Enfilade

Jean-Jacques Bachelier, Dog of the Havana Breed, detail, 1768, oil on canvas, 70 × 91 cm
(The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, BM 913)

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For anyone celebrating, a very happy National Dog Day to you and yours! Now on at The Wallace Collection:

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney
The Wallace Collection, London, 29 March — 15 October 2023

The exhibition Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney explores our devotion to four-legged friends across the centuries. Through carefully selected paintings, sculptures, drawings, works of art and even taxidermy, the exhibition highlights the unique bond between humans and their canine companions. Dog portraiture developed as an artistic genre contemporaneously with its human counterpart—dogs are represented in the earliest cave paintings alongside humans—and it flourished, particularly in Britain, from the 17th century onwards. More than any other nationality perhaps, the British have both commissioned and collected portraits of dogs. Bringing over 50 works of art to Hertford House, Portraits of Dogs presents a broad range of portraiture showing dogs in all their different shapes and sizes, with each painter or sculptor challenging themselves how best to represent mankind’s most faithful and fearless friend.

From Giles:

Xavier Bray and Bruce Fogle, Faithful and Fearless: Portraits of Dogs (London: Giles, 2021), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-1913875015, £25 / $35.

Throughout history, dogs and humans have had a special relationship based on trust, loyalty, and friendship—a relationship frequently immortalised in art. Faithful and Fearless: Portraits of Dogs features 50 works of art depicting the bond between people and their beloved pet—from members of the British Royal Family, to artists themselves. Organised in a series of thematically grouped sections—the dog as hero, as a companion to royals, aristocrats and artists, or as an allegory of the human condition—the book explores the canine portrait in its many guises and features dogs belonging to many celebrated figures, including Queen Victoria’s Tilco, Lucian Freud’s Pluto, and David Hockney’s portraits of his dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie. The pieces are all drawn from major British collections including the Royal Collection, the V&A, Tate Britain, the British Museum, and a wealth of regional museums and private collections. In “A Vet’s Point of View,” renowned clinical veterinarian Bruce Fogle examines the many reasons for the extraordinary bond between dogs and their owners. At a time of rising dog ownership, this enchanting volume is a welcome reminder of our devotion to our four-legged friends.

c o n t e n t s

Director’s Foreword

Faithful and Fearless: Portraits of Dogs by Xavier Bray

Catalogue: Introduction
• The Aristocratic Dog
• The Royal Dog
• Kylin and AhCum: Two Pekinese
• The Artist’s Dog
• The Allegorical Dog
• The Heroic Dog
• The Dog Immortal
• Until Death

A Vet’s Point of View by Bruce Fogle

Notes
Index
Photo credits

The related exhibition was on view in Dublin at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2020. Forthcoming from ACC:

Patricia Butler, Drawn from Nature: The Flowering of Irish Botanical Art (Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2023), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1788842365, £35 / $40.

For centuries, artists of all disciplines have expressed delight in nature through the highly skilled and captivating medium of botanical art. The distinguished contributions of Irish botanical artists include records of plants from 17th-century Ireland, early illustrated floras, and botanical art found in the field of design. Drawn from Nature: The Flowering of Irish Botanical Art also covers the importance of botanical art to the Ordnance Survey of Ireland during the 19th century, as well as the vital plant portraits produced by Irish women. These portraits assisted generations of botanists in understanding and describing the natural world but received scant recognition. Published for the first time, these outstanding examples of Irish botanical art, from both public and private collections, demonstrate a shared desire by botanical artists to observe, illuminate, and record Ireland’s unique flora. This book finally affords them the recognition they deserve.

Patricia Butler is an art historian and gardener. The author of Irish Botanical Illustrators & Flower Painters (2000), she curated the exhibition Drawn from Nature: Irish Botanical Art, on view in Dublin at the National Gallery of Ireland in 2020. She owns the historic garden at Dower House, Rossanagh, Ashford, Co Wicklow.

Now on view at Marly:

Séduction et Pouvoir: L’art de s’apprêter à la Cour
Musée du Domaine royal de Marly, 14 April — 27 August 2023

Curated by Anne Camilli and Karen Chastagnol

Une exposition consacrée à l’art du paraître aux 17e et 18e siècles.

Se vêtir et accessoiriser sa tenue révèle les usages sociaux et politiques des élites. Si l’usage de la parure et l’envie d’embellir le corps sont présents dans toutes les sociétés et à toutes les époques, il s’accompagne sous Louis XIV d’une véritable stratégie d’affirmation du pouvoir motivée par la centralisation politique. Le règne du Roi-Soleil se caractérise par un souci de l’apparence et de la représentation. L’accessoire, tout comme le vêtement, contribue à la nécessité de paraitre et de tenir son rang.

Qu’on les appelle ornements ou encore parures, les accessoires du vêtement, de la coiffure et de la beauté deviennent les outils d’une communication non verbale entre les individus et le lieu d’un investissement symbolique. Ces ornements et ces parures reflètent les courants de la mode mais témoignent également des valeurs et des préférences de la société française de l’époque.

Chaque accessoire, chaque geste, chaque attitude répond à des normes, à des codes qui ne cessent d’évoluer attestant ainsi des changements de modes et de mœurs. Cette construction de l’apparence requiert de connaître les usages et les règles et de s’y conformer pour bénéficier de la faveur royale et attester de son identité sociale.

Aussi, cette culture du paraître s’accompagne d’une parfaite maîtrise de soi et des expressions du visage : fards, poudres, mouches et parfums concourent à une monotonie d’apparence. L’impératif de séduction s’inscrit dans un double mouvement : un mimétisme envers le roi et le pouvoir d’une part, et la nécessité de s’en affranchir pour se faire remarquer et mieux révéler son rang d’autre part. Le corps se pare alors de divers artifices : perruques, maquillage, bijoux, parfums, dentelles, et objets de poche et de galanterie. Les costumes sont complétés par différents atours : broderies, dentelles, rubans qui rivalisent de sophistication et de raffinement.

Objets luxueux, réalisés par des métiers d’art, ces accessoires subliment le vêtement, deviennent des objets de distinction et s’accompagnent pour certains d’une gestuelle propre qui révèle un langage codifié et marquent le corps modifiant la posture, le déplacement, la prestance du courtisan. Qu’elles soient rhétoriques ou esthétiques, ces armes de séduction servent l’esprit d’une société élitiste où se mêlent des enjeux amoureux, politiques et religieux.

L’exposition vous emmène à la découverte de ces objets qui participent à ce jeu de la séduction et du pouvoir à la cour. Éléments de la mise en scène du théâtre de la cour, les accessoires de mode, les produits de beauté et l’art du parfum révèlent les attentes des femmes et des hommes nobles tout au long des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Le visiteur découvre les œuvres dans un parcours qui évoque de la tête au pied les différents objets auquel recourt le courtisan et reflète les évolutions de ces accessoires au cours des règnes successifs de Louis XIV, Louis XV et Louis XVI, période d’activité du château de Marly, instrument de la politique royale.

Anne Camilli and Karen Chastagnol, eds., with additional contributions by Alice Camus, Georgina Letourmy-Bordier, Grégory Maugain, and Corinne Thépaut-Cabasset, Séduction & Pouvoir: L’art de s’apprêter à la Cour (Fine éditions d’art, 2023), 104 pages, ISBN: 978-2382031179, €25.

Entre les règnes de Louis XIV et de Louis XVI, Versailles puis Paris se disputent le titre de capitale de la mode. Entre désir de séduction, affirmation du pouvoir et désir de signifier un statut social, les accessoires de mode et de beauté viennent appuyer sous l’Ancien Régime une nouvelle mise en scène de soi. Chaque parure, chaque geste, chaque attitude répond à des codes qui ne cessent d’évoluer et accompagnent ainsi les modes et les mœurs. Le corps est paré de divers artifices qui rivalisent d’audace et de distinction. Quels rôles jouent ces ornements dans le contexte de la cour ? L’exposition du Musée du Domaine royal de Marly retrace les usages de ces objets, de la tête aux pieds : coiffes, perruques, maquillage, parfums, ornements du vêtement, bijoux, objets de galanterie, chaussures.

s o m m a i r e

• Introduction — Être et paraître : Accessoires de mode, parures & ornements — Karen Chastagnol
• Boucles, dentelles, bonnets et édifices de la mode capillaire — Corinne Thépaut-Cabasset
• Mouche et rouge : Les attributs de la mode et de la beauté — Corinne Thépaut-Cabasset
• L’apparat olfactif du courtisan — Alice Camus
• Orner le vêtement et ses accessoires à la cour : Dentelles, broderies et boutons — Géraldine Bidault
• Le bijou et la montre pour briller à la cour — Anne Camilli et Grégory Maugain
• La galanterie de poche — Anne Camilli et Georgina Letourmy-Bordier
• Le soulier et ses parures — Anne Camilli

Annexes
Notices des œuvres exposées
Sources & bibliographie
Crédits photographiques

So Sehr War Nei Erzürnet Gott / Never Was God So Full of Wrath, detail, emblematic representation from Daniel Meisner, Politica – Politica, Newes Emblematisches Büchlein, I–VIII (Nürnberg, ca. 1700), engraving (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek).

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I was fortunate to see this exhibition a few weeks ago and can’t recommend it highly enough: it’s thoughtfully conceived, brilliantly installed, incredibly engaging, and deeply satisfying. It’s also just a lot of fun! A model for how to make the history of visual conventions (overlapping with history of ideas generally) broadly accessible (my thirteen-year-old daughter was riveted). It’s a reminder of how many of our categories for making sense of the world emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The catalogue is certainly worth ordering. –CH

UFO 1665: The Air Battle of Stralsund / Die Luftschlacht von Stralsund
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 5 May — 3 September 2023

Curated by Moritz Wullen

In April 1665, six fishermen witnessed an unexplained celestial phenomenon: an aerial battle in the skies above the Baltic Sea near Stralsund. As evening broke, a dark-grey disk appeared high above the city centre. UFO 1665 is the first exhibition of its kind to focus on this historical UFO sighting. With reference to contemporaneous visual and textual sources, the exhibition reconstructs the way this event was portrayed in the media and exposes certain paradigms and communications strategies that are still used today to determine how we report on ‘unexplained aerial phenomena’ (UAPs).

The exhibition takes visitors on an expedition into a strange and unfamiliar world of images that otherwise remains concealed from the museum’s general audience in archives or between the pages of old books. Those who are familiar with 17th-century art only from the grand galleries of paintings may be taken aback: upon entering the exhibition space, visitors might feel they are entering a baroque parallel universe with strange symbols in the sky, airships, space rockets, and flying saucers. Everything is centred around one of the most spectacular celestial phenomena of the modern era: at 2pm on 8 April 1665, six men fishing for herring off the coast of Stralsund watch as great flocks of birds in the sky morph into warships and engage in a thunderous air battle. The decks teem with ghostly figures. When, at dusk, “a flat, round shape like a plate” appears above the St. Nicholas Church, they flee. The following day, they find that they are trembling all over and complain of pain.

Media Transformation

The media spread the news like wildfire, with the publishers of various leaflets and newspapers locked in fierce competition with each other to concoct the most colourful versions and interpretations of events. It was religious convictions in particular that were most responsible for determining how the event was transformed by the media. The general public could not have known that what had actually been witnessed was an atmospheric reflection of a sea battle that was raging just beyond the horizon. Instead, they were convinced that the universe was ruled by a god who had the power to project visions of impending disaster into the sky. The air battle was likewise perceived as a prodigium (Latin for ‘omen’ or ‘portent’).

The visual themes of the 17th century were likely also decisive in terms of determining how the media shaped depictions of the air battle, with futuristic visions of airships—which the people of the 17th century were incredibly enthusiastic about—playing a special role. More than 100 years before the first manned hot air balloon flight was conducted, Francesco Lana Terzi (1631–1687) had published his design for a flying boat borne aloft by vacuum spheres, which caused a great sensation throughout Europe. The fact that the project could never actually be realised did little to detract from the general fervour. Humankind continued to dream of conquering the skies.

The Power of Myths

Another theme of the exhibition is the power of myths: when, on 19 June 1670, lightning struck—of all places—the St. Nicholas Church, the building above which the grey disc had loomed so ominously five years earlier, the celestial phenomenon was subsequently interpreted as a sign of God’s wrath. The descriptions and accounts of the day invoked a mystical link to the destruction of Babylon at the hands of a great millstone, as it is described in the Book of Revelation. However, the popular perception of the air battle over Stralsund was not only shaped by the media, beliefs, designs, and myths of the baroque era; it also reveals the kinds of things that humans of the era were unable to envisage and comprehend. There are no 17th-century sources, for example, that mention extraterrestrials in connection with the unexplained aerial phenomena. Yet at the same time, the human imagination was already so far advanced that it could well conceive of expeditions to other inhabited planets and the kinds of propulsion systems that would be required to carry these out. Why nobody considered for a moment that extraterrestrials might appear in our skies with their own flying machines is one of the many mysteries this exhibition endeavours to solve.

An Excursion into the Present

This cultural and media-historical investigation culminates in an excursion into the present, which focuses on the videos and accounts of sightings of mysterious ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’ (UAPs) made by the US military that went viral in 2019 and even made their way onto the front cover of an issue of Der Spiegel two years later. The sightings in question have given rise to a maddeningly broad spectrum of interpretations. Are they physically explicable natural phenomena, sophisticated high-tech drones made in China or Russia, extraterrestrials, or even visitors from the future? Even NASA and the Pentagon seem completely baffled. We can, however, be sure of one thing: the factors that were so crucial to the media success of the UFO of 1665 lack none of their that same potency today.

The exhibition is curated by Moritz Wullen, director of the Kunstbibliothek.

Moritz Wullen, UFO 1665: The Air Battle of Stralsund / Die Luftschlacht von Stralsund (Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 2023), 112 pages, ISBN 978-3868327502 (bilingual edition, German and English), €24.

Opening this fall at the BMA:

Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400–1800
Baltimore Museum of Art, 1 October 2023 — 7 January 2024
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 30 March — 1 July 2024

Curated by Andaleeb Badiee Banta and Alexa Greist

For centuries, women artists in Europe were considered rare and less talented than their male counterparts. Women who achieved professional artistic careers were deemed anomalous or exceptional, while those who engaged in creative pursuits in the home were dismissed as amateurs, and their works were categorized as material culture rather than art.

Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400–1800, the BMA’s much anticipated major exhibition opening 1 October 2023, aims to correct these broadly held but mistaken beliefs through more than 200 works of diverse media and scale. From royal portraits and devotional sculptures to embroidered objects, tapestries, costumes, wax sculptures, metalwork, ceramics, graphic arts, furniture, and more, Making Her Mark will feature objects from the 15th to 18th centuries that reflect the multifaceted and often overlooked ways that women contributed to the visual arts of Europe.

The exhibition’s focus on displaying exclusively objects made by women or toward which women contributed their labor distinguishes this project by putting women makers of all social levels in conversation with each other through their works. Examples by artistic heroines such as Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, Luisa Roldán, Rosalba Carriera, Rachel Ruysch, and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun will join exceptional products of female artisanal collectives and talented amateurs who operated outside of the male-dominated professional arena and often remained anonymous in the historical record. Further, sublime examples of ceramics, metalwork, and cabinetmaking from this era will reflect women’s involvement in major manufactories and workshops.

Organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Making Her Mark is curated by Andaleeb Badiee Banta, Senior Curator and Department Head, Prints, Drawings & Photographs at the BMA, and Alexa Greist, Curator and R. Fraser Elliott Chair, Prints & Drawings at the AGO. The exhibition is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and Sheela Murthy/MurthyNAYAK Foundation.

Andaleeb Badiee Banta and Alexa Greist, with Theresa Kutasz Christensen, Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400–1800 (Fredericton, New Brunswick: Goose Lane Editions, 2023), 264 pages, ISBN: 9781773103181, $60.

Angelika Kauffmann, Clio, Muse of History, detail, ca. 1770–75 (Augsburg: Schaezlerpalais–Deutsche Barockgalerie; photo by Andreas Brücklmair).

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Opening this fall at the the Bucerius Kunst Forum:

Ingenious Women: Women Artists and Their Companions
Geniale Frauen: Künstlerinnen und ihre Weggefährten
Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, 14 October 2023 — 28 January 2024
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2 March — 30 June 2024

With the exhibition Ingenious Women: Women Artists and Their Companions, the Bucerius Kunst Forum traces the careers of outstanding women artists (Künstlerinnen) from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. For the first time, the family context in which the women artists pursued their careers is addressed and made visible through juxtaposition with works by their fathers, brothers, husbands, and fellow painters. Today often forgotten, female artists of their time were able to achieve extraordinary success in a wide variety of family constellations: they became court painters, teachers, entrepreneurs, and even publishers and were awarded the highest honours.

The exhibition presents around 140 works by 26 women artists, including Sofonisba Anguissola, Judith Leyster, Marietta Robusti (Tintoretto’s daughter), and Angelika Kauffmann. Masterful portraits, still lifes, and historical scenes in painting, along with drawings and prints from across Europe, ranging from the Renaissance and Baroque periods to early Neoclassicism, will be brought together in Hamburg. For the first time, works by women artists will be juxtaposed with those of their male colleagues in such a pointed way that both formal and stylistic similarities and differences will come to the fore.

In the early modern period it was not altogether impossible for women to pursue a career as an artist, but it was definitely outside the norm and therefore always subject to special challenges. Anyone wishing to practice a freelance profession had to join a guild, but some regions denied membership to women, and in others it entailed considerable hurdles and costs. A conspicuous number of women artists of this period came from or married into artistic families. They worked for their fathers, brothers, and husbands, and often in secret. At the royal courts of Europe, the situation was different: with an open mind to artistic achievement—regardless of origin or gender—women were able to work openly as artists at court. Women such as Lavinia Fontana, Anna Dorothea Therbusch, and Rachel Ruysch asserted themselves against social norms, capturing the attention and earned the esteem of their contemporaries. The fact that they fell into oblivion is also due to the history of art scholarship, in which a male gaze dominated until the advanced twentieth century.

The exhibition shows the unique careers of these pioneering women artists and offers new insights into their lives and work, as well as thought-impulses on contemporary issues such as equality and the reconciliation of work and family.

Bodo Brinkmann and Katrin Dyballa, eds., with contributions by Beiträge von B. Brinkmann, K. Dyballa, S. Engel, A. Mensger, R. Müller, S. Salomon, A. Tacke, S. Pisot, I. Wenderholm, and S. Werthemann, Geniale Frauen: Künstlerinnen und ihre Weggefährten (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2023), 300 pages, ISBN: 978-3777442365, €45.

Installation view, Out of the Shadows: Women Artists from the 16th to the 18th Century, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister at Dresden’s Zwinger, 2023.

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This installation on view at the Zwinger closes in a few weeks:

Out of the Shadows: Women Artists from the 16th to the 18th Century
Aus dem Schatten: Künstlerinnen vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger, Dresden, 12 May — 20 August 2023

With this cabinet exhibition, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister turns its attention to women artists (Künstlerinnen) from the 16th to the 18th century, who for a long time have been overshadowed by the ‘Great Masters’ of art history. With their works represented in the collection, they are a minority, and to this day their names are far less familiar than those of their male counterparts. This is not due to inability, but to a structural discrimination that is perpetuated in art historiography.

Women generally were not allowed formal academic training nor drawing from live (nude) models. Only a few women were lucky enough to grow up and be promoted in an artistic environment, so that institutional and social structures did not necessarily hinder their advancement. In many cases, they were the daughters of artists trained in their father’s workshop.

The cosmopolite Angelika Kauffmann (1741–1807) achieved widespread recognition in her lifetime and is also represented here with five works. In a time when only men were seen as true artists and women were credited, at most, with talent but never genius, the painter managed to assert herself by also being a shrewd strategist and self-promotor. She produced numerous history paintings with references to antiquity in which women take the leading roles.

Lavinia Fontana (1552–1614) was one of the first women of the modern period to work as an independent artist. She painted numerous portraits and history paintings of mythological and biblical themes, some of them in large format. The devotional painting in Dresden, The Holy Family, is an early work by the Bolognese artist which, after undergoing restoration, will be included in the show in mid-August.

This concentrated presentation also features copperplate engravings by Diana Scultori from the holdings of the Kupferstich-Kabinett as well as paintings and prints by other noteworthy women artists such as Elisabetta Sirani, Barbara Longhi, Rachel Ruysch, Maria van Oosterwijck, and Theresa Concordia Mengs.

Stephan Koja and Iris Yvonne Wagner, Out of the Shadows: Women Artists from the 16th to the 18th Century (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 2023), 144 pages, ISBN: 978-3954987559 (German edition) / ISBN: 978-3954987696 (English edition), €34.

Now on view at the Museum of The American Revolution:

Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia
Museum of The American Revolution, Philadelphia, 11 February — 26 November 2023

When James Forten (1766–1842) walked the streets of Philadelphia as a young man in the 1770s, he was surrounded by the sights and sounds of transformation. He heard the words of the Declaration of Independence read aloud for the first time in 1776 before setting sail to fight for independence in 1781. Born a free person of African descent, Forten built upon his coming-of-age in a revolutionary city and his wartime experience to forge himself into a changemaker in Philadelphia and the young United States, becoming a successful businessman, philanthropist, and stalwart abolitionist.
In our new special exhibition Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia, the Museum introduces visitors to Forten and his descendants as they navigated the American Revolution and cross-racial relationships in Philadelphia to become leaders in the abolition movement in the lead-up to the Civil War and the women’s suffrage movement. Using objects, documents, and immersive environments, Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia explores the Forten family’s roles in the Revolutionary War, business in Philadelphia, and abolition and voting rights from 1776 to 1876.

The exhibition features more than 100 historical artifacts, works of art, and documents from 38 different lenders, including both institutions and private collectors, as well as the Museum’s own collection. Rare historical objects on loan from descendants of the Forten family are on view for the very first time in a public exhibit.

The unique journey and exceptional story of this family of Revolutionaries explores the legacy of the American Revolution, the history of the American experiment of liberty, equality, and self-government, and the ongoing work to improve the nation’s dedication to the principle that “all men are created equal.”

Black Founders: The Forten Family of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Museum of the American Revolution, 2023), ISBN: 978-1933153445, $38.