Enfilade

From the Städtischen Museen Freiburg:

La France, Zwischen Aufklärung und Galanterie: Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik​
La France au siècle des Lumières et de la galanterie: Chefs-d’œuvre de la gravure
La France, Between Enlightenment and Gallantry: Masterworks of Graphic Reproduction
Augustinermuseum, Freiburg, 24 February — 3 June 2018

Das französische Bürgertum des 18. Jahrhunderts liebte gute Unterhaltung: galant und charmant, mit Witz und scharfem Verstand. Reich bebilderte Bücher erfreuten sich größter Beliebtheit. Die Verlage druckten Romane, Gedichte und Theaterstücke mit Illustrationen und gaben Graphikserien heraus, gestochen nach Gemälden des Rokoko.

Angespornt durch die große Nachfrage schufen die Künstler der Zeit wahre druckgraphische Meisterwerke. Das Haus der Graphischen Sammlung zeigt Zeichnungen, Graphiken und illustrierte Ausgaben galanter Literatur, satirischer Romane und moralischer Fabeln aus der Schenkung des Freiburger Sammlers Josef Lienhart, darunter Radierungen von François Boucher und Bilderfindungen Antoine Watteaus.

Hélène Iehl and Felix Reusse, eds., La France—Zwischen Aufklärung und Galanterie: Meisterwerke der Druckgraphik aus der Zeit Watteaus (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2018), 192 pages, ISBN: 9783731906339, $53. [French and German Text]

Press release (6 February 2018) for the exhibitions:

Colony: Australia 1770–1861
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 15 March — 15 July 2018

Colony: Frontier Wars
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 15 March — 2 September 2018

NGV Australia will host two complementary exhibitions that explore Australia’s complex colonial history and the art that emerged during and in response to this period. Presented concurrently, these two ambitious and large-scale exhibitions, Colony: Australia 1770–1861 and Colony: Frontier Wars, offer differing perspectives on the colonisation of Australia.

Richard Browne (illustrator), Insects, 1813, p. 52 in Select Specimens from Nature of the Birds Animals &c &c of New South Wales collected and arranged by Thomas Skottowe, 1813, watercolour (Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, SAFE/PXA 555).

Featuring an unprecedented assemblage of loans from major public institutions around Australia, Colony: Australia 1770–1861 is the most comprehensive survey of Australian colonial art to date. The exhibition explores the rich diversity of art, craft, and design produced between 1770, the arrival of Lieutenant James Cook and the Endeavour, and 1861, the year the NGV was established.

The counterpoint to Colony: Australia 1770–1861, Colony: Frontier Wars presents a powerful response to colonisation through a range of historical and contemporary works by Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists dating from pre-contact times to present day. From nineteenth-century drawings by esteemed Wurundjeri artist and leader, William Barak, to the iridescent LED light boxes of Jonathan Jones, this exhibition reveals how Aboriginal people have responded to the arrival of Europeans with art that is diverse, powerful, and compelling.

Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV said: “Cook’s landing marks the beginning of a history that still has repercussions today. This two-part exhibition presents different perspectives of a shared history with unprecedented depth and scope, featuring a breadth of works never-before-seen in Victoria. In order to realise this ambitious project, we have drawn upon the expertise and scholarship of many individuals from both within and outside the NGV. We are extremely grateful to the Aboriginal Elders and advisory groups who have offered their guidance, expertise and support,” said Ellwood.

Port Jackson Painter, Half-length Portrait of Gna-na-gna-na, ca. 1790, gouache (Canberra, National Library of Australia, Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK144/D).

Joy Murphy-Wandin, Senior Wurundjeri Elder, said: “I am overwhelmed at the magnitude and integrity of this display: such work and vision is a credit to the curatorial team. The NGV is to be congratulated for providing a visual truth that will enable the public to see, and hopefully understand, First Peoples’ heartache, pain and anger. Colony: Australia 1770–1861 / Frontier Wars is a must-see for all if we are to realise and action true reconciliation.”

Charting key moments of history, life, and culture in the colonies, Colony: Australia 1770–1861 includes over 600 diverse and significant works, including examples of historical Aboriginal cultural objects, early watercolours, illustrated books, drawings, prints, paintings, sculpture, and photographs, to a selection of furniture, fashion, textiles, decorative arts, and even taxidermy specimens.

Highlights from the exhibition include a wondrous ‘cabinet of curiosities’ showcasing the earliest European images of Australian flowers and animals, including the first Western image of a kangaroo and illustrations by the talented young watercolourist Sarah Stone. Examples of early colonial cabinetmaking also feature, including the convict made and decorated Dixson chest containing shells and natural history specimens, as well as a rarely seen panorama of Melbourne in 1841 will also be on display.

Following the development of Western art and culture, the exhibition includes early drawings and paintings by convict artists such as convicted forgers Thomas Watling and Joseph Lycett; the first oil painting produced in the colonies by professional artist John Lewin; work by the earliest professional female artists, Mary Morton Allport, Martha Berkeley and Theresa Walker; landscapes by John Glover and Eugene von Guérard; photographs by the first professional photographer in Australia, George Goodman, and a set of Douglas Kilburn’s silver-plated daguerreotypes, which are the earliest extant photographs of Indigenous peoples.

Colony: Frontier Wars attests to the resilience of culture and community, and addresses difficult aspects of Australia’s shared history, including dispossession and the stolen generation, through the works of Julie Gough, Brook Andrew, Maree Clarke, Ricky Maynard, Marlene Gilson, Julie Dowling, S. T. Gill, J. W. Lindt, Gordon Bennett, Arthur Boyd, Tommy McRae, Christian Thompson, and many more.

Giving presence to the countless makers whose identities have been lost as a consequence of colonialism, Colony: Frontier Wars also includes a collection of anonymous photographic portraits and historical cultural objects, including shields, clubs, spear throwers and spears, by makers whose names, language groups and Countries were not recorded at the time of collection. Challenging global museum conventions, the exhibition will credit the subjects and makers of these cultural objects as ‘once known’ rather than ‘unknown’.

Colony: Australia 1770–1861 / Frontier Wars (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2018), 394 pages, ISBN: 9781925432503, $50.

This publication accompanies the two-part exhibition Colony: Australia 1770–1861 and Colony: Frontier Wars, which explores Australia’s shared history. Featuring works from the National Gallery of Victoria and key collections throughout Australia, it highlights the multiple perspectives on our colonial history through new scholarship and first-person statements from contemporary artists. This volume is a valuable addition to existing analyses of Australia’s complex colonial past.

Contributors
Brook Andrew, Robert Andrew, Louise Anemaat, Alisa Bunbury, Maree Clarke, Bindi Cole Chocka, Michael Cook, Carol Cooper, Julie Dowling, Amanda Dunsmore, Rebecca Edwards, Daina Fletcher, Elle Freak, Joanna Gilmour, Dr Ted Gott, Dr Julie Gough, Genevieve Grieves, Dr David Hansen, Peter Hughes, David Hurlston, Julia Jackson, Jonathan Jones, Cathy Leahy, Greg Lehman, Dr Donna Leslie, Dr Jane Lydon, John McPhee, Kimberley Moulton, Aunty Joy Murphy-Wandin AO, Richard Neville, Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax, John Packham, Steaphan Paton, Cara Pinchbeck, Elspeth Pitt, Dr Joseph Pugliese, r e a, Beckett Rozentals, Dr Lynette Russell, Myles Russell-Cook, Judith Ryan AM, Yhonnie Scarce, Caitlin Sutton, Dr Christian Thompson, James Tylor (Possum), Michael Varcoe-Cocks, Judy Watson, H. J. Wedge, Danielle Whitfield, Nat Williams, Susan van Wyk.

From the National Portrait Gallery:

Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 11 May 2018 — 10 March 2019
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, 27 April — 25 August 2019

Curated by Asma Naeem

Silhouettes—cut paper profiles—were a hugely popular and democratic form of portraiture in the 19th century, offering virtually instantaneous likenesses of everyone from presidents to those who were enslaved. The exhibition Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now explores this relatively unstudied art form by examining its rich historical roots and considering its forceful contemporary presence. The show features works from the Portrait Gallery’s extensive collection of silhouettes, such as those by Auguste Edouart, who captured the likenesses of such notable figures as John Quincy Adams and Lydia Maria Child, and at the same time, the exhibition reveals how contemporary artists are reimagining silhouettes in bold and unforgettable ways.

Highlights of the historical objects include a double-silhouette portrait of a same-sex couple and a rarely seen life-size silhouette of a nineteen-year-old enslaved girl, along with the bill of her sale from 1796. The featured contemporary artists are Kara Walker, who makes panoramic silhouettes of plantation life and African American history; Canadian artist Kristi Malakoff, who cuts paper to make life-size sculptures depicting a children’s Maypole dance; MacArthur-prize-winner Camille Utterback, who will present an interactive digital work that reacts to visitors’ shadows and movements; and Kumi Yamashita, who ‘sculpts’ light and shadow with objects to create mixed-media profiles of people who are not there. With both historical and contemporary explorations into the silhouette, Black Out reveals new pathways between our past and present, particularly with regard to how we can reassess notions of race, power, individualism, and even, our digital selves.

This exhibition is curated by Portrait Gallery Curator of Prints, Drawings and Media Arts, Asma Naeem.

Asma Naeem, Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now (Princeton University Press, 2018), 192 pages, ISBN: 978 0691180588, $45.

◊  ◊  ◊  ◊  ◊

Note (added 27 April 2019) — The posting was updated to include the Mississippi Museum of Art as a second venue.

I’m late with this posting, having only recently come to understand that the eighteenth-century provenance of the paintings (of which we have no knowledge until they appeared at auction in England in the 1720s) makes the series potentially relevant for issues of collecting and the South Sea Company, Jewish civil rights in the eighteenth century, and, of course, the reception of the Spanish Golden Age. –CH

From The Frick:

Zurbarán’s Jacob and His Twelve Sons: Paintings from Auckland Castle
The Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas, 17 September 2017 — 7 January 2018
The Frick Collection, New York, 31 January — 22 April 2018

Curated by Susan Grace Galassi, Mark Roglán, Amanda Dotseth, and Edward Payne

In collaboration with the Meadows Museum, Dallas, Texas, and The Auckland Project, County Durham, England, The Frick Collection has organized an exhibition of Jacob and His Twelve Sons, an ambitious series of thirteen paintings that depict over life-size figures from the Old Testament. On loan from Auckland Castle, the works by the Spanish Golden Age master Francisco de Zurbaran (1598–1664) have never before traveled to the United States. They were first presented at the Meadows Museum in the fall of 2017, and are on view at The Frick Collection from January 31 through April 22, 2018. In preparation for this American tour, these important seventeenth-century Spanish paintings, dating from the 1640s, have undergone a year-long in-depth technical analysis in the conservation department at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, the most extensive study of the series to date.

The iconography of Zurbarán’s remarkable series is derived from the ‘Blessings of Jacob’ in Chapter 49 of the Book of Genesis, a poem that has significance for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. On his deathbed, Jacob called together his sons, who would become the founders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. He bestowed on each a blessing, which foretold their destinies and those of their tribes. Jacob’s prophecies provide the basis for the manner in which the figures are represented in Zurbarán’s series. For his compositions, the artist drew inspiration from northern European prints.

The series was likely intended for export to the New World. In seventeenth-century Spain, it was commonly believed that indigenous peoples of the Americas were descended from the so-called ‘lost tribes of Israel’. The paintings, however, did not come to light until the 1720s in England when they appeared at auction and were purchased by a Jewish merchant. In 1756 they were acquired by Richard Trevor, Bishop of Durham, a supporter of Jewish rights. Trevor hung them in the dining room at Auckland Castle, where they have remained for over 250 years. A two-year restoration of Auckland Castle presents this extraordinary study and exhibition opportunity.

Comments Frick Director Ian Wardropper, “We are thrilled to collaborate with Auckland Castle and the Meadows Museum on the first North American showing of Francisco de Zurbarán’s extraordinary series Jacob and His Twelve Sons. The technical analysis carried out at the Kimbell has greatly enriched our understanding of the master’s methods, while catalogue essays commissioned for the show explore the works in historical, cultural, and religious contexts. The sheer visual power and rich narrative content of this series will draw visitors in and will be beautifully complemented by the Frick’s strong holdings in Spanish art, which include paintings by Velázquez and Murillo—Zurbarán’s Sevillian contemporaries—as well as by El Greco and Goya.”

Zurbarán’s Jacob and His Twelve Sons: Paintings from Auckland Castle has been organized by Susan Grace Galassi, Senior Curator, The Frick Collection; Mark A. Roglan, Director of the Meadows Museum; Amanda Dotseth, Meadows/Mellon/Prado Fellow at the Meadows Museum; and Edward Payne, Senior Curator, Spanish Art, The Auckland Project, County Durham, England.

Susan Grace Galassi, Edward Payne, and Mark Roglán, eds., Zurbarán: Jacob and His Twelve Sons, Paintings from Auckland Castle (Seattle: Lucia Marquand, 2017), 136 pages, ISBN: 978 0998093024, $45.