The Burlington Magazine, February 2025

Claude-Joseph Vernet, Shipwreck on a Rocky Coast, 1775, oil on canvas, 74 × 108 cm (Private Collection). The work and its pendant, Harbour Scene at Sunset, are identified by Yuriko Jackall as paintings acquired directly from the artist by François-Marie Ménage de Pressigny, who likely commissioned The Swing by Fragonard. In contrast to the latter, which in 1794 was valued at 400 livres, the two paintings by Vernet were valued at 4,000 livres—the most valuable paintings owned by Ménage de Pressigny.
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The long 18th century in the February issue of The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 167 (February 2025)
e d i t o r i a l
• “Cataloguing,” p. 79.
It is one of the basic responsibilities of major collections to research and publish the works of art in their care. Such projects can take many years to mature and are often abandoned because of a lack of funding or shifting institutional priorities. It might be imagined, therefore, that because of these threats and the formidable cost of producing specialist and richly illustrated books, that collection catalogues would have become an extinct species. However, happily, a close reading of this Magazine in recent months would suggest otherwise, across a wide range of media and in terms of a broad chronological span . . .
a r t i c l e s
• Lucy Wood and Timothy Stevens, “The Elder Sisters of The Campbell Sisters: William Gordon Cumming’s Patronage of Lorenzo Bartolini,” pp. 126–53.
s h o r t e r n o t i c e s
• Yuriko Jackall, “Ménage de Pressigny and His Art Collection,” pp. 157–61.
• Dyfri Williams, “Lusieri’s Mysterious Wooded Lake Identified,” pp. 161–63.
r e v i e w s
• Marjorie Trusted, Review of the exhibition Luisa Roldán: Escultora Real (Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid, 2024–25), pp. 164–66.
• Karin Hellwig, Review of the exhibition Hand in Hand: Sculpture and Colour in the Spanish Golden Age (Prado, 2024–25), pp. 166–69.
• William Whyte, Review of Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner and Jennifer Sherwood, Oxfordshire: Oxford and the South-East, The Buildings of England (Yale UP, 2023), pp. 188–89.
• Elizabeth Savage, Review of Esther Chadwick, The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2024), pp. 194–96.
Online Talk | Conserving Paper with Live Demonstration
From The Linnean Society:
John Abbott | How to Conserve 18th- and 19th-Century Paper with Live Demonstration
Online and in-person, The Linnean Society, Burlington House, 5 March 2025, 2pm
The Linnean Society takes the preservation of its collections seriously. The Society has a full-time conservator, Janet Ashdown, and an adopt-an-item programme (AdoptLINN). The Society is also incredibly fortunate in having had an experienced volunteer and retired paper conservator, John Abbott, who has been working with Janet since 2018. In the past seven years, John has conserved many illustrations within the Society Papers Collection, and in this talk, he will demonstrate how to conserve loose 18th- and early 19th-century papers. By showcasing papers in need of conservation, John will reveal the decision-making process even before the start of conservation, and then undertake a live conservation demonstration. The demonstration will cover cleaning as well as repairing paper. We will send the link for this online event two hours before it starts.
Registration is available here»
John Abbott is a retired archive conservator who worked for the National Archives and its predecessor The Public Record Office for 43 years. He was involved in the conservation and preservation of archival material including paper and parchment manuscripts, maps, plans, designs, posters, photographs, and seals. Between 1984 and 1986 John was part of a team of three (two archive conservators and one book conservator) involved in the conservation and rebinding of Great and Little Domesday books.



















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