New Book | Late-Georgian Churches, 1790–1840
Forthcoming from John Hudson Publishing:
Christopher Webster, Late-Georgian Churches: Anglican Architecture, Patronage, and Church-Going in England, 1790–1840 (London: John Hudson Publishing, 2022), 360 pages, ISBN: 978-1739822903, £80 / $115. Also available as an ebook for £20.
This book is the first comprehensive study of late-Georgian church-building. After centuries of post-Reformation inactivity, the Church of England began to address the desperate shortage of accommodation and build on a huge scale. Almost all the leading architects were involved and, amongst approximately 1500 new churches, there are some outstanding designs—buildings of the very highest order architecturally. In this pioneering study, the churches are considered free from the Ecclesiological zeal that condemned them and has, for so long, prevented their serious study. It celebrates the best of them and provide valuable insights into the design and planning of the whole corpus. Included is a thorough examination of the stylistic alternatives and contemporary liturgical imperatives, along with their architectural implications. The book also explores a lost world of late-Georgian churchgoing: what people expected and experienced in a church service. Also considered are some of the period’s remarkable material and constructional innovations, ones often exploited in church-building, along with the provision of architectural services in the era that preceded full professionalisation.
Christopher Webster is an independent architectural historian whose work focuses on Georgian England. His books include R.D. Chantrell (1793–1872) and the Architecture of a Lost Generation (2009) and edited volumes of essays: Episodes in the Gothic Revival (2011); Building a Great Victorian City: Leeds Architects and Architecture, 1790–1914 (2011); and The Practice of Architecture (2012). Dr Webster has also published articles in Architectural History, The Georgian Group Journal, and Ecclesiology Today.
C O N T E N T S
1 Introduction
2 The Church in Danger
3 Ecclesiastical Architecture and the Question of Style
4 Church Designers and Their World
5 Constructional and Decorative Innovation in Church-building
6 Designing for Worship: The Practical Issues
7 Planning Liturgical Spaces
8 Late-Georgian Worship
9 Seating the Congregation
10 Late Eighteenth Century Church-building: The Final Triumph of Classicism
11 Church-building, 1800–1820
12 The Gothic Revival in West Yorkshire and Liverpool, 1800–1820
13 Design Debates and Solutions, 1820: The Commissioners, the ICBS and Publications
14 Church-building in the 1820s
15 Church-building in London, c1790–1830: From Classical to Gothic
16 Church-building in South-East Lancashire, 1790–1830: The Role of the Clergy
17 Church-building in the 1830s
18 A Brave New World?
19 Conclusions
Select Bibliography
Select Gazetteer
Index
Exhibition | Boilly: Parisian Chronicles
Louis-Léopold Boilly, Trompe-l’oeil aux cartes et pieces de monnaie, detail, ca. 1808–15
(Lille: Palais des Beaux-Arts)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the Cognacq-Jay:
Boilly: Parisian Chronicles
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, 16 February — 26 June 2022
Curated by Annick Lemoine and Sixtine de Saint-Léger
A virtuosic and prolific artist in a class of his own, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845) was the enthusiastic chronicler of Parisian life for sixty years, spanning a period from one revolution to the dawn of the next (1789 and 1848). In addition to being a portraitist for Parisians and a painter of city scenes, Boilly was also the inventor of stunning trompe-l’œil paintings and the author of witty caricatures. This monographic exhibition explores Boilly’s productive career through a selection of 130 works, giving us a glimpse into the artist’s uniqueness, brilliance, humour, and inventiveness. It presents several previously unseen masterpieces, some of which have never been shown in France.
Born in the North of France, Boilly set out to win over the capital at the age of 24, in 1785. He would live there his whole life. Taking little interest in the grand history of Paris, he instead became fascinated by the city’s modernity, its hustle and bustle, and its many spectacles. As a true chronicler of everyday life, Boilly painted an intimate portrait of his generation. The artist developed a fondness for scrutinising the views and faces he came across in the city. He distinguished himself in the art of portraiture by capturing the faces of Parisians on the small formats that would become his trademark. The portraitist was also a keen caricaturist who looked at his fellow citizens with an amused, and perhaps even scathing, eye. His taste for provocation and technical proficiency can also be found in his stunningly illusionistic trompe-l’œil.
The exhibition also showcases the subtle tricks the artist employed to depict himself in his works. In addition to painting derisive self-portraits and using a variety of signatures, he also slid his likeness amongst the protagonists of his crowd scenes, just as Alfred Hitchcock did in his films. These stratagems establish a knowing relationship between the artist and viewer. Throughout the exhibition, visitors are taken along on a fun treasure hunt to find Boilly’s face or clues of his presence.
Organised as a follow-up to the publication of Étienne Bréton and Pascal Zuber’s catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work (Boilly: Le peintre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe, Arthena, 2019), the exhibition is curated by Annick Lemoine and Sixtine de Saint-Lége. On display are several masterpieces never before shown in France on loan from prestigious private collections, including one of the largest, currently held by the Ramsbury Manor Foundation (United Kingdom).
Annick Lemoine, ed., with contributions by Etienne Bréton, Sixtine de Saint-Léger, Côme Fabre, Martial Guédron, Charlotte Guichard, Annick Lemoine, Susan L. Siegfried, Anne-Laure Sol, Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, and Pascal Zuber, Boilly: Chroniques Parisiennes (Paris: Musées, 2022), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605187, €30.
New Book | Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670–1792
Andrew Bricker will be speaking online (via Zoom) with Marissa Nicosia about his new book on Tuesday, 12 April 2022, at noon (ET) in a session sponsored by the Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography and the Rare Book School. From Oxford UP:
Andrew Benjamin Bricker, Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670–1792 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0192846150, $90.
Libel and Lampoon shows how English satire and the law mutually shaped each other during the long eighteenth century. Following the lapse of prepublication licensing in 1695, the authorities quickly turned to the courts and newly repurposed libel laws in an attempt to regulate the press. In response, satirists and their booksellers devised a range of evasions. Writers increasingly capitalized on forms of verbal ambiguity, including irony, allegory, circumlocution, and indirection, while shifty printers and booksellers turned to a host of publication ruses that complicated the mechanics of both detection and prosecution. In effect, the elegant insults, comical periphrases, and booksellers’ tricks that came to typify eighteenth-century satire were a way of writing and publishing born of legal necessity. Early on, these emergent satiric practices stymied the authorities and the courts. But they also led to new legislation and innovative courtroom procedures that targeted satire’s most routine evasions. Especially important were a series of rulings that increased the legal liabilities of printers and booksellers and that expanded and refined doctrines for the courtroom interpretation of verbal ambiguity, irony, and allegory. By the mid-eighteenth century, satirists and their booksellers faced a range of newfound legal pressures. Rather than disappearing, however, personal and political satire began to migrate to dramatic mimicry and caricature-acoustic and visual forms that relied less on verbal ambiguity and were therefore not subject to either the provisions of preperformance dramatic licensing or the courtroom interpretive procedures that had earlier enabled the prosecution of printed satire.
Andrew Benjamin Bricker is an Assistant Professor of English Literature in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University and a Senior Fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He received his BA and MA from the University of Toronto and his PhD from Stanford University. Before joining UGent, he was a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at McGill University and a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia.
C O N T E N T S
Introduction: The Perils of Satire
1 Keeping out of Court I: Libel and Lampoon after Hale and Dryden
2 Keeping out of Court II: Swift and the Illicit Book Trade
3 Irony in the Courts: Defoe and the Law of Seditious Libel
4 Naming in the Courts: Pope and the Dunciad
5 Allegory in the Courts: Satire and the Problem of ‘Libellous Parallels’
6 Keeping out of Court III: Caricature, Mimicry, and the Deverbalization of Satire
Epilogue: A Shandean History of the Press
Exhibition | French Taste in Spain, 17th–19th Centuries
Now on view at the Fundacion MAPFRE:
The French Taste and Its Presence in Spain, 17th–19th Centuries
El gusto francés y su presencia en España, siglos XVII–XIX
Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, 11 February — 8 May 2022
Curated by Amaya Alzaga Ruíz with Gloria Martínez Leiva
Louis-Michel Van Loo, María Antonia Fernanda de Borbón, Infanta of Spain, detail, ca. 1737, oil on canvas, 88 × 71 cm (Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Repository of the Collection of the IX Count of Villagonzalo; photo by Marcos Morilla).
Through numerous paintings, sculptures, textiles, sumptuary arts, and everyday objects, the exhibition El gusto francés y su presencia en España, siglos XVII–XIX delves into the evolution of French taste in Spain, which until now has been studied only on an ad hoc basis. A cross-cutting project that covers such an extensive historical period cannot be understood without its historical context. In this sense, the exhibition also addresses aspects that make this evolution possible, such as diplomatic relations, the history of collecting, and the construction of national identities. The nearly 110 works on display are from both public and private collections and are all pieces of national heritage. The project commences at the moment when French artworks began to arrive in Spain, as France emerged as a model of European taste, and it concludes when the opposite phenomenon occurred, when Spain became the focus of attraction for French culture, due to the image constructed around its diversity and exoticism throughout the 19th century.
17th Century | Difficult Relations: Portraits, Exchanges, and Gifts
The 1630s and 1640s, under the reign of Louis XIII, who for a time managed to stabilize the power of the crown, witnessed a golden age for French painting. Both Louis XIII and his advisor, Cardinal Richelieu, launched an extremely active artistic policy and commissions proliferated, which encouraged the art market.
Towards 1650, Spain was irrevocably losing its primacy as a world power to the France of Louis XIV, the Sun King. One of the strategies used to seal the peace was to establish alliances through marriages with the Spanish royal house. In this context, it was common for gifts of a very different nature to be exchanged between the two: horses, sumptuary arts, small pieces of furniture and above all portraits. From 1660 onwards, thanks to his marriage to Maria Teresa of Austria, daughter of Philip IV, known as the Planet King—a union that brought the Thirty Years’ War to an end— the exchange of gifts became even more frequent. The queen was portrayed on numerous occasions alone or accompanied by her son Louis, known as the Grand Dauphin of France, as can be seen in María Teresa de Austria y el Gran Delfín de Francia (Maria Theresa of Austria and the Grand Dauphin of France), ca. 1664, by cousins Charles and Henri Beaubrun.
18th Century | The Arrival of French Artists in Bourbon Spain, the Emergence of French Taste
In 1700, with the accession to the throne of Philip V, the Bourbon dynasty, of French origin, was established in Spain, and in the early years of his reign, the king wanted to bring everything he had known in Versailles and Paris to the Spanish court. He commissioned the work on the Buen Retiro, as well as the interior renovation of the Alcázar, and undertook the construction of the Granja de San Ildefonso, in Segovia. In addition, all kinds of furniture, jewelry, and clothing were imported. In 1715, the painter Michel-Ange Houasse came to the Spanish court from France, later being succeeded by Jean Ranc. In 1735, Louis-Michel Van Loo replaced Ranc, and became the King’s principal painter, as well as the director of painting at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, founded in 1752. From his hand came the portrait María Antonia Fernanda de Borbón, infanta de España (María Antonia Fernanda de Borbón, Infanta of Spain), ca. 1737.
During this period, artistic transfers between France and Spain were sometimes made by way of Italy, which was home to an important French community fostered by the presence of the Académie de France in Rome, founded by Louis XIV in 1666. Spanish artists traveled to Rome more and more frequently, which gave them the opportunity to become familiar with French art without the need to travel to Paris. This was the case of Francisco Goya, who was able to become acquainted with the work of Nicolas Poussin and Pierre Subleyras during his documented stay in the Italian capital.
The blossoming of French culture and taste in Spain reached its pinnacle during the reign of Charles IV, grandson of Philip V. Born in Portici during the reign of his father Charles III in Naples and Sicily, Charles Anthony of Bourbon (1748–1819) arrived in Spain as a teenager. He was first named Prince of Asturias and then crowned King of Spain and the Indies in 1788. In 1808 he was dethroned, exiled first in France and then in Rome, until his death in Naples. His interest in the sumptuary arts, furniture, painting, and sculpture became apparent at an early age and the best example of this is the Platinum Cabinet in the Casa del Labrador in Aranjuez, which was made entirely by French artists. On the occasion of his marriage to Maria Luisa Teresa of Parma in 1765, Louis XV gave the couple a table service from the porcelain company Manufactura Real de Porcelana de Sèvres, and his cousin Louis XVI, presented them with two paintings by Claude Joseph Vernet.
19th Century | The Romantic Vision of Spain
With the Napoleonic invasion that led to the War of Independence (1808–1814), Spain became the new destination to be explored by the French who, together with other foreign travelers and intellectuals, created what is known today as the ‘romantic image of Spain’. Some of those who contributed to this creation were the writer Victor Hugo and the painter Eugène Delacroix. We can see more specific examples in the exhibition, in the figures of Antonio de Orleans, Duke of Montpensier and Galliera, and Eugenia de Montijo.
The Duke of Montepensier married the sister of Queen Isabella II, the Infanta Luisa Fernanda. After the revolution of 1848 the couple left France, settling in Seville in 1849. Their stay led to a boom in culture and popular events in the city, to the point that Seville came to be nicknamed the ‘Small Court’. Eugenia de Montijo, the daughter of the Duke of Peñaranda, was born in Granada, but spent most of her life in France. Wife of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, thanks to her education and refinement, she was one of those responsible for exporting the ‘Empire style’ to the Spanish court.
At the end of the 18th century, France and Spain became official allies and a change began to take place with respect to the foreign view of the latter. Spain, which was at peace, proved to be the perfect alternative for more inquisitive spirits, since it was home to magnificent remains from the Roman and Arab civilizations. In this context, Alexandre de Laborde (1773–1842), an officer, scholar and traveler, taking advantage of his diplomatic posting in Madrid, in 1800 penned the story of his travels, in the Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Espagne. In 1808, he finally published a shorter version, entitled Itinéraire descriptif de l’Espagne, which led a considerable number of artists to Spain, including François Ligier.
In 1826, in Paris, Baron Isidore Justin Taylor began the publication of a Voyage pittoresque en Espagne, en Portugal et sur la Côte d’Afrique, de Tanger à Tétouan. In Paris, where he held the post of Royal Commissioner of French Theater, Taylor promoted the production of Hernani, Victor Hugo’s 1830 play set in the Spanish Golden Age, further catalyzing the Romantic enthusiasm for the Peninsula. At the same time, his involvement in governmental mechanisms allowed him to present himself as the connoisseur par excellence of Spain: in 1835, he was commissioned to assemble a collection of Spanish paintings for the Louvre Museum, a campaign personally financed by King Louis-Philippe, who was eager to acquire a Galérie espagnole, taking advantage of the imminent confiscations of Mendizábal. The two French artists most involved in illustrating the Baron’s work were Adrien Dauzats and Pharamond Blanchard, who also helped to locate the paintings destined for Louis Philippe’s Spanish gallery.
Although the perception of ‘Spanishness’ in France varied throughout the 19th century, after the 1848 Revolution, it became increasingly frequent to associate Spanish culture with the image of an archaic and free people, in contrast with the rigid rules of bourgeois society. Starting in 1850, several artists, among them Gustave Doré, Jean-Baptiste Achille Zo, and Édouard Manet, began to exhibit paintings in French salons featuring gypsies, beggars, vagabonds and working class ‘majos’. Made after their respective trips to Spain, in most cases they tried to exalt the Spanish Golden Age with the figures of Velázquez and Ribera at the forefront.
Amaya Alzaga Ruíz, ed., El Gusto francés y su presencia en España, siglos XVII–XIX (Madrid: Fundación MAPFRE, 2022), 331 pages, ISBN 978-8498447972, 50€.
New Book | Luxury after the Terror
From Penn State UP:
Iris Moon, Luxury after the Terror (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0271091617, $105. Also available as an ebook.
When Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793, vast networks of production that had provided splendor and sophistication to the royal court were severed. Although the king’s royal possessions—from drapery and tableware to clocks and furniture suites—were scattered and destroyed, many of the artists who made them found ways to survive. This book explores the fabrication, circulation, and survival of French luxury after the death of the king.
Spanning the final years of the ancien régime from the 1790s to the first two decades of the nineteenth century, this richly illustrated book positions luxury within the turbulent politics of dispersal, disinheritance, and dispossession. Exploring exceptional works created from silver, silk, wood, and porcelain as well as unrealized architectural projects, Iris Moon presents new perspectives on the changing meanings of luxury in the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, a time when artists were forced into hiding, exile, or emigration. Moon draws on her expertise as a curator to revise conventional accounts of the so-called Louis XVI style, arguing that it was only after the revolutionary auctions liquidated the king’s collections that their provenance accrued deeper cultural meanings as objects with both a royal imprimatur and a threatening reactionary potential.
Lively and accessible, this thought-provoking study will be of interest to curators, art historians, scholars, and students of the decorative arts as well as specialists in the French Revolution.
Iris Moon is Assistant Curator in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the author of The Architecture of Percier and Fontaine and the Struggle for Sovereignty in Revolutionary France. She teaches at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.
C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Death and Dispersal: The 1793–94 Revolutionary Auctions at Versailles
2 Henry Auguste: Precious Metals in the Age of Terror
3 Jean-Démosthène Dugourc: Political Fantasies of the Arabasque
4 Aubert-Henri-Joseph Parent: Carving in Exile
5 Alexandre Brongniart: Fragile Terrains
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
Index
The Burlington Magazine, March 2022
The eighteenth century in the March issue of The Burlington . . .
The Burlington Magazine 164 (March 2022)
G. B. Piranesi, Catalogo delle Opere, State I, with manuscript additions, 1761, etching, 40 × 30 cm (Private collection).
A R T I C L E S
• Andrew Robison, “Piranesi’s Catalogo delle Opere,” pp. 230–45. When Piranesi moved to new quarters in Rome in 1761 he had space to store and sell his prints rather than entrust them to booksellers. This prompted him to publish an illustrated sales catalogue in the form of an etching and engraving, of which a number of copied inscribed to his friends and patrons survive. Revised twenty-nine times before Piranesi’s death in 1778, the catalogue provides important evidence about his understanding as well as the dating of his prints, series of prints and illustrated books.
• Giovan Battista Fidanza, “Carlo Maratti’s Additions to the Barberini Venus,” pp. 260–65. In 1999–2000 a restoration of the sixteenth-century mural in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome, known as the Barberini Venus, which was remodelled with additions by Carlo Maratti in 1693, removed tempera overpainting in the belief that it post-dated his changes. A newly discovered document in the Barberini archives both provides the fullest contemporary record of Maratti’s work on the mural and indicates that the tempera additions were painted by him.
R E V I E W S
• Isabelle Kent, Review of the Spanish Gallery, Bishop Auckland, pp. 276–83. In October 2021 the only museum in Britain devoted to Spanish art opened in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. Part of the Auckland Project, which uses art, faith and heritage to fuel long-term regeneration, the museum offers an impressive if idiosyncratic representation of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. [Paintings by Zurbarán were purchased by the Bishop of Durham, Richard Trevor in 1756.]
• Laura Moretti, Review of the newly opened galleries for the permanent collection at the Palazzo Maffei in Verona, pp. 290–92.
• Imogen Tedbury, Review of the exhibition Willem van de Velde and Son (Amsterdam: National Maritime Museum, 2021–22), pp. 293–95.
• Clare Hornsby, Review of the exhibition Grand Tour: Sogno d’Italia da Venezia a Pompei (Milan: Gallerie d’Italia, Piazza Scala, 2021–22), pp. 295-98.
• Carl-Johan Olsson, Review of the exhibition True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe 1780–1870 (Paris: Fondation Custodia, 2021–22), pp. 298-300.
• María Cruz de Carlos Varona, Review of Beatriz Blasco Esquivias, Jonatan Jair López Muñoz, and Sergio Ramiro Ramírez, eds., Las mujeres y las artes: Mecenas, artistas, emprendedoras y coleccionistas (Abada Editores, 2021), pp. 316–17.
• Susanna Zanuso, Review of Aurora Laurenti, Intagli rococo: professionalità ed elaborazione del gusto negli interni del Palazzo Reale di Torino (Accademia University Press, Turin, 2020), pp. 318–20.
The Burlington Magazine, February 2022
The eighteenth century in February’s issue of The Burlington . . .
The Burlington Magazine 164 (February 2022) — Northern European Art
Nathaniel Dance Holland, Portrait of Christian VII, King of Denmark, 1768, oil on canvas, 77 × 63 cm (Royal Collection Trust).
A R T I C L E S
• Sara Ayres, “Christian VII of Denmark’s Lost British Portraits,” pp. 155–63. In 1768–69 the young Christian VII of Denmark visited London and Paris, where several portraits of him were painted. Three were by artists born or working in Britain—Angelica Kauffmann, Edward Cunningham, known as Calze, and Matthew Peters. All are now lost, but evidence about the comissions survives in copies and prints, contemporary descriptions and documents in the Danish State Archives.
• Lars Hendrikman, “The Finding of the Infant Bacchus,” pp. 180–83.
R E V I E W S
• Camilla Pietrabissa, Review of the exhibition Venetia 1600: Births and Rebirths (Venice: Palazza Ducale, 2021–22), pp. 190–92.
• Ivan Gaskell, Review of the new galleries of Dutch and Flemish art at the MFA Boston (open from November 2021), pp. 195–98.
• Richard Stemp, Review of the exhibition Hogarth and Europe (London: Tate Britain, 2021–22), pp. 198–200.
• Maryl Gensheimer, Review of Fabio Barry, Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Yale UP, 2020), pp. 216–17.
• Clare Hornsby, Review of Ortwin Dally, Maria Gazzetti, and Arnold Nesselrath, eds., Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768): Ein Europ isches Rezeptionsph nomen / Fenomeno Europeo della Ricezione (Michael Imhof Verlag, 2021), pp. 217–18.
• Robert Skwirblies, Review of Lea Kuhn, Gemalte Kunstgeschichte: Bildgenealogien in der Malerei um 1800 (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2020), pp. 218–19.
• Thomas Stammers, Review of Stacey Boldrick, Iconoclasm and the Museum (Routledge, 2020), p. 222.
O B I T U A R I E S
• Marjorie Trusted, “Christian Theuerkauff (1936–2021),” pp. 223–24. For many years Deputy Director of the sculpture collection at the Bode Museum, Berlin, and honorary professor at the city’s Free University, Christian Theuerkauff was a leading scholar of Baroque ivories, whose expert connosseurship and archival research definitively shaped our understanding of many of the outstanding sculptors in the medium.
New Book | The Material World of Eyre Hall
From Giles, in association with the Maryland Center for History and Culture, Baltimore:
Carl Lounsbury, ed., The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History (London: Giles, 2021), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-1911282914, £75 / $90.
With an Introduction by Cary Carson, and contributions by Laura Pass Barry, Bennie Brown, Edward A. Chappell, Sam Florer, Erik Goldstein, Haley Hoffman, Neal T. Hurst, Angelika R. Kuettner, Mark B. Letzer, Carl R. Lounsbury, George W. McDaniel, Katie McKinney, Elizabeth Palms, Margaret Pritchard, Sumpter Priddy, Will Rieley, Alexandra Rosenberg, Gary Stanton, Robert Watkins, and John Watson
A microhistory of 400 years of southern USA history told in the study of one place, Eyre Hall on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay.
Erected in 1759 on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, Eyre Hall is still occupied by descendants of its builder. It retains a rich variety of objects from furniture and books to silver and paintings acquired by the family, reflecting the tastes and aspirations of its many different generations. Only a small handful of places in Virginia can claim such continuity. The material culture of Eyre Hall illustrates the ever-changing meanings of this place in American culture from the seventeenth through the twenty-first century. It represents the cultural endeavours of Southern society built on slavery and impacted by the tribulations of wars, emancipation, and economic depressions. This study explores the mutability of this inheritance in the wake of such transformative events. The book is divided into four sections. The first recounts the history of those who lived at Eyre Hall. The second examines the architecture of the house and its service buildings. The third explores the formal garden. The fourth section is a catalogue raisonné of its objects.
Carl R. Lounsbury was Senior Architectural Historian at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (now retired) and Adjunct Associate Professor of History at the College of William and Mary. Cary Carson was Senior Vice President of Research at Colonial Williamsburg (now retired).
C O N T E N T S
Acknowledgments
Foreword by J. Thomas Savage
Eyreloom: An Introduction by Cary Carson
I. The Changing Fortunes of the Eyre Family through Four Centuries
Golden Quarter by Carl Lounsbury
Eyreville: Archaeology of the Late Seventeenth Century by Haley Hoffman
Eyre Hall: Power House by Carl Lounsbury
Working the Land by Sam Florer
The Bounty of Eyre Hall: From Working Plantation to Summer Retreat in the Long Nineteenth Century by Carl Lounsbury
Escaping Enslavement by Whaleboat, 1832 by Alexandra Rosenberg
Health Retreats and Pleasure Grounds by Robert Watkins
Hoofprints by Elizabeth Palms
Eyre Hall in the Twentieth Century: ‘I’m Home’ by George McDaniel
A Scrapbook of Recollections by Those Who Called Eyre Hall ‘Home’ by George McDanielII
II. Architecture
The Architecture of the House by Carl Lounsbury
Architectural Hardware by Edward Chappell
Wallpaper by Margaret Pritchard
Domestic Service Buildings by Carl Lounsbury
Home Farm: Overseer’s House by Carl Lounsbury
III. Landscape
Garden and Grounds by Will Rieley
Green-house by Will Rieley
Graveyard by Carl Lounsbury
IV. Catalogue
Furniture by Sumpter Priddy
Silver by Mark Letzer
Ceramics by Robert Hunter and Angelika Kuettner
Glass by Angelika Kuettner
Paintings by Laura Pass Barry
Maps by Katie McKinney
Prints by Katie McKinney
Books by Bennie Brown
Musical Instruments by John Watson
Sheet Music by Gary Stanton
Costume and Textiles by Neal Hurst
Ironwork and Arms by Erik Goldstein
Index
Photo Credits
New Book | Lover’s Eyes
This is an updated and expanded version of the 2012 exhibition catalogue. From Giles:
Elle Shushan, ed., with additional contributions by Graham Boettcher and Stephen Lloyd, Lover’s Eyes: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection (London: Giles, 2022), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-1911282938, £40 / $50.
Until the early 2000s, little had been written about eye miniatures, or ‘Lover’s Eyes’, and their short-lived popularity at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries, when hand-painted portraits of single human eyes were set in jewellery, or created to memorialize a deceased loved one. This new expanded and updated edition of the 2012 volume The Look of Love examines their role in the broader context of Georgian and early Victorian portrait miniatures; and looks in detail at the creation, and appeal, of these extraordinary objects.
Dr. and Mrs. David A. Skier’s collection of eye miniatures is one of the most complete such collections of this genre of miniature painting anywhere in existence. This volume features over 130 pieces from the Skier Collection, with 36 extraordinary newly acquired pieces, including two of the three known existing ‘lovers’ lips’, and six examples of a delightful sub-category known as ‘Flower Eyes’. There are four new illustrated essays: on forgeries and fakes of lovers’ eyes, on ‘Flower Eyes’, on the persistence of the eye image which continues the tradition of lovers’ eyes, and an essay on the eye miniatures created by Richard Cosway.
Elle Shushan is a specialist dealer, author, lecturer, and museum consultant. She is a member of the Antiques Dealers’ Association of America, the British Antique Dealers’ Association, CINOA, the Private Art Dealers Association, and the Association of Historians of American Art.
Stephen Lloyd is curator of the Derby Collection at Knowsley Hall, Merseyside. From 1993 to 2009 he was Assistant Keeper and then Senior Curator at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where he co-curated the exhibition The Intimate Portrait: Drawings, Miniatures, and Pastels from Ramsay to Lawrence.
Graham Corray Boettcher is the director of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama.
C O N T E N T S
Collectors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
The Artist’s Eye by Elle Shushan
Eye Miniatures by Richard Cosway by Stephen Lloyd
Symbol & Sentiment: Lover’s Eyes and the Language of Gemstones by Graham Boettcher
Floriography by Elle Shushan
Fake of Fashion by Elle Shushan
Love Never Dies by Graham Boettcher
Catalogue of the Exhibition by Graham Boettcher, Nan Skier, and Elle Shushan, with the assistance of Laura Wallace and Maggie Keenan
Index
Author biographies
New Book | Worn: A People’s History of Clothing
From Penguin Random House:
Sofi Thanhauser, Worn: A People’s History of Clothing (New York: Pantheon, 2022), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1524748395, $30.
In this panoramic social history, Sofi Thanhauser brilliantly tells five stories—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and where they come from, illuminating our world in unexpected ways. She takes us from the opulent court of Louis XIV to the labor camps in modern-day Chinese-occupied Xinjiang. We see how textiles were once dyed with lichen, shells, bark, saffron, and beetles, displaying distinctive regional weaves and knits, and how the modern Western garment industry has refashioned our attire into the homogenous and disposable uniforms popularized by fast-fashion brands.
Thanhauser makes clear how the clothing industry has become one of the planet’s worst polluters and how it relies on chronically underpaid and exploited laborers. But she also shows us how micro-communities, textile companies, and clothing makers in every corner of the world are rediscovering ancestral and ethical methods for making what we wear. Drawn from years of intensive research and reporting from around the world, and brimming with fascinating stories, Worn reveals to us that our clothing comes not just from the countries listed on the tags or ready-made from our factories. It comes, as well, from deep in our histories.
Sofi Thanhauser teaches in the writing department at Pratt Institute. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Program, MacDowell, and Ucross Foundation. Her writing has appeared in Vox, Essay Daily, and The Establishment, among other publications.
C O N T E N T S
Introduction
Linen
1 The Last Linen Shirt in New Hampshire
2 Underthings
Cotton
3 Texas Fields
4 The Fabric Revolution
5 Drought
Silk
6 Yangtze Silk
7 Costume Drama
8 The Rise of Mass Fashion
Synthetics
9 Rayon
10 Nylons
11 Export Processing Zones
Wool
12 Army of the Small
13 Woolfest
14 Weavers
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Enfilade 
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