New Book | Representing Duchess Anna Amalia’s Bildung
From Routledge:
Christina Lindeman, Representing Duchess Anna Amalia’s Bildung: A Visual Metamorphosis in Portraiture from Political to Personal in Eighteenth-Century Germany (New York: Routledge, 2017), 210 pages, ISBN: 978 147246 7386, $150.
The cultural milieu in the ‘Age of Goethe’ of eighteenth-century Germany is given fresh context in this art historical study of the noted writers’ patroness: Anna Amalia, Duchess of Weimar-Sachsen-Eisenach. An important noblewoman and patron of the arts, Anna Amalia transformed her court into one of the most intellectually and culturally brilliant in Europe; this book reveals the full scope of her impact on the history of art of this time and place. More than just biography or a patronage study, this book closely examines the art produced by German-speaking artists and the figure of Anna Amalia herself. Her portraits demonstrate the importance of social networks that enabled her to construct scholarly, intellectual identities not only for herself, but for the region she represented. By investigating ways in which the duchess navigated within male-dominated institutions as a means of advancing her own self-cultivation—or Bildung—this book demonstrates the role accorded to women in the public sphere, cultural politics, and historical memory. Cumulatively, Christina Lindeman traces how Anna Amalia, a woman from a small German principality, was represented as an active participant in enlightened discourses. The author presents a novel and original argument concerned with how a powerful woman used art to shape her identity, how that identity changed over time, and how people around her shaped it—an approach that elucidates the power of portraiture in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.
Christina K. Lindeman is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of South Alabama. A scholar of eighteenth-century art and material culture, she has contributed essays to edited volumes and Source.
C O N T E N T S
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Setting the Stage
2 Composing a Musical Portrait
3 Representing the Female Grand Tourist
4 The Scientific Lady in Naples
5 Materializing Anna Amalia’s Bildung
6 Anna Amalia’s Gedenktafel: The Making of an Icon
Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B
Bibliography
Index
Exhibition | Sampled Lives
Press release for the exhibition now on view at The Fitzwilliam:
Sampled Lives: Samplers from the Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 6 May 2017 — 8 April 2018
Coloured silks and metal threads, white-work, and needle lace… Over 120 beautifully embroidered samplers—some hundreds of years old—have gone on display in Cambridge in the exhibition Sampled Lives: Samplers from the Fitzwilliam Museum. Each one meticulously stitched by a girl or young woman, the samplers and accompanying book give a glimpse of past lives: from mid-17th-century English Quakers to early 20th-century school pupils. The skill employed in making them is remarkable—works by girls as young as nine years old are shown.
Very rarely seen due to their fragility and sensitivity to the light, several samplers have been newly conserved and cleaned for the show. This will be the first time so many fine examples from The Fitzwilliam’s outstanding collection of samplers have gone on display together.
The sampler was an essential part of a young woman’s education. It showed much more than just her ability with a needle and thread—it was a stitched CV, representing her competence to run a future home, or for seeking employment where such needle skills would be to her advantage. Samplers were also a work of creativity and pride, some containing hidden messages in the symbols and images used, referring to the girls’ political or religious beliefs. Many are stitched with names and ages. In some cases it is the only surviving document to record the existence of an ordinary young woman.
As the centuries progressed the sampler also became part of exercises towards literacy. Stitched prayers and odes to charity and faith adorned the fabric alongside alphabets and numerals. The displays highlight the importance of samplers as documentary evidence of past lives, revealing their education, employment, religion, family, societal status, and needlework skills. A fully- illustrated catalogue by Carol Humphrey, Honorary Keeper of Textiles, includes new high resolution photography to reveal the intricacy of the coloured silk stitches. It explores some of the personal stories that archival and genealogic research has revealed, as well as showing the evolution of different embroidery styles. It is hoped that the exhibition and book of Sampled Lives will stimulate further research, revealing more about the hidden histories of their makers.
Carol Humphrey commented: “The samplers are a stunning example of the needlework of the past and a masterclass for anyone interested in the changing fashions and styles of embroidery over the centuries. Much has changed in the study of samplers during the last thirty years or so. Now samplers can be seen as a valid means of studying the circumstances and material culture of their makers. When researched in depth, they can reveal not only personal details about an individual girl but also provide a key to family histories. We hope that visitors will enjoy discovering more about the techniques and past lives revealed in the exhibition and the book, and that further discoveries will come to light in the future.”
Carol Humphrey, Sampled Lives: Samplers from the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam Museum, 2017), 242 pages, ISBN: 978 1910731 079, £20.
New Book | Dans l’œil du connaisseur: Pierre-Jean Mariette
From PUR:
Valérie Kobi, Dans l’œil du connaisseur: Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774) et la construction des savoirs en histoire de l’art (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2017), 322 pages, ISBN: 978 27535 53149, 28€.
En partant du cas singulier du collectionneur Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774), cet ouvrage vise à mieux définir les étapes qui jalonnent la formation des connaissances en histoire de l’art au xviiie siècle et, plus largement, à questionner le rôle joué par la figure du connaisseur dans cette dynamique. En somme, il s’agit de répondre aux interrogations suivantes : sur quels éléments repose la réputation de l’amateur et comment s’organise la reconnaissance de son autorité par ses pairs ? Quels sont les instruments, matériels ou intellectuels, déployés par l’expert ? Et, finalement, sous quelles formes se présente son savoir lorsqu’il se matérialise par l’écrit ?
Dans ce but, l’identité et l’activité de Mariette se trouvent ici interrogées à travers six chapitres thématiques scindés en deux parties. La première, intitulée La naissance d’un amateur, analyse l’émergence de la figure de l’amateur à travers trois moments-clés : la constitution d’une identité, le voyage d’Italie et l’insertion de l’érudit dans la République des Lettres. La seconde, dévouée aux Savoirs mis en œuvre, examine les modalités de la divulgation scientifique, de ses modèles théoriques à ses représentations visuelles.
Plus qu’un panorama exhaustif d’une pensée savante, le développement suivi enquête sur la façon dont le livre devient, au cours du xviiie siècle, un véritable laboratoire des savoirs ; un espace privilégié où se déroule, entre amateurs, le débat qui participe à l’élaboration d’une connaissance empirique dans le domaine de l’histoire de l’art. À cet égard, la présente étude pose non seulement un regard nouveau sur l’apport de Pierre-Jean Mariette au champ historique mais elle réfléchit aussi de manière originale aux pratiques socio-culturelles et aux enjeux esthétiques qui façonnent la discipline à l’époque des Lumières.
Valérie Kobi a reçu son doctorat en histoire de l’art de l’université de Neuchâtel (Suisse). Elle a été boursière à l’Institut suisse de Rome, au Getty Research Institute et à la Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Depuis mai 2015, elle mène ses recherches postdoctorales entre Bielefeld et Weimar dans le cadre du projet Parergonale Rahmungen. Zur Ästhetik wissenschaftlicher Dinge bei Goethe.
T A B L E D E S M A T I È R E S
Remerciements
Préface de Pascal Griener
Introduction
Première partie: La naissance d’un amateur
Destinée historiographique
Un œil poli: La formation d’un amateur entre préjugés et émancipation
Cultiver les muses: Transactions érudites et collaborations scientifiques au sein de la République des Lettres
Conclusion
Seconde partie: Les savoirs mis en œuvre
Le catalogue comme modèle de connaissance
L’esprit de l’original et les protocoles de la reproduction
Mariette et Bouchardon : la rhétorique d’une amitié
Conclusion
Conclusion générale
Annexes
Bibliographie
Index
Table des illustrations
New Book | Settecento romano: Reti del Classicismo arcadico
From Viella and available from ArtBooks.com:
Beatrice Alfonzetti, ed., Settecento romano: Reti del Classicismo arcadico (Rome: Viella, 2017), 532 pages, ISBN: 978 88672 88571, 50€ / $75.
Questo libro—nato da una ricerca d’équipe composta da letterati, storici dell’architettura, dell’arte e della musica—propone per la prima volta di unificare sotto la categoria di Classicismo arcadico tutto ciò che si crea ed elabora a Roma dalla fondazione dell’Arcadia in avanti. Non valida, ad esempio, per Torino, questa estensione permette di superare le viete periodizzazioni come la divisone per secoli fra Sei e Settecento o fra il primo e il secondo Settecento; e ci consente finalmente di intravedere la continuità, tutta romana, fra l’idea del bello di Bellori, la ragione poetica di Gravina, il recupero del tragico di Alfieri e Monti, tutti attivi, dall’inizio alla fine del secolo, proprio a Roma, accanto a Mengs, Füssli, Winckelmann, David. Al centro l’Arcadia che, con le acclamazioni o iscrizioni di cardinali, principi, sovrani, letterati, artisti di passaggio o residenti a Roma, era riuscita nell’impresa di fondare una repubblica letteraria sovranazionale che guardava persino a Voltaire. Era all’avanguardia, allora, Roma nelle arti, nelle accademie, nelle biblioteche, nei teatri e nella letteratura sinora chiamata neoclassica.
C O N T E N T S
Beatrice Alfonzetti, Introduzione
Parte prima
I. Il Classicismo restaurato
• Amedeo Quondam, Roma 1672: il Classicismo restaurato. L’idea del bello e il canone delle arti secondo Bellori
Parte seconda
I. L’Arcadia e la Roma di Clemente XI
• Valentina Gallo, La Basilissa: Cristina di Svezia in Arcadia
• Javier Gutiérrez Carou, Endimione fra Alessandro Guidi e Francesco de Lemene: drammaturgia, spettacolo, struttura dei finali
• Marina Formica, Dominare il tempo. Clemente XI e i tentativi di riforma del calendario
• Simone Caputo, Il ‘teatro della festa’ nella Roma di Clemente XI
II. Il Classicismo arcadico
• Franco Piperno, Architettura e musica nella Roma del Classicismo arcadico
• Angela Cipriani, Un secolo di premiazioni in Campidoglio (1696–1795). Le quattro arti liberali in mutuo soccorso
• Nicola Badolato, Il Ciro di Pietro Ottoboni e Alessandro Scarlatti e gli allestimenti operistici romani di Filippo Juvarra
• Massimo Zammerini, Architettura e scenografia nella Roma del Settecento
• Ilaria Delsere, L’Arcadia alla corte pontificia: la collaborazione tra Ludovico Sergardi e Antonio Valeri alla Fabbrica di San Pietro (1713–1726)
• Valter Curzi, Memoria dell’antico nella pittura di storia a Roma tra Seicento e Settecento: un contributo per la revisione storico-critica del Neoclassicismo
• Silvia Tatti, L’Arcadia di Crescimbeni e il trionfo della poesia: l’incoronazione in Campidoglio del 1725
• Alviera Bussotti, La recita del Temistocle di Michele Giuseppe Morei: tra Zeno e Metastasio
• Roberto Gigliucci, Il cardinale Pietro Ottoboni tra San Filippo Neri e San Casimiro
III. L’Arcadia: una rete transnazionale
• Maurizio Campanelli, I Sermones di Giovan Battista Casti (1762–1764)
• Elodie Oriol, Mecenatismo e sviluppo delle carriere musicali: il ruolo delle famiglie Acquaviva, Stuart e Albani nella Roma settecentesca
• Piermario Vescovo, Goldoni: vacanze romane
• Rosanna Cioffi, Tra Arcadia e Neoclassicismo. Da Maratti a Mengs nel segno di Shaftesbury e Winckelmann
• Marina Caffiero, Dal monastero al salotto alla tribuna. La mediazione culturale femminile nella Roma di metà Settecento
• Beatrice Alfonzetti, Poeti italiani e stranieri nelle adunanze arcadiche
• Andrea Fabiano, Astacide Tespio ovvero Poinsinet le Noyé (le Mystifié): un librettista comico francese in Arcadia
• Franca Sinopoli, Giovanni Battista Audiffredi e la realizzazione del modello di biblioteca universale
• Antonio Rostagno, Il ‘nuovo Dante’ nella musica. Dante e Petrarca in due manoscritti romani di Nicolò Antonio Zingarelli
• Orietta Rossi Pinelli, Gli artisti stranieri a Roma nel XVIII secolo
Indice dei nomi
New Book | Empire of the Senses
Scheduled for publication this fall from Brill:
Daniela Hacke and Paul Musselwhite, eds., Empire of the Senses: Sensory Practices of Colonialism in Early America (Leiden: Brill, 2017), ISBN: 978 90043 40633, 135€ / $156.
Empire of the Senses brings together pathbreaking scholarship on the role the five senses played in early America. With perspectives from across the hemisphere, exploring individual senses and multi-sensory frameworks, the volume explores how sensory perception helped frame cultural encounters, colonial knowledge, and political relationships. From early French interpretations of intercultural touch, to English plans to restructure the scent of Jamaica, these essays elucidate different ways the expansion of rival European empires across the Americas involved a vast interconnected range of sensory experiences and practices. Empire of the Senses offers a new comparative perspective on the way European imperialism was constructed, operated, implemented and, sometimes, counteracted by rich and complex new sensory frameworks in the diverse contexts of early America.
Daniela Hacke is Professor of Early Modern History at the Free University of Berlin. She has published monographs, translations and many articles on European Gender and Cultural History and is currently researching a History of the Senses in Venice.
Paul Musselwhite is Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College. He researches and publishes on early British America and the development of plantation society.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Making Sense of Colonial Encounters and New Worlds, Daniela Hacke and Paul Musselwhite
I | Cultural Encounters
1 Touching on Communication: Visual and Textual Representations of Touch as Friendship in Early Colonial Encounters, Céline Carayon
2 Mission Soundscapes: Demons, Jesuits, and Sounds in Antonio Ruiz de Montoya’s Conquista Espiritual (1639), Jutta Toelle
3 Singing with Strangers in Early Seventeenth-century New France, Michaela Ann Cameron
II | Colonial Subjectivity
4 The Pain of Senses Escaping: Eighteenth-century Europeans and the Sensory Challenges of the Caribbean, Annika Raapke
5 Color Visions: Perceiving Nature in the Portuguese Atlantic World, Marília dos Santos Lopes
III | Structures of Knowledge
6 Colonial Sensescapes: Thomas Harriot and the Production of Knowledge, Daniela Hacke
7 Merian and the Pineapple: Visual Representation of the Senses, Megan Baumhammer and Claire Kennedy
8 ‘Delightful a Fragrance’: Native American Olfactory Aesthetics within the Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Botanical Community, Andrew Kettler
IV | Colonial Projects
9 The Aromas of Flora’s Wide Domains: Cultivating Gardens, Aromas, and Political Subjects in the Late Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic, Kate Mulry
10 Exploring Underwater Worlds: Diving in the Late Seventeenth-/Early Eighteenth-Century British Empire, Rebekka von Mallinckrodt
Index
New Book | The Collector’s Cabinet and Miniature Pharmacy
Collector’s Cabinet with Miniature Apothecary’s Shop, 1730
(Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Press release (23 June 2017) from the Rijksmuseum. The English edition of the book should be be available from Distributed Art Publishers (DAP) in August.
Paul van Duin, ed., The Collector’s Cabinet and Miniature Pharmacy / Verzamelaarskast met miniatuurapotheek (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2017), 184 pages, ISBN: 978 949171 4610 (Dutch edition) / ISBN: 978 949171 4726 (English edition), 40€ / $60. Essays by Reinier Baarsen, Annette Bierman, Judith van der Brugge-Mulder, Gerhard Cadée, Roelof van Gelder, and Dave van Gompel.
In the last few years no fewer than 50 experts have been involved in conducting research on the only eighteenth-century miniature apothecary’s shop in the Netherlands. The Rijksmuseum is now presenting the results of this research and conservation project in an extensive publication, designed by Irma Boom and showing the miniature pharmacy and 56 secret drawers for the first time, at almost actual size.
This rare collector’s cabinet houses an abundance of curiosities including a fully fitted miniature apothecary’s shop containing more than three hundred Delftware pots, glass bottles, tiny wooden drawers, paintings, and gilded ornaments. Concealed beside and behind the miniature pharmacy are no fewer than 56 secret drawers, all but five of which contain the collection of nearly 2000 varieties of naturalia, including seeds, flowers, roots, animal parts, rocks, minerals, and fossils.
The research has now been completed, providing a far deeper understanding of the cabinet’s origins, its purpose, the exceptional naturalia it contains, and the collectors’ world it inhabited. We can now be fairly certain that the cabinet was made in Amsterdam in 1730 for a wealthy doctor or apothecary, as a curiosity for the entertainment of a select group of friends and fellow collectors. The study also revealed that most of the naturalia items form the original contents of the cabinet. The naturalia even include uraninite and two other minerals containing uranium—for safety reasons, these materials are now safely stored in lead caskets in the Rijksmuseum’s depot, in accordance with the regulations and permit issued under the Dutch Nuclear Energy Act.
The conservation and restoration work have for a large part returned the cabinet and miniature apothecary’s shop to their former glory, and this object is now one of the highlights of the eighteenth-century galleries in the Rijksmuseum.
With thanks to the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden University, and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research. The research, conservation, and publication were made possible by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art Conservation Project.
New Book | The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art
From The University of Chicago Press:
Charlotte Sleigh, The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 256 pages, ISBN: 978 022644 7124, $45.
As children, our first encounters with the world’s animals do not arise during expeditions through faraway jungles or on perilous mountain treks. Instead, we meet these creatures between the pages of a book, on the floor of an obliging library. Down through the centuries, illustrated books have served as our paper zoos, both documenting the world’s extraordinary wildlife in exquisite detail and revealing, in hindsight, how our relationship to and understanding of these animals have evolved over time.
In this stunning book, historian of science Charlotte Sleigh draws on the ultimate bibliophile’s menagerie—the collections of the British Library—to present a lavishly illustrated homage to this historical collaboration between art and science. Gathering together a breathtaking range of nature illustrations from manuscripts, prints, drawings, and rare printed books from across the world, Sleigh brings us face to face (or face to tentacle) with images of butterflies, beetles, and spiders, of shells, fish, and coral polyps. Organized into four themed sections—exotic, native, domestic, and paradoxical—the images introduce us to some of the world’s most renowned natural history illustrators, from John James Audubon to Mark Catesby and Ernst Haeckel, as well as to lesser-known artists. In her accompanying text, Sleigh traces the story of the art of natural history from the Renaissance through the great age of exploration and into the nineteenth century, offering insight into the changing connections between the natural and human worlds.
But the story does not end there. From caterpillars to crabs, langurs to dugongs, stick insects to Old English pigs; from the sinuous tail feathers of birds of paradise to the lime-green wings of New Zealand’s enormous flightless parrot, the kakapo; from the crenellated plates of a tortoise’s shell to imagined likenesses of unicorns, mermaids, and dinosaurs, the story continues in this book. It is a Paper Zoo for all time.
Charlotte Sleigh is a reader in history at the University of Kent. She is the author of Ant, Six Legs Better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology, Literature and Science, and Frog.
Musée d’art Hyacinthe Rigaud to Reopen This Week
The newly renovated and expanded Hyacinthe Rigaud Art Museum in Perpignan is scheduled to open on June 24th. From Snoeck Publishers:
Musée d’art Hyacinthe Rigaud, 14th–21st Centuries (Gent: Snoeck Publishers, 2017), 214 pages, ISBN: 978 946161 3998, 25.
In 2017 the Musée d’Art Hyacinthe Rigaud is reopening. After three years of work, a renovated building now houses an enriched and restored collection, to be discovered through a completely redesigned itinerary. To accompany the rediscovery, this guide presents a selection of works chosen to reflect the diversity and excellence of this heritage. Richly illustrated, it is both a souvenir of your visit and an invitation to open the museum’s doors.
Exhibition | Paintings of the Abbés Desjardins
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Press release for the exhibition now on view at the MNBAQ:
The Fabulous Destiny of the Paintings of the Abbés Desjardins / Le Fabuleux Destin des Tableaux des Abbés Desjardins
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, 15 June — 4 September 2017
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, 14 October 2017 — 28 January 2018
Curated by Daniel Drouin and Guillaume Kazerouni
This exhibition highlights the bicentennial of the arrival in Canada of some 200 paintings initially done by renowned artists for churches in Paris in the 17th and 18th centuries. These paintings, confiscated during the French Revolution and reunited by clergyman Philippe-Jean-Louis Desjardins (1753–1833) , were shipped to Québec City to be sold to the rapidly growing parishes and religious congregations at the time. Fairly unfamiliar in France, this important body of religious paintings was researched recently. The history of the paintings is marked by two major periods—their use in France and their 19th-century use and impact in the Province of Québec. First, thanks to recent discoveries in France resulting in new attributions, more is known about the background for their creation. Several big names in French painting were involved—artists such as Claude Vignon, Simon and Aubin Vouet, Frère Luc, Charles-Michel-Ange Challes, Jean-Baptiste Corneille, Daniel Hallé, Pierre Puget, Michel Dorigny, Louis Boulogne le jeune, Joseph Christophe, Pierre Dulin, Samuel Massé, Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, François-Guillaume Ménageot, and Matthias Stomer—several of whom were French Court painters.
Philippe-Jean-Louis Desjardins, through his brother Louis-Joseph (1766–1848), chaplain to the Augustines de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, was very aware of the situation of Québec churches. The clergy and religious communities were booming and did not have sufficient art of devotional calibre. In 1817 and 1820, nearly 200 paintings made the voyage to Quebec. They would go on to be reframed and sold on site before being placed in various churches and chapels. Alongside this, a new cohort of Canadian artists such as Jean-Baptiste Roy-Audy, Joseph Légaré, Antoine Plamondon and Théophile Hamel would get their training by restoring French works and copying them at the request of sponsors, thereby making up for the shortage of painters in the British colony. This period saw the birth of Canadian painting, but also the creation of the first art collections in Québec and the appearance of the first museum.
A selection of some 40 French paintings and 20-or-so Québec copies of French masterpieces that have disappeared, as well as of genuine Québec work, are on display in the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion using contemporary staging. Only the French paintings from the Québec exhibition will cross the ocean again in the fall of 2017, bound for the Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes, the MNBAQ’s partner in this great museological adventure.
Once Upon a Time… Philippe-Jean-Louis et Louis-Joseph Desjardins
Philippe-Jean-Louis and Louis-Joseph Desjardins were born in Messas, France. They both studied theology at the Seminary of Orléans, and then in Paris and Bayeux. The former was ordained in 1777 and the second in 1790. During the Revolution, the two brothers, faithful to their values, fled France to England. The elder arrived in Québec City in 1793—followed by his younger sibling the following year—and held various positions, including vicar general, Séminaire professor, and chaplain of the Augustines de l’Hôtel-Dieu and of the Ursulines. The youngest was initially a missionary in Baie-des-Chaleurs before becoming vicar, then pastor, of Notre-Dame de Québec, the chaplain of the Augustines and the Superior of the Ursulines.
Philippe returned to France in 1802. His interest in the Diocese of Québec and his experience made it clear to him that painters able to meet local demand were few and far between. On returning home, he also realized that the family business was in dire financial straits. It dawned on him that there was simple solution: combine both interests by selling paintings in Lower Canada and using the profits to help his family.
Between 1803 and 1810, he acquired paintings in circumstances that remain largely unknown. The first shipment was in 1816. Four rolls and a case totaling 120 paintings left the port of Brest bound for New York City. On site, the imports had to be cleared and transportation to Québec City arranged. In the winter of 1817, the works of art made the voyage to Québec City in a sleigh. Once there, the works were delivered to Louis-Joseph in the outer chapel of the Augustines, which was transformed into a workshop where several young artists remounted the pieces and restored them before the art was sold to various parishes and communities. The same scenario was repeated in 1820, but this time with some sixty paintings.
The 17th-Century Desjardins Paintings
Most of the Desjardins paintings are 17th-century French works and, with a few exceptions, work from Italian and Northern schools. The composition of this ensemble speaks volumes about the taste of the French at the time of the Revolution. It reflects the conservation choices made in separating the works that would be placed in the newly created museums from those destined to be sold and saved by amateurs like Philippe Desjardins. As a result, the generation of painters of the 1640s, appreciated for their classicism by the curators who formed the nucleus of French national collections, such as Jacques Stella, Laurent de La Hyre, Eustache Le Sueur, Philippe de Champaigne, Sébastien Bourdon and obviously, their model, Nicolas Poussin, is either totally absent or is represented by work incorrectly attributed even before it arrived in Québec City. Only a few paintings by Philippe de Champaigne and his studio are the exception to the rule.
The strength of the Desjardins paintings lies in the art from the opposite ends of the century. Christ in the Garden of Olives, a rare canvas by Quentin Varin, introduces a remarkable ensemble from the 1630s, with two paintings by Simon Vouet and several works by his pupils and followers such as Michel Dorigny and Jean Senelle. For the second half of the century—basically the years 1680 to 1690—there are some interesting anonymous paintings such as Angels and Shepherds Adoring the Child Jesus, but especially the great paintings by Daniel Hallé, Brother Luc, Jean-Baptiste Corneille and Louis de Boullogne, including The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, one of the masterpieces of the exhibition.
Master Simon Vouet and His Entourage
Around 1630, a new generation of artists who had trained in Italy came back to France. The most notable return was that of Simon Vouet, in 1627. After a brilliant career primarily in Rome, the painter was recalled to Paris by Louis XIII. At that time, Philippe de Champaigne and Claude Vignon—whose works are exhibited in this gallery—were beginning their careers and the biggest workshop in the city was that of Georges Lallemant, which was soon surpassed by Vouet’s. Alongside private assignments, in which Vouet excelled, the artist received commissions for religious art throughout his career.
The Desjardins paintings feature a particularly important set of works by Vouet and his entourage. This is undeniably one of the strong points of the ensemble and of this exhibition. The master himself is represented by two canvases. Saint Francis of Paola Resuscitating a Child is one of the last commissions by Vouet before his death, while The Apparition of the Virgin and Child Jesus to Saint Anthony, revealed here after its de-restoration, is situated at the very beginning of the painter’s Parisian career, just after he returned from Italy. Around these two altarpieces are paintings in which Vouet’s influence and the propagation of his artistic manner are palpable.
Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, The Entombment, 1770, oil on canvas, 155 × 205 cm
(Québec City, MNBAQ, 1970.115; photo: Patrick Altman)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The 18th-Century Desjardins Paintings
The Desjardins paintings consist of fewer 18th-century works—mainly French—than 17th-century ones. However, chronologically, they cover the entire century. It comprises a body of work done for the churches of Paris by the most important artists of the time. At first there were originals or copies by all the big names (Collin de Vermont, Restout, Cazes, Massé or Vanloo), but several have disappeared since. The absence of a Boucher or a Fragonard is not surprising, since religious commissions occupied only a very minor place in their respective work.
The second half of the century, which marks a renewal of history painting and a gradual return to the antique model, is illustrated through Challe’s paintings for the Louvre Oratory, Lagrenée’s two masterpieces from the Abbey of Montmartre, and the large painting by Menageot. This work by well-known painters is complemented by paintings by less famous artists such as Godefroy and Preudhomme (Ursulines de Québec chapel). As a result, the paintings from the 18th century provide a far more exhaustive portrait of their era than their 17th-century counterparts. It must be borne in mind that the paintings of the Enlightenment were still very recent at the time when the Revolution broke out and did not always enjoy the same prestige as the works of the Grand Siècle.
Jean-Jacques Lagrenée, The Incredulity of St Thomas, 1770, oil on canvas, 156 × 206 cm
(Québec City, MNBAQ, 1970.114; photo: Patrick Altman)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The Desjardins Paintings, Joseph Légaré and Art Museums in Québec
Starting in the early 1820s, self-taught Québec painter Joseph Légaré purchased several canvases from among the Desjardins paintings, some of which were the inspiration for his numerous copies. His collection would pave the way for the creation of the first two art museums in Québec in the 19th century.
As early as 1829, Légaré exhibited his collection in the meeting room of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. In 1833, he moved it to his three-storey residence on Sainte-Angèle Street. In association with lawyer Thomas Amiot, he inaugurated the Québec Gallery of Paintings in 1838. However, Légaré’s ventures did not seem to spark much interest, and the gallery folded in 1840. Undaunted, in 1852 the painter opened the Quebec Gallery in his new home at the corner of Sainte-Ursule and McMahon Streets. Légaré died in 1855, but his widow kept the museum open until her death in 1874. Monseigneur Thomas-Étienne Hamel, Superior of the Séminaire de Québec and Rector of Laval University, bought the collection.
This acquisition laid the foundation for the Pinacotheque at Laval University as North America entered a period of museum-mania. Even before the inauguration of the first building of the Art Association of Montreal (the future Montréal Museum of Fine Arts) in 1879, the City of Québec had an art museum, thanks to Joseph Légaré’s determination. The Desjardins paintings imported some 60 years earlier formed the core of the museum’s collection.
The Augustines and Ursulines de Québec Paintings
As we have seen, the Abbés Desjardins had special ties with the Augustines de l’Hôtel-Dieu and the Ursulines de Québec, ties that went well beyond the paintings themselves. From the outset, the former were an integral part of the adventure by lending their buildings for the reception, uncrating and remounting of the paintings and by extending their hospitality to the painters involved and customers from everywhere in Québec. François-Guillaume Ménageot’s The Virgin Placing Saint Teresa under the Protection of Saint Joseph, usually found on the left lateral altarpiece of the exterior chapel of the Augustines, attests to this significant episode in the life of the paintings.
Several generations of Ursulines have venerated Christ Exposing his Sacred Heart to Margaret Mary Alacoque, by Pierre-Jacques Cazes, usually strategically placed in the exterior chapel, a place of worship which is the permanent home of the greatest number of Desjardins paintings. Seven paintings are displayed there, including Brother André’s The Meal at the House of Simon, the biggest of all the Desjardins paintings, at 3.66 metres high by 6.10 metres wide.
Copying and Distribution of the Desjardins Paintings
The Desjardins paintings played a crucial role in the growth of painting in Lower Canada by stimulating the budding careers of artists who, after having done copies of certain works, diversified their output. Since at the time there were no fine arts academies or schools in Lower Canada, these painters were able to learn the basics by borrowing to various degrees from the French academic tradition made available through this pool of 17th- and 18th-century paintings.
The inventory of the copies—a little over 120 done in the 19th century—shows that one quarter of the Desjardins paintings were used as templates by Québec artists. The most of the copies were in the chapel of the Séminaire de Québec, at the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-Québec and in Joseph Légaré’s collection. The copies found their way to nearly 70 parishes or collectors, the result being considerable visibility for these paintings in our churches.
Laurier Lacroix, Guillaume Kazerouni, and Daniel Drouin, Le Fabuleux Destin des Tableaux des Abbés Desjardins: Peintures des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles des musées et églises du Québec (Gent: Snoeck Publishers, 2017), 312 pages, ISBN: 978 94616 14162, 39€.
New Book | The Accomplished Lady
Available from ArtBooks.com:
Noël Riley, The Accomplished Lady: A History of Genteel Pursuits, c. 1660–1860 (Wetherby: Oblong Creative, 2017), 460 pages, ISBN: 978 09575 99291, $53.
This richly illustrated book is a study of the skills and pastimes of upper-class women and the works they produced during a 200-year period. Their activities included watercolours, printmaking and embroidery, shellwork, drawn from diaries and journals, rolled and cut paperwork, sand painting, wax flower modelling, painting on fabrics and china, featherwork, japanning, silhouettes, photography, and many others, some familiar and others little known. The context for these pursuits sets the scene: the general position of women in society and the restrictions on their lives, their virtues and values, marriage, domestic life, and education. This background is amplified with chapters on other aspects of women’s experience, such as sport, reading, music, dancing, and card-playing. While some of the activities discussed appear trivial, others show evidence of great seriousness of purpose and extraordinary talent. Pursuits of choice rather than for payment could reach levels of excellence as high as any commercially driven occupations, especially for those with plenty of time to follow their interests. Most of these women—because of their social status—were precluded from working for money, but they had time to study and hone their skills, and their creative works were supremely important to them. In some cases—particularly among watercolourists—they enjoyed the very best of teachers. The word ‘amateur’ in the context of this book is not a term of disparagement but rather a celebration of the fine work produced by those who followed their inclinations with loving care and diligent practice without the pressures of the market place. The material for this book has been drawn from diaries and journals, biographies and social histories, letters, documents, periodicals, contemporary pastime manuals, domestic guides, and conduct books. Above all, it has come from decades of close study—and sometimes collection—of the objects made by gentlewomen over more than two centuries. The illustrations come from a similarly wide range of sources: private collections, museums, galleries, country houses, and dealers in art and antiques.
Noël Riley is a writer and lecturer on the decorative arts and a consultant at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Book Launch
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 19 June 2017
Join us on Monday, 19 June, 6–8pm to celebrate the launch of Noel Riley’s latest book The Accomplished Lady: A History of Genteel Pursuits, 1660–1860.
Enfilade 
leave a comment