Enfilade

Joseph Wright of Derby, Sir Brooke Boothby, 1781 (London: Tate)

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As noted at ArtDaily:

Landscapes of the Mind: British Landscapes from the Tate Collection, 1690–2007 / Paisajismo británico. Colección Tate, 1690–2007
Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, 25 March — 21 June 2015

On March 25th Landscapes of the Mind: British Landscape Painting, Tate Collection, 1690–2007 was presented for the first time ever in Mexico City, an exhibition organized by Tate in association with Museo Nacional de Arte, as part of the celebrations of the Dual Year between Mexico and the United Kingdom. The exhibition presents 111 artworks by British and European artists, with a plurality of techniques (painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture/installation, etc.) which ponder the evolution of British landscape in art history. The term ‘Britain’ is understood as the geographical entity of the British Isles, i.e., the archipelago that includes England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, before the independence of the latter in 1921.

This genre was explored in Britain during the 16th century with the use of documents describing the topography, geology, history, and legends of the said land. It gained popularity throughout the 17th century, with the discoveries of explorers, naturalists, and merchants who helped expand the limits of the British nation to the four parts of the world. By the late 18th century, the landscape genre had become a dominant trend in Britain.

According to Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, “the reasons for the predominance of landscape in British visual culture are many and varied: the extraordinary diversity of physical landscapes in such a relatively small geographic area; acute sense of loss of a pastoral and rural ideal world because of rapid industrialization during the 18th and 19th centuries; identification of the aristocracy of classical culture field; the immense impact of the natural sciences, and at the same time, the belief that close observation revealed both the moral and the hidden spiritual truth behind appearances”.

The nine topics developed by curator Richard Humphreys aim to introduce British culture through great classical painters of the 18th century such as Thomas Gainsborough; continuing with artworks of romantic and impressionist artists of the 19th century, like John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, John Martin, John Singer Sargent and James Tissot; and finally addressing modern and contemporary landscapes by artists such as David Inshaw, Sir Stanley Spencer, and Paul Nash.

Considering the importance of a current view on the history of landscape and the need for a continued dialogue between the ages; in addition to meeting the great interest of a younger generation in discovering the artistic production of its own time, Dr. Agustín Arteaga, Director of the Museo Nacional de Arte, managed the incorporation of David Hockney’s Bigger Trees Near Warter or /ou Peinture sur le Motif pour le Nouvel Age Post- Photographique. In 1984, Museo Tamayo presented the traveling exhibition Hockney Paints the Stage, an exhibit shown after the failed attempt to include a graphic series of nudes during the Cultural Olympiad in 1968, which were eventually censored. After visiting Mexico City in 1984, Hockney traveled to the state of Oaxaca, where he produced a series of paintings and graphics inspired by a hotel in Acatlán. Tate preserves in its collection some works from this series. Nearly 30 years after, Hockney returns to Mexico with his biggest artwork accomplished so far: a picture of monumental proportions, more than 4.5 by 12 meters, consisting of 50 paintings, done in six weeks in 2007 for the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of London, and donated to Tate the following year, along with two digital reproductions. The image depicts a landscape of East Yorkshire, a region where the artist lived, shortly before the arrival of spring when the trees begin to sprout.

Alongside Landscapes of the Mind, a comparative exercise linking landscape tradition in Britain and Mexico is included, this latter is exhibited as a dialogue with the newly renovated galleries of the Museo Nacional de Arte in the permanent exhibit. The relationship was established through the canvas Mexico Valley (1837) of the London traveler artist Daniel Thomas Egerton. His work coexists with a selection of paintings by the Mexican artist José María Velasco.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalog print run of 2,000 copies, consisting of 142 black/white and color images, with texts by curator Richard Humphreys and edited by Museo Nacional de Arte. As part of the show, Museo Nacional de Arte offers an Academic Program aimed at a wide audience, including a lecture every Thursday at 17:00 with varied presentations including one by the curator Richard Humphreys; a commented film series of the best of British cinematography; weekend and specialized workshops; interpretive materials downloadable via the website, as well as guided tours.

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), London: The Thames from Somerset House Terrace towards the City
(Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014)

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News of this exhibition appeared here at Enfilade in January, but the posting addressed only the Kendal venue (where it will have a slightly different title). Here’s the expanded version:

Press release from Compton Verney:

Canaletto: Celebrating Britain
Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 14 March — 7 June 2015
Holburne Museum, Bath, 27 June — 4 October 2015
Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, 22 October 2015 — 14 February 2016

This is the first time that these magnificent paintings and drawings by Canaletto have been brought together to provide an overview of Canaletto’s work created between 1746 and 1755, whilst he was visiting Britain. During his nine-year stay in Britain he documented not just traditional or established views and landmarks but also his (and his patrons’) latest achievements in architecture and engineering. The depictions of these new building works and projects, whether couched in Palladian, Baroque or Gothic styles, celebrate the new-found wealth and assurance of the British nation, reflecting contemporary developments in popular culture such as the rediscovery of Shakespeare; the success of Handel’s Messiah and the cult of King Alfred—which in turn spawned Arne’s immortal Rule Britannia.

Set into context, by 1750 the first generation of Palladian architects and patrons (Burlington, Campbell and Kent) were dead, and the nation was ready for a more liberal attitude to architectural design. Britain itself was a more stable and confident place than it had been even thirty years before. During the recent War of the Austrian Succession, the nation had held onto its new colonial gains and had succeeded in forcing Spain to open up South America to its traders. The economy was booming and the Jacobite threat had evaporated. Accordingly, a new, more confident generation, profiting from the ‘Georgian Revolution’ and increasingly assured by Britain’s status as a major world power, was prepared to be less regimented by Palladian rules and more eclectic in its architectural patronage seeking cultural inspiration not just from the Mediterranean but also from their own history.

This new found confidence signalled through the architecture of Baroque masters such as Wren (at St Paul’s and St Mary’s, Warwick), Hawksmoor (at Westminster Abbey’s west towers) and the Gothic revival marks Britain out as the new Venice, which was the real subject of Canaletto’s great canvases on display in this exhibition.

Information regarding programming at Compton Verney is included in the press release.

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From Paul Holberton:

Steven Parissien, Pat Hardy, Jacqueline Riding and Oliver Cox, Celebrating Britain: Canaletto, Hogarth, and Patriotism (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2015), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-1907372780, £25.

By 1750 Britain was—as Jacqueline Riding shows—at peace with her traditional enemy, France, and had finally extinguished the threat from the Catholic Jacobites. The art of William Hogarth—particularly his great canvas O The Roast Beef of Old England of 1749—duly reflected this new sense of security and pride in being British. The economy was booming. Trade was expanding. And newly-confident Britons were no longer looking to Italy or France for their cultural exemplars, particularly in the field of architectural design.

It was the ferment of activity, the eclectic building boom which underlines Britain’s wealth and optimism and which marks the nation out as the new Venice, which is the real subject of Canaletto’s great canvases. Almost all of Canaletto’s views focused on a new architectural commission or a recent urban development, and were specifically designed to celebrate the latest achievements of British architecture and engineering. The Italian master was not alone. The vigorous and infectious patriotism of his works mirrored emerging nationalistic trends in popular culture during the 1740s, a decade which witnessed the canonization of William Shakespeare as a British hero, the creation of Handel’s Messiah and Arne’s immortal Rule Britannia, and, as Oliver Cox shows, the propagation of the nationalistic cult of King Alfred—and, more bizarrely, of the ‘flying king’ Bladud in Bath.

As Pat Hardy explains, the presence of a significant group of artists working in London prior to Canaletto’s arrival, led by Samuel Scott, along with the strength of existing artistic practices and traditions and the vibrant print market for maps and surveys of London, suggests that the impact of the arrival of Canaletto was more complicated than may have previously been perceived. At the same time, Canaletto’s legacy survived throughout the eighteenth century, in the hands of native artists such as William Marlow.

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Press release (November 2014) from Abbot Hall:

Abbot Hall was built in the Palladian style just three years after Canaletto left England for the last time. In 1746, by then in his late 40s, he first arrived for a prolonged stay in London. He was to remain for most of the following 10 years.

Already a well established artist, his work had proved very popular with aristocratic Englishmen doing their Grand Tour of Europe. In the 1720s, having started his career as a theatrical scene painter, Canaletto started painting his distinctive views of Venice, frequently featuring the many major churches designed for it by Palladio. One of his clients was Joseph Smith, an English merchant banker who lived in Venice for 70 years, for 16 of which he was the British consul there. Smith bought many Canaletto works for himself, and also helped arrange commissions from wealthy English collectors—by the late 1720s his works were already in the collections of Goodwood, Chatsworth, Woburn and of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. Smith himself owned by far the largest collection of works, including 52 oil paintings and over 140 drawings, which he eventually sold to George III in 1762 for £10,000—half the sum the latter paid the previous year for Buckingham Palace.

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), Portrait of Canaletto with St Paul’s in the Background at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust Images/Hamilton Kerr Inst/Chris Titmus)

Canaletto came to London as an indirect result of the War of the Austrian Succession, which started in 1741. This had made continental travelling difficult for his wealthy English patrons, severely reducing his income. He therefore decided to move himself to London, setting up his studio near Golden Square. He arrived a month after Culloden, the last pitched battle fought on British soil, and at the beginning of a period of unprecedented domestic peace and prosperity, which saw London turning into the world’s richest and largest city.

Although the bulk of the works with English subjects were of London scenes, with the Thames a frequent presence, he was also a regular visitor to the countryside, often at the invitation of his rich patrons, and painted several views of Warwick Castle, as well as of Alnwick, Badminton, Eton and Walton.

The rapid change of London’s architecture during his time here is also documented. In The Old Horse Guards from St James’ Park of 1749, he caught the Horse Guards Parade ground, complete with parading soldiers, as well as men peeing against the wall of Downing Street, and dozens of people promenading, showing the artist’s interest in depicting scenes of daily life. Within a couple of years, from almost exactly the same spot, he was back painting the new Horse Guards parade, the one that is still there today—it can be dated very precisely to 1752–53, as the clock tower still has scaffolding on it, while the south wing had yet to be constructed.

Canaletto is often accused of depicting London whilst using bright Venetian lighting. However, in both his pictures of the Horse Guards, the light is soft and diffused. In A View of Walton Bridge the sky is even more typically ‘English’—and un-Venetian—with the sun competing with storm clouds brewing overhead. The picture also includes a portrait of Thomas Hollis, who commissioned 5 works from Canaletto, as well as a rare self-portrait of the artist, shown painting the scene. The bridge was regarded at the time as an advanced feat of engineering. The contrasting stately bulk of Westminster Bridge and the views from it was evidently something that fascinated Canaletto, who clearly would have agreed with Wordsworth’s later opinion that “earth hath not anything to show more fair.” The bridge was under construction during his time here, and he painted and sketched it repeatedly. In one of the pictures from the Royal Collection, he frames a view of the Thames, St Paul’s and the City as if he had drawn the scene from under one of the new arches of the bridge, while others show it still under construction.

It is easy to forget that Canaletto continued to paint Venetian scenes throughout his time in London. Worked up from his sketches, or done from memory, these provided him with a significant proportion of his income whilst in London, as his more conservative patrons demanded work that they were familiar with, rather than venturing into the new views that the artist was confronting. For example, his Bucintoro at the Molo on Ascension Day, showing the state barge after the annual ‘marriage’ of Venice with the sea—which, when it sold for $20,000,000 in 2005, was briefly his most expensive painting sold at auction—was painted in London in 1754.

Ruskin had a particular down on Canaletto. It is, however, unclear quite how familiar the ascerbic critic was with genuine works by the Venetian. As a hugely popular artist, his work was widely forged and copied both during his lifetime and afterwards. It is possible that Ruskin was sometimes writing about Canaletto pupils and assistants, when he thought he was writing about Canaletto himself. In “Notes on the Louvre”, writing about a picture of the Salute and the entrance to the Grand Canal, he said that it is “cold and utterly lifeless—truth is made contemptible” and that “boats and water he could not paint at all.” The picture has since been re-attributed to Canaletto’s pupil Michele Marieschi. Similarly the “bad landscape” he saw in Turin is almost certainly a work by Bernardo Bellotto, Canaletto’s nephew. Writing about Canaletto’s “vacancy and falsehood” in Modern Painters, he refers to a painting in the Palazzo Manfrin—Augustus Hare, who visited it at about the same time, noted that the palazzo “has a picture gallery which is open daily, but contains nothing worth seeing, all the good pictures having been sold.” It is unclear which work Ruskin was referring to when he said that Canaletto’s depiction of architecture was “less to be trusted in its renderings of details than the rudest and most ignorant painter of the 13th century.” Certainly that is not the view of most modern critics of most properly authenticated works by Canaletto, but Ruskin was never one to allow the facts to affect his pet prejudices.