Enfilade

Bacchanalian Triumph, Wedgwood black basalt rectangular plaque, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Copied from a bas-relief by Claude Michel Clodion (1738–1814).

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From The Mint:

Classic Black: The Basalt Sculpture of Wedgwood and His Contemporaries
The Mint Museum Randolph, Charlotte, North Carolina, 8 February — 30 August 2020

Featuring more than 100 ceramic objects, with loans from notable public and private collections in the United States and England, this exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on the black basalt sculpture made by Josiah Wedgwood and other Staffordshire potters in late eighteenth-century England. The works of art on view include life-size portrait busts, statues, vases, and other fully three-dimensional, ornamental forms, as well as works in low relief, such as large plaques, portrait medallions, and medals.

Among the ceramic bodies produced in great numbers in Staffordshire, England in the late eighteenth century was black basalt. Josiah Wedgwood perfected this fine-grained stoneware in 1768, creating its dark color by adding manganese and carr, a slurry rich-with-iron oxide obtained from coal mines, to the clay body. Basalt was soon produced by many other Staffordshire potters as well. Although Wedgwood and the other potters used black basalt to create so-called ‘useful wares’, such as teapots and bowls, this exhibition showcases basalt sculpture, especially works with classically inspired themes or ornament.

Many of the basalt objects on view in the galleries were copied directly from works of art made in ancient Greece and Rome, such as busts of Homer and Socrates, gems and statues depicting gods and other mythological creatures, and coins with portraits of Julius Caesar and his successors.  Other basalt pieces derived from works made much later. Among the many artists represented in the exhibition by basalt versions of their creations are Michelangelo from the sixteenth century, Gian Lorenzo Bernini from the seventeenth century, and sculptor Louis François Roubiliac from the eighteenth. The Staffordshire potteries also hired modelers and other craftsmen to create new designs for their basalt wares.

Whatever the design source, the basalt sculpture made by Wedgwood and his contemporaries was well-crafted, refined, and perfectly suited for the neoclassical interiors so popular among style-conscious consumers, both in England and beyond, in the last few decades of the eighteenth century. Classic Black proudly highlights this fascinating chapter in the history of ceramics.

The catalogue is published by Giles:

Brian Gallagher, ed., with contributions by Gaye Blake-Roberts, Robin Emmerson, M.G. Sullivan, and Nancy Ramage, Classic Black: The Basalt Sculpture of Wedgwood and His Contemporaries (London: D. Giles, Ltd., 2020), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1911282358, £45 / $60.

Classic Black explores classically inspired sculpture and other ornamental wares in black basalt. This famous stoneware was perfected by Josiah Wedgwood in 1768 and then went on to be produced by other prominent Staffordshire potters. Wedgwood, with prescience, said of his new creation, “Black is Sterling and will last forever.” This volume presents approximately 120 examples of ornamental black basalt, including portrait busts, statues, and vases, ewers and other fully three-dimensional, ornamental forms. It also features works in low relief including tablets, plaques, medallions and cameos. Essays by renowned subject specialists enhance the fully illustrated catalogue entries, which are grouped into three chapters. These each focus on an era of the design sources used by Wedgwood and his contemporaries to create their basalt wares: Classical Antiquity, the 16th and 17th centuries, and the 18th century.

Brian Gallagher is the curator of Decorative Arts at The Mint Museum. His recent projects include the publication, British Ceramics 1675–1825: The Mint Museum, which highlights over 225 examples from the Mint’s renowned British ceramics collection, and the reinstallation of that collection in a long-term display called Portals to the Past: British Ceramics 1675–1825.
Gaye Blake-Roberts is curator of the Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston.
Robin Emmerson is the former curator of Decorative Arts, National Museums, Liverpool.
Nancy H. Ramage is the Charles A. Dana Professor of the Humanities and Arts Emerita, Ithaca College.
M.G. Sullivan is an independent scholar, York University.

C O N T E N T S

Foreword by Todd Herman, President and CEO, The Mint Museum
Acknowledgments
Preface

Essays
Robin Emmerson, Classicism and the Design Business
Gaye Blake-Roberts, Wedgwood’s Customers for Ornamental Black Basalt
M.G. Sullivan, Wedgwood’s Basalt and the Sculpture Market

Catalogue by Brian Gallagher
I. Works Based on Sources from Classical Antiquity
Rome and Pompeii: Fountains of Inspiration
Introduction by Nancy Ramage
II. Works Based on 16th- and 17th-Century Sources
From Renaissance Italy to the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic and Restoration England
III. Works Based on 18th-Century Sources
Enlightened Thinkers, Contemporary Events, and New Interpretations of the Classical Past
Concordance (by Object Type)

Selected Bibliography
Index
Photography Credits

Press release (via Art Daily) for the exhibition:

A Province of the Rococo: François Boucher’s Idealised China
Musée des beaux-arts et d’archéologie de Besançon, 9 November 2019 — 2 March 2020

Besançon’s Museum of Fine Art and Archaeology presents Une des provinces du Rococo: La Chine rêvée de François Boucher (One of the Provinces of the Rococo: François Boucher’s Idealised China), an exhibition that embarks the visitor on an enchanting voyage of discovery.

The Chinese Garden, 1742, oil on canvas (Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie de Besançon).

The illustrious François Boucher (1703–1770) was one of the key figures of eighteenth-century painting along with Watteau and Fragonard, and was one of the artists displaying the greatest talent in his efforts to renew the decorative arts. At a time when China, an ancient and distant civilisation, was drawing closer to France thanks to the trade in objets d’art, Boucher offered a window into this fascinating world, creating numerous Chinese subjects that were almost instantly adopted as part of Parisian decorative schemes and print collections and, inevitably, in the decorative arts: porcelain, furniture, and particularly tapestries.

The Museum of Fine Art and Archaeology in Besançon—which for the last two centuries has been home to the sketches produced in 1742 for the Beauvais Manufactory, a producer of tapestries—presents an ambitious exhibition with one hundred and thirty international loaned items, offering a poetic take on a theme never before presented to the public: the creative process of an artist who successfully created an exotic and original repertoire through his outstanding curiosity and creativity and who, in the words of the Goncourts Brothers, “made China one of the provinces of the Rococo.”

Tipsy Boats

One of the exhibition’s objectives is to help the visitor understand Francois Boucher’s keen artistic eye, finely honed during his visits to Parisian traders dealing in exotic items, a trade which was booming at the time. The exhibition begins with a series of items sold by marchands-merciers around 1730–1740 (lacquered screens, wallpaper, porcelain, etc.), presented in a specially laid out scene resembling the interior of a shop.

Produced for a pair of exotic item enthusiasts, the Chinese décor created by Antoine Watteau around 1710 at the Muette hunting lodge on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne also decisively influenced the way Boucher came to view Chinese subjects as ornamental features. He was among the artists who visited the site in 1731, to etch the subjects. Dismantled in the eighteenth century, this decor is represented by twelve prints produced by Boucher and by the two surviving paintings by Watteau.

Taste’s Hidden Surprises

The research conducted for the exhibition confirms that Boucher was one of the most ambitious collectors of Asian items in his day. His collection, which was dispersed in 1771 after his death, included around 700 Asian items. It stood out from contemporary collections thanks to its size and above all its virtually boundless diversity. A selection of some fifty items matching descriptions of this collection are presented with a view to presenting its richness and variety, while at the same time giving visitors some idea of the proportions of the different categories of items and forms involved including statuettes, mounted porcelain items, lacquered butterfly-shaped boxes, locks, and musical instruments from China, etc. Very early on, Boucher used this collection as a visual meaning but also as a means of getting himself better known as an artist but also as an enthusiast. He arranged for Gabriel Huquier, the famous print merchant who went on to become his business partner in the field of chinoiseries, to publish a collection of figures drawn by himself based on items from his collection. In the exhibition, these etched prints are compared with Asian models to highlight the changes of form through which the artist succeeded in bringing his collection to life.

China in Silk

His mastery of the vocabulary of forms, something which he alone managed so effortlessly, inevitably saw Boucher emerge as the artist of choice for the tapestry cartoons from the second Chinese series. An initial series had been woven at the Beauvais Manufactory in the late seventeenth century, but the cartoons gradually became worn and their subjects outdated. Boucher was therefore asked by Oudry, the Manufactory’s manager, to supply new models. He created ten ‘mini-cartons’ converted into larger works by the painter Dumons, for the weavers in the low-warp workshops. Eight of these cartons were presented at the 1742 exhibition and six were finally used for the series. The series became one of the greatest successes in the French tapestry industry of the eighteenth century with ten follow-up works being woven between 1743 and 1775. For the first time since the eighteenth century, the exhibition brings together the six tapestry items, forming a set which is truly spectacular in terms of its size and the exotic yet lively nature of its subjects.

China’s Gallantry

Presented in an elegant and intimate atmosphere resembling an art enthusiast’s lounge, this section examines Boucher’s Chinese paintings. The artist produced no easel paintings in this register although he was perfectly able to do so. China was simply a ‘sideline’ in his painted work but a side-line of outstanding quality. It can be seen firstly through the insistent representation of Asian objets d’art like those he had the opportunity to see and collect at first hand, in four interior scenes or ‘fashion pictures’ produced in the late 1730s and put together for this exhibition. These paintings, produced in small sizes for an impeccable result, demonstrate the artist’s great familiarity with the Parisian luxury goods market, which was undergoing profound change at the time, and of which these pictures were part. Three lintel pieces also reveal another function of painting, this time a decorative one. Two of these paintings, delicate blue-and-white monochromes, are seen near the chest of drawers and corners of the Comtesse de Mailly’s blue apartment at the Château de Choisy as research suggests that they came from this same sumptuous decor designed as an outstanding blue and white symphony.

Copyright Boucher

Even more so than through painting, Boucher’s creativity in the Chinese register is also expressed through paper: the artist is the author of almost a hundred print models, mostly distributed by the printmaker and merchant Gabriel Huquier. They both developed a significant repertoire of subjects inspired by Chinese models and adapted to European tastes, which were then reused by craftsmen for screens and for decorating porcelain or furniture. The number of prints featuring Chinese subjects produced by Boucher is extremely impressive for someone who was not a professional ornamentalist and their influence on the decorative arts in France and elsewhere was immense. The drawings and prints exhibited here therefore allow for a better understanding of the transition from one technique to the other, along with several luxury items produced by the manufactory of Vincennes Sèvres and by the best Parisian cabinetmakers, demonstrating their adaptation and use in the decoration of European objets d’art.

One hundred and thirty European and Asian works loaned by numerous museums and private collections also feature in the exhibition, as part of a poetic exhibition experience highlighting a unique approach, one which encompasses the history of art and the history of taste. Objets d’art, drawings, prints, paintings and tapestries, including some never before seen, make it possible to appreciate François Boucher’s keen eye and to demonstrate his central decisive contribution to the growing enthusiasm for China which developed in France back in his day. The manner in which this artist, collector, and enthusiast incorporates the exotic items he knows so well in his paintings and drawings suggests a link with the transformation and re-creation methods used at the same time by the marchands-merciers. We should consequently consider Boucher as an inventor and even as an entrepreneur with a highly developed awareness of the social and artistic challenges of his time, looking beyond the all too convenient label of painter or draughtsman. His idyllic China marks an incredibly creative ten-year interlude in an immense career, the effects of which left their mark on the age of Enlightenment.

The catalogue is published by In Fine éditions d’art:

Nicolas Surlapierre, Yohan Rimaud, Alastair Laing, and Lisa Mucciarelli, eds., Une des Provinces du Rococo: La Chine Rêvée de François Boucher (Paris: In Fine éditions d’art, 2019), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-2902302291, 29€. Contributors include Nicolas Surlapierre, Pierre Rosenberg, Vincent Bastien, Maël Bellec, Adrien Bossard, Stéphane Castelluccio, Claire Délery, Guillaume Faroult, John Finlay, Anne Forray-Carlier, Françoise Joulie, Alastair Laing, Lisa Mucciarelli, Jamie Mulherron, David Pullins, Béatrice Quette, Yohan Rimaud, Marie-Laure de Rochebrune, Kristel Smentek, Perrin Stein, Jean Vittet, and Sylvia Vriz.

More information on the catalogue, including the full table of contents, is available as a PDF file here»

Now on view at the Galleria Borghese . . . Of the 72 objects included, only 22 were included in the related Frick exhibition, as noted by Xavier Salomon in his review for The Burlington (December 2019), p. 1053.

Luigi Valadier: Splendour in Eighteenth-Century Rome
Galleria Borghese, Rome, 30 October 2019 — 2 February 2020

Curated by Anna Coliva

Ma ciò che la mostra vuole esaltare è la possibilità davvero unica di ammirare le opere del grande artefice all’interno di un contesto decorativo, quale quello della Villa Borghese, capace di restituire, di per sé, quella particolare compresenza di pittori, scultori e artigiani che l’architetto Antonio Asprucci aveva diretto nel rinnovamento del Palazzo di città e della Villa voluto dal principe Marcantonio IV Borghese; artisti che, nei medesimi anni, non solo avevano condiviso molte delle principali imprese artistiche romane ma i cui rapporti diretti con Luigi Valadier sono ampiamente documentati: è il caso, solo per fare un esempio, dell’intagliatore di marmi Lorenzo Cardelli, già nella bottega di Piranesi, che con il grande orafo collaborerà tanto nell’esecuzione del camino della Sala XVI, decorato con applicazioni in bronzo di Valadier, quanto nella realizzazione di manufatti destinati alla committenza anglosassone.

La Villa, che custodisce alcuni dei capolavori, come l’Erma di Bacco e la coppia di Tavoli dodecagonali, sintetizza così il gusto dominante a Roma intorno alla metà del secolo, dove i raffinati apparati decorativi risplendono di un declinante rococò che coesiste con le nuove tendenze stilistiche ispirate all’antico. Di questo particolare contesto culturale, nel senso più ampio, Valadier è protagonista assoluto.

Se la committenza Borghese costituì il filo conduttore dell’attività di Valadier, il rango e il numero dei committenti rivelano lo straordinario successo della sua carriera di orafo e argentiere, esaltando la vastità di campo, l’originalità e l’impronta internazionale della sua produzione, che la mostra intende rappresentare con importanti testimonianze. I prestiti spaziano dalle grandi lampade d’argento per il santuario di Santiago di Compostela, al San Giovanni Battista del Battistero Lateranense, per la prima volta visibili fuori della loro collocazione originale; dal servizio per pontificale della cattedrale di Muro Lucano alle sculture della cattedrale di Monreale; e, ancora, saranno esposte le riproduzioni in bronzo di celebri statue antiche per re Gustavo III di Svezia, Madame du Barry e il conte d’Orsay; il mirabile sostegno del cammeo di Augusto, realizzato su commissione di Pio VI per il Museo Sacro e Profano in Vaticano, oltre alle straordinarie invenzioni dei superbi desert, come quello commissionato dal Balì di Breteuil e poi venduto a Caterina II di Russia, oggi a San Pietroburgo, e la ricostruzione del tempio di Iside a Pompei per Maria Carolina d’Austria.

Una importante sezione sarà dedicata ai disegni, strumento fondamentale per comprendere l’evolversi del procedimento creativo di Valadier e la sua traduzione attraverso l’attività della grande e articolata bottega. Il prezioso volume della Pinacoteca Comunale di Faenza, per la prima volta interamente catalogato in occasione della mostra, ne offre una rassegna variegata, che sarà apprezzabile anche attraverso riproduzioni digitali. I disegni offrono inoltre la testimonianza di opere oggi disperse, come il sontuoso servizio in argento dorato realizzato per i Borghese, i cui pochi oggetti giunti fino a noi saranno riuniti in questa occasione.

In mostra saranno presenti alcuni totem multimediali dedicati ai Luoghi di Luigi Valadier a Roma: siti, chiese, palazzi e ambienti che conservano le sue opere o comunque significativi, come la casa-studio in via del Babuino. Un invito a trasferire questo percorso virtuale nella realtà, per comprendere meglio quel Valadier “romano”, decoratore nella più splendida e “moderna” Villa di delizie della città eterna, ma espressione di quel gusto internazionale che da Roma partiva per diffondere un gusto ricercato e imitato in tutta Europa.

Geraldine Leardi, ed., Valadier: Splendore nella Roma del Settecento (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2019), 376 pages, 978-8833670638, 48€.