Lecture | Frédéric Ogée, Pleasures of the Senses and the Imagination
From the conference series Sociabilité et libertinage au siècle des Lumières, organized at the Cognacq-Jay Museum in conjunction with this year’s summer exhibition Realm of the Senses, from Boucher to Greuze / L’ Empire des sens, de Boucher à Greuze (19 May — 18 July 2021), curated by Annick Lemoine . . .
Frédéric Ogée | Plaisirs des sens, plaisirs de l’imagination dans l’art et la littérature anglaise du 18ème siècle
Online and In-Person, Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, 26 November 2021, 17.00
Dans le sillage de sa « Glorieuse Révolution » de 1688, l’Angleterre inaugura le siècle des Lumières en découvrant le plaisir d’un certain nombre de libertés : « régler le pouvoir des rois en leur résistant » (Voltaire), publier sans entrave, ré-évaluer l’héritage des Anciens, regarder la Nature à travers le prisme de Newton plutôt que celui des prêtres, entreprendre à crédit, célébrer la sensibilité et l’imagination. Les Anglais ont ainsi cherché de nouveaux équilibres entre la liberté de l’individu—son goût, sa subjectivité, sa perception du monde, son « progrès » —et les nécessités de la sphère collective, qu’elle soit publique ou privée. Ecrivains et artistes se sont vite employés à représenter cette nouvelle sociabilité, pour la modéliser et la polir autant que pour la promouvoir, au travers de remarquables expériences littéraires et picturales où les personnages se meuvent et s’émeuvent sous l’œil complice du spectateur-lecteur. Influencés par la philosophie empiriste ils font l’expérience du plaisir des sens pour accéder à la connaissance, d’eux-mêmes et du monde. La présente conférence permettra d’évoquer cette remarquable période de créativité qui, de Daniel Defoe et William Hogarth à Jane Austen et Thomas Lawrence, contribua au triomphe de la Grande-Bretagne sur la scène du monde.
Discutante: Sophie Mesplède (Université Rennes 2)
Frederic Ogee est professeur de littérature et d’histoire de l’art britanniques à l’Université de Paris. Ses principaux domaines de recherche sont l’esthétique, la littérature et l’art au cours du long 18ème siècle (1660–1815), sur lesquels il a souvent donné des conférences dans des universités européennes, nord-américaines et asiatiques. Commissaire de l’exposition sur le peintre anglais William Hogarth au Musée du Louvre en 2006, il est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages, notamment Diderot and European Culture, un recueil d’essais (Oxford: 2006, réédité 2009), J.M.W. Turner : Les paysages absolus (Hazan, 2010), et Jardins et Civilisations (Valenciennes, 2019), suite à une conférence organisée à l’Institut Européen des Jardins et Paysages de Caen. Il écrit actuellement une série de quatre monographies sur quelques grands artistes anglais (Thomas Lawrence, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough et William Hogarth) pour les éditions Cohen & Cohen (Paris), à paraître entre 2022 et 2025. De 2014 à 2017, il a été membre du conseil scientifique du musée Tate Britain à Londres et, depuis 2014, est membre du Conseil Scientifique de la Ville de Paris.
Conférence en présentiel dans la limite des places disponibles, entrée libre avec pass sanitaire ET en distanciel via Zoom. Participation libre sur inscription obligatoire: reservation.cognacqjay@paris.fr et alain.kerherve@univ-brest.fr. La conférence sera précédée à 16h30 d’une visite flash des collections en lien avec la thématique du jour.
Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Marine Carcanague, Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, Guillaume Faroult, Yuriko Jackall, F. Joulie, É. Kerner, A. Laing, C. Le Bitouzé, A. Le Brun, A. Lemoine, N. Lesur, H. Meyer, L-A. Prat, S. de Saint-Léger, M. Szanto, L’ Empire des sens, de Boucher à Greuze (Paris Musées / Musée Cognac-Jay, 2020), 152 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605002, €30.
Resource | Price Guide for Period Frames
From the press relase (via Art Daily) . . .
Eli Wilner & Company has announced that the Price Guide for American and European Period Frames will be made available as a free download. The decision was reached in response to tremendous interest being shown by collectors in donating their antique frames to nonprofit cultural institutions, and in response to requests from numerous art insurance brokers for the Price Guide to be more widely available. The book is a unique reference tool, with particular value to collectors, museum professionals, academic scholars, and appraisers.
Formerly priced at $795, the current edition of the Price Guide for American and European Period Frames was released in late 2020, and constitutes a completely updated and revised version of Wilner’s first edition published in 1995 by Avon Books. The book includes a new collection of over 100 period frame images, along with descriptions and retail pricing. The prices are based on retail frame sales by Eli Wilner & Company, with a sample paid invoice featured at the beginning of each section of the book. The increasing rarity of period frames of the quality showcased here, is reflected in the high prices that these objects can fetch in a retail market. The finest examples of period frames have been sold in the marketplace for hundreds of thousands of dollars. One collector is known to have spent nearly $10 million forming a period frame collection.
As a specialist in period framing for nearly 40 years, Eli Wilner has completed over 15,000 framing projects for private collectors as well as more than 100 institutions. The Wilner gallery is held in high regard by both institutions and private collectors for our expertise, extensive inventory, and superior quality of craftsmanship. This regard and confidence is evidenced by clients such as The White House, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Yale University Art Gallery, and many private individuals. In 2019, Eli Wilner & Company was honored by the Historic Charleston Foundation with the Samuel Gaillard Stoney Conservation Craftsmanship Award, for their work in historic picture frame conservation.
The Price Guide for American and European Period Frames is available for download as a PDF file here»
New Book | The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture
From Oxford UP:
Ivan Gaskell and Sarah Anne Carter, eds., The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 680 pages, ISBN: 978-0199341764, $150.
The past has left a huge variety of traces in material form. If historians could figure out how to make use of them to create accounts of the past, a far greater range of histories would be available than if historians were to rely on written sources alone. People who do not appear in writings could come into focus; as could the concerns of people that have escaped writing but whose material things belie their desires and actions. This book explores various ways in which aspects of the past of peoples in many times and places otherwise inaccessible can come alive to the material culture historian. It is divided into five thematic sections that address history, material culture, and—respectively—cognition, technology, symbolism, social distinction, and memory. It does so by means of six individually authored case studies in each section that range from pins to pearls, Paleolithic to Punk.
Ivan Gaskell is Professor of Cultural History and Museum Studies at Bard Graduate Center, New York City. Sarah Anne Carter is Visiting Executive Director of the Center for Design and Material Culture, and Visiting Assistant Professor in Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
C O N T E N T S
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why History and Material Culture?
I History, Material Culture, and Cognition
• Words or Things in American History? — Steven Conn
• Artifacts and Their Functions — A. W. Eaton
• Mastery, Artifice, and the Natural Order: A Jewel from the Early Modern Pearl Industry — Mónica Domínguez Torres
• Food and Cognition: Henry Norwood’s A Voyage to Virginia — Bernard L. Herman
• On Pins and Needles: Straight Pins, Safety Pins, and Spectacularity — Amber Jamilla Musser
• Mind, Time, and Material Engagement — Lambros Malafouris and Chris Gosden
II History, Material Culture, and Technology
• Material Time — John Robb
• Remaking the Kitchen, 1800–1850 — J. Ritchie Garrison
• Boston Electric: Science by ‘Mail Order’ and Bricolage at Colonial Harvard — Sara J. Schechner
• Making Knowledge Claims in the Eighteenth-Century British Museum — Ivan Gaskell
• The Ever-Changing Technology and Significance of Silk on the Silk Road — Zhao Feng
• Science, Play, and the Material Culture of Twentieth-Century American Boyhood — Rebecca Onion
III History, Material Culture, and the Symbolic
• The Sensory Web of Vision: Enchantment and Agency in Religious Material Culture — David Morgan
• Sensiotics, or the Study of the Senses in Material Culture and History in Africa and Beyond — Henry John Drewal
• The Numinous Body and the Symbolism of Human Remains — Christopher Allison
• Symbolic Things and Social Performance: Christmas Nativity Scenes in Late Nineteenth-Century Santiago de Chile — Olaya Sanfuentes
• Heritage Religion and the Mormons — Colleen McDannell
• From Confiscation to Collection: The Objects of China’s Cultural Revolution — Denise Y. Ho
IV History, Material Culture, and Social Distinction
• Persons and Things in Marseille and Lucca, 1300–1450 — Daniel Lord Smail
• Cloth and the Rituals of Encounter in La Florida: Weaving and Unraveling the Code — Laura Johnson
• Street ‘Luxuries’: Food Hawking in Early Modern Rome — Melissa Calaresu
• Ebony and Ivory: Pianos, People, Property, and Freedom on the Plantation, 1861–1870 — Dana E. Byrd
• The Material Culture of Furniture Production in the British Colonies — Edward S. Cooke Jr.
• Material Culture, Museums, and the Creation of Multiple Meanings — Neil G. W. Curtis
V History, Material Culture, and Memory
• Chronology and Time: Northern European Coastal Settlements and Societies, c. 500–1050 — Christopher Loveluck
• Materialities in the Making of World Histories: South Asia and the South Pacific — Sujit Sivasundaram
• Mapping History in Clay and Skin: Strategies for Remembrance among Ga’ anda of Northeastern Nigeria — Marla C. Berns
• Remember Me: Sensibility and the Sacred in Early Mormonism — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
• Housing History: The Colonial Revival as Consumer Culture — Thomas Denenberg
• Collecting as Historical Practice and the Conundrum of the Unmoored Object — Catherine L. Whalen
Conclusion: The Meaning of Things
Index
Exhibition | The Way Sisters: Miniaturists of the Early Republic
Attributed to Mary Way, Dressed miniature portraits of a husband and wife of the Deshon family, ca. 1800, mixed media with fabrics and painted paper (Lyman Allyn Art Museum: Gift of Ursula and Gertrude Grosvenor, 1949.122 a & b).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the press release (28 October 2021) for the exhibition:
The Way Sisters: Miniaturists of the Early Republic
Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut, 30 October 2021 — 23 January 2022
Curated by Tanya Pohrt with Brian Ehrlich
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum is pleased to mount a major new exhibition that presents the story and art of May Way (1769–1833) and Elizabeth (Way) Champlain (1771–1825), two sisters and artists from New London, Connecticut. The sisters were among the earliest professional women artists working in the United States. Opening 30 October 2021, The Way Sisters: Miniaturists of the Early Republic will be on view until 23 January 2022.
“This is the first museum exhibition to focus on the Way sisters, and it includes objects that have never been publicly exhibited,” said Dr. Tanya Pohrt, the exhibition’s curator. “These two women made important and lasting contributions to the art and history of Connecticut and a young nation. Their work deepens our understanding of early American art with objects and stories from the past that still resonate today.”
Mary Way, Portrait of Charles Holt (1772–1852), 1800, signed on verso, watercolor and fabric on paper applied to fabric (Private Collection, courtesy of Nathan Liverant & Son, LLC).
The women adapted their schoolgirl training in textiles to create collaged and painted portraits that pushed the boundaries of miniatures as an art form, while serving to expand gender roles for women. Mary Way began her career as a miniaturist around 1789 or 1790, producing painted and unique ’dressed’ portrait miniatures in profile with sewn and adhered fabric clothing that were unlike anything else made in America at the time.
Evidence suggests that Elizabeth (Way) Champlain, known as Betsey, also produced dressed and painted miniatures in roughly the same period. She remained in New London throughout her life and was active as a miniaturist until her sudden illness and death in 1825. Mary Way, who never married, moved to New York City in 1811, seeking new patrons and hoping to expand her artistic sphere. Facing stiff competition, she managed to eke out a living until she went blind in 1820 and was forced to return to New London, where her family supported her until her death in 1833.
Over the course of their careers, the Way sisters portrayed friends, relatives, and acquaintances, as well as a larger network of the mercantile elite from southeastern Connecticut. Telling a story of struggle and accomplishment, this exhibition traces what is known of the sisters’ artistic production, celebrating their stylistic and material innovations. It also examines the identities of their sitters, exploring New London’s history in the decades following the American Revolution.
On November 10, Pohrt and Brian Ehrlich, M.D., advisor to the exhibition, will give an in-person gallery talk. The lecture and reception begin at 5.30. The exhibition is made possible with support from Connecticut Humanities; the Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts; and an anonymous foundation.
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum welcomes visitors from New London, southeastern Connecticut, and all over the world. Established in 1926 by a gift from Harriet Allyn in memory of her seafaring father, the Museum opened the doors of its beautiful neo-classical building surrounded by 12 acres of green space in 1932. Today, it presents a number of changing exhibitions each year and houses a fascinating collection of over 17,000 objects from ancient times to the present: artworks from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe, with particularly strong collections of American paintings, decorative arts, and Victorian toys and doll houses.
Brian Ehrlich, Catherine Kelly, D. Samuel Quigley, and Elle Shushan, The Way Sisters: Miniaturists of the Early Republic (New London: Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 2021), 100 pages, ISBN: 978-1878541086.
Exhibition | La Ménagerie de Chantilly
Now on view at the Château de Chantilly:
La Ménagerie de Chantilly
Château de Chantilly, 8 September 2021 — 3 January 2022
Curated by Florent Picouleau
Archive material, books, plans, prints, and drawings provide a glimpse into a less well-known aspect of the history of the Château de Chantilly. The remarkable menagerie at Chantilly, with its collection of exotic animals, was one of the largest of its kind in the 17th and 18th centuries, rivaled only by that of Versailles.
À partir du Moyen Âge, posséder des animaux étrangers est un marqueur de richesse auquel prétendent, dès la Renaissance, les seigneurs de Chantilly. De la fin du XVIe siècle à celle du XVIIIe, le domaine appartient aux familles des Montmorency et des Bourbon-Condé. Pour se divertir et satisfaire leur curiosité, ils introduisent, d’abord dans le parc du château, puis dans l’une des plus extraordinaires ménageries du royaume, des animaux exotiques ou autochtones qui embellissent les jardins et valorisent l’image des propriétaires.
Les cheptels s’accroissent à tel point qu’à la fin du XVIIe siècle il apparaît indispensable de leur construire un lieu spécifique, une ménagerie au moins digne de celle de Louis XIV à Versailles. Point de convergence de la zoologie, de l’architecture animalière, de l’art, de la curiosité scientifique, elle s’inscrit pleinement, jusqu’à sa disparition amorcée en 1792, dans la vie culturelle et mondaine des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.
Dans le prolongement de l’exposition sur l’Orangerie de Chantilly proposée en 2017, le service des archives ressuscite désormais, au croisement de l’histoire, de l’histoire naturelle et de l’architecture, une autre partie du parc qui a, elle aussi, grandement contribué à la renommée du château et de ses propriétaires du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle.
Les visiteurs découvrent ainsi des documents rares ou inédits issus des archives et de la bibliothèque de Chantilly, du musée Condé, ou prêtés par la Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France et le Muséum national d’histoire naturelle. L’exposition leur dévoile les multiples sources du travail historique et la difficulté de la reconstitution.
Commissariat
Florent Picouleau, Chargé d’archives au musée Condé
The press packet (in French) is available as a PDF file here»
Florent Picouleau, La Ménagerie de Chantilly, XVIe–XIXe siècles (Dijon: Éditions Faton, 2021), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-2878443059, €35.
Exhibition | The King’s Animals
Now on view at Versailles:
Les Animaux du Roi / The King’s Animals
Château de Versailles, 12 October 2021 — 13 February 2022
Curated by Alexandre Maral and Nicolas Milovanovic
From its location in the heart of a vast forest in the Île-de-France region, the Palace of Versailles has always fostered a dynamic relationship with the animal kingdom. From animals as objects to be studied or collected to those used as political attributes and symbols of power, the exhibition explores the bond between the court of Versailles and animals—whether ‘companion animals’ (primarily dogs, cats, and birds), exotic beasts, or ‘wild’ creatures. It also brings two long-lost areas of the estate back to life: the Royal Menagerie and the Maze. Once the pride and joy of Louis XIV’s gardens, they can still be admired today in drawings, paintings and testimonies from the period.
The Royal Menagerie, which the Sun King had installed close to the Grand Canal, was home to the rarest and most exotic animals—from coatis to quaggas, cassowaries to black-crowned cranes (nicknamed the ‘royal bird’)—constituting an extraordinary collection in which the king took ever greater pride. The animals in the menagerie were also a great source of inspiration for the artists of the time: they helped Claude Perrault with his Histoire naturelle, as well as serving the Royal Academy of Sciences as subjects for dissections and, later, Louis XV and Louis XVI, in their naturalism pursuits.
In addition to decorative items from the interior of the menagerie—particularly the paintings by Nicasius Bernaerts—on display are well-known garden sculptures, such as those in the Latona Fountain and the Maze. The latter comprised no fewer than 300 animals made from lead, arranged into a scene from Aesop’s fables and depicting a vision of the world in which animals make political, often moralising, always educational, pronouncements. In all, 37 sculptures recovered from the erstwhile grove will be on display.
More information about the Labyrinth (in French) is available here»
As well as the actual animals that were collected and studied, animal symbolism was used to represent power. The exhibition illustrates the link between the establishment of Versailles as a seat of power—from the construction of the palace itself on the site of Louis XIII’s old hunting lodge—and animal symbolism. Part of the exhibition is devoted to the daily hunt—a key activity pursued by warrior kings in times of peace as a form of training and demonstration of power. The hunt, consequently, features prominently in royal iconography.
The animals themselves will return in droves to Versailles, because they never disappeared completely. They live on in the work of the king’s top painters; from Bernaerts, Boel and Le Brun, to Desportes and Oudry, many artists produced portraits of these exotic, wild and more familiar animals. As well as paintings, on view are portraits woven by the Gobelins Manufactory plus animals that were dissected, engraved, then preserved at the Academy of Sciences and in the King’s Garden, which is now the National Museum of Natural History. The exhibition also includes the skin of the Asian elephant gifted to Louis XV, which was donated to the Pavia Museum by Napoleon, and the skeleton of the very first elephant at Versailles, which was presented to Louis XIV by the king of Portugal and lived at Versailles for 13 years.
Finally, the exhibition addresses the role at court of companion animals for both the royal family and courtiers. As is evident from many portraits, companion animals were present everywhere, enlivening the royal apartments and brightening up the daily lives of children and adults alike. Many of the sovereigns, such as Marie Lesczcynska, wife of Louis XV, chose to surround themselves with their favourite animals. The court’s interest in the animal world led to greater sensitivity towards animals, in direct contrast to the Cartesian theory of animal-machines. Madame Palatine and, later, Madame de Pompadour, were particularly passionate about them.
Exhibition Curators
• Alexandre Maral, Curator General, Head of the Sculpture Department of the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon
• Nicolas Milovanovic, Head Curator of the Paintings Department of the Louvre Museum
Alexandre Maral and Nicolas Milovanovic, eds., Les Animaux du Roi (Paris: Lienart éditions / musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, 2021), 464 pages, ISBN: 978-2359063455, 49€.
New Book | Le prince et les animaux
From Lavoisier:
Joan Pieragnoli, Le prince et les animaux: Une histoire zoologique de la cour de Versailles au siècle des Lumières, 1715–1792 (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2021), 295 pages, ISBN: 978-2800417615, €27.
Entre utile et futile, les animaux accompagnent l’existence quotidienne du prince dont les chiens et les chevaux réclament de monumentaux bâtiments à Versailles. Mais au siècle des Lumières les animaux favorisent aussi l’apparition d’un Versailles intime à travers l’artisanat du luxe et de multiples constructions zoologiques de fantaisie.
Durant le règne de Louis XIV, les animaux contribuent à ériger Versailles en véritable monument à la gloire du prince, car ils sont des symboles de pouvoir et deviennent le prétexte de bâtiments grandioses. Cependant, au XVIIIe siècle, les derniers Bourbons délaissent ostensiblement leur principale demeure.
L’histoire zoologique proposée ici, en considérant les pratiques de chasse et la gestion des populations animales qu’elles impliquent, prétend d’abord expliquer cette désaffection. Elle invite également à évoquer un Versailles méconnu, où l’architecture zoologique de fantaisie consacre l’apparition d’une demeure intime au sein de la résidence officielle. Moins qu’à la magnificence, les animaux se trouvent désormais associés à la quête de l’existence privée confortable privilégiée par le roi et son entourage. À travers l’artisanat, l’industrie du luxe et la gastronomie les bêtes participent d’une consommation somptuaire qui définit l’art de vivre des Lumières. Mais l’opinion, indisposée par le coût des ménageries et celui des équipages, juge sévèrement des dépenses qui permettent aux princes de se comporter comme de simples particuliers. Le faste équestre et cynégétique, notamment, joue un rôle prépondérant dans l’effondrement de la monarchie, car les réformes destinées à limiter le nombre de chiens et de chevaux nécessaires au service de la cour interviennent trop tard. Déjà, la Révolution éclate et conduit à des choix autrement plus radicaux.
Docteur en histoire, Joan Pieragnoli s’est spécialisé dans l’étude des animaux durant la période moderne et a consacré plusieurs articles et ouvrages à la Ménagerie de Versailles. Il a récemment collaboré au Dictionnaire Louis XIV (Robert Laffont, 2015) dont il a signé les notices dédiées aux animaux et a publié La cour de France et ses animaux, XVIe–XVIIe siècles (PUF, 2016).
S O M M A I R E
Les animaux : un « habitus du prince » ?
Le cadre social Le cadre administratif et architectural • Le contexte anthropologique
I | Les animaux et le retour de la cour à Versailles
1 Les animaux et la Maison du roi
Les équipages de vénerie • Les équipages de fauconnerie • Les équipages et les animaux de la Chambre • Les écuries du roi
2 Les temps retrouvés de la chasse
Les saisons et les chasses • Les séquences de la chasse • L’économie de la chasse
3 Repeupler la Ménagerie
Protagonistes de l’approvisionnement et itinéraires • Les animaux : peuplement et transport • Les grandes étapes de l’approvisionnement
II | Les animaux et la privatisation des plaisirs royaux
4 L’architecture royale : bâtiments zoologiques et vie sociale
Situation et fonction des constructions royales • Les animaux et la distribution du corps de logis • Les basses-cours et les autres dépendances d’utilité
5 La société des chasses royales
Les chiens et les membres des équipages • La maison régnante • Les courtisans
6 Le renouveau de l’alimentation carnée
L’approvisionnement de la viande et du poisson • La redistribution de la viande sur les tables de la cour • La structure de la consommation
III | Les animaux au crépuscule de Versailles
7 Des animaux de bonne compagnie
L’animal aimé : les témoignages artistiques • Le bestiaire de l’intime • Le soin et la nourriture
8 La Ménagerie : abandon et renouveau d’une institution royale
La Ménagerie : une institution obsolète ? • Le renouveau du peuplement de la Ménagerie • Le fonctionnement quotidien
9 Les animaux à l’heure des réformes
L’héritage du règne de Louis XV et les premières mesures de Louis XVI • Les grandes réformes • Le fonctionnement quotidien
Conclusion générale
Exhibition | Simon Watson: Portrait of a House
From Dublin’s Kevin Kavanagh gallery and Dürer Editions:
Simon Watson: Portrait of a House
Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin, 14–30 October 2021
In Portrait of a House, Watson explores an eighteenth-century Georgian house on Dublin’s storied Henrietta Street. The house (Number Twelve) has a history of transformation, from the grand city home of wealthy merchants to the inner-city tenement dwelling for the poverty stricken. In a gentle Proustian fashion, the house reveals a quiet melancholy and the slow passing of time. The photographs were made over several years. The work is intended to be a poetic and intimate portrait.
For over 30 years Simon Watson has exhibited his photographs in Europe and the U.S. including solo shows at the late Richard Anderson Gallery in New York and the Auschwitz Museum in Poland. More recently he has shown his paintings at the Galerie Rideau de Fer in France. His work is included in museums and in public and private collections worldwide. Watson has been a regular contributor to The New York Times T Magazine, W Magazine, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. His recent book The Lives of Others was published by Rizzoli in 2020.
Simon Watson, Portrait of a House (Dürer Editions, 2021 ), 64 pages, ISBN: 978-1838314309 , first edition of 1000 copies, €45; special edition of 50, €350; limited edition of 10, €750; collector edition of 5, €1850.
New Book | The Best Address in Town: Henrietta Street
From Four Courts Press:
Melanie Hayes, The Best Address in Town: Henrietta Street, Dublin and Its First Residents, 1720–80 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2021), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-1846828478, €30 / $40.
Once Dublin’s most exclusive residential street, Henrietta Street was, throughout the eighteenth century, home to the country’s foremost figures from church, military, and state. Here, in this elegant setting on the north side of the city, peers rubbed shoulders with property tycoons, clerics consorted with social climbers, and celebrated military men mixed with the leading lights of the capital’s beau monde, establishing one the principle arenas of elite power in Georgian Ireland. Looking behind the red-brick facades of the once-grand Georgian town houses, this richly illustrated volume—commissioned by Dublin City Council Heritage Office in conjunction with the 14 Henrietta Street museum—focuses on the people who originally populated these spaces, delineating the rich social and architectural history of Henrietta Street during the first fifty years of its existence. By weaving the fascinating and often colourful histories of the original residents around the framework of the buildings, in repopulating the houses with their original occupants, and by offering a window into the lives carried on within, this book presents a captivating portrait of Dublin’s premier Georgian street, when it was the best address in town.
Melanie Hayes is an architectural historian, specialising in Ireland’s eighteenth-century architectural and social history. She was an academic researcher during the development of the 14 Henrietta Street museum by Dublin City Council, and continues to be involved with the museum. Melanie currently works as a research fellow on an Irish Research Council laureate project, CRAFTVALUE, at Trinity College Dublin, exploring a new skills-based perspective on the architecture of Britain and Ireland from 1680 to 1780.
New Book | 14 Henrietta Street: Georgian Beginnings, 1750–1800
From the 14 Henrietta Street museum:
Melanie Hayes, 14 Henrietta Street: Georgian Beginnings, 1750–1800 (Dublin: Dublin City Council Culture Company, 2021), ISBN: 978-0995744660, €18.
In 1800 Henrietta Street was one of the most elegant and elite addresses in all of Georgian Dublin, home to some of the most powerful members of the Anglo-Irish ruling class. 14 Henrietta Street: Georgian Beginnings explores the early history of the house, its first residents—the Molesworths, Bowes, and O’Brien families—and the lives lived behind the red brick facade. This book is one of three new publications commissioned by the 14 Henrietta Street museum that uncover the lives of the people who lived at the house and the surrounding areas.
Melanie Hayes is an architectural and cultural historian, specialising in Ireland’s eighteenth-century architectural and social history. Melanie was part of the historian research team at 14 Henrietta Street, and continues to be involved as a historian for the museum. Dr Hayes currently works as a post-doctoral research fellow, on an Irish Research Council advanced laureate project, CRAFTVALUE, at Trinity College Dublin.
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