Enfilade

Sweden Nationalmuseum Acquires Self-Portrait by Périn-Salbreux

Posted in museums by Editor on March 10, 2023

From the press release (1 March 2023) . . .

Self portrait of the artist looking out at the viewer.

Lié-Louis Périn-Salbreux, Self-Portrait, ca. 1800–10, black crayon, stumped and elevated with white crayon, on paper, 26.5 × 22 cm (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum NMB 2819; photo by Anna Danielsson).

Nationalmuseum has acquired a self-portrait by Lié-Louis Périn-Salbreux, a French miniaturist. The piece is one of the artist’s later works and, unlike many of his other self-portraits, is unusually modest and largely free from affectation. Périn was heavily influenced by the Swedish artist Peter Adolf Hall and enjoyed his greatest success during the years immediately before and after the French Revolution.

Lié-Louis Périn-Salbreux (1753–1817) was born in Reims, the son of a wool manufacturer. At the age of 19, he arrived in Paris to be a pupil in the studio of Jean-Baptiste Vien. By the following year, 1773, he had already been admitted to the academy of fine arts as a student, as Vien was the academy’s director. There, Périn encountered other influential artists, including Alexander Roslin, the Swedish-born portrait painter. His friendship with Roslin was to prove crucial to his future success, giving him access to several high-ranking clients, including members of the royal family, of whom Périn painted small, intimate portraits in oils. But it was as a miniature portraitist that Périn was to make his name. His training in this art form was acquired privately rather than at the academy, and the best-known of his teachers was Louis Marie Sicardi.

Roslin was generous with his support, not only referring clients but also commissioning Périn to paint portraits of Roslin himself and his wife, Marie Suzanne Giroust, which are now in the Nationalmuseum collection. The miniaturist also painted other family members, including Roslin’s daughter-in-law Adélaïde and grandson Abraham—a portrait acquired by Nationalmuseum fairly recently. What was more, Roslin entrusted Périn with creating miniature replicas of Roslin’s own oil portraits. Quite frequently, clients simply wanted a reduced version of their existing portrait, and it fell to Roslin’s younger colleague to carry out the job. One such example is a miniature replica of Roslin’s pastel portrait of the ill-fated Crown Prince Louis. Throughout the 1780s, Périn enjoyed a productive and successful career as a miniaturist without being elected to the academy. When the art world became more democratic during the Revolutionary period, he was able to exhibit at the Salon for eight years from 1791.

Périn soon adopted the free style of Swedish miniaturist Peter Adolf Hall, with its vibrating brushwork, and through Roslin he made direct contact with Hall. Like Hall, Périn employed elegant accents in the form of clothing and draperies. Both also liked to place their models in natural or parkland settings. However, Périn’s depiction of the models’ faces was more affected, with distinctive, almond-shaped eyes. Like Hall, Périn suffered when his wealthy clients emigrated during the French Revolution. As a result of monetary depreciation, Périn lost his capital and left Paris in 1799 to take charge of his family’s woollen mill in Reims. The newly married artist appended his wife’s maiden surname, Salbreux, to his own. Back in his hometown, he continued working as a portraitist, but mainly in oils and pastels. Hence his choice of technique for the self-portrait in black crayon, drawn sometime between 1800 and 1810, which was recently acquired by Nationalmuseum. Over many years, Périn produced self-portraits using various techniques, both in oils and in miniature format. These were often somewhat pretentious, indicating that the artist had a good conceit of himself, but in this relatively late work he takes a more restrained approach. The image is drawn with fine gradations in black crayon, stumped with elevations in white. Given the palpably graphic nature of the work, it is not surprising that it later provided the basis for an engraving by Henri-Joseph Dubouchet, many years after Périn’s death.

“In this sensitive self-portrait by Lie-Louis Perin-Salbreux, we see an artist with no great pretensions, with a gentle, understanding expression. This new acquisition joins Nationalmuseum’s collection of self-portraits by miniaturists, which is the only one of its kind in the world. So we are delighted to put this significant artwork on display in the Treasury,” said Magnus Olausson, director of collections.

Nationalmuseum receives no state funds with which to acquire design, applied art and artwork; instead the collections are enriched through donations and gifts from private foundations and trusts. This acquisition has been made possible by a generous donation from the Hjalmar and Anna Wicander Foundation.

Exhibition | Pierre Varignon (1654–1722)

Posted in exhibitions by Editor on March 9, 2023

Now on view at the Mazarin Library in Paris:

Pierre Varignon (1654–1722): Pratique et transmission des mathématiques à l’aube des Lumières
Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, 18 January — 15 April 2023

Curated by Sandra Bella, Jeanne Peiffer, and Patrick Latour

La carrière de Pierre Varignon, né à Caen en 1654 et mort à Paris en 1722, s’articule essentiellement autour de ses activités d’enseignant et d’académicien. Titulaire de la première chaire de mathématiques de l’Université de Paris, établie au Collège Mazarin dès l’ouverture de celui-ci en 1688, il fut aussi lecteur au Collège royal à partir de 1706, et contribua ainsi à la formation de nombreux savants et ingénieurs. L’Académie des sciences, dont il devint membre en novembre 1688 et au sein de laquelle il joua un rôle important, lui procura par ailleurs un cadre privilégié pour ses recherches, en facilitant leur diffusion à travers les périodiques académiques (Mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences et Journal des savants).

En tant que géomètre, Varignon a su reconnaître le pouvoir d’innovation de l’analyse leibnizienne, dont il fut en France l’un des premiers défenseurs. Mais son activité scientifique se déploie sur de plus amples territoires. Sa carrière est encadrée par deux ouvrages, le Projet d’une nouvelle mechanique, qui lui ouvre en 1687 les portes du monde savant, et la Nouvelle mecanique ou statique, publiée de manière posthume en 1725. De fait ses apports à la mécanique sont aussi décisifs que variés, tant dans ses aspects théoriques (transposition en termes analytiques leibniziens des lois de la dynamique newtonienne, unification de la statique, travaux sur les forces centrales…) que dans ses applications pratiques.

Savant presque « ordinaire » à l’aube des Lumières, sans laisser d’œuvre aussi conséquente que certains de ses contemporains et correspondants européens comme Leibniz (1646–1716), Newton (1643–1727) ou encore les frères Jacques (1654–1705) et Jean (1667–1748) Bernoulli, Varignon contribue néanmoins, par son enseignement et ses travaux, à la constitution d’une tradition d’application des mathématiques et au développement de la mécanique analytique.

Commissariat
Sandra Bella (Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire SPHere)
Jeanne Peiffer (Centre Alexandre Koyré)
Patrick Latour (Bibliothèque Mazarine)

Exhibition | Crafting Worldviews: Art and Science in Europe, 1500–1800

Posted in exhibitions by Editor on March 9, 2023

Set of 24 Microscope Slides (signed: “AYpelaar & comp”), Netherlands, ca. 1808–11, brass, glass, ivory, mahogany, natural specimens, and a handwritten inscription in brown ink (Yale Peabody Museum, The Lentz Collection).

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

From the press release for the exhibition:

Crafting Worldviews: Art and Science in Europe, 1500–1800
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 17 February — 25 June 2023

Organized by Jessie Park and Paola Bertucci

The Yale University Art Gallery presents Crafting Worldviews: Art and Science in Europe, 1500–1800, an exhibition that showcases nearly 100 objects from across Yale University’s collections, including the Gallery, the Yale Peabody Museum, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Lewis Walpole Library, as well as the collection of Thomas Lentz, Professor Emeritus of Cell Biology at the Yale University School of Medicine. Co-organized by Jessie Park, the Nina and Lee Griggs Assistant Curator of European Art, and Paola Bertucci, Associate Professor, History of Science and Medicine Program at Yale University and Curator of the History of Science and Technology Division, Yale Peabody Museum, Crafting Worldviews examines the inseparable relationship among art, science, and European colonialism from the 16th through the 18th century—an era of voyage, trade, and Europe’s territorial dominance on a global scale. The objects included reveal histories of invention and appropriation, consumption and exploitation, collaboration and conflict.

The works featured in this multidisciplinary exhibition cross the modern-day boundaries of art and science and range from the everyday, such as books, maps, globes, drafting tools, microscopes, playing cards, and sundials, to the more unusual, such as a hand-cranked model of the solar system, an automaton clock, and anatomical figures. Crafted from both locally and globally obtained materials, including brass, ivory, mahogany, and ebony, these objects are remarkable not just for their exquisite design but also their intricate construction. Together, they illuminate the role that art and science have played in shaping Europeans’ understanding of the world and their place within it.

Pocket Globe with a Case (signed: “LANE’s Improved GLOBE | London”), England, ca. 1783–1803, hand-colored gores and steel; case: shagreen and brass (The Lentz Collection, on loan to the Yale Peabody Museum).

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

The exhibition also addresses the intellectual, artistic, and scientific foundations of European colonialism, whose legacy continues in the present. According to Jessie Park, “In our current age of reckoning with racism and exploitation, we found it imperative to call our attention to the foundations of such forms of injustice. Visitors will encounter not only objects of noteworthy craftsmanship but also the realities of their production and consumption in the era of colonialism, which laid the groundwork for ongoing discrimination.”

Paola Bertucci notes that, for her, the exhibition “is a dream come true. I’ve always wanted to display scientific instruments to tell stories that we don’t typically associate with science. Early modern scientific instruments are usually presented in art museums as intriguing marvels. I was eager to emphasize instead the role of these objects in shaping European taste, everyday life, and a sense of superiority toward other cultures.”

Portable Sundial with a Compass (signed: “Butterfield AParis”), France, ca. 1690, silver, glass, and blued steel (The Lentz Collection, on loan to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History).

The exhibition is thematically divided into six sections. Serving as an introduction to the exhibition, “Voyages of Conquest” details the colonization of new lands through oceanic navigation, foregrounding objects such as the sextant, octant, compass, and theodolite as tools of power and dominance. Building on this introductory section is “Workshops of Power,” which explores how colonialism impacted and shaped the manufacture of both scientific instruments and everyday items made by skilled artisans. “Clockwork Cosmologies” features a variety of geared mechanisms—real and imagined—such as watches, astrolabes, and mills, to examine the ways in which Europeans visualized an orderly universe, measured time, or promoted colonial projects. “Consuming Science,” which presents the role of science in the education and social life of the elites, includes objects like tobacco pipes, shagreen-covered microscopes, and electrical machines made of mahogany. “Bodies of Nature” showcases anatomical illustrations, books on natural history, and other objects to address how scholars regarded scientific research as a hunt for the secrets of nature. Finally, “Worlds Seen and Unseen” examines the ways in which contemporary stereotypes about non-European worlds were articulated in portrayals of nature and people from Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

To assist the co-curators in sensitively addressing the topics presented in the exhibition, the Gallery formed an advisory committee. Members included Salwa Abdussabur (Founder and Creative Director, Black Haven), Marisa Bass (Professor, History of Art, Yale University), Adrienne L. Childs (Adjunct Curator at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., and independent scholar), Meleko Mokgosi (Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Painting/Printmaking, Yale School of Art), Ayesha Ramachandran (Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, Yale University), Romita Ray (Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, History of Architecture, Syracuse University), and Carolyn Roberts (Assistant Professor, History of Science and History of Medicine, and African American Studies, Yale University). Their insights were crucial for shaping this project.

New Book | Birth Figures

Posted in books by Editor on March 9, 2023

From The University of Chicago Press:

Rebecca Whiteley, Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2023), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-0226823126, $49.

book coverThe first full study of ‘birth figures’ and their place in early modern knowledge-making.

Birth figures are printed images of the pregnant womb, always shown in series, that depict the variety of ways in which a fetus can present for birth. Historian Rebecca Whiteley coined the term and here offers the first systematic analysis of the images’ creation, use, and impact. Whiteley reveals their origins in ancient medicine and explores their inclusion in many medieval gynecological manuscripts, focusing on their explosion in printed midwifery and surgical books in Western Europe from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. During this period, birth figures formed a key part of the visual culture of medicine and midwifery and were widely produced. They reflected and shaped how the pregnant body was known and treated. And by providing crucial bodily knowledge to midwives and surgeons, birth figures were also deeply entangled with wider cultural preoccupations with generation and creativity, female power and agency, knowledge and its dissemination, and even the condition of the human in the universe. Birth Figures studies how different kinds of people understood childbirth and engaged with midwifery manuals, from learned physicians to midwives to illiterate listeners. Rich and detailed, this vital history reveals the importance of birth figures in how midwifery was practiced and in how people, both medical professionals and lay readers, envisioned and understood the mysterious state of pregnancy.

Rebecca Whiteley is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London.

C O N T E N T S

List of Illustrations
A Note on Terminology

Introduction: Picture Pregnancy

Part I: Early Printed Birth Figures, 1540–1672
1  Using Images in Midwifery Practice
2  Pluralistic Images and the Early Modern Body

Part II: Birth Figures as Agents of Change, 1672–1751
3  Visual Experiments
4  Visualizing Touch and Defining a Professional Persona

Part III: The Birth Figure Persists, 1751–1774
5  Challenging the Hunterian Hegemony

Conclusion

Color Plates
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

New Book | Phenomena: Doppelmayr’s Celestial Atlas

Posted in books by Editor on March 9, 2023

From The University of Chicago Press:

Giles Sparrow, with a foreword by Martin Rees, Phenomena: Doppelmayr’s Celestial Atlas (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-0226824116, $65.

Lavishly illustrated volume revealing the intricacies of a 1742 map of the cosmos.

The expansive and intricate Atlas Coelestis, created by Johann Doppelmayr in 1742, set out to record everything known about astronomy at the time, covering constellations, planets, moons, comets, and more, all rendered in exquisite detail. Through stunning illustrations, historical notes, and scientific explanations, Phenomena contextualizes Doppelmayr’s atlas and creates a spectacular handbook to the heavens.

Phenomena begins by introducing Doppelmayr’s life and work, placing his extraordinary cosmic atlas in the context of discoveries made in the Renaissance and Enlightenment and highlighting the significance of its publication. This oversized book presents thirty beautifully illustrated and richly annotated plates, covering all the fundamentals of astronomy—from the dimensions of the solar system to the phases of the moon and the courses of comets. Each plate is accompanied by expert analysis from astronomer Giles Sparrow, who deftly presents Doppelmayr’s references and cosmological work to a modern audience. Each plate is carefully deconstructed, isolating key stars, planets, orbits, and moons for in-depth exploration. A conclusion reflects on the development of astronomy since the publication of the Atlas and traces the course of the science up to the present day. Following the conclusion is a timeline of key discoveries from ancient times onward along with short biographies of the key players in this history.

Giles Sparrow is an author, editor, and consultant specializing in popular science, astronomy, and space technology. His books include The Stargazer’s Handbook, Physics in Minutes: 200 Key Concepts Explained in an Instant and The Cosmic Gallery: The Most Beautiful Images of the Universe.

 

New Book | Seventeenth-Century Water Gardens

Posted in books by Editor on March 8, 2023

From Oxbow Books:

Stephen Wass, Seventeenth-Century Water Gardens and the Birth of Modern Scientific Thought in Oxford: The Case of Hanwell Castle (Oxford: Windgather Press, 2022), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1914427169, £40.

book coverBased on a decade of archaeological investigation and historical research, this book tells the story of the Copes of Hanwell Castle in north Oxfordshire and the creation of a garden with links to the development of scientific thinking in Oxford in the late seventeenth century. New research using Robert Plot’s Natural History of Oxfordshire as a starting point has uncovered details of a remarkable family and their rise and tragic downfall, their social circle, that included some great names in the development of early scientific thinking, and their garden that in effect became a place dedicated to the wonders of technology. The complex tale weaves together the activities of a royalist agent, Richard Allestree, a prodigious musician, Thomas Baltzar, John Claridge, a Hanwell Shepherd with a penchant for weather forecasting, and Sir Anthony Cope who in an atmosphere of secrecy and distrust began to gather together a community that eventually was named by Plot as The New Atlantis, a reference to a book published earlier in the century by Sir Francis Bacon in which he suggests a model for a Utopian science-focused society.

The book also chronicles the programme of archaeological excavation that has uncovered several unusual garden features and, most significantly of all, describes in detail the unique collection of seventeenth-century terracotta garden urns, an assemblage that is unparalleled in post-medieval archaeology. This collection was destroyed in a single episode of vandalism around 1675 and has been preserved in deeply buried deposits of mud and silt. Their analysis and reconstruction is opening new insights into the decorative schemes of seventeenth-century gardens. There is coverage of other gardens of the period and their surviving features as well as an examination of early science and how gardens impacted on its development in many ways.

Stephen Wass completed his MA in historical archaeology at the University of Leicester and then established himself as a freelance consultant specialising in historic gardens. Much of his work has been for the National Trust including major sites such as Chastleton House, Packwood House, Croft Castle, and Stowe Landscape Gardens. The current volume arises from a programme of doctoral research at the University of Oxford.

C O N T E N T S

Preface: Robert Plot and Sir Anthony Cope

1  Introduction
• The Study of Gardens in Theory and Practice
• Hanwell: Geology, Geography, Archaeology, and History

2  The Sixteenth Century
• William Cope and the Building of Hanwell House
• The Origins of Early Modern Water Gardens
• Water Gardens in the Sixteenth Century

3  The Seventeenth Century
• Continental Engineers and Their Influence
• The Copes in Ascendancy
• Walter Cope’s Water Maze
• Francis Bacon, Gardening, and The New Atlantis
• Thomas Bushell and the Enstone Marvels
• Other Early Seventeenth-Century Water Gardens

4  At Hanwell House
• The Archaeology of the Gardens, 1600–1660
• Sir Anthony Cope, the Fourth Baronet
• Sir Anthony Cope in His Social Setting
• Hanwell, Cope, and Plot
• Sir Anthony’s Companions
• The Archaeology of the Gardens, 1660–1675
• Reconstructing the House of Diversion
• The Hanwell Pots and Other Finds

5  The End of it All
• The Aftermath, the Family and Estate after 1675
• The Archaeology of the Gardens from 1675 to the Present Day

6  Oxford, Science, and Gardening
• Oxford, Hanwell, and Early Scientific Thinking
• Gardens and Science
• The Tangley Mystery and Hanwell as the New Atlantis

Conclusions

New Book | Thomas White (c. 1736–1811)

Posted in books by Editor on March 8, 2023

From Oxbow Books:

Deborah Turnbull and Louise Wickham, Thomas White (c. 1736–1811): Redesigning the Northern British Landscape (Oxford: Windgather Press, 2021), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1914427008, £40 / $55.

Book coverThis volume aims to restore the reputation of Thomas White, who in his time was as well respected as his fellow landscape designers Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton. By the end of his career, White had produced designs for at least 32 sites across northern England and over 60 in Scotland. These include nationally important designed landscapes in Yorkshire such as Harewood House, Sledmere Hall, Burton Constable Hall, Newby Hall, and Mulgrave Castle, as well as Raby Castle in Durham, Belle Isle in Cumbria, and Brocklesby Hall in Lincolnshire. He had a vital role in the story of how northern English designed landscapes evolved in the 18th century. The book focuses on White’s known commissions in England and sheds further light on the work of other designers such as Brown and Repton, who worked on many of the same sites. White set up as an independent designer in 1765, having worked for Brown from 1759, and his style developed over the next thirty years. Never merely a ‘follower of Brown’, as he is often erroneously described, White was admired for his designs, which influenced the later, more informal styles of the picturesque movement. The improvement plans he produced for his clients demonstrate his surveying and artistic skills. These plans were working documents but at the same time works of art in their own right. Over 60 of his beautifully-executed coloured plans survive as a testament to the value his clients placed on them. This book makes available for the first time over 90% of the known plans and surveys by White for England. Also included are plans by White’s contemporaries, together with later maps, estate surveys, and contemporary illustrations to understand which parts of improvement plans were implemented.

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgements
List of Figures
Abbreviations

1  Thomas White in Context
2  Early Career and Working with Brown
3  First Commissions, 1765–68
4  Established Landscape Designer, 1769–80
5  Later Career, 1781–1803
6  Getting the Commission
7  His Landscape Designs
8  Working Methods
9  Arboricultural Activities
10  Thomas White in Scotland by Christopher Dingwall
11  White’s Sites in England

Bibliography
Index

 

New Book | Humphry Repton: Designing the Landscape Garden

Posted in books by Editor on March 8, 2023

From Rizzoli:

John Phibbs, with photographs by Joe Cornish, Humphry Repton: Designing the Landscape Garden (New York: Rizzoli, 2021), 288 pages, ISBN: ‎ 978-0847863549, $75.

book coverWidely acknowledged as the last great landscape designer of the eighteenth century, Humphry Repton created work that survives as a bridge between the picturesque theory of Capability Brown and the pastoral philosophy of Frederick Law Olmsted. By turns inspired by and in opposition to the grandeur of Brown’s estates, Repton’s contribution to the British landscape encompassed a tremendous range, from subtle adjustments that emphasized the natural features of the countryside to deliberate interventions that challenged the notion of the picturesque. This remarkable book explores 15 of Repton’s most celebrated landscapes—from the early maturity of his gardens at Courteenhall and Mulgrave Castle to more adventurous landscapes at Stanage, Brightling, and Endsleigh that would point the way toward how we envision parkland today. With photography by Joe Cornish commissioned specially for the book, and including reproductions of key illustrations and plans for garden design from the famous red books that shed light on Repton’s vision and process, this book illuminates some of Britain’s most beautiful gardens and parks—and the masterful mind behind their creation.

John Phibbs is a renowned garden historian with more than 30 years’ experience in the management and restoration of historic landscapes. He is the author of Capability Brown: Designing the English Landscape. Joe Cornish is an award-winning landscape photographer and an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, with a studio and gallery in Yorkshire.

ASECS 2023, St. Louis

Posted in conferences (to attend) by Editor on March 7, 2023

View of the St. Louis with the Arch.

From ASECS:

2023 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
Hyatt Regency at the Arch, St. Louis, 9–11 March 2023

The 53rd annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies takes place in St. Louis. HECAA will be represented by the Anne Schroder New Scholars’ Session, chaired by Emily Casey and Amy Torbert, on Friday, starting at 11.30am. In addition to delivering the presidential address on Saturday, Wendy Roworth will chair a tribute session in honor of Christopher Johns on Thursday afternoon. To close out the conference, HECAA has organized a happy hour for Saturday evening. A selection of 18 additional panels is included below (of the 179 sessions scheduled, many others will, of course, interest HECAA members). For the full slate of offerings, see the program.

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

T H U R S D A Y ,  9  M A R C H  2 0 2 2

Westminster Abbey Revisited
Thursday, 8:00–9:30am, Sterling 9
Chair: Bradford MUDGE, University of Colorado Denver
1. Cedric REVERAND, University of Wyoming, “Westminster Abbey’s Invisible Architect”
2. Laura ENGEL, Duquesne University, “‘She will not allow one to look elsewhere’: Queen Elizabeth I, Westminster Abbey, and the Uncanny Seduction of Wax”
3. David VINSON, Auburn University, “(Re)Making Major John André: Britain’s Revisionary Strategies for Masking Wartime Failures”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

All Things Great and Small: Miniatures and Monstrosities
Thursday, 8:00–9:30am, Sterling 8
Chair: Daniella BERMAN, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
1. Michelle MOSELEY-CHRISTIAN, Virginia Tech, “Miniature, Microscopy & Magnification: Scale and the Dutch Luxury Dollhouse during the Long 18th Century”
2. Katherine CALVIN, Kenyon College, “Palmyra’s Arch, Reproduced”
3. Blythe C. SOBOL, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, “Colonialism in Miniature: John Smart’s Journey to India, 1785–1795”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Plagier, citer, détourner / Plagiarizing, (Mis)quoting, and Rewriting (Society for Eighteenth-Century French Studies)
Thursday, 9:45–11:15, Sterling 2
Chair: Rudy Le MENTÉOUR, Bryn Mawr College
1. David EICK, Grand Valley State University, “The Original Sin of the Dictionnaire de Trévoux (1704)”
2. Kaitlyn QUARANTA, Brown University, “Between Citation and Censorship: Abridging the Encyclopédie
3. Ryan BROWN, University of Chicago, “18th-Century ‘Celebrity Autobiography’ and the Plague of Plagiarism: The Case of Voltaire’s Commentaire historique
4. Anna RIGG, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Art Criticism as Anecdote: Souvenirs of Sophie Arnould”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Asia
Thursday, 9:45–11:15, Sterling 8
Chair: Susan SPENCER, University of Central Oklahoma, Emerita
1. Yuefan WANG, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, “Landscape into Gardens, Gardens into Landscape: Poetry of the Banana Garden Women in Late-Seventeenth-Century Hangzhou”
2. Laura NUFFER, Colby College, “Beasts and Brides: Tales of Otherkind Marriage in Early-Modern Japanese Trosseaus”
3. Han CHEN, Penn State University, “Trading Aesthetics in the Early 18th Century: The Eccleston Screen and the Transcultural Visual Trope”
4. Lina JIANG, Fordham University, “Naturalizing the ‘Chinese Lady’ in ‘Her New English Garb’: Thomas Percy’s Translation of the Chinese Fiction Hau Kiou Choaan (1761)”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Special Session, Lightning Round: ‘Sex Objects’ and Unstable Luxury
Thursday, 9:45–11:15, Sterling 9
Chair: Joelle DEL ROSE, College for Creative Studies
1. Mary PEACE, Sheffield Hallam University, “The Divan Club and the Contradictions of Enlightenment”
2. George WILLIAMS, Independent Scholar, “Geisha and Yuna: Bathhouse Culture, Desire, and the Shifting Roles of Women during the Kensai Reforms of the Late 18th Century’”
3. Elena DEANDA-CAMACHO, Washington College, “Condoms and Dildos in 18th-Century Europe: Spain and France”
4. Michelle LYONS-MCFARLAND, Case Western Reserve University, “The Sexiest Silver Ever: Valuation and ‘Virtue’ in Defoe’s Roxana

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Poetry and the Arts
Thursday, 9:45–11:15, Mills 5
Chair: Amy TORBERT, Saint Louis Art Museum
1. Chip BRADLEY, University of California, Davis, “Phillis Wheatley Peters’ Desire to Look: Ekphrasis and Lyric Interiority”
2. Johannah KING-SLUTZKY, Columbia University, “Poetic Energy and Literature as a Response to Resource Scarcity in the Long 18th Century”
3. Elizabeth GIARDINA, University of California, Davis, “The Portland Vase and the Mysterious Initiations of Erasmus Darwin’s Visual Poetics”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Roundtable: Performing Challenges to Imperialism
Thursday, 11:30–1:00, Sterling 6
Chair: Kristina STRAUB, Carnegie Mellon University
1. Jean I. MARSDEN, University of Connecticut, “Adaptation and Imperialism”
2. Allison CARDON, College of Wooster, “Samuel Foote’s Nabob and Imperialism Turned Inward”
3. Monica Anke HAHN, Community College of Philadelphia, “Tinsel and Toy Theaters: Decolonizing the British Empire at Home”
4. Lisa A. FREEMAN, University of Illinois Chicago, “Race and the Failures of Imperial Imagination in Edward Young’s The Revenge

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Rome, Italian Art, and the Catholic Enlightenment: A Tribute to Christopher M.S. Johns (Presidential Session)
Thursday, 4:30–6:00, Regency E
Chair: Wendy Wassyng ROWORTH, University of Rhode Island
1. Carole PAUL, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Rome and the Motivations for Public Art Museums”
2. Jeffrey COLLINS, Bard Graduate Center, “Seeing is Believing: Marchionni and Bergondi at the Crossing of Saint Peter’s”
3. Rebecca MESSBARGER, Washington University St. Louis, “Betwixt Trent and Beccaria: The Pope’s ‘Moderately Modern’ Criminal Justice Reforms”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Indigenous, Black, Asian, and Mixed-Race Architects and Builders in the Americas
Thursday, 4:30–6:00, Sterling 5
Chair: Luis Gordo PELÁEZ, California State University, Fresno, and Juan Luis BURKE, University of Maryland
1. Luis J. CUESTA, Universidad Iberoamericana, “Labor Force and the Architect’s Self Image: Indios, Mestizos and Criollos during New Spain’s Town Planning under the Bourbon Reform. The Case of ‘D. Ignacio Castera, maestro de architectura’”
2. Cody BARTEET, University of Western Ontario, “Maya Masons, Carpenters, and Masters in 18th-Century Yucatán: Pre-Contact Legacies in the Colonial Era”
3. Sabina DE CAVI, Universidade Nova, Lisboa, “Aleijadinho, creole sculptor-architect from Minas Gerais: Expressionism, Myth, and Artistic Practice in 18th-Century Brazil”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Making Knowledge in the Atlantic World
Thursday, 4:30–6:00, Mills 3
Chair: Daniella BERMAN, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
1. Sahai COUSO DIAZ, Vanderbilt University, “Antonio Parra’s Collection: Material Culture, Displays, and Trans-Atlantic Networks”
2. E. Bennett JONES, The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, “The Entire Skin of the Bird: Whooping Cranes, Indigenous Expertise, and Mark Catesby”
3. Jacob EDMOND, University of Otago, “Total Confusion: Making and Confounding Knowledge in 18th-Century Cross-Readings from the Newspaper”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Amateur Art
Chair: Katherine A. P. ISELIN, University of Missouri
Thursday, 4:30–6:00, Mills 7
1. Fiona BRIDEOAKE, American University, “Inside and Outside at A La Ronde”
2. Brittany LUBERDA, Baltimore Museum of Art, “Paper & Paste, Shell & Hair: The Bonnell Sisters and Craft”
3. Jennifer VAN HORN, University of Delaware, “Flora’s Profile: Enslavement, Resistance, and the Silhouette”
4. Andrea PAPPAS, Santa Clara University, “‘My Will and Pleasure’: Art and Enslavement in Two Massachusetts Pictorial Embroideries, 1756–1758”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

F R I D A Y ,  9  M A R C H  2 0 2 2

‘Nature Display’d’: Visualizing the Natural World
Friday, 8:00–9:30am, Mills 3
Chair: Anne Nellis RICHTER, Independent Scholar, and Melinda MCCURDY, Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
1. Elisa CAZZATO, Università Ca’ Foscari/NYU, “The Spectacle of Nature: Theatre Sets and Gardens in 18th-Century Paris”
2. Angela ESCOTT, Independent Scholar, “The Environment and Commercial Prosperity Considered in Hannah Cowley’s Scottish Village (1787 and 1813) and Oliver Goldsmith’s Deserted Village (1770)”
3. Dani EZOR, Southern Methodist University, “A Colonial Arboretum: Tropical Hardwoods at the Toilette Table in the French Caribbean and France”
4. Tori CHAMPION, University of St. Andrews, “Boundaries, Borders, and Women’s Naturalisms: Marie-Thérèse Reboul Vien’s Illustrations for the Histoire naturelle du Sénégal, coquillages

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

‘L’homme mêle et confond les climats’: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Anthropocene (German Society for Eighteenth Century Studies)
Friday, 9:45–11:15, Regency F
Chair: Jürgen OVERHOFF, Universität Münster
1. Tim ZUMHOF, Universität Trier, Germany, and Nicole BALZER, University of Münster, Germany, “Rousseau’s Critique of the Anthropocene and the Legacy of Enlightenment: A New Materialist Perspective”
2. Célia ABELE, Princeton University, “‘J’aperçois une manufacture de bas’: Industry, Colonies, and Nature in Rousseau’s ‘Seventh Promenade’”
3. Giulia PACINI, William & Mary, “Deforestation and the French Climate Literature of François-Antoine Rauch and Jean-Baptiste Rougier de la Bergerie”
4. James SWENSON, Rutgers University, “A Rediscovered Text by Rousseau on the Notion of Climate”
5. Jason KELLY, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, “Making ‘Nature’ in the Anthropocene”
6. Charlee BEZILLA, George Washington University, “L’art de ‘se circonscrire’: Rousseau on Living in the Anthropocene”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Anne Schroder New Scholars Session (HECAA)
Friday, 11:30–1:00, Sterling 9
Chair: Emily CASEY, University of Kansas, and Amy TORBERT, Saint Louis Art Museum
1. Kaitlin R. GRIMES, Auburn University, “The Metonymic Colonial Materiality of Ivory Ships in Early Modern Denmark-Norway”
2. Elisabeth (Lizzie) RIVARD, University of Virginia, “Discipline and Disorder: 18th-Century British Drawing Practice in the Age of Academies”
3. Sabina SULLIVAN, Boston College, “Pack Up Your Jewels: Beauty, Currency, and Character in the Work of Penelope Aubin”
4. Demetra VOGIATZAKI, Harvard University, “The Curious Case of Louis François Petit-Radel (1739–1818)”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

The Enlightened Body? Part I
Friday, 11:30–1:00, Sterling 5
Chair: Anne SEUL, Washington University in St. Louis
1. Amelia RAUSER, Franklin & Marshall College, “Fashion, Abjection, and the Enlightened Body”
2. Eleonora DEL RICCIO, Sapienza University of Rome, “The Tabulae Anatomicae by Pietro da Cortona: A Question Still to Be Explored”
3. Jacob SIDER JOST, Dickinson College, “Medicine and Politeness in Shaftesbury’s Askemata and Soliloquy

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Presidential Session: Awards, Business Meeting, and Presidential Address
Friday, 2:45–4:15, Regency C
Wendy Wassyng ROWORTH, Professor Emerita of Art History University of Rhode Island, “Close Encounters and Stranger Things: Angelica Kaufman’s First Years in London”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

S A T U R D A Y ,  9  M A R C H  2 0 2 2

Building the 18th Century: Histories of Physical Form
Saturday, 8:00–9:30am, Sterling 3
Chair: Janet R. WHITE, UNLV School of Architecture
1. Dylan Wayne SPIVEY, University of Virginia, “Palladianism and Print: Architectural Style and Representation in 18th-Century British Architecture”
2. Julie PARK, Penn State University, “Follies and Fictions of Gothic Space in 18th-Century Landscapes”
3. Luis GORDO PELÁEZ, California State University, Fresno, “The Architecture of Cigar Making: Tobacco Industry and Infrastructure in Bourbon New Spain”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Enlightenment Afterlives, Part II
Saturday, 8:00–9:30am, Regency F
Chair: Joseph DRURY, Villanova University
1. David A. BREWER, The Ohio State University, “The Friends of English Magic”
2. Tekla BABYAK, Independent Scholar, “Christianity without Enlightenment: 19th-Century Musical Evocations of the 18th Century”
3. Steve NEWMAN, Temple University, “Haunted by the Enlightenment: Robert Burns, the Black Atlantic, and the Resources of Lyric in Shara McCallum’s No Ruined Stone”
4. Rachel HARMEYER, Rice University, “Lost in Austen: The Cinematic Afterlife of Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807)”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Off the Beaten Path: New Perspectives on the Grand Tour
Saturday, 8:00–9:30am, Sterling 8
Chair: Sarah CARTER, University of Chicago, and Lauren DISALVO, Utah Tech University
1. Megan BAKER, University of Delaware, “The Roman Genesis of a New Franco- British Masculinity”
2. Dominic BATE, Brown University, “Coming Home: The Artistic Education of a Catholic Jacobite in the Papal States”
3. Peter DEGABRIELE, Mississippi State University, “Lady Mary Steals Some Antiquities: The Legacy of Cultural Imperialism”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Inventing the Global and Discovering the World: Global Imagination, Part II
Saturday, 2:00–3:30, Mills 5
Chair: Idolina HERNANDEZ, Lindenwood University, and Heesoo CHO, Washington University in Saint Louis
1. Matt J. SCHUMANN, Bowling Green State University, “Persia in the European ‘World View’, ~1720–1747”
2. Amy FREUND, Southern Methodist University, “Killing Crocodiles at Versailles: Louis XV’s ‘Foreign Hunt’ Paintings”
3. Sarah R. COHEN, University at Albany, SUNY, “Globalizing the Caribbean for the European Dessert Table”

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

HECAA Happy Hour
Saturday, 5:00–8:00pm, Sterling

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

Note (added 8 March 2023) — The original posting did not include the session on Enlightenment Afterlives or the HECAA Happy Hour.

New Book | French Suite: A Book of Essays

Posted in books by Editor on March 7, 2023

Distributed by The University of Chicago Press:

Michael Fried, with an introduction by Stephen Bann, French Suite: A Book of Essays (London: Reaktion Books, 2022), 356 pages, ISBN ‏: ‎ 978-1789146042, $45.

French Suite examines a range of important French painters and two writers, Baudelaire and Flaubert, from the brothers Le Nain in the mid-seventeenth century to Manet, Degas, and the Impressionists in the later nineteenth century. A principal theme of Michael Fried’s essays is a fundamental concern of his throughout his career: the relationship between painting and the beholder. Fried’s typically vivid and strongly argued essays offer many new readings and unexpected insights, examining both familiar and lesser-known French artistic and literary works.

Art critic, art historian, literary critic-historian, and poet Michael Fried is the J. R. Herbert Boone Emeritus Professor of Humanities and the History of Art at Johns Hopkins University. His many books include The Moment of Caravaggio.

Stephen Bann, CBE, is professor emeritus of the history of art and a senior research fellow at Bristol University. His recent books include Distinguished Images: Prints in the Visual Economy of Nineteenth-Century France and Stonypath Days: Letters between Ian Hamilton Finlay and Stephen Bann, 1970–72.

C O N T E N T S

Preface
Introduction by Stephen Bann

1  Being Seen and Seeing: Thoughts on the Le Nains
2  Hubert Robert and the ‘Pastoral’ Conception of Painting
3  The Hand on the Page: Three Works by Théodore Géricault
4  Painting Memories: On Baudelaire’s Salon of 1846
5  Facingness Meets Mindedness: Manet’s Luncheon in the Studio and Balcony
6  Degas and Antitheatricality
7  Chapter One of L’Education sentimentale as a Work of Writing
8  Corot’s Figure Paintings and the Apotheosis of Touch
9  Unknown Daubigny
10  The Moment of Impressionism
Coda: The House at Rueil

References
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Index