Enfilade

From McGill-Queen’s University Press:

Jean Coutu, Then and Now: Collecting and Classicism in Eighteenth-Century England (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), 340 pages, ISBN: 978-0773545434, $100.

In the mid-eighteenth century, English gentlemen filled their houses with copies and casts of classical statuary while the following generation preferred authentic antique originals. By charting this changing preference within a broader study of material culture, Joan Coutu examines the evolving articulation of the English gentleman.

Then and Now consists of four case studies of mid-century collections. Three were amassed by young aristocrats—the Marquis of Rockingham, the Duke of Richmond, and the Earl of Huntingdon—who, consistent with their social standing, were touted as natural political leaders. Their collections evoke the concept of gentlemanly virtue through example, offering archetypes to encourage men toward acts of public virtue. As the aristocrats matured in the politically fractious realm of the 1760s, such virtue could become politicized. A fourth study focuses on Thomas Hollis, who used his collection to proselytize his own unique political ideology.

Framed by studies of collecting practices earlier and later in the century, Coutu also explores the fluid temporal relationship with the classical past as the century progressed, firmly situating the discussion within the contemporaneous emerging field of aesthetics. Broadening the focus beyond published texts to include aesthetic conversations among the artists and the aristocracy in Italy and England, Then and Now shows how an aesthetic canon emerged—embodied in the Apollo Belvedere, the Venus de’ Medici, and the like—which shaped the Grand Manner of art.

Joan Coutu is associate professor of art history and visual culture at the University of Waterloo, and author of Persuasion and Propaganda: Monuments and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire.

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C O N T E N T S

Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1  Temporal Elision and Sculpture Collections in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century
2  An “Old Whig”: The 2nd Marquis of Rockingham and His Collections
3  The 3rd Duke of Richmond and His Sculpture Gallery in Whitehall: Munificence Worthy of a Prince
4  The 10th Earl of Huntingdon and the Arcadian Plains of Leicestershire
5  Thomas Hollis and His Life Plan
6  Conclusion: The Nuances of the Classical Archetype

Notes
Bibliography
Index

From Ashgate:

E. Geoffrey Hancock, Nick Pearce, and Mungo Campbell, eds., William Hunter’s World: The Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2015), 424 pages, ISBN: 978-1409447740, $140.

Despite William Hunter’s stature as one of the most important collectors and men of science of the eighteenth century, and the fact that his collection is the foundation of Scotland’s oldest public museum, The Hunterian, until now there has been no comprehensive examination in a single volume of all his collections in their diversity. This volume restores Hunter to a rightful position of prominence among the medical men whose research and amassing of specimens transformed our understanding of the natural world and man’s position within it.

This volume comprises essays by international specialists and are as diverse as Hunter’s collections themselves, dealing as they do with material that ranges from medical and scientific specimens, to painting, prints, books and manuscripts. The first sections focus upon Hunter’s own collection and his response to it, while the final section contextualises Hunter within the wider sphere. The volume includes references to The Hunterian’s web pages and on-line databases, enabling searches for items from Hunter’s collections, both from his museum and library.

Locating Hunter’s collecting within the broader context of his age and environment, this book provides an original approach to a man and collection whose importance has yet to be comprehensively assessed.

E. Geoffrey Hancock, an entomologist with a career in various British museums, is currently Honorary Curator of Entomology and a Research Fellow in The Hunterian Museum. His interests include the history of museums and their collections.
Nick Pearce holds the Sir John Richmond Chair of Fine Art at the University of Glasgow, where he specialises in the arts of China. His career has spanned both museums and universities, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Burrell Collection in Glasgow and the universities of Durham and Edinburgh.
Mungo Campbell worked at the National Galleries of Scotland until 1997 and is now Deputy Director of The Hunterian. Curating several major loan exhibitions culminated recently in Allan Ramsay: Portraits of the Enlightenment (2013), and he edited the accompanying publication.

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C O N T E N T S

Foreword, David Gaimster
Introduction, Mungo Campbell

Part I—William Hunter: Developing His Museum
1  The Great Windmill Street Anatomy School and Museum, Helen McCormack
2  Anatomy and the ‘museum oeconomy’: William and John Hunter as collectors, Simon Chaplin

Part II—William Hunter: Anatomy in Practice
3  William Hunter’s sources of pathological and anatomical specimens, with particular reference to obstetric subjects, Stuart W. McDonald and John W. Faithfull
4  ‘An universal language’: William Hunter and the production of The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, Caroline Grigson
5  The anatomist and the artists: Hunter’s involvement, Anne Dulau Beveridge
6  William Hunter’s anatomical and pathological specimens, Stuart W. McDonald

Part III—William Hunter: Collector
7  Animal specimens in William Hunter’s anatomical collection, Stuart W. McDonald and Margaret Reilly
8  William Hunter’s zoological collections, Margaret Reilly
9  The shaping role of Johann Christian Fabricius: William Hunter’s insect collection and entomology in 18th-century London, E. Geoffrey Hancock
10  Dr John Fothergill: Significant donor, Starr Douglas
11  The mineral collection of William Hunter: Assembly and function, John W. Faithfull
12  A collection without a catalogue: Captain John Laskey and the missing vertebrate fossils from the collection of William Hunter, Jeff Liston
13  Archaeological objects in William Hunter’s collection, Sally-Anne Coupar
14  William Hunter’s parade shield: A memento of Leonardo’s Milan?, Martin Kemp
15  Ethnographic treasures in the Hunterian from Cook’s voyages, Adrienne L. Kaeppler
16  ‘At last in Dr Hunter’s library’: William Hunter’s Chinese collections, Nick Pearce
17  William Hunter’s numismatic books, Donal Bateson
18  The ‘Hunterian orchard’: William Hunter’s library, David Weston

Part IV—William Hunter: The Wider World
19  On the way to the museum: Frederich The Great’s Bildergalerie in the park of Sanssouci in the context of other painting collections in 18th-century Germany, Heiner Krellig
20  Dr Black goes down to town: The 1788 tour to Ireland and England, Robert G. W. Anderson
21  For ‘instruction and delight’: The enfilade of nature at Sir Ashton Lever’s museum, Leicester House, London, 1775–86, Clare Haynes
22  David Ure (1749–98): The enlightened fossil collector, Neil D. L. Clark

Index

From ACC Distribution:

From Campisano:

Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodino, Carlo Marchionni: Caricaturista tra Roma, Montefranco, Civitavecchia e Ancona (Rome: Campisano, 2015), 464 pages, ISBN: 978-8898229482, $90.

Carlo Marchionni (1702–1786) è assai noto per la sua attività di architetto e decoratore nel Settecento a Roma, città dove lavorò nelle imprese più significative del tempo: la Fabbrica e la Sacrestia di San Pietro, anche se la sua fama è legata alla celebre Villa Albani sulla via Salaria, da lui progettata per raccogliere la collezione di antichità del cardinal Alessandro Albani. Accanto a questa attività, Marchionni si dedicò anche alla caricatura, realizzando per suo divertimento un’ampia serie di divertenti studi caricaturali dedicati a personaggi d’ogni ambiente sociale del suo tempo: da gentiluomini ed ‘offiziali’, prelati e personaggi di Curia, artisti suoi colleghi incontrati all’Accademia di San Luca, quali l’architetto Barigioni, i pittori Benefial, Batoni e Monosilio, senza dimenticare servi, mendicanti, gobbi ed appartenenti alla più bassa categoria sociale, che ci offrono nel loro insieme uno spaccato interessantissimo della società romana del Settecento. Se le strade di Roma, fornirono il materiale umano più interessante all’occhio curioso dell’architetto, la sua vena satirica lo accompagnò anche nei suoi viaggi di lavoro a Civitavecchia ed Ancona, luoghi dove si soffermò a ritrarre figure di turchi, levantini e lavoranti portuali incontrati per caso. Una pausa serena gliela offrì la cittadina umbra di Montefranco, nei pressi di Terni, dove soggiornò con la sua famiglia in una tranquilla vacanza ospitato dall’amico Lorenzo Sinibaldi: lì ebbe modo di fissare in divertentissime vignette i personaggi più in vista del piccolo centro agricolo, dal Segretario comunale, ai villici, al barbiere, sino a fabbri, contadini e i caratteristici gobbi, da lui presi bonariamente in giro. Tre di questi tomi, ed indubbiamente i più significativi, sono confluiti nelle raccolte del Museo di Roma a Palazzo Braschi: insieme agli analoghi volumi, oggi conservati uno nella Biblioteca Palatina di Parma, l’altro nella Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ed infine l’ultimo nel Département des Arts Graphiques del Louvre di Parigi, essi costituiscono il documento della produzione di caricature, davvero non secondaria, del più noto architetto attivo a Roma nel Settecento. Questo libro illustra tale attività, offrendo il catalogo completo delle ben 294 caricature conservate nei tre volumi del Museo di Roma.

Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò è professore ordinario di Storia dell’arte moderna all’Università di Roma Tor Vergata. Èspecialista del disegno italiano ed in particolare romano dal XVI al XVIII secolo, soggetto ai cui ha dedicato molti saggi in riviste italiane e straniere ed in cataloghi di mostre. Da anni approfondisce lo storia del collezionismo ed il mercato del disegno in Italia dei secoli XVII e XVIII. Le sue più recenti e significative pubblicazioni su questi soggetti sono i volumi Il Codice Resta di Palermo (2007), I disegni del Codice Capponiano 237 della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (2010), Dilettanti del disegno nell’Italia del Seicento: padre Resta tra Malvasia e Magnavacca (2013). È uno dei curatori ed autori del volume di Atti del Convegno Maratti e l’Europa (Roma, 11–12 novembre 2013), di prossima pubblicazione.

From Ashgate:

Liam Lenihan, The Writings of James Barry and the Genre of History Painting, 1775–1809 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 218 pages, ISBN: 978-1409467526, $110.

Examining the literary career of the eighteenth-century Irish painter James Barry through an interdisciplinary methodology, The Writings of James Barry and the Genre of History Painting, 1775–1809 is the first full-length study of the artist’s writings. Liam Lenihan critically assesses the artist’s own aesthetic philosophy about painting and printmaking, and reveals the extent to which Barry wrestles with the significant stylistic transformations of the pre-eminent artistic genre of his age: history painting. Lenihan’s book delves into the connections between Barry’s writings and art, and the cultural and political issues that dominated the public sphere in London during the American and French Revolutions.

Barry’s writings are read within the context of the political and aesthetic thought of his distinguished friends and contemporaries, such as Edmund Burke, his first patron; Joshua Reynolds, his sometime friend and rival; Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, with whom he was later friends; and his students and adversaries, William Blake and Henry Fuseli. Ultimately, Lenihan’s interdisciplinary reading shows the extent to which Barry’s faith in the classical tradition in general, and the genre of history painting in particular, is permeated by the hermeneutics of suspicion. This study explores and contextualizes Barry’s attempt to rethink and remake the preeminent art form of his era.

Liam Lenihan was National University of Ireland Centennial Postdoctoral Fellow in Irish Studies from 2009 to 2011. He teaches English literature and History of Art at University College Cork.

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C O N T E N T S

Introduction: James Barry’s Writings and the Genre of History Painting

1  Barry’s Inquiry into public taste
2  The Progress of Human Culture as a Narrative of Enlightenment
3  Barry’s Lectures on Painting and the Royal Academy of Arts
4  Wollstonecraft’s Reading of Milton and the Sublime of Barry, Fuseli and Blake
5  Barry’s Self-Portrait as Timanthes and His Tenure as Professor of Painting

Conclusion: History Painting as a ‘Union of Talents’

Works Cited
Index

From Artbooks.com:

Stefan Koppelkamm, The Imaginary Orient: Exotic Buildings of the 18th and 19th Centuries in Europe (Stuttgart: Axel Menges, 2015), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-3936681772, $78.

In the eighteenth century the idea of the landscape garden, which had originated in England, spread all over Europe. The geometry of the Baroque park was abandoned in favour of a ‘natural’ design. At the same time the garden became the ‘land of illusion’: Chinese pagodas, Egyptian tombs and Turkish mosques, along with Gothic stables and Greek and Roman temples, formed a miniature world in which distance mingled with the past. The keen interest in a fairy-tale Orient was manifested also in architecture. This ‘Orient’, which could hardly be clearly defined geographically, was characterized by Islamic culture. The Islamic styles seemed especially appropriate for buildings of a secular and cheerful character. The promise of happiness associated with an Orient staged by architectural means was intended to guarantee the commercial success of coffee houses and music halls, amusement parks and steam baths. But even extravagant summer residences and middle-class villas were built in faux-Oriental styles.

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Note (added 21 December 2016) — Barry Bergdoll reviews the book for The Burlington Magazine 158 (December 2016), p. 982:

Published originally in German in 1987 to accompany a series of no doubt delightful exhibitions entitled Exotische Welten-Europäische Phantasien in Stuttgart (Institut für Auslansbeziehungen), this anthology seems to be more concerned with compiling examples than analysing them . . . Sometimes groundbreaking exhibition catalogues are republished years later either because of their historical importance or because greater availability stimulates new research. The decision to translate (more or less) this rather helter-skelter overview into English more than a quarter of a century after its appearance is mystifying . . .

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Scheduled for October release, from Yale UP:

Marina Lopato, British Silver: State Hermitage Museum Catalogue (London: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2015), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-0300213201, $175.

Despite its comparatively small size—just over 370 items, dating mainly from the 18th century—the collection of British silver in the Hermitage is renowned for its variety and quality. Over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, the introduction of European dining habits and Russian Anglophilia contributed to the acquisition of large quantities of British silver. Most of the pieces were functional rather than decorative, such as dinner or toilet services specially commissioned by members of the imperial family and the aristocracy.

Marking the 250th anniversary of the State Hermitage Museum, this catalogue offers a grand presentation of these glorious silver items, supported by new research and documents. In her introduction, Marina Lopato details the complexities of Russian and Hermitage history to set the scene for the objects. Sumptuous illustrations showcase the exceptional nature of the Hermitage’s British silver, most evident in four monumental wine coolers that are among the best known pieces of British silver anywhere in the world.

Marina Lopato is curator of European silver at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.