Enfilade

Published by Hirmer and distributed The University of Chicago Press:

Gerhard Röbbig, ed., Meissen Snuffboxes of the Eighteenth Century (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2014), 350 pages, ISBN: 978-3777421377, $65. 

Originally praised for its medicinal purposes, powdered tobacco emerged as a fashionable stimulant among Europe’s high-society during the eighteenth century. To accommodate this novel pastime, elegant ladies and gentleman of the era sought to complete their look with tabatières, or elaborately painted porcelain snuffboxes.

Meissen Snuffboxes presents more than one hundred of the finest snuffboxes produced by the European porcelain manufacturer Meissen throughout the eighteenth century. Among the first manufacturers to cater to the rapidly growing demand for these tiny treasures, Meissen developed a wide range of snuffboxes, each fastidiously painted by the company’s most adept painters and incorporating motifs from the entire Meissen repertoire. In addition to 250 full-color photographs, this comprehensive catalog includes detailed descriptions of each item by eminent scholars in the field, as well as contributions that discuss current scholarship. Beautifully illustrated, Meissen Snuffboxes offers an incredible amount of information and shows how these tiny containers provide some of the most intimate insight available into the courtly life of the eighteenth century.

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C O N T E N T S

Essays
• Barbara Beaucamp-Markowsky, Porcelain Snuffboxes of the Eighteenth Century: An Introduction
• Hans Ottomeyer, Snuffboxes and the Taking of Snuff: On the Purpose of Luxury
• Lorenz Seelig, Precious Snuffboxes in Princely Collections of the Eighteenth Century
• Heike Zech, Pleasure and Principle: Collecting Snuffboxes from 1800 Onwards
• Ulrich Pietsch, Eighteenth-Century Meissen Porcelain Snuffboxes
• Sarah-Katharina Acevedo, Image and Symbol: On the Use and Meaning of the Snuffbox as Reflected by Meissen Figures of the Eighteenth Century

Catalogue

Appendix: The Work Reports of Meissen Modellers and Decorators Concerning Snuffboxes, selected and transcribed by Ulrich Pietsch
Literature
Index

A new English translation of the 1912 novel, published last year and recently released in paperback from Alma Classics:

Anatole France, The Gods Want Blood, translated by Douglas Parmée (Richmond, Alma Classics, 2013), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1847493194, $15.

Set in Paris during the years of the Reign of Terror, The Gods Want Blood centres on the rise to power of the Jacobin sympathizer Évariste Gamelin, a young painter who becomes a juror on a local Revolutionary tribunal. Caught up in the bloodthirsty madness surrounding him, he helps to dispense cruel justice in the name of his ideals, while at the same time succumbing to his own petty instincts of revenge when he jealously pursues a rival for the affections of his lover Élodie.

Benefiting from Anatole France’s meticulous historical research, this fascinating and timeless novel sheds light on a complex world of rival factions and institutions of state terror and vividly portrays the lives and psyches of ordinary people who are complicit in acts of public barbarity.

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From The TLS Blog:

Adrian Tahourdin, “Anatole France and Proust,” The TLS Blog (19 September 2013).

A new translation of Anatole France’s novel Les Dieux ont soif is being published next month by Alma Classics, as The Gods Want Blood. First published in 1912, the book is set during the Terror of 1793–4 and features, fleetingly, both Marat and Robespierre. As its translator Douglas Parmée writes in his introduction, the novel has contemporary resonance: its main character, the mediocre painter (pupil of Jacques-Louis David) and revolutionary fanatic Évariste Gamelin “would surely make a first-rate suicide bomber.” France did his research thoroughly, with the result that his novel, in Parmée’s words, “bears throughout the stamp of historical authenticity.” . . .

The full posting is available here»

From John Murray (a publishing house with its own eighteenth-century history: founded in 1768, the company remained under the Murray family’s control until 2002). . .

Jonathan Beckman, How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace Affair (John Murray, 2014), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1848549982.

A tale of greed, lust, deceit, theft on an extraordinary scale, charlatanry, kidnapping, assassination and escape from prison.

On 5 September 1785, a trial began in Paris that would divide the country, captivate Europe and send the French monarchy tumbling down the slope towards the Revolution. Cardinal Louis de Rohan, scion of one of the most ancient and distinguished families in France, stood accused of forging Marie Antoinette’s signature to fraudulently obtain the most expensive piece of jewellery in Europe—a 2,400-carat necklace worth 1.6 million francs. Where were the diamonds now? Was Rohan entirely innocent? Was, for that matter, the queen? What was the role of the charismatic magus, the comte de Cagliostro, who was rumoured to be two-thousand-years old and capable of transforming metal into gold?

This is a tale of political machinations and extravagance on an enormous scale; of kidnappings, prison breaks and assassination attempts; of hapless French police disguised as colliers, reams of lesbian pornography and a duel fought with poisoned pigs. It is a detective story, a courtroom drama, a tragicomic farce, and a study of credulity and self-deception in the Age of Enlightenment.

Jonathan Beckman is senior editor of Literary Review. He has degrees in English from the University of Cambridge and Intellectual and Cultural History from Queen Mary, University of London. In 2010, he won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction.

From Assouline:

Jean-Pascal Hesse, Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade (Paris: Assouline, 2014), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1614282020, $75.

Man of letters, philosopher, and politician, the Marquis de Sade is one of the most controversial figures since the eighteenth century, but recently psychology, theater, cinema, and literary criticism have shed new light on his life and works. Lacoste Castle in the South of France, one of the properties of the Sade family, became the refuge of the Marquis between periods of incarceration. Thanks to the Sade family opening its archives for the first time, historian Jean-Pascal Hesse examines Sade’s story through previously unpublished documents and imagery and walks in the Marquis’ footsteps in his beloved château.

Originally from the region of Lacoste, historian Jean-Pascal Hesse is the author of a number of books, including Pierre Cardin: 60 Years of Innovation (2010), Maxim’s: Mirror of Parisian Life (2011), and The Palais Bulles (2012), all in close collaboration with Pierre Cardin and published by Assouline. He also serves on the Paris city council, and directs cultural events for the mayor of the 16th arrondissement.

From The Paul Mellon Centre and Yale UP:

Arthur MacGregor ed., The Cobbe Cabinet of Curiosities: An Anglo-Irish Country House Museum (London: The Paul Mellon Centre for British Studies, 2014), 480 pages, ISBN: 978-0300204353, $125 / £75.

This lavishly produced volume presents a survey and analysis of a fascinating cabinet of curiosities established around 1750 by the Cobbe family in Ireland and added to over a period of 100 years. Although such collections were common in British country houses during the 18th and 19th centuries, the Cobbe museum, still largely intact and housed in its original cabinets, now forms a unique survivor of this type of private collection from the Age of Enlightenment.

A detailed catalogue of the objects and specimens is accompanied by beautiful, specially commissioned photographs that showcase the cabinet’s component elements. Reproductions of portraits from the extensive collection of the Cobbe family bring immediacy to the narrative by illustrating the personalities involved in the collection’s development. Scholars contribute commentary on the significance of the objects to their collectors; also included are essays outlining, among other topics, the place of the cabinet of curiosities in Enlightenment society and the history of the Cobbe family. Extracts from the extensive family archive place the collection in its social context.

Arthur MacGregor is a former senior assistant keeper in the Department of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

From Palgrave Macmillan:

Sebastian Mitchell, Visions of Britain, 1730–1830: Anglo-Scottish Writing and Representation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1137290106, $90. 

Visions of Britain is an inquiry into the literary and visual representation of Great Britain in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. The book considers the inter-relationship of text and image for the purposes of national projection. It analyses an extensive range of poems, novels, journals, drawings, satirical prints, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings. The study follows recent discussions of Anglo-Scottish writing in this period in the attempt to determine the salient characteristics of the imaginative depiction of the Kingdom of Britain, but challenges their more confident claims for the development of a progressive integrated nationhood. It argues instead that the most engaging literary and visual accounts of Britain in this era subject their imagery to extensive artistic pressure, threatening to dismantle the national vision at the moment of its construction.

Sebastian Mitchell is Lecturer in English Literature at the University or Birmingham.

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C O N T E N T S 

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Thomson’s Vision of Britannia
3. Smollett and Dialectical Nationalism
4. Ramsay, Hume, and British Portraiture
5. Ossian, Wolfe, and the Death of Heroism
6. Boswell: Self, Text, Nation
7. Scott, Turner, and the Vision of North Britain
Bibliography
Index

Anyone anticipating a proper Fourth of July posting might have a look back at the notice posted in May for Magna Carta: Cornerstone of Liberty, which just opened at Boston’s MFA. Less directly, this book from Ashgate might stimulate broader thoughts on issues of heritage interpretation, a field that in the United States too rarely comes into art historical conversations. In any case, a happy Fourth of July to all of you who mark the day. -CH

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Russell Staiff, Re-imagining Heritage Interpretation: Enchanting the Past-Future (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), 202 pages, ISBN: 978-1409455509, $110.

This book challenges traditional approaches to heritage interpretation and offers an alternative theoretical architecture to the current research and practice. Russell Staiff suggests that the dialogue between visitors and heritage places has been too focused on learning outcomes, and so heritage interpretation has become dominated by psychology and educational theory, and over-reliant on outdated thinking. Using his background as an art historian and experience teaching heritage and tourism courses, Russell Staiff weaves personal observation with theory in an engaging and lively way. He recognizes that the ‘digital revolution’ has changed forever the way that people interact with their environment and that a new approach is needed.

Russell Staiff holds a PhD in art history from the University of Melbourne where he was the foundation lecturer in the postgraduate visual arts and tourism program. He began his life in heritage and tourism as a guide in Italy. Currently, he teaches in the heritage and tourism program at the University of Western Sydney and Silpakorn University, Bangkok. He researches the various intersections between cultural heritage, communities and tourism with a particular emphasis on Southeast Asia.

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C O N T E N T S

Prologue: the known, the unknown and other ruminations
1  Anecdotes and observations
2  Tilden: beyond resurrection
3  The somatic and the aesthetic: embodied heritage experiences
4  Visual cultures: imagining and knowing through looking
5  Narratives and narrativity: the story is the thing
6  Digital media and social networking
7  Conversing across cultures
8  Enchantment, wonder and other raptures: imaginings outside didacticism

From the V&A:

Joanna Gwilt, Vincennes and Early Sèvres Porcelain from the Belvedere Collection (London: V&A Publishing, 2014), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1851777730, £60 / $80.

The opulent wares of the renowned Sèvres manufactory are prominently displayed in palaces and art galleries throughout the world. By contrast, the comparative delicacy and simplicity of the beautiful wares of the Vincennes porcelain works, from which the Sèvres factory evolved, remain relatively unknown, even to porcelain experts, who will find much that is alluring and surprising in this remarkable book. Detailed photographs and lavish illustrations reveal the rich variety of styles and increasingly complex gilding that mark out the products of Vincennes and early Sevres, including such innovations as the introduction of sculptural figures during the late 1740s. Much of these novel designs were initially inspired by the work of leading artists of the time—including François Boucher. The ebook that accompanies the printed version contains additional photographs, showing every piece in close detail, making it perfect for scholars, collectors and enthusiasts.

Joanna Gwilt is a specialist in eighteenth-century French decorative arts and formerly the Assistant Curator at the Royal Collection and also of the Wallace Collection, London. She is the author of French Porcelain for English Palaces: Sèvres from the Royal Collection (2009).

A digital preview is available here»

From Ashgate:

Marion Harney, Place-making for the Imagination: Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 326 pages, ISBN: 978-1409470045, £50 / $100.

Drawing together landscape, architecture and literature, Strawberry Hill, the celebrated eighteenth-century ‘Gothic’ villa and garden beside the River Thames, is an autobiographical site, where we can read the story of its creator, Horace Walpole. This ‘man of taste’ created private resonances, pleasure and entertainment—a collusion of the historic, visual and sensory. Above all, it expresses the inseparable integration of house and setting, and of the architecture with the collection, all specific to one individual, a unity that is relevant today to all architects, landscape designers and garden and country house enthusiasts. Avoiding the straightforward architectural description of previous texts, this beautifully illustrated book reveals the Gothic villa and associated landscape to be inspired by theories that stimulate ‘The Pleasures of the Imagination’ articulated in the series of essays by Joseph Addison (1672–1719) published in The Spectator (1712). Linked to this argument, it proposes that the concepts behind the designs for Strawberry Hill are not based around architectural precedent but around eighteenth-century aesthetics theories, antiquarianism and matters of ‘Taste’.

Using architectural quotations from Gothic tombs, Walpole expresses the mythical idea that it was based on monastic foundations with visual links to significant historical figures and events in English history. The book explains for the first time the reasons for its creation, which have never been adequately explored or fully understood in previous publications.

The book develops an argument that Walpole was the first to define theories on Gothic architecture in his Anecdotes of Painting (1762–71). Similarly innovative, The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (1780) is one of the first to attempt a history and theory of gardening. The research uniquely evaluates how these theories found expression at Strawberry Hill. This reassessment of the villa and its associated landscape reveals that the ensemble is not so much a part of the conventionally-conceived linear progression of eighteenth-century architectural style but, rather, is an original essay in contemporary aesthetics.

Marion Harney is Director of Studies, Conservation of Historic Gardens and Cultural Landscapes at the University of Bath.

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C O N T E N T S

Preface: Walpole Moves from Strawberry Hill to Connecticut
Introduction: ‘Things Come to Light’: Experiment and Experience, The Philosophical and Cultural Context
1. ‘The Pleasures of the Imagination’: Tropes of Taste
2. ‘Giving an Idea of the Spirit of the Times’: Anecdotes and Antiquarianism
3. ‘I Am Going to Build a Little Gothic Castle at Strawberry Hill’: Creation of a Seat, part 1
4. ‘The Art of Creating Landscape’: Creation of a Seat, part 2
Epilogue: ‘A Genius is Original, Invents. Taste Selects, Perhaps Copies with Judgement’