Enfilade

Opening next month at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse:

Ceci n’est pas un portrait: Figures de fantaisie de Murillo, Fragonard, Tiepolo…
Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, 21 November 2015 — 28 February 2016

Curated by Melissa Percival and Axel Hémery

Le Musée des Augustins, musée des beaux arts de Toulouse présentera, à partir du 21 novembre 2015, une exposition totalement inédite sur les figures de fantaisie en Europe du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. Encore peu étudiées comme un sujet à part entière dans l’histoire de l’art, les figures de fantaisie regroupent des peintures illustrant la fascination qu’ont pu exercer la figure et le corps humains sur l’art européen pendant plus de deux siècles.

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Cavalier assis près d’une fontaine, ca. 1769 (Barcelone, MNAC, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya de Bellas Artes)

Centrées sur les émotions et les passions humaines, elles offrent au regard une intimité au plus près du sujet et abordent des thèmes universels, toujours étonnement modernes, comme l’apparence des sentiments, l’ambivalence des êtres humains ou la question du genre. Loin de l’art du portrait contraint par la commande ou la mode, cette exposition est un véritable éloge à la liberté, à l’invention et à la virtuosité en peinture.

Quatre-vingt tableaux provenant de musées français et européens seront réunis au musée des Augustins pour évoquer cet art intemporel en marge des traditionnelles classifications et mouvements de l’histoire de l’art. Les plus grands comme les plus attachants des peintres y seront représentés comme Annibal Carrache, Van Dyck, Jordaens, Hals, Murillo, Fragonard, Greuze, Tiepolo, mais aussi Dosso Dossi, Sweerts, Schalcken, Giordano, Piazzetta, Grimou, Ceruti, Morland… Cette sélection d’œuvres exceptionnelles sera présentée sous un angle inhabituel mélangeant provenances, époques et écoles pour se concentrer sur des sections dynamiques.
Les thèmes développés par le parcours de l’exposition seront les suivants : Jeux de regards ; Musiciens ; Vies intérieures ; Dormeurs ; Rires et sarcasmes ; Le laboratoire du visage ; L’atelier du costume. Tous ces sujets permettront de mettre en valeur l’originalité profonde de cette peinture et  la cohérence de ces œuvres à travers le temps et l’espace.

Commissariat de l’exposition
Melissa Percival : professeur d’histoire de l’art et de français à l’université d’Exeter, auteur de Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure (auteur pour le catalogue qui accompagnera cette exposition de l’essai principal et des notices sur le XVIIIème siècle)
Axel Hémery, Co-commissaire : Directeur du musée des Augustins de Toulouse, conservateur en chef du patrimoine spécialiste de peinture du XVIIème siècle (auteur pour le catalogue  d’un avant-propos et des notices XVIème et XVIIème).

Pour plus d’information, téléchargez le communiqué de presse.

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The catalogue is published by Somogy:

Melissa Percival and Axel Hémery, ed., Figures de fantaisie du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, Somogy éditions d’Art, 2015), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-2757209981, 35€.

Figures de fantaisie du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle explore les recherches et inventions des artistes européens autour de la figure humaine, sur presque trois siècles. Le rapprochement d’œuvres jusque-là rattachées aux catégories usuelles de l’histoire de l’art (peinture d’histoire, portrait, scène de genre, etc.) éclaire de façon saisissante la récurrence de certains types de figures, dans différents pays et à différentes périodes de l’histoire : ici, les mendiants italiens se comparent aux vagabonds d’Espagne, les courtisanes de la Renaissance rencontrent les bergères du Nord du XVIIe siècle, les tronies nordiques renvoient aux figures caravagesques, les têtes d’expression de Tiepolo, aux figures de fantaisie de Fragonard, et Greuze répond aux fancy pictures anglaises. Il s’en dégage un ensemble d’une cohérence inattendue, véritable éloge de la liberté et de la virtuosité en peinture.

S O M M A I R E

Avant-propos

• Les figures de fantaisie. Un phénomène européen / Melissa Percival
• Sensualité des figures à mi-corps et théâtralité de la peinture / Bronwen Wilson
• Pathos et mystère : la figure de fantaisie endormie / Petra ten-Doesschate Chu
• La tête de vieillard dans l’art européen : sacrée et profane / Martin Postle
• Les fenêtres du possible : la figure de fantaisie et l’esprit d’entreprise au début du XVIIIe siècle / John Chu

Œuvres exposées
Jeux de regards, cat. 1–15
Musiciens, cat. 16–22
Vies intérieures, cat. 23–34
Dormeurs, cat. 35–41
Rires et sarcasmes, cat. 42–55
Le laboratoire du visage, cat. 56–69
L’atelier du costume, cat. 70–83

Annexes
Index des artistes exposés
Bibliographie

Press release (23 October 2015) from The Frick:

Watteau’s Soldiers: Scenes of Military Life in Eighteenth-Century France
The Frick Collection, New York, 12 July — 2 October 2016

Curated by Aaron Wile

Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Portal of Valenciennes (La Porte de Valenciennes), ca. 1711−12, oil on canvas, 12 3/4 x 16 inches (New York: The Frick Collection; photo by Michael Bodycomb)

It would be difficult to think of an artist further removed from the muck and misery of the battlefield than Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), who is known as a painter of amorous aristocrats and melancholy actors, a dreamer of exquisite parklands and impossibly refined fêtes. And yet, early in his career, Watteau painted a number of scenes of military life, remarkable for their deeply felt humanity and intimacy. These pictures were produced during one of the darkest chapters of France’s history, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). But the martial glory on which most military painters of the time trained their gaze—the fearsome arms, snarling horses, and splendid uniforms of generals glittering amid the smoke of cannon fire—held no interest for Watteau, who focused instead on the most prosaic aspects of war: the marches, halts, encampments, and bivouacs that defined the larger part of military life. Inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish genre scenes, the resulting works show the quiet moments between the fighting, when soldiers could rest and daydream, smoke pipes and play cards.

Watteau produced about a dozen of these military scenes, but only seven survive. Though known primarily only to specialists, they were once counted among the artist’s most admired works and owned by such prominent figures as Catherine the Great and the Prince of Conti. Presented exclusively at The Frick Collection in the summer of 2016, Watteau’s Soldiers is the first exhibition devoted solely to these captivating pictures, introducing the artist’s engagement with military life to a larger audience while offering a fresh perspective on the subject. Among the paintings, drawings, and prints are four of the seven known paintings—with the Frick’s own Portal of Valenciennes as the centerpiece—as well as the recently rediscovered Supply Train, which has never before been exhibited publicly in a museum. Also featured are about twelve studies of soldiers in red chalk, many directly related to the paintings on view.

Jean-Antoine Watteau, The Supply Train (Escorte d’équipages), ca. 1715, oil on panel, 11 1/8 x 12 3/8 inches (Private collection)

The works on display offer a rare opportunity to study the drawings and paintings together and probe Watteau’s complex and remarkable working methods. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Watteau did not proceed methodically from compositional sketches, studies, and full-scale models to the final painting. Instead, his process followed the whims of his imagination and the demands of the moment. He began by drawing soldiers from life, without a predetermined end in mind. These drawings provided him with a stock of figures, often used multiple times, that he would arrange in an almost spontaneous fashion on the canvas. As a result, figures previously isolated in his sketchbook were brought together and juxtaposed in new social relationships on the canvas, producing the ambiguous, dreamlike effects that make his paintings so intriguing.

The exhibition is rounded out by a selection of works by Watteau’s predecessors and followers: the Frick’s Calvary Camp by Philips Wouwerman, a typical example of the seventeenth-century Dutch paintings after which Watteau modeled his own; a study of a soldier by Watteau’s follower Jean-Baptiste Pater, from the Fondation Custodia, Paris; and a painting of a military camp by his other great follower, Nicolas Lancret, from a private collection. These works shed light on the ways in which Watteau transformed the painting of military life in Europe, demonstrating his pivotal influence on the genre.

Aaron Wile, Watteau’s Soldiers: Scenes of Military Life in Eighteenth-Century France (London: D. Giles, 2016), 112 pages, ISBN: 978-1907804793, £25 / $40.

Published by The Frick Collection in association with D Giles, Ltd., London, the book accompanying the exhibition is the first illustrated catalogue of all Watteau’s works related to military subjects.

Additional works included in the exhibition are illustrated here»

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Album of Darly prints in the Chester Beatty Collection (Wep 0494), with its much deteriorated eighteenth-century binding, as photographed in the Library’s conservation studio in 2015. More information is available at the Chester Beatty Conservation Blog.

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Now on view at the Chester Beatty Library:

Wicked Wit: Darly’s Comic Prints
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin Castle, Dublin, 11 September 2015 — 14 February 2016

Curated by Jill Unkel

Drawing on the Library’s own collections, this exhibition features over 100 hand-coloured, eighteenth-century etchings by the husband and wife team, Mary and Matthew Darly. From the time of their marriage, they worked in tandem designing, engraving and publishing prints using the signature, MD or MDarly.

This printer-publisher team produced well over 500 comic images of Caricatures, Macaronies, and Characters from no. 39 Strand (London) between 1770 and 1780. At the height of their fame, carriages lined the streets so their occupants could titter at the images on display in Darly’s Comic Exhibitions, held every spring from 1773 to 1778. By the end of the decade, they had become so popular that their publications were available throughout Great Britain and Ireland, Europe and even America. The name Darly became synonymous with the humorous images they produced.

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The catalogue is available for purchase through the Beatty Library’s shop:

Jill Unkel, Wicked Wit: Darly’s Comic Prints (Dublin: Chester Beatty Library, 2015), 80 pages, ISBN: 978-0957399822, 20€.

This fully illustrated catalogue is divided into a number of themes and opens with a general introduction to Mary and Matthew Darly. It then examines more specifically their comic prints, publications, and exhibitions. This is followed by a more detailed exploration of the various subjects presented in their comic images: stereotyped characters (and their relation to theatre), caricatures of notable contemporaries, satires of the dress of young macaroni (akin to a dandy or fop) men and their feathered-feminine counterparts, and finally the impolitical satires related to the war with the American Colonies.

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Press release (11 September 2015) from The Fitzwilliam:

Following Hercules: The Story of Classical Art
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 25 September — 6 December 2015

Curated by Caroline Vout

A colossal polystyrene statue of Hercules by contemporary artist Matt Darbyshire will be the star exhibit in a new exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum exploring the story of classical art. How did artefacts made in the Mediterranean millennia ago come to define western art? To show us how Greece and Rome’s gods and heroes came to inhabit post-antique painting and sculpture, the Fitzwilliam Museum has called upon one of them to act as a guide: Hercules.

Hercules and the Erymanthian Boar, ca. 1790, Wedgwood, Etruria, Staffordshire, Jasperware plaque, h. 212 mm (Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum)

Hercules is one of the best-loved ancient heroes. Known in antiquity for completing twelve tasks or ‘labours’ that confirmed his status as a god, Hercules is today tasked with one more—to tell the story of classical art. Hercules is brought to life by each of the forty objects on display (from exquisite gems and coins, Renaissance drawings and bronzes, to eighteenth-century paintings, and Matthew Darbyshire’s giant polystyrene statue…). Their interaction also reveals how classical art was born, and gives classical art on-going relevance.

The exhibition takes its lead from its star exhibit, a colossal sculpture by Cambridge-born artist Matthew Darbyshire. Darbyshire’s intervention is a version of the Farnese Hercules, a marble statue unearthed in Rome in 1546, but is made from sheets of polystyrene—classical art for a consumerist age. Up close, its cut, crisp polystyrene layers make it appear pixelated, but step back, and the statue comes into focus, shining like marble. Back in 1850, two years after the Founder’s Building opened to the public, the Fitzwilliam Museum exhibited another Farnese Hercules, a plaster version, now in Cambridge’s Museum of Classical Archaeology. Before being given to the Fitzwilliam, it stood in a private house in Battersea, where it moved London’s artists to tears. The Fitzwilliam Museum’s own collection is well equipped with prototypes and later versions of the Farnese Hercules: from a bronze statuette of the first century BCE, through Hendrick Goltzius’s sixteenth-century engraving of the Farnese statue’s rear view, Wedgwood’s white on blue cameo plaque, and William Blake’s illustration of the statue for Abraham Rees’s The Cyclopædia, or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature. The Museum’s collection also provides competing images of Hercules—images of Hercules young, drunk, or dressed as a woman, in bronze, wood and painted porcelain. These give context to Darbyshire’s sculpture, underlining that classicism and modernism are not opposites. In the fast moving, digital age in which we live, we perhaps need tradition more than ever.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Caroline Vout, Reader in Classics in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Christ’s College, and is part of her British-Academy funded research project entitled Classical Art: A Life History.

Caroline Vout, Following Hercules: The Story of Classical Art (Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam Museum, 2015), 48 pages, ISBN: 978-1910731024, £5.

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Note (added 2 December 2018) — The posting was updated to include information about the catalogue.