At Christie’s | Interracial Double Portrait Purchased by Philip Mould
Press release via Art Daily (22 January 2023) . . .
American School, A Portrait of Two Girls, ca. 1820, oil on canvas, 24 × 20 inches (Philip Mould & Co). Estimated to sell for $50–100K, the portrait sold at auction for nearly $1million.
An extraordinarily rare image of two children—one
White, one African American—was purchased by London art dealers Philip Mould & Company this evening (Friday, 20 January 2023) at Christie’s in New York for just under one million dollars.
Painted by an unknown artist in America in about 1820, and estimated at $50–100k, the double portrait attracted heated competition from collectors and museums on both sides of the Atlantic, eventually making ten times its top estimate with premium included.
Mould, who is also known as the art expert on BBC1’s Fake or Fortune, believes it to be unprecedented for this date in American portrait painting. “We are very excited to have bought it. I know of no painting of this date or earlier quite like it. The unselfconscious depiction of two racially distinct girls, who were clearly deeply attached, is extraordinarily rare for this period, as well as very affecting. The constraints and social protocol in painted portraiture of the period make such palpable depiction of interracial attachment almost without precedent.”
In their description of the painting Christie’s acknowledged its rarity, stating: “This double portrait presents its subjects as equals at a time of pervasive racial inequality. If anything, the pose and props cast the African American girl as the superior figure.” [Sale 21026, Lot 460]
The only painting that Mould knows which could be described as comparable is the portrait of Dido Belle and her cousin Elizabeth Murray painted around 1770 in England (on display as part of the collection at Scone Palace, Perth, Scotland)—a work that was the focus of an episode of Fake or Fortune in 2018. Dido was the daughter of a Black slave and White father. Mould identified the artist, after considerable research, as the Scottish portraitist, David Martin. “This however goes considerably further. Although, as yet, we don’t know the artist, nor the identity of the subjects, the relationship of equality is emphatically expressed” says Mould “The normal objectifications in the depiction of racial distinction have been set aside.”
A most unusual and revealing aspect of the painting is the book of the story of Cinderella held by the younger child. As the Christie’s cataloguer pointed out: “The inclusion of a reference to a well-known story with stepsister characters raises the possibility that in the absence of blood ties, the artist was nonetheless deliberately conveying sisterhood.” Mould muses “Or perhaps the reference to Cinderella is more obvious. As a female heroine who overcame the prejudices of her oppressors, Cinderella may well turn out to have more in common with the eldest child than initially thought.”
Future plans for the painting involve a period of research, after which Mould will be looking to place the work in a museum where its qualities and significance can be appreciated within a fuller context, and it can be enjoyed by the public.
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The painting was included in the Important Americana sale at Christie’s New York on 20 January 2023, Sale 21026, Lot 460. Also relevant is this early nineteenth-century miniature portrait of two girls with arms around each other.
Research Lunch | Dominic Bate on Pythagorean Visions
From the Mellon Centre:
Dominic Bate, Pythagorean Visions: Picturing Harmony in British Art, 1719–1753
Online only, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 10 February 2023, 1pm
In the early eighteenth century, an eclectic group of artists and architects working primarily in London believed that they could improve the arts by placing their working practices on an unassailable mathematical footing. In this endeavour they were inspired by a concept of universal harmony, which held that the entire cosmos was organised by God according to the rules of arithmetic and geometry. This concept had ancient roots, being associated with the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, among others, but it assumed a new significance in Hanoverian Britain thanks to the work of antiquarians and natural philosophers such as Isaac Newton, whose scientific discoveries were hailed in terms of the recovery of lost knowledge.
The first part of this talk introduces some of the artistic initiatives that were inspired by the highly acclaimed work of Newton and his followers, and argues that these initiatives can be understood with reference to the early modern phenomenon of ‘projecting’, defined in this instance as the contrivance of speculative schemes that sought to marry public benefit and private profit by harnessing the power of mathematics and natural knowledge.
The second part of the talk deepens and complicates the first by focusing on the career of the talented draftsman Giles Hussey (1710–1788), who developed a mathematical approach to portraiture during the 1730s and 1740s. At the heart of Hussey’s method was the geometry of the equilateral triangle and the proportional relationships that it encompassed, including the ratios of musical consonances such as the octave (2:1), the perfect fourth (4:3), and the perfect fifth (3:2). Hussey’s work shows how the pursuit of mathematical approaches to artmaking could be productive while also entailing serious practical and theoretical difficulties, thereby shedding light on the role played by eighteenth-century artists (rather than ‘disinterested’ philosophers) as solvers of aesthetic problems.
Book tickets here»
Dominic Bate is a PhD candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he is writing a dissertation that examines the relationship between art and aesthetics, natural theology and practical mathematics in eighteenth-century Britain. Before coming to Brown, Dominic worked in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, where he was involved in cataloguing the collection of portrait prints and British book illustrations. Dominic has BA and MA degrees in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and in the spring of 2022 he was a visiting student in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. His research has been supported by the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown and the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art.
New Book | Looking for Longitude
From Liverpool UP:
Katy Barrett, Looking for Longitude: A Cultural History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1802070538, £76 / $130.
Why make a joke out of a niche and complex scientific problem? That is the question at the heart of this book, which unearths the rich and surprising history of trying to find longitude at sea in the eighteenth century. Not simply a history on water, this is the story of longitude on paper, of the discussions, satires, diagrams, engravings, novels, plays, poems, and social anxieties that shaped how people understood longitude in William Hogarth’s London. We start from a figure in one of Hogarth’s prints—a lunatic incarcerated in the madhouse of A Rake’s Progress in 1735—to unpick the visual, mental, and social concerns which entwined around the national concern to find a solution to longitude. Why does longitude appear in novels, smutty stories, political critiques, copyright cases, religious tracts, and dictionaries as much as in government papers? This sheds new light on the first government scientific funding body—the Board of Longitude—established to administer vast reward money for anyone who found a means of accurately measuring longitude at sea. Meet the cast of characters involved in the search for longitude, from famous novelists and artists, to almost unknown pamphleteers and inventors, and see how their interactions informed the fate of longitude’s most famous pursuer, the clockmaker John Harrison.
Dr Katy Barrett is an interdisciplinary curator, scholar, and writer focusing on interactions between art and science. Currently she works as Deputy Curator of Art and Head of Interpretation at the Houses of Parliament. She has previously worked as Curator of Art Collections at the Science Museum, London; Curator of Art, pre-1800, at Royal Museums Greenwich; and has held various posts in national and university museums. She has higher degrees in History of Art and History of Science and is active on social media as @SpoonsonTrays.
Call for Articles | Japonisme and Fashion
From the Call for Papers:
Japonisme and Fashion — Special Issue of the Journal of Japonisme, 2024
Edited by Elizabeth Emery and Mei Mei Rado
Articles due by 1 July 2023
Japanese garments and textiles have captured the European imagination since the seventeenth century, exerting particular influence on European and American fashion after the 1860s when artists such as Whistler, Tissot, and the Rossettis competed to acquire kimono from shops such as that of Emile and Louise Desoye at 220 rue de Rivoli in Paris. They promptly emulated Japanese motifs in their own artistic creations, such as Whistler’s Princesse du pays de la porcelaine (1864–65). From paintings, poetry, and music to clothing, costume design, and cosplay, artists and designers from around the world have continued to create new japoniste works inspired by Japanese fashion.
Building on recent interest on the worldwide impact of Japanese fashion (museum exhibits and publications by scholars such as Akiko Fukai), this special issue of the Journal of Japonisme, to be published in 2024, welcomes complete essays in English (translation from French may be possible; please enquire) dedicated to figures or movements from around the world that have taken Japanese garments, textiles, or patterns as inspiration for new artistic creations. Each submission should be no longer than 20 pages (including notes) and may include up to 12 images, which will appear in color online, but black and white in print. Authors are responsible for obtaining the relevant permissions. For information about format, submission, and peer review please consult the Author Instructions. Articles should be submitted by 1 July 2023 via Editorial Manager. For more information or questions, please contact submissionsJOJ@gmail.com.
The Journal of Japonisme accepts submissions dedicated to the worldwide reception of Japanese art and culture in history, visual culture including the history of art and design, the decorative arts, painting and the graphic arts, architecture, fashion, film, literature, aesthetics, art criticism, and music. Articles related to collectors of Japanese art, either specific museums or individuals, are also encouraged.
Call for Articles | Gastronomic Criticism
From the Appel à contribution:
La critique gastronomique : histoire, rhétorique, valeurs, institutions
Edited by Julia Csergo and Frédérique Desbuissons
Proposals due by 15 February 2023, with full texts due by 15 January 2024
Il s’agit de produire un volume de synthèse (reader) qui analyse, dans une perspective tant historique que contemporaine, le phénomène de la critique gastronomique : son émergence, ses relations avec la critique s’exerçant dans les autres domaines de la création, en s’attachant à ses fonctions, ses formes et sa rhétorique, aux valeurs qui la structurent, aux institutions, media et instances qui la légitiment, et à l’économie dans laquelle elle s’inscrit.
Plutôt qu’une approche monographique des figures célèbres de la gastronomie, nous aborderons la question à partir d’une grille d’analyse organisée selon les thématiques suivantes :
1. L’émergence du phénomène de la critique gastronomique : généralement datée du tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, en lien avec l’essor des commerces de bouche, puis des restaurants, elle connaît des développements inédits et des métamorphoses au cours des XXe et XXIe siècles. Ce chapitre vise à mieux définir sur cette période les quatre fonctions principales de la critique — informer, instruire, juger, promouvoir — telles qu’elles sont perceptibles dans le domaine spécifique de la gastronomie. L’objectif est de souligner ses liens avec la critique s’exerçant dans les autres domaines de la création, sa spécialisation et sa professionnalisation.
2. Les formes et les rhétoriques : ce chapitre portera sur les discours produits à travers la littérature, la philosophie, l’érudition, la chronique, le billet, etc. Il scrutera les postures auctoriales — qui parle ? de quel point de vue ? — autant qu’il interrogera l’existence d’éventuels mouvements ou styles à partir desquels les autres formes de critique ont pu structurer leurs propos. Il abordera aussi la place qu’y occupent les illustrations, la façon dont celles-ci contribuent aux fonctions dévolues à la critique afin de s’écarter du logocentrisme souvent associé à la gastronomie.
3. Les valeurs qui structurent la production et la diffusion de la critique : à partir de quels critères ou indicateurs — esthétiques, éthiques, sociaux, économiques, politiques — s’opèrent les jugements de goût, et plus largement les évaluations particulières ? Sont-elles toujours explicitées et justifiés ? Les valeurs généralement reconnues à l’art constituent-elles une grille d’analyse pertinente pour la critique gastronomique ? Qu’en est-il de l’indépendance dont elle revendique les vertus ? Entre mise en ordre et représentation du « bien manger » seront abordées les questions de genre, d’identité et de pouvoirs.
4. Institutions critiques : ce chapitre vise à analyser le rôle des clubs, sociétés, réseaux, médias dans la légitimation de la critique gastronomique. Le rôle des palmarès, ainsi que des transformations induites par les nouvelles technologies, réseaux sociaux, influenceurs, etc.
Les articles proposés, rédigés en français, devront contenir une part inédite de recherche, d’hypothèses ou de mises à jour ; ils ne sauraient reprendre la totalité d’un article déjà paru. La taille des articles sera d’environ 35 000 signes, notes comprises. Propositions et articles seront adressés conjointement à : csergo.julia@uqam.ca / frederique.desbuissons@univ-reims.fr
Calendrier
Soumission des propositions accompagnées d’une notice bio-bibliographique : 15 février 2023
Sélection des propositions par le Comité scientifique : 15 mars 2023
Remise des textes par les auteur·e·s pour double évaluation : 15 janvier 2024
Retours aux auteur·e·s : 15 mars 2024
Remise des textes définitifs : 30 juin 2024 Sortie du volume : automne 2024
Éditeur
Menu Fretin, Chartres
Éditrices
Julia Csergo (université du Québec à Montréal / Chaire de recherche du Canada en patrimoine urbain)
Frédérique Desbuissons (université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne / HiCSA)
Comité scientifique
Matthieu Aussudre (historien et critique indépendant, Paris)
Benedict Beaugé (auteur gastronomique, Paris)
Michael Garval (North Carolina State University, Raleigh)
Bertrand Marqueur (université de Strasbourg)
Catherine Méneux (université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Laure Ménétrier (musée du vin de Champagne et d’Archéologie d’Épernay) Sidonie Naulin (Sciences Po Grenoble)
Denis Saillard (université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines)
Display | Print and Prejudice: Women Printmakers, 1700–1930
Dorothea Knighton (1780–1862), Landscape, early nineteenth century, lithograph, 6.4 × 9 cm
(London: V&A, E.343-2017)
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From the V&A:
Print and Prejudice: Women Printmakers, 1700–1930
Victoria & Albert Museum, 5 November 2022 — 1 May 2023
This display charts the development of women artists’ remarkable but overlooked engagement with printmaking from the 18th to early 20th centuries—from picturesque landscapes, to intimate portraits and vibrant botanical works.
Online Talk | Malcolm Baker on Canova’s Three Graces at the V&A
Antonio Canova, The Three Graces (detail), 1814–17 (London: V&A Museum, no. A.4-1994).
This evening (London time), from the V&A:
Malcolm Baker with Kira d’Alburquerque | Canova’s Three Graces and the V&A
Online and in-person, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 19 January 2023, 7pm
Malcolm Baker joins V&A curator Kira d’Alburquerque for a look at Antonio Canova’s The Three Graces (1814–17) and the campaign to save the celebrated group in the early 1990s. Baker played a significant role in the acquisition of the work for the V&A nearly three decades ago. He joins Kira d’Alburquerque to discuss the campaign to “Save the Three Graces” and how attitudes toward Canova’s sculpture have changed. The talk will be held in-person and on Zoom. Online tickets are £5. If, as a ticket-holder, you have not received a link by noon on the day, contact membershipevents@vam.ac.uk.
New Book | Heritage
Available from Blackwell’s:
James Stourton, Heritage: A History of How We Conserve Our Past (London: Apollo, 2022), 496 pages, ISBN: 978-1838933166, £40.
Heritage is all around us: millions belong to its organisations, tens of thousands volunteer for it, and politicians pay lip service to it. When the Victorians began to employ the term in something approaching the modern sense, they applied it to cathedrals, castles, villages, and certain landscapes. Since then a multiplicity of heritage labels have arisen, cultural and commercial, tangible and intangible—for just as every era has its notion of heritage, so does every social group, and every generation. In Heritage, James Stourton focuses on elements of our cultural and natural environment that have been deliberately preserved: the British countryside and national parks, buildings such as Blenheim Palace and Tattersall Castle, and the works of art inside them. He charts two heroic periods of conservation—the 1880s and the 1960s—and considers whether threats of wealth, rampant development, and complacency are similar in the present day. Heritage is both a story of crisis and profound change in public perception, and one of hope and regeneration.
James Stourton is a British art historian, a former Chairman of Sotheby’s UK, and the author of Great Houses of London, British Embassies, and the authorized biography of Kenneth Clark. Stourton frequently lectures for Cambridge University History of Art Faculty, Sotheby’s Institute of Education, and The Art Fund. In addition, he is a senior fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, and he sits on the Heritage Memorial Fund, a government panel that decides what constitutes heritage and thus what should be saved for the nation.
C O N T E N T S
Preface
Introduction
1 The First Threats
2 The Search for Arcadia
3 Assembling a National Collection
4 The Exodus of Paintings
5 Brave New World
6 Birmingham and Anti-Heritage
7 The Backlash: The Heroic Period of Conservation
8 Rescuing a City: York
9 The Sack of Bath
10 The Archaeologists
11 Beyond the Town
12 The Fall and Rise of Country Houses
13 The Enthusiasts: Canals and Railways
14 Regeneration: Mills, Housing, and Power Stations
15 Regeneration: Cities, Docklands, and Basins
16 Liverpool Story
17 Margate Sands
18 The Heritage Industry and the Lottery
19 Churches
20 Museums
21 Heritage: An Unfinished History
Acknowledgments
Endnotes
Select Bibliography
Dulwich Loans over 50 Paintings to Strawberry Hill
From the press release, via Art Daily and Richmond.gov.uk:
The Tribune, Strawberry Hill House, with loans from Dulwich Picture Gallery (Photo by Matt Chung).
Over fifty Old Master paintings on long-term loan from Dulwich Picture Gallery—and a further eight works from a private English collection—have just gone on display at Strawberry Hill House, helping to recreate the atmosphere of how the house would have appeared over 250 years ago.
As part of an ambitious project—through acquisitions and loan agreements, including the partnership with Dulwich Picture Gallery—Strawberry Hill House, the remarkable former home of the writer, antiquarian, and politician, Horace Walpole (1717–1797) is endeavouring to return some of the 6000 objects from the collection that Walpole amassed during his lifetime and, where possible, to recreate the original atmosphere of the house, when the rooms were filled with fantastic works of art.
In 1842, following Walpole’s death, the contents of the house were dispersed in a famous auction, known as the Great Sale. Since then, it has been a long-held desire of the Strawberry Hill Trust to bring as many pieces possible back to the historic villa in Twickenham. Indeed, its efforts have recently seen the acquisitions of an extraordinary portrait of Catherine de Medici and a celebrated Chinese ceramic fish tub with a macabre past. This appetite to acquire original objects and to display contemporaneous artworks has helped to create an atmosphere that would be familiar to Walpole were he alive today.
Detail of the Tribune, Strawberry Hill House, with loans from Dulwich Picture Gallery (Photo by Matt Chung).
The relationship between Strawberry Hill House and Dulwich Picture Gallery began in 2011 with the long-term loan of the portrait of Dorothy, Viscountess Townshend, ca. 1718 by Charles Jervas. Dorothy Walpole (1628–1726) was the sister of Sir Robert Walpole, Horace’s father. This portrait of his great aunt now hangs in its original position in the Great Parlour, where Walpole displayed portraits of both his family and some of his closest friends.
Among the paintings from the latest loan is a set of twenty-six British monarchs, assembled by the founder of Dulwich College, Edward Alleyn. These include Henry VIII, ca. 1618; Queen Anne Boleyn, ca. 1618; and Queen Mary, ca. 1618. These royal portraits have been hung in the Holbein Chamber, reflecting Walpole’s passion for history and its protagonists, which also influenced the overall arrangement of the artworks throughout the house. As an antiquarian and writer possessed of a vivid imagination, Walpole had a deep interest in royal and historical figures, evident throughout his collection, as well as in the designs of the house itself. The ceiling in the Holbein Chamber is a copy of the Queen’s Dressing Room in Windsor Castle, while the one in the Library is decorated with heraldic emblems, mythical beasts, coats of arms, and images of mounted crusaders, all reflecting Walpole’s various interests in the medieval period.
Dr Silvia Davoli, Strawberry Hill House Curator says: “Our collaboration with Dulwich Picture Gallery offers us the unique opportunity to borrow a substantial number of paintings that are very similar in style, period, and schools to those once collected by Horace Walpole; and it is thanks to these artworks that the rooms of Strawberry Hill finally appear to us in all their glory, much as they did in Walpole’s time.”
Attingham Courses in 2023
This year’s Attingham course offerings:
The Attingham Trust offers specialist courses for the study of historic houses and their collections based on contextual, in-situ study. Course members are drawn from different fields of the heritage sector, including curators, architects and architectural historians, conservators, academics, historic house managers, and decorative arts specialists from around the world. The clear objectives of the courses are to examine the architectural and social history of historic houses and palaces, to study their contents and collections, and to stimulate discussion on conservation, preservation, display, and interpretation. Group discussion is core to the programmes, and participants are expected to share their knowledge and expertise and engage with current debates.
Members of the Royal Collection Studies programme in the Print Room at Windsor Castle, looking at drawings by Holbein.
70th Attingham Summer School, 1–16 July 2023
Applications due by 29 January 2023
This intensive residential course will include visits to country houses in Sussex, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire. The course directors and visiting lecturers are established specialists in their fields, and the range of study is specifically chosen to address a wide curriculum with hands-on object study. In addition to architecture and planning, the focus is on the study of interiors, furniture, paintings, sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, plasterwork, textiles, and other applied arts. Limited scholarship funding is available. More detailed information can be found here»
Royal Collection Studies, 3–12 September 2023
Applications due by 12 February 2023
This annual course, a collaboration now in its 27th year with The Royal Collection, provides a ten-day immersive opportunity to study the British royal collection, one of the most outstanding collections of art and decorative art in the world. Based near Windsor, the course also examines the history of the collection and the key roles played by monarchs and their consorts over the centuries. Combining a mixture of lectures and tutorials, visits to both the occupied and unoccupied palaces in and around London, and close-up object study, Royal Collection Studies aims to give experienced professionals in the heritage sector a deeper understanding of this remarkable collection. Limited scholarship funding is available. More detailed information can be found here»
Attingham Study Programme: Andrea Palladio, Venice, and the Veneto, 18–26 September 2023
Applications due by 12 February 2023
The 2023 Study Programme will consider the impact of Palladian architecture, Venetian painting, sculpture, and decorative art on the development of the country house in Europe, Britain, and the USA. Based in and around Venice and its lagoon and accompanied by specialists in their field, the course will also consider the preservation, conservation, and ecology of Venice and its artistic legacy. More detailed information can be found here»
The London House Course, October 2023
Applications details forthcoming
This non-residential week-long course studies the development of the London house from the Renaissance to the present. It combines visits to houses with lectures by leading authorities. Progressing broadly chronologically and exploring all over London, the course takes members inside grand aristocratic buildings, smaller domestic houses, artists’ studios, and the garden suburb. More detailed information can be found here»
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