Enfilade

Opening this month at the Pasquale Paoli Museum in Merusaglia:

Maria Cosway (1760–1838): A strada eccezziunale di un’artista
Museu Pasquale Paoli, Merusaglia (Corsica), 18 May — 30 October 2024

Curated by Amandine Rabier

Maria Cosway (1760–1838): A Strada eccezziunale di un’artista (L’itinéraire singulier d’une artiste), présentée au Musée Maison natale de Pasquale Paoli raconte le cheminement d’une femme brillante que tout prédestinait à une grande carrière d’artiste dans la High Society anglaise et qui, contre toute attente, trouvera sa véritable émancipation en renonçant à sa première vocation pour se consacrer à l’éducation des jeunes filles. Ami fidèle, Pasquale Paoli (1725–1807) fut présent à chaque étape de cette vie singulière. Ses lettres à l’attention de Maria Cosway, tel un fil rouge, ponctuent les différentes sections de cette exposition. Fruit de deux années de travail en collaboration avec des institutions britanniques et italiennes reconnues, l’exposition s’accompagne d’un catalogue édité en français et en anglais, richement illustré et documenté par des historiens d’art réputés, spécialistes du XVIIIe siècle, sous la direction d’Amandine Rabier, commissaire de l’exposition. Cette exposition est aussi pour le musée de Merusaglia, l’occasion de s’extraire de son enracinement local pour rayonner sur la scène internationale, conformément à son Projet Scientifique et Culturel.

Introduction
• L’apprentissage en Italie
• Maria Hadfield devient Maria Cosway

Salle 1 | Maria Cosway dans la société anglaise
• La reine de Pall Mall
• À propos des femmes artistes
• Pasquale Paoli et Maria Cosway

Salle 2 | Maria Cosway peintre
• L’influence du cercle romain
• L’amitié avec David
• Exposer à la Royal Academy

Salle 3 | Rupture

Salle 4 | Émancipation: Maria Cosway pédagogue

Amandine Rabier, ed., Maria Cosway (Ghent: Snoeck Publishers, 2024), ISBN: 978-9461619051, €30.

Francesco Guardi, The Feast of the Ascension in the Piazza San Marco, detail, ca. 1775, oil on canvas
(Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Museum)

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Opening this fall at Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum:

Splendor in Venice: Canaletto and Guardi in 18th-Century Painting
Veneza em Festa: Canaletto e Guardi na Pintura do Século XVIII
Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, 24 October 2024 — 13 January 2025
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, 3 February — 12 May 2025

In 2024, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum welcomes the masters of 18th-century Venetian painting in an exhibition organised in collaboration with the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. After working together on a 2009 exhibition devoted to the French painter Henri Fantin-Latour, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza are joining forces once again to promote an encounter between the works of their respective collections, based on their characteristic affinities. This new project, which starts in Lisbon in autumn 2024 and continues in Madrid in early 2025, takes as its theme 18th-century Venetian painting, with each museum contributing works that echo and complement one another. Canaletto, Guardi, Bellotto, and Tiepolo—creators of some of the most brilliant compositions of their time—will be brought together with other artists for the exhibition. The display will focus on the feste (the celebrations held in La Serenissima), vedute (panoramic views of a specific location), and capricci (fantastical architectures dreamt up by local artists), all of which are naturally festive motifs.

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Note (added 16 August 2025) — The posting was updated to include the dates in Madrid. Also, note that the catalogue is distributed by ACC Art Books and Simon & Schuster.

Now on view at The Wallace Collection:

Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King
The Wallace Collection, London, 10 April — 20 October 2024

Explore the life of the great Sikh leader Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) in this major exhibition

With an unwavering sense of destiny, Ranjit Singh conquered the Punjab, an area that today encompasses Pakistan, following a period of anarchy caused by decades of Afghan invasions. By the early 19th century, he emerged as the undisputed Maharaja, establishing the influential Sikh Empire. Ranjit Singh’s leadership led to a golden age marked by thriving trade, flourishing arts, and a formidable army. Discover his story through nearly 100 stunning artworks, including jewellery and weaponry from the Sikh Empire drawn from major private and public collections. The exhibition also features historic objects from his court, courtiers, and family, including items owned by the Maharaja and the most famous of his 30 wives, Maharani Jind Kaur. Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King is a unique opportunity to see our remarkable collection of Sikh arms and armour alongside other Sikh artworks for the first time.

From Bloomsbury Press:

Davinder Toor, Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2024), 144 pages, ISBN: 978-1781301265, £20 / $30.

This book, published to coincide with the exhibition at the Wallace Collection, features historic artworks, jewellery, and weaponry from Ranjit Singh’s court, courtiers, and family members. Also highlighted are objects intimately connected with his son, Maharaja Duleep Singh—the deposed boy-king turned country squire who was a favourite of Queen Victoria and father of the prominent suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. Richly illustrated, this catalogue also reveals the achievements of Ranjit Singh’s European and American officials. Acknowledging Ranjit Singh’s remarkable feat of holding back the threat of a British invasion for four decades, these ‘Firangis’ would nickname their esteemed Sikh sovereign ‘The Napoleon of the East’.

Davinder Toor is a leading figure among a new generation of Sikh, Indian, and Islamic art collectors. He has acted as a consultant to major private collectors, auction houses and institutions such as the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Wallace Collection. He currently lectures on the ‘Arts of the Royal Sikh Courts’ and ‘Sikh Painting and Manuscripts’ for the V&A’s prestigious Arts of Asia course. Both he and objects from the Toor Collection of Sikh Art were featured on the BBC’s Lost Treasures of the Sikh Kingdom (2014) and The Stolen Maharajah: Britain’s Indian Royal (2018) documentaries. The Toor Collection, comprising more than 1,500 works, acts as a lasting legacy to the empire of the Sikhs.

c o n t e n t s

Maps
Foreword
Preface

Prelude to Power — Davinder Toor
Masters of War — Davinder Toor
The Lahore Durbar — Davinder Toor
Firangis — William Dalrymple
Legacies — Davinder Toor

Notes
Bibliography
Image credits

Now on view at the Beaux-Arts de Paris:

The Tiepolos: Invention and Virtuosity in Venice
Beaux-Arts de Paris, 22 March — 30 June 2024

Curated by Hélène Gasnault and Giulia Longo

This exceptional exhibition brings together drawings and etchings by Giambattista Tiepolo and his two sons, Giandomenico and Lorenzo Tiepolo, a family of virtuoso artists in 18th-century Venice.

The Beaux-Arts de Paris owns a remarkable collection of ten works by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770), making it the second-largest public collection of the artist’s drawings in France. Above all, this collection is the only one in France to include drawings not only by Giambattista, but also by his two painter sons, Giandomenico (1727–1804) and Lorenzo (1736–1776), as well as another of Tiepolo’s assistants in the 1730s, Giovanni Raggi. This collection alone provides an overview of graphic practices within the family and the studio.

The study of these sheets and prints, combined with works by other artists—sources of inspiration such as Rembrandt, masters such as Piazzetta, and contemporaries such as Canaletto, Guardi, and Novelli—highlights the great modernity of their art. This is particularly evident in their ability to produce variations on the same theme, both in traditional religious and mythological subjects and in figure studies, particularly caricatures, as well as scenes from Venetian life. The exhibition also explores the relationship between the father and his sons, and the work within a family of artists.

The exhibition opens with a series of studies of heads and faces that raise the question of training in the Tiepolo studio. It then moves on to religious paintings and large-scale secular decors produced by the Tiepolos and their contemporaries in Venice, followed by autonomous graphic works conceived outside of any painted project, as pure graphic exercises or pleasures, based on iconographic themes repeated almost obsessively, in multiple variants. It is the exceptional inventiveness of Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, one of the most fascinating facets of their artistic personalities, that these drawings and prints allow us to rediscover.

Curated by Hélène Gasnault, curator of drawings at Beaux-Arts de Paris, and Giulia Longo, curator of engravings and photos at Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Hélène Gasnault, ed., with additional texts by Catherine Loisel and Giulia Longo, Les Tiepolo: Invention et virtuosité à Venise (Paris: Beaux-Arts de Paris éditions, 2024), 112 pages, ISBN: 978-2840568780, €25.

This exhibition of over 100 Italian drawings closed on Sunday, though there is a catalogue:

Disegno Disegni
Musée Jenish, Vevey, Switzerland, 8 December 2023 — 14 April 2024

Curated by Emmanuelle Neukomm et Pamella Guerdat

Pietro Palmieri, Trompe-l’oeil with eight copied engravings and study drawings stacked on top of each other, 1783, pen, black and brown inks, brown wash, and blue watercolor on paper, 45 × 60 cm (Vevey: Musée Jenish; photo by David Quattrocchi).

Avec Guerchin, Novelli, Piola, Tiepolo ou encore Zuccari, le dessin italien ancien et moderne est au coeur de l’exposition Disegno disegni.

Dans le sillage du legs de René de Cérenville en 1968, qui faisait la part belle à la création graphique de la Péninsule, les fonds italiens du Musée Jenisch Vevey n’ont cessé de s’enrichir au fil des années, constituant aujourd’hui l’un des noyaux essentiels du patrimoine veveysan. Plus de 100 feuilles issues d’une collection particulière déposée au musée depuis 2003 sont mises en lumière pour l’occasion, dans un dialogue fécond avec les propres fonds de l’institution. Les pièces ainsi réunies invitent à voyager à travers les grands centres artistiques d’Italie, de Venise à Rome, en passant par Bologne et Florence. Autant d’écoles à l’origine d’une production dessinée placée sous le signe de la diversité technique et matérielle. Sujets religieux et profanes, pages d’études et dessins autonomes célèbrent la pluralité qui caractérise le médium et ses multiples fonctions, entre la fin du XVe siècle et les premières décennies du XIXe siècle.

Une exposition sous le commissariat de Emmanuelle Neukomm et Pamella Guerdat, conservatrice et conservatrice adjointe Beaux-Arts, assistées de Leïla Thomas, collaboratrice scientifique.

Marcantonio Franceschini, Allegory of Fame, before 1696 (Private Collection).

Pamella Guerdat et Emmanuelle Neukomm, eds., Disegno disegni: Dessins italiens de la Renaissance au XIXe siècle (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2024), 340 pages, ISBN: 978-8836654727, €45.

Préface — Nathalie Chaix
Le dédale des provenances — Ètienne Dumont
Connoisseurship et marché de l’art — Frédéric Elsig
Avertissement
Catalogue: Dessins ita­liens de la Renais­sance au XIX siècle
Du dessin, la part maudite — Jérémie Koering

Index 
Bibliographie sélective
Remerciements 
Impressum

Now on view at the Cognacq-Jay:

Pocket Luxuries: Small Precious Objects in the Age of Enlightenment
Luxe de poche: Petits objets précieux au siècle des Lumières
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, 28 March — 29 September 2024

Curated by Sixtine de Saint Léger and Gabrielle Baraud

L’exposition Luxe de poche au musée Cognacq-Jay présente une collection exceptionnelle de petits objets précieux et sophistiqués, en or, enrichis de pierres dures ou de pierres précieuses, couverts de nacre, de porcelaine ou d’émaux translucides, parfois ornés de miniatures. Les usages de ces objets varient, mais ils ressortent tous des us et coutumes d’un quotidien raffiné, signe de richesse, souvenir intime. Au siècle des Lumières comme aux suivants, ils suscitent un véritable engouement en France d’abord puis dans toute l’Europe. Luxe de poche a pour ambition de renouveler le regard que l’on porte sur ces objets, en adoptant une approche plurielle, qui convoque à la fois l’histoire de l’art et l’histoire de la mode, l’histoire des techniques, l’histoire culturelle et l’anthropologie en faisant résonner ces objets avec d’autres œuvres : des accessoires de mode, mais aussi les vêtements qu’ils viennent compléter, le mobilier où ils sont rangés ou présentés et enfin des tableaux, dessins et gravures où ces objets sont mis en scène. Ce dialogue permet d’envisager ces objets dans le contexte plus large du luxe et de la mode au XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècle.

Point de départ de cette nouvelle exposition, la remarquable collection d’Ernest Cognacq est enrichie de prêts importants—d’institutions prestigieuses comme le musée du Louvre, le musée des Arts décoratifs de Paris, le Château de Versailles, le Palais Galliera, les Collections royales anglaises ou le Victoria and Albert Museum à Londres—afin d’offrir une nouvelle lecture de ces accessoires indispensables du luxe.

Commissariat scientifique
• Vincent Bastien, collaborateur scientifique au Château de Versailles
• Ariane Fennetaux, professeure des universités, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle
• Pascal Faracci, conservateur en chef du patrimoine

Sixtine de Saint-Léger, ed., Luxe de poche: Petits objets précieux au siècle des Lumières (Paris: Musée Cognacq-Jay, 2024), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605798, €19. With contributions by Gabrielle Baraud, Vincent Bastien, Ariane Fennetaux, and Alice Minter.

From the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden:

Timeless Beauty: A History of Still Life / Zeitlose Schönheit: Eine Geschichte des Stilllebens
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger, Dresden, 17 November 2023 — 1 September 2024

Rachel Ruysch (1664–1750), Floral Still Life, 1690, oil on canvas on oak panel, 35 × 27 cm (Dresden: Museum Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, 3149).

In the Winckelmann Forum of the Semper Building, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister presents around 80 works from its own collection in the exhibition Timeless Beauty: A History of Still Life. The wide-ranging presentation—with masterpieces by painters such as Frans Snyders, Balthasar van der Ast, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Adriaen van Utrecht, Willem Claesz. Heda, Abraham Mignon, and Rachel Ruysch—comprehensively illuminates the genre ‘still life’. Since when has it existed? What exactly constitutes a still life? What meaning, what content and what function did they have and still have today? What allegories and symbols are hidden in these motifs?

Still lifes were not only showpieces of decorative room furnishings, in which the overall effect was in the foreground. They also bear witness to natural scientific interests: the depicted object is regarded as a scientifically object and ‘document’—today as in the Age of Enlightenment. At the same time, however, still lifes are also an illusion, a game with the eye (trompe-l’œuil), in which the optical effect of the entire motif takes center stage. Through the bravura of painting, the ephemeral is immortalized. Many of the works on display, some of them recently restored, allow visitors to rediscover this fascinating genre, as only a few of the more than 100 still lifes in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister are on permanent display.

Konstanze Krüger, ed., Stillleben: Zeitlose Schönheit (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2023), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-3775751131, $50.
Konstanze Krüger, ed., Still Life: Timeless Beauty (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2024), 144 pages, ISBN: 978-3775751148, $40.

From the press release for the exhibition:

William Blake’s Universe / William Blakes Universum
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 23 February — 19 May 2024
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 14 June — 8 September 2024

Curated by David Bindman and Esther Chadwick

Responding to the upheavals of revolution and war in Europe and the Americas, visionary artist, poet, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) produced an astonishing body of work that combined criticism of the contemporary world with his vision for universal redemption. But he wasn’t the only one. William Blake’s Universe is the first major exhibition to consider Blake’s position in a constellation of European artists and writers striving for renewed spirituality in art and life.

Organised in collaboration with the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and drawing on extensive research, this ambitious exhibition will explore the artist’s unexpected yet profound links with important European figures including pre-eminent German Romantic artists Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1820) and Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840). It will also place Blake within his artistic network in Britain, drawing parallels with the work of his peers, mentors, and followers including Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), John Flaxman (1755–1826), and Samuel Palmer (1805–1881).

Poster with detail of William Blake after Henry Fuseli, Head of a Damned Soul, ca. 1788–90, engraving and etching on paper (University of Cambridge: The Fitzwilliam Museum).

Featuring around 180 paintings, drawings, and prints—including over 90 of those by Blake—this major exhibition marks the largest ever display of work from the Fitzwilliam’s world-class William Blake collection, with additional loans from the British Museum, Tate, Ashmolean and other institutions. Examples of the artist’s most iconic and much-loved works including Albion Rose (1794–96) and Europe: A Prophecy (1794), will be joined by rarely exhibited artworks from Blake’s oeuvre, including outstanding new acquisitions from the Sir Geoffrey Keynes bequest, displayed publicly for the first time since joining the Fitzwilliam collection. These include the trial frontispiece of Blake’s prophetic book Jerusalem (1804–1820) and his spectacular large drawing Free Version of the Laocoön (c.1825). Additional highlights include the unique first state of Joseph of Arimathea (1773), produced by Blake as an apprentice aged 16, shown alongside a reworked version of the same image, completed by Blake in his mature years.

Visitors will have a special opportunity to discover the work of Runge, one of Germany’s most important Romantic artists, who has been very rarely seen in the UK until now. Bringing together the largest number of Runge works in the UK to date, the exhibition will include the engravings from the Times of Day (1802–10) series, a defining work of German Romanticism. Representing not only the changing times of day, but the seasons, the ages of man and historical epochs, Runge obsessively returned to this important body of work, an extensive number of preparatory drawings and studies of which will be presented at the Fitzwilliam. Among the works on loan from the Hamburger Kunsthalle will be The Large Morning (1808–09), a fragmentary oil painting widely considered to be one of the most important works from Runge’s short career, cut short by his death aged 33.

Another highlight of the exhibition will be Caspar David Friedrich’s seven sepia drawings The Ages of Man (c.1826) on loan from the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Thought to be inspired by Runge’s interest in visual representations of time, the exquisitely delicate series is associated with the themes of change in nature, the cyclical representation of time, and the temporality of human life.

William Blake’s Universe will unfold in three main sections—past, present and future—with an introductory display of artists’ portraits. ‘The Past: Antiquity and the Gothic’ will focus on the legacy of classical antiquity and Blake’s turn towards the Gothic as an alternative source of inspiration, as well as a spotlight section on Flaxman, an artistic mentor to Blake who gained great acclaim in Germany and across Europe. ‘The Present: Europe in Flames’ will concentrate on the responses of Blake and his close contemporaries in Britain to the revolutionary 1790s. The third section, ‘The Future: Spiritual Renewal’, will show how visions of redemption from a fallen world became a central concern for Blake and his contemporaries in the post-revolutionary period. Jacob Böhme’s mystical ideas about light and cosmic unity, which form a bridge between Blake and his German contemporaries, will be a central display.

William Blake’s Universe is curated by David Bindman, emeritus Durning-Lawrence professor of the History of Art at University College London, and Esther Chadwick, Lecturer in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring new scholarship by the curators, as well as essays by leading academics Sarah Haggarty, Joseph Leo Koerner, Cecilia Muratori, William Vaughan, and James Vigus.

Curators David Bindman and Esther Chadwick said: “This is the first exhibition to show William Blake not as an isolated figure but as part of European-wide attempts to find a new spirituality in face of the revolutions and wars of his time. We are excited to be able to shed new light on Blake by placing his works in dialogue with wider trends and themes in European art of the Romantic period, including transformations of classical tradition, fascination with Christian mysticism, belief in the coming apocalypse, spiritual regeneration and national revival.”

David Bindman and Esther Chadwick, eds., William Blake’s Universe (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2024), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1781301272, £35 / $45.