markets, audiences, and meanings. We seek proposals that consider cross-cultural dialogues between Britain and the United States, focusing on any period and any aspect of visual and material culture. Proposals should outline the ways in which the project/article will take advantage of the possibilities offered by the digital platform.
Authors of accepted proposals will be invited to a think-tank workshop at the Terra Foundation’s property in Giverny, France, 3–5 May 2018. The workshop will offer the opportunity to discuss the intellectual rationale of the projects in tandem with the digital tools entailed in their realization. Building on these discussions, BAS will work with a small group of selected authors to develop a series of single-authored or collaboratively written articles and features that examine cross-cultural dialogues between Britain and the United States. All articles will be subject to peer review, as is standard for BAS.
Proposals should include the following:
• A description of no more than one thousand words that outlines the intellectual premise of the project and how it speaks to the theme of “Objects in Motion.”
• The description must include details of how the project will take advantage of the digital platform. We are not looking for technical specifications but for a vision statement of how the digital platform will support or enhance the development and/or presentation of the project.
• Names and short CVs (no more than two pages) for all co-authors and contributors.
Funding for travel and accommodation in Giverny will be provided to authors selected to participate in the workshop. Inquiries and completed application materials in the form of PDFs should be sent to journal@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk. The deadline for applications is 11:59 pm GMT on Friday, September 1, 2017.
Conference | Early Modern Collections in Use
From the conference flyer:
Early Modern Collections in Use
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, 15–16 September 2017
Ferrante Imperato, Dell ’Historia Naturale, 1599, detail from a double plate (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute).
From cabinets of curiosities, auction houses, and libraries to stables, menageries, and laboratories, early modern collections played a key role in the creation and transmission of knowledge. But how were these collections used in their own time? Speakers will explore the relationships between space and knowledge through the discussion of a range of themes in the history of collecting: from management to performance, from visitation to dissemination. Cumulatively, the papers will offer a new basis for thinking not only about the origins and content, but also about the functions and dynamics of early modern collections.
Conference registration and optional lunches by reservation only. The registration fee is $25 (students free), with buffet lunches for $20 each day. Please visit The Huntington website for more information. Funding provided by The Huntington’s William French Smith Endowment and The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.
F R I D A Y , 1 5 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7
8:30 Registration and coffee
9:30 Welcome by Steve Hindle (The Huntington) and remarks by Elizabeth Eger and Anne Goldgar (King’s College London)
10:00 Session 1 | Conceptualizing
Moderator: Anne Goldgar
• Paula Findlen (Stanford University), Why Put a Museum in a Book? Ferrante Imperato and Natural History in Sixteenth-Century Naples
• Peter Mancall (University of Southern California and The USC-Huntington, Early Modern Studies Institute), Birds of (Early) America
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Session 2 | Displaying
Moderator: Elizabeth Eger
• Vera Keller (University of Oregon), Johann Daniel Major (1634–1693) and the Experimental Museum
• Mark Meadow (University of California, Santa Barbara), Quiccheberg, Prudence, and the Display of Techne in the Brueghel/Rubens Allegories of the Senses
2:45 Break
3:00 Session 3 | Performing
Moderator: Arnold Hunt (University of Cambridge)
• Dániel Margócsy (University of Cambridge), Stables as Collections for Breeding: The Production of Knowledge and the Reproduction of Horses
• Anne Goldgar (King’s College London), How to Seem a Connoisseur: Learning to Perform in Early Modern Art Collections
S A T U R D A Y , 1 6 S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7
9:00 Registration and coffee
9:30 Session 4 | Hiding
Moderator: Peter Mancall
• Jessica Keating (Carleton College), Hidden in Plain Sight: The Kunstkammer of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II
• Victoria Pickering (The British Museum), Sealed and Concealed: The Visible and Not-so-Visible Uses of a Botanical Collection
11:30 Lunch and time to view exhibition, Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin (led by exhibition curator Daniela Bleichmar)
1:00 Session 5 | Visiting
Moderator: Kim Sloan (The British Museum)
• Elizabeth Eger, Collecting People
• Felicity Roberts (King’s College London), Sir Hans Sloane’s Museum and Animal Encounters
2:45 Break
3:00 Session 6 | Disseminating
Moderator: Miles Ogborn (Queen Mary University of London)
• Alice Marples (The John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester), ‘Raised to High Eminence By the Excitement’: Collections and the Creation of ‘Provincial’ Medical Education
• Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California), The Interpretation of Mexican Indigenous Objects in Collections in Early Modern Europe and New Spain
4:45 Concluding Roundtable
Arnold Hunt (University of Cambridge), Miles Ogborn (Queen Mary University of London), Kim Sloan (The British Museum), and Mary Terrall (University of California, Los Angeles)
Exhibition | Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature
Press release from The Huntington:
Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin
The Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, 16 September 2017 — 8 January 2018
Curated by Catherine Hess and Daniela Bleichmar
A sweeping international loan exhibition at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens will explore how the depiction of Latin American nature contributed to art and science between the late 1400s and the mid-1800s. Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin, on view in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery from September 16, 2017 to January 8, 2018, will feature more than 150 paintings, rare books, illustrated manuscripts, prints, and drawings from The Huntington’s holdings as well as from dozens of other collections. Many of these works will be on view for the first time in the United States.
Visual Voyages will be complemented by a richly illustrated book, along with an array of other programs and exhibitions, including a sound installation by Mexican experimental composer Guillermo Galindo. The exhibition is a part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, an exploration of Latin American and Latino art that involves more than 70 arts institutions across Southern California.
“Despite notorious depredation of people and resources during the period, the brilliant work of a number of Latin Americans and Europeans helped to illuminate our understanding of the natural world,” said Catherine Hess, chief curator of European art at The Huntington and co-curator of Visual Voyages. “We aim to shed light on this relatively unexamined piece of the story—to show how beautiful, surprising, and deeply captivating depictions of nature in Latin America reshaped our understanding of the region and, indeed, the world—essentially linking art and the natural sciences.”
Visual Voyages looks at how indigenous peoples, Europeans, Spanish Americans, and individuals of mixed-race descent depicted natural phenomena for a range of purposes and from a variety of perspectives: artistic, cultural, religious, commercial, medical, and scientific. The exhibition examines the period that falls roughly between Christopher Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 and Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, a work based largely on Darwin’s own voyage to the region in the 1830s.
“Information and materials circulated at an unprecedented rate as people transformed their relationship to the natural world and to each other,” said Daniela Bleichmar, associate professor of art history and history at the University of Southern California (USC) and co-curator of the exhibition. “Images served not only as artistic objects of great beauty but also as a means of experiencing, understanding, and possessing the natural world. These depictions circulated widely and allowed viewers—then and now—to embark on their own ‘visual voyages’.”
Bleichmar, who was born in Argentina and raised in Mexico, is an expert on the history of science, art, and cultural contact in the early modern period. Her publications include the prize-winning book Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (The University of Chicago Press, 2012).
The Huntington’s three collection areas—library, art, and botanical—all contribute to Visual Voyages. Its Library is one of the world’s greatest research institutions in the fields of British and American history, art, and the history of science, stretching from the 11th century to the present, and includes such riches as the first European depiction of a pineapple and a rare 16th-century manuscript atlas that includes three stunning maps of the Americas. From The Huntington’s art holdings, Frederic Edwin Church’s monumental painting Chimborazo (1864) will be on display, depicting a Latin American landscape both real and imaginary. The Huntington’s 120 acres of gardens include several thousand plant species from Latin America, including pineapple, vanilla, cacao, and various orchids and succulents.
Designed by Chu+Gooding Architects of Los Angeles, Visual Voyages engages visitors through an evocative installation that includes interactive media, display cases of specimens and rare materials, and two walls almost completely covered with grids of visually arresting depictions of botanical specimens and still lifes.
The exhibition opens with a playful display of taxidermy mounts to make vivid the rare animals that captured the imagination of Europeans and were avidly collected during the period. Visual Voyages then begins with a section on “Rewriting the Book of Nature,” in which manuscripts, maps, and publications show how nature came to be reconsidered in the first century of contact. This section includes a copy of the 1493 letter Christopher Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain while on the return leg of his first voyage to the New World. He writes that the region is “so fertile that, even if I could describe it, one would have difficulty believing in its existence.” This section highlights the many contributions of indigenous Americans to the exploration of New World nature, among them two large-scale maps painted by indigenous artists in Mexico and Guatemala; a volume from the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century Mexican manuscript on loan from the Laurentian Library, Florence; and a spectacular feather cape created by the Tupinambá of Brazil.
Next, a gallery called “The Value of Nature” explores the intertwining of economic and spiritual approaches to Latin American nature. Commercial interests resulted in the investigation, depiction, and commercialization of such natural commodities as tobacco and chocolate. Indigenous religions considered the natural world to be infused with the divine, while Christian perspectives led observers to envision Latin American nature as both rich in signs of godliness as well as marked with signs of the devil—and needing eradication. Various depictions of the passion flower, a New World plant, show how the flower’s form recalled to missionaries the instruments of Christ’s Passion.
A third section, “Collecting: From Wonder to Order,” shows how the ‘wonder’ that European collectors held for the astonishing material coming from the New World became a desire to possess and, later, to “order” this material, following systems of taxonomy and classification. On view will be a spectacular set of large paintings depicting Brazilian fruits and vegetables by the Dutch painter Albert Eckhout (ca.1610–1665) as well as 30 artful, vivid, and detailed drawings of botanical specimens painted by artists from New Granada (present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, Peru, northern Brazil, and western Guyana), never before seen in the United States.
The final section of the exhibition, called “New Landscapes,” examines scientific and artistic perspectives on Latin America created in the 19th century, a period when a new wave of voyagers explored the region and independence wars resulted in the emergence of new nations. The Romantic and imperial visions of artists and scientists from Europe and the U.S. are juxtaposed with the patriotic and modernizing visions of artists and scientists from Latin America, who envisioned nature as an integral part of national identity. This juxtaposition can be seen visually in the pairing of The Huntington’s monumental Chimborazo by Church with the equally monumental Valley of Mexico (1877) by Mexican painter José María Velasco, on loan from the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City.
Gallery text is in Spanish and English.
Daniela Bleichmar, Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 240 pages, ISBN: 978 030022 4023, $50.
Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin is accompanied by a hardcover book of the same title written by Daniela Bleichmar, co-curator of the exhibition. In a narrative addressed to general audiences as well as students and scholars, Bleichmar reveals the fascinating story of the interrelationship of art and science in Latin America and Europe during the period.
More information is available from Yale UP.
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The Huntington will present an array of public programs to complement Visual Voyages, including a lecture, a curator tour, and focused exhibitions.
Guillermo Galindo Installation and Performance
16 September 2017 — 8 January 2018
Experimental composer, sonic architect, and performance artist Guillermo Galindo will create an outdoor sound installation and performance at The Huntington during the run of the exhibition. The program is part of USC Annenberg’s Musical Interventions, a series of public events organized for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA by Josh Kun, historian of popular music and recently named a MacArthur Fellow.
Nuestro Mundo
16 September 2017 — 8 January 2018
About two dozen paintings by students of Art Division make up this installation of works inspired by Visual Voyages. Art Division is a non-profit organization dedicated to training and supporting underserved Los Angeles youth who are committed to studying the visual arts. Flora-Legium Gallery, Brody Botanical Center (weekends only).
In Pursuit of Flora: Eighteenth-Century Botanical Drawings
28 October 2017 — 19 February 2018
European exploration of other lands during the so-called Age of Discovery revealed a vast new world of plant life that required description, cataloging, and recording. By the 18th century, the practice of botanical illustration had become an essential tool of natural history, and botanical illustrators had developed strategies for presenting accurate information through exquisitely rendered images. From lusciously detailed drawings of fruit and flowers by Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708–1770), a collaborator of Linnaeus, to stunning depictions of more exotic examples by the talented amateur Matilda Conyers (1753–1803), In Pursuit of Flora reveals the 18th-century appreciation for the beauty of the natural world.
Symposium: Indigenous Knowledge and the Making of Colonial Latin America
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 8-10 December 2017
This symposium will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the ways in which indigenous knowledge contributed to the making of colonial Latin America. A dozen talks will examine practices related to art, architecture, science, medicine, governance, and the study of the past, among other topics. Curator-led visits to two related exhibitions—Visual Voyages at The Huntington and Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas at The J. Paul Getty Museum—will allow participants to view magnificent examples of work by indigenous artists and authors, including more than half a dozen rare pictorial manuscripts (codices). The symposium is organized by Daniela Bleichmar, co-curator of Visual Voyages and Kim Richter, co-curator of Golden Kingdoms and senior research specialist at the Getty Research Institute, with funding from the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, the Seaver Institute, and the Getty Research Institute
Exhibition | Project Blue Boy
Press release (3 August 2017) from The Huntington:
Project Blue Boy
The Huntington, San Marino, 22 September 2018 — 30 September 2019
Thomas Gainsborough, The Blue Boy, ca. 1770; oil on canvas, 71 × 49 inches (San Marino: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens).
One of the most famous paintings in British and American history, The Blue Boy, made around 1770 by English painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), will undergo its first major technical examination and conservation treatment. Project Blue Boy begins on August 8, 2017, when the life-size image of a young man in an iconic blue satin costume will go off public view for preliminary conservation analysis until November 1. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, home to The Blue Boy since its acquisition by founder Henry E. Huntington in 1921, will conduct the conservation project over a two-year period. The final part of the project will largely take place in public view, during a year-long exhibition, also called Project Blue Boy, presented from September 2018 to September 2019 in the Thornton Portrait Gallery, where the painting traditionally hangs.
“We are profoundly conscious of our duty of care towards this unique and remarkable treasure,” said Steve Hindle, The Huntington’s Interim President and W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research. “The Blue Boy has been the most beloved work of art at The Huntington since it opened its doors in 1928. It is with great pride that we launch this thoughtful and painstaking endeavor to study, restore, and preserve Gainsborough’s masterpiece. The fact that we are able to do so while inviting the public to watch and to learn is both gratifying and exciting—not least since the project is so perfectly suited to our mission.”
The Blue Boy requires conservation to address both structural and visual concerns. The painting is so important and popular that it has been on almost constant display since The Huntington opened to the public almost 100 years ago. “The most recent conservation treatments have mainly involved adding new layers of varnish as temporary solutions to keep The Blue Boy on view as much as possible,” said Christina O’Connell, The Huntington’s senior paintings conservator and co-curator of the exhibition. “The original colors now appear hazy and dull, and many of the details are obscured.” According to O’Connell, there are also several areas where the paint is beginning to lift and flake, making the work vulnerable to loss and permanent damage; and the adhesive that binds the canvas to its lining is failing, meaning the painting does not have adequate support for long-term display. These issues and more will be addressed by Project Blue Boy.
In addition to contributing to scholarship in the field of conservation, the undertaking will likely uncover new information of interest to art historians. O’Connell will use a Haag-Streit surgical microscope to closely examine the painting. To gather material information, she will employ imaging techniques including digital x-radiography, infrared reflectography, ultraviolet fluorescence, and x-ray fluorescence. The data from these analytical techniques will contribute to a better understanding of the materials Gainsborough procured to create The Blue Boy while at the same time revealing information about earlier conservation treatments. The Huntington will address several questions. “One area we’d like to better understand is, what technical means did Gainsborough use to achieve his spectacular visual effects?” said Melinda McCurdy, The Huntington’s associate curator for British art and co-curator of the exhibition. “He was known for his lively brushwork and brilliant, multifaceted color. Did he develop special pigments, create new materials, pioneer new techniques?” She and O’Connell will build upon clues gleaned from previous conservation projects to learn more. “We know from earlier x-rays that The Blue Boy was painted on a used canvas, on which the artist had begun the portrait of a man,” she said. “What might new technologies tell us about this earlier abandoned portrait? Where does this lost painting fit into his career? How does it compare with other portraits from the 1760s?” McCurdy also looks forward to discovering other anomalies that may become visible beneath the surface paint, and what they might indicate about Gainsborough’s painting practice.
The Huntington’s website will track the project as it unfolds.
Exhibition | Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury
Now on view at Gainsborough’s House:
Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 17 June – 8 October 2017
The market town of Sudbury in Suffolk has a surprising history. Regarded today as Great Britain’s most important centre for silk manufacture, Sudbury produces nearly 95 per cent of the nation’s woven silk textiles from its three working mills: Vanners Silk Weavers, Stephen Walters & Sons, and Gainsborough Silks. Dating back to the late 1700s, Sudbury’s nascent silk industry was facilitated by the town’s former history as a wool centre, to which many family members of the Sudbury-born artist Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (1727–1788) plied their trade.
The exhibition Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury will explore the local and national history of silk in England from the eighteenth century to the present day, focussing on the diaspora of silk manufacture from Spitalfields in London to Sudbury in Suffolk. In the first part of the exhibition, the formation of the English silk industry in Spitalfields in the early 1700s will be examined, highlighting the important Huguenot silk weavers who formed the basis of this work force. Objects displayed will illustrate the processes of design and manufacture and include everything from silk pattern books and historic costume to paintings and drawings featuring silk fashions of the era.
In the second part of the exhibition, the focus will turn to the relocation of silk manufacture from London to Suffolk over the course of the nineteenth century, exploring the history of Sudbury’s silk mills and the textiles they produced. Objects on show from the town’s three mills, in addition to the Sudbury manufacturer Humphries Weaving, will illustrate the many types of silk made in Sudbury, past and present—from furnishing textiles for historic palaces to contemporary design fabrics made for major British fashion houses.
This exhibition will draw together artworks and textiles from both national and local collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Norfolk Museums Service, and the Warner Textile Archive. As the childhood home of the artist Thomas Gainsborough situated at the very heart of the nation’s active silk industry, Gainsborough’s House is ideally placed to tell this important story of silk in England, from Spitalfields to Sudbury.
Study Day | 300 Years of Silk
One of a pair of shoes, ca 1720; leather sole, with brocaded silk uppers with silk woven in Spitalfields
(London: V&A, T.446&A-1913)
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300 Years of Silk: A Study Day at Gainsborough’s House
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 26 September 2017
Join us for 300 Years of Silk, an exclusive Silk Study Day held at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury, Suffolk. Hosted by textile specialists Mary Schoeser and Kate Wigley of the School of Textiles, Coggeshall, and Keeper of Art & Place Louisa Brouwer of Gainsborough’s House, this event will feature a series of informative lectures, interactive handling sessions and a curator-led tour of the current exhibition, Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury (17 June — 8 October 2017). The daylong programme will include opportunities to study a range of silk textiles from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries in close detail and will offer privileged access to the Sudbury silk mill Vanners Silk Weavers, with guided tours led around this vibrant working factory in the afternoon.
Organised to accompany the current exhibition Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury at Gainsborough’s House, this Study Day will explore the fascinating history of the English silk industry, focussing on the town of Sudbury, Suffolk—regarded today as Great Britain’s most important centre for silk manufacture. Sudbury now produces more woven silk textiles than anywhere else in the nation, with four working firms still in operation: Vanners Silk Weavers, The Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company, Stephen Walters & Sons, and The Humphries Weaving Company. Dating back to the early years of the nineteenth century, Sudbury’s nascent silk industry was facilitated by the town’s former history as a wool centre, to which many family members of the Sudbury-born artist Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (1727–1788) plied their trade.
Open to students, curators, and textile enthusiasts alike, this Study Day offers full access to Gainsborough’s House in the historic market town of Sudbury, located just 1 hour 20 minutes by train from London Liverpool Street. The day will run from 10am to 5pm and cost £80 per person (inc. VAT). Tickets will include tea, coffee, and biscuits upon arrival, followed by a light sandwich lunch in the afternoon. For further enquiries and to reserve your place, please contact louisa@gainsborough.org. Limited places are available so early booking is recommended.
National Museum Wales Acquires Rare Richard Wilson Portrait
Press release (7 July 2017) from the UK’s Art Fund:
With support from Art Fund, National Museum Wales has acquired the painting Portrait of a Lady (ca. 1750), which is now on display at National Museum Cardiff. Thought to be an image of Miss Mary Jenkins, whose family owned Priston Manor in Somerset, the work joins only one other female portrait by Wilson in National Museum Wales’ collection. It offers insight into Wilson’s early career, when he first trained in London as a society portrait painter, before later becoming best known for his landscapes.
The acquisition has also enabled further research, which is currently trying to establish whether this may in fact be a marriage portrait, rather than one of a pair of siblings (Wilson also painted Jenkins’ sister, Elizabeth, in the same year). The woman’s hand clasps a sprig of white blossom, which may be choisya (orange blossom), sometimes used to symbolise an eternal bond.
“This striking and intriguing Portrait of a Lady is a strong example of Wilson’s early practice, and further enriches Amgueddfa Cymru’s collection of works by the artist,” said Andrew Renton, keeper of art at National Museum Wales. “This portrait not only strengthens the female presence in our 18th-century displays but it also enables us to undertake interesting further research—the identity of the sitter is speculative and we’d love to be sure who she really is!”
“Richard Wilson is of course one of Wales’ most celebrated landscape painters, but his portraits are particularly rare,” said Stephen Deuchar, director of Art Fund. “We’re very pleased to support this acquisition for Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales, a leading centre for his work in all its range and depth.”
Newly Attributed Self-Portrait by Wright on View at LAPADA Fair
As noted at Art Daily (29 July 2017) . . .
LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair
Berkeley Square, London, 15–20 September 2017
Joseph Wright of Derby, Self-portrait, 1793.
An 18th-century painting catalogued as being by a ‘Follower of Joshua Reynolds’ at auction has been revealed as a genuine self-portrait by renowned British artist Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797). The discovery, a rarity for 18th-century works by high-profile British artists, will be unveiled at the LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, from the 15th to 20th of September.
Acquired by Archie Parker of The Parker Gallery, a leading dealer in Old Master and British works of art, the painting has been traced back to 1793, when records indicate that Wright gifted it to the Rev. Thomas Gisborne of Yoxall. Gisborne was a close friend of Wright’s and had amassed an extensive collection of paintings and drawings by the artist, including a portrait featuring Gisborne and his wife, two landscapes of the Lake District (subsequently at Kedleston Hall), and a painting of Mount Vesuvius.
In 1793, Wright presented Gisborne with a self-portrait that had, until now, disappeared from view, its existence known only from a copy belonging to the collection of Sir John Crompton-Inglefield. A Latin inscription on the copy’s reverse reads: “Joseph Wright the artist presented this painting by his own hand as a gift to his friend T. Gisborne in the year of Our Lord 1793 and 59th of his age.” The newly discovered self-portrait is almost certainly the missing original that inspired the copy and was later reproduced as the frontispiece of the 1885 monograph The Life and Works of Joseph Wright A.R.A., commonly called ‘Wright of Derby’.
Thomas Gisborne (1758–1846) was educated at Harrow. Scholarly and artistic, he was later admitted as a Fellow Commoner to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where his immense achievements pleased his old headmaster, Dr. Heath. In celebration of his achievements, Heath arranged for Gisborne’s portrait to be painted by Wright and despite their significant age difference, Gisborne struck up a friendship with the artist that was to last until the end of Wright’s life. In 1781, Gisborne was ordained a deacon and then a priest and subsequently inherited his father’s mansion at Yoxall, three miles from his church. Wright was a frequent guest at the peaceful house and produced some of his most beautiful sketches and studies while exploring the surrounding ancient oak wood. In 1793, Wright was once again staying at Yoxall when he presented Gisborne with the recently discovered self-portrait.
The annual LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair, sponsored by award-winning investment house Killik & Co, returns to Berkeley Square, London, for its 2017 edition from Friday 15th to Wednesday 20th September—this year bridging two weeks—and will showcase a fascinating array of one-of-a-kind works of art, antiques, design, jewellery and decorative art.
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