Enfilade

From the exhibition press release:

Genius and Grace: Franҫois Boucher and the Generation of 1700
Cincinnati Art Museum, 14 February — 11 May 2014

Curated by Esther Bell

François Boucher, Venus Presenting Aeneas to Jupiter and Juno, 1747, black chalk, pen with brown ink, and brush with brown wash and touches of white gouache on tan antique laid paper (Boston: The Horvitz Collection)

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This spring, the verve, grace, and exuberance of 18th-century French drawings will be on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum. The Cincinnati Art Museum will show drawings by the talented group of artists responsible for an unprecedented level of artistic and cultural production in the France of Louis XV in an exhibition titled Genius and Grace: Franҫois Boucher and the Generation of 1700, on view from February 14 to May 11, 2014. Franҫois Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Carle Vanloo, and their contemporaries, born in or around 1700, executed virtuoso compositions whose refined elegance epitomizes the French grand manner. Along with Boucher, Natoire, and Vanloo, the exhibition will also celebrate lesser known but equally talented figures such as Louis-Gabriel Blanchet and Joseph Franҫois Parrocel, as well as several pastels, including a rare example by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. More than seventy master drawings, many of which have never before exhibited or published, will be on view.

This exhibition is organized by the Horvitz Collection in Boston—the preeminent private collection of early French art in the United States. Twenty-nine of the most distinguished artists of this period will be featured, along with a fully illustrated catalogue edited by Alvin L. Clark, Curator of the Horvitz Collection and the J.E.Horvitz Research Curator, Department of Drawings, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum. The Cincinnati Art Museum venue for Genius and Grace: François Boucher and the Generation of 1700 is organized by Dr. Esther Bell, Curator of European Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture; it is the first old master drawings exhibition to take place at the Cincinnati Art Museum in more than thirty years. “These are some of the most beautiful and sexiest images the Old Masters ever produced,” commented Cincinnati Art Museum Director Aaron Betsky. “They are stunning in their display of talent and the sensuality they convey.”

François Boucher, Recumbent Female Nude, ca. 1742–43, red chalk, heightened with white chalk  (Boston: The Horvitz Collection)

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Sixteen of the works on view were created by Franҫois Boucher, who an eighteenth-century critic called “the painter of voluptuousness and grace.” One of the artist’s drawings, Recumbent Nude, depicts a luscious female figure. This may, at first, seem to be a provocative and erotically charged image, but it may have simply developed from a figure study intended to be used when painting a sea nymph or other historical subject. Also part of the exhibition is Carle Vanloo’s Saint Augustine Disputing with the Donatists, which has never before been exhibited. This masterpiece is remarkable for its heavy contours and energetic forms encased within a scene of monumental Italian architecture.

According to Cincinnati Art Museum Curator Dr. Esther Bell, “A selection of master drawings was selected that best tell the story of the unfolding eighteenth century. Not only will visitors be able to enjoy the sumptuous forms of the high Rococo, but also the virtuoso drawings that resulted from rigorous academic training and the cool and classicizing manifestations of these artists’ Italian journeys.”

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From Artbooks.com:

Alvin Clark, ed., Genius and Grace: Franҫois Boucher and the Generation of 1700 (Boston: The Horvitz Collection, 2014), 151 pages, ISBN: 978-0991262502, $34.

Genius and Grace: Franҫois Boucher and the Generation of 1700 features over seventy master drawings from the Horvitz Collection, Boston—widely considered the preeminent collection of French art in the United States. The exhibition features works by a group of artists known as the Generation of 1700. This talented group of artists born in or around the year 1700, such as François Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Carle Vanloo, and their contemporaries, will be celebrated for their virtuoso compositions whose curvilinear elegance epitomizes the French grand manner. From Boucher’s sumptuous reclining female nude, to a rare, early pastel by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, to Director of the French Academy Charles Coypel’s mature self portrait—the works on view celebrate Dezallier d’Argenville’s comment of 1745: “A painter’s way of drawing is as distinctive as handwriting and more so than a writer’s style.” Includes: A. Clark, “The Generation of 1700: Draftsmen, Drawings, and Questions”; F. Joulie, “Reflections on the Early Drawings of Boucher and His Contemporaries”; and E. Bell, “Charles Coypel and the Age of Eclecticism.”

Press release (29 January 2014) from The Royal Collection:

The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714–1760
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 11 April — 12 October 2014

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In 1714 Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover in Germany, acceded to the British throne as George I, the country’s first constitutional monarch. Despite many stronger genealogical claims to the crown than his, the 1701 Act of Settlement had declared that the choice of sovereign was the gift of Parliament alone and that only a Protestant could sit on the British throne. With this unprecedented decision, the Georgian era began, ushering in an unbroken line of succession to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Marking the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian succession, The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714–1760 explores the reigns of George 1 (r.1714–27) and his son George II (r.1727–60), shedding light on the role of this new dynasty in the transformation of political, intellectual and cultural life. Through over 300 works from the Royal Collection, it tells the story of Britain’s emergence as the world’s most liberal, commercial and cosmopolitan society, embracing freedom of expression and the unfettered exchange of ideas.

The Hanoverians’ right to rule was fiercely disputed by the Jacobites, supporters of the Stuart claim to the throne. The ‘Old Pretender’, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, set up a rival court in Paris and Rome, and his son, Prince Charles Edward—Bonnie Prince Charlie—led an uprising in 1745–46 on behalf of his father’s cause. The continuous threat to Hanoverian rule, both at home and overseas, is reflected in the exhibition’s military maps and battle plans. They include a draft order of battle at Culloden, thought to have been produced by George II’s son, the Duke of Cumberland, who led the King’s troops to victory in 1746.

Vanderbank, Equestrian Portrait of George I, 1726
(Royal Collection 404412)

Although St James’s Palace remained the principal royal residence, the newly installed George I focused his artistic attention on Kensington Palace–its location outside London provided some shelter from the scrutiny of his more sceptical subjects. Here he appointed William Kent to decorate a new suite of State Rooms. The King filled Kensington with the best British furniture of the day, including pieces by James Moore and Old Master paintings, such as Don Roderigo Calderón on Horseback, 1612–15, and The Holy Family with St Francis, 1620–30, by Peter Paul Rubens.

The reigns of both Georges were fraught with familial strife. In 1717 George I expelled the Prince of Wales, the future George II, from St James’s Palace. Far from enduring a humiliating exile, the Prince established an alternative court, hosting ‘drawing rooms’, evening parties and balls, and regularly dining in public. Some 20 years later, George II’s son, Frederick, Prince of Wales (whose son George William Frederick became George III) was similarly banished and set up rival headquarters. Furnishing his private residences, the Prince could indulge his enthusiasm for the Old Masters. Among his acquisitions were Guido Reni’s Cleopatra with the Asp, c.1628, Anthony van Dyck’s Thomas Killigrew with an unidentified Man, c.1630, and ‘The Jealous Husband’, c.1660, by David Teniers.

Frederick presented himself as a fashionable man about town, entertaining freelyand informally—a typical supper party offered a menu of larks, pigeons, partridges, truffles, veal, turkey, lamb, turbot, salmon, teal, blackbird, asparagus, broccoli, sweetbreads, coffee cream and jelly. To dress his table, he commissioned dining plate in the new Rococo style, including the spectacular marine service by Paul Crespin and Nicholas Sprimont. Frederick’s mother, Queen Caroline, despised her son’s relaxed manner: “popularity always makes me sick,” she is reported to have said, “but Fretz’s popularity makes me vomit.”

After John Michael Rysbrack and Joseph Highmore, Posthumous Portrait of Queen Caroline, Consort of George II, 1739
(Royal Collection, 31317)

Queen Caroline, consort of George II, was the most intellectual member of the Hanoverian dynasty. Her interests combined art, genealogy and a passion for gardening. She undertook major landscape projects at Kensington Palace and at her private retreat in Richmond, where she commissioned Charles Bridgeman to lay out the new gardens, complemented by follies created by William Kent. The most remarkable of these was the Hermitage, a picturesque temple devoted to British scientists and theologians, encapsulating Caroline’s belief in the interdependence of science and religion.

During the course of the 18th century, the focus of British cultural life began to shift away from court. Artists achieved success and fame through their own efforts, without the traditional support of a royal patron. William Hogarth’s portrait of David Garrick and his Viennese dancer wife, Eva-Marie Veigel, captures one of the most high-profile couples of the age. When the portrait was painted, in c.1757–64, Garrick had already combined great financial success as an actor-manager with international celebrity. Hogarth himself was not only a prominent artist, but
also a writer on art and a noted philanthropist.

The favourite genre of the early Georgian period was satire, both pictorial and literary. In 1724, its greatest practitioner, William Hogarth, published The Bad Taste of the Town, ridiculing British taste for foreign forms of art, such as Italian opera. London’s leading exponent of Italian opera was the German composer George Frideric Handel, who was employed in many royal roles. He was music teacher to George II’s daughter, Princess Anne, who is seen playing the cello with her two sisters and brother, Frederick, Prince of Wales, in Philippe Mercier’s The Music Party, 1733.

Meissen, Tea and coffee service with chinoiserie figures, 1720s
(Royal Collection, 5000106)

The desire for fashionable luxury goods drove Britain’s commercial enterprise and turned London into the most important trading city in the world. The Chelsea porcelain works, one of several new ventures set up to compete with the newly established Meissen factory in Germany, typified the entrepreneurialism of the time. With the emergence of a new leisure class came an explosion of coffee houses, gaming haunts, assembly rooms, theatrical entertainments and pleasure gardens. In the painting St James’s Park and the Mall, c.1745, all elements of cosmopolitan Georgian society mix together, with Frederick, Prince of Wales at the centre, rubbing shoulders with his future subjects.

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The catalogue is published by the Royal Collection and distributed by the University of Chicago Press:

Desmond Shawe-Taylor, ed., The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714–1760 (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2014), 496 pages, ISBN 978-1905686797, £45 / $90.

2014 marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the succession of the House of Hanover to the British throne. In celebration of this historic milestone, The First Georgians explores the rich artistic culture of the early Hanoverian period.

This publication showcases more than three hundred of the finest works of this period, many of which have never been on public display before. Created in Germany, France, and Britain during one of the most dramatic periods of change across all aspects of political, intellectual, and cultural life, they reflect changing views of science, politics, and art throughout the early to mid-eighteenth century—the period when modern Britain was coming into being.

My apologies for (once again) being so late with this exhibition, which recently closed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. The catalogue, however, is still available from Artbooks.com. -CH

Caravaggio to Canaletto: The Glory of Italian Baroque and Rococo Painting
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 26 October 2013 — 16 February 2014

Curated by Zsuzsanna Dobos

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The Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition titled Caravaggio to Canaletto will present the leading styles, outstanding artist figures as well as the extraordinary wealth of genres, techniques, and themes of 17th- and 18th-century Italian painting through more than 140 works by 100 masters, including nine paintings—the highest number by a single artist included in the displayed material—by the period’s prominent painter genius, Caravaggio.

The backbone of the selection is formed by the 34 principal works from the internationally highly acclaimed Italian Baroque and Rococo collection of the museum’s Old Masters Gallery, which will be complemented by 106 masterpieces arriving in Budapest from sixty-two collections of eleven countries, such as the National Galleries in Washington and London, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Museo del Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The material commands international attention since such a large-scale, comprehensive exhibition surveying the entirety of Italian painting as the one in Budapest has not been put on for decades anywhere in the world.

Some years ago the Museum of Fine Arts set itself the ambitious goal of presenting 15th- to 18th-century Italian painting in two consecutive exhibitions, unprecedented in its scope in Hungary. The first one, titled Botticelli to Titian, held in 2009–2010, attracted 230 thousand visitors, and thus became one of the most successful shows in the history of the museum.

The next, representative exhibition devoted to 17th- and 18th-century Italian painting will be the closing event of the Italian-Hungarian Cultural Season 2013 in Hungary. The two centuries of Italian art surveyed by the exhibition were determined by the Baroque style, which prevailed during the period all over Europe. The early Baroque, which had started at the end of the previous century saw the rise of the naturalism of Caravaggio and his followers, as well as the Bolognese School of Classicism linked to the Carracci. High Baroque, which lasted more than fifty years, was characterised equally by the dynamic style of the so-called master decorators, Baroque Classicism, and early Romanticism. We can talk about the Late Baroque period from the last decades of the seicento, when the tradition of the great masters was carried on in a somewhat empty, routine-like way. The Baroque Era ended in the 18th century with the luxurious Venetian Rococo, while in the middle of the century, also referred to as settecento, the beginnings of Neoclassicism started to appear. The artists of the various painting schools and styles of the 17th and 18th centuries were driven by the same desire: to imitate reality, strive for realistic depiction and create the illusion of tangibility, for which they had the whole range of artistic means at their disposal.

The exhibition will survey the period in eight chapters, starting with Caravaggio, whose activity in Rome brought radical change to painting, going on to the Baroque replacing Mannerism, and ending with the development of Rococo and Classicism, and the introduction of their masters. The opening section will display two early works by Caravaggio—one of them Boy with a Basket of Fruit—which will be followed by some religious compositions of Caravaggist painting, including two versions of Caravaggio’s Salome. The third section will showcase classicising Baroque linked to the names of Lodovico, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, while the fourth unit will present the spreading and flourishing of Baroque art. The fifth section will give an overview of the bourgeois genres of the still-life, the landscape, the portrait and the genre portrait, followed by the part devoted to the main stylistic trends of the 18th century. The last two sections will provide a glimpse into 18th-century painting in Venice and introduce the veduta (townscape), which became a popular genre at that time, through four Venetian townscapes by Canaletto.

The exhibition is implemented at the highest standard, thanks to the collaboration of nearly fifty Hungarian and foreign curators specialising in the period, and is accompanied by a Hungarianand English catalogue. The exhibition is curated by Zsuzsanna Dobos, art historian at the Old Masters Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts.

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From Artbooks.com:

Dobos, Zuzsanna, ed., Caravaggio to Canaletto: The Glory of Italian Baroque and Rococo Painting (Budapest: Museum of Fine Arts, 2013), 458 pages, ISBN: 978-6155304187, $130.

Contents include

• J. Jernyei-Kiss, Italian Painting in the 17th and 18th Centuries
• J. Spike, Caravaggio and the Caravaggesque Movement
• D. Benati, The Carracci Academy: From Nature to History
• C. De Seta, The Grand Tour: The European Rediscovery of Italy in the 17th and 18th Centuries
• A. Vecsey, The Reception of 17th- and 18th-Century Italian Painting in Hungary: Taste and Collecting