Exhibition | Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea
On view at Galerie Kugel:
Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea, 16th–18th Century
Galerie Kugel, Paris, 18 October — 16 December 2023
From Roman times to the 18th century, many recognised the inherent value of amber and hypothesised its origin, some assuming it to be whale sperm, others, solidified lynx urine. Its mystery endowed it with medicinal virtues. Amber was recommended as a powder to cure melancholy, toothache, and epilepsy, among other ailments, and as a love filter. The occasional inclusions of insects and small animals found trapped in amber have also made it a symbol of immortality. Pliny the Elder was the first to unveil its nature as the result of plant resin, but it wasn’t until 1757 that the Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonossov determined its true origin.
Amber is a fossilised resin originating, in the case of the objects exhibited, from a prehistoric forest dating back to some 30 to 40 million years, located under the Baltic Sea, between the towns of Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland) and Königsberg (today Kaliningrad in Russia), then, in East Prussia. In the 16th century, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1490–1568) converted to Protestantism and transformed the territories of the Order of the Teutonic Knights in the Duchy of Prussia. This marked the beginning of a tremendous expansion in the trade and production of amber works of art. They became Prussia’s diplomatic gifts par excellence and were sought after to adorn the ‘Kunstkammern’ of Europe’s sovereigns and princes. It took nearly 20 years to collect the fifty pieces on display in this exhibition. Combining sculptures, caskets, tankards, and game boards, the wide variety of objects presented illustrate the fascination for amber through the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
Alexis Kugel and Rahul Kulka, Amber: Treasures from the Baltic Sea, 16th to 18th Century / Ambre: Trésors de la mer Baltique du XVI au XVIIIe siècle (Saint-Remy-en-l’Eau: Éditions Monelle Hayot, 2023), 376 pages, €85. Available in French and English.
Exhibition | Drawing on Blue
Opening in January at The Getty:
Drawing on Blue
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 30 January — 28 April 2024
Curated by Edina Adam and Michelle Sullivan
Made from blue rags, blue paper has fascinated European artists from its earliest use in Renaissance Italy to Enlightenment France and beyond. Through new technical examination of drawings in the Getty’s collection, this exhibition offers fresh insight into the physical properties of blue paper and its unique contribution to artistic practice from the 15th through 18th centuries.
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From Getty Publications:
Edina Adam and Michelle Sullivan, eds., Drawing on Blue: European Drawings on Blue Paper, 1400s–1700s (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2024), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-1606068670, $35. With contributions by Mari-Tere Álvarez, Thea Burns, Marie-Noelle Grison, Camilla Pietrabissa, and Leila Sauvage.
This engaging book highlights the role of blue paper in the history of drawing. The rich history of blue paper, from the late fifteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, illuminates themes of transcultural interchange, international trade, and global reach. Through the examination of significant works, this volume investigates considerations of supply, use, economics, and innovative creative practice. How did the materials necessary for the production of blue paper reach artistic centers? How were these materials produced and used in various regions? Why did they appeal to artists, and how did they impact artistic practice and come to be associated with regional artistic identities? How did commercial, political, and cultural relations, and the mobility of artists, enable the dispersion of these materials and related techniques? Bringing together the work of the world’s leading specialists, this striking publication is destined to become essential reading on the history, materials, and techniques of drawings executed on blue paper.
Edina Adam is assistant curator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Michelle Sullivan is associate conservator of drawings at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
The Burlington Magazine, October 2023
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Coriolanus Taking Leave of His Family, 1786, oil on canvas, 114 × 146 cm
(National Gallery of Art, Washington)
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The eighteenth century in the October issue of The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 165 (October 2023)
a r t i c l e
• Aaron Wile, “Girodet’s Coriolanus Taking Leave of His Family Rediscovered,” pp. 1094–1105.
In 2019 Girodet’s lost entry for the 1786 Grand prix de peinture came to light and was acquired by the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The painting, which depicts a rarely represented incident from the story of Coriolanus—a subject that may have had contemporary political relevance—was not awarded the prize, probably because Girodet was regarded as being too close to Jacques-Louis David, a relationship to which the work may allude.
s h o r t e r n o t i c e
• Antoinette Friedenthal, “Image of a Connoisseur: An Unknown Portrait of Pierre Jean Mariette,” pp. 1106–10.
Among the unpublished miniatures in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (V&A), is an eighteenth-century bust-length portrait of a middle-aged gentleman. A basic unillustrated inventory sheet for this work appeared in 2020 on the museum’s website. It stated that the portrait represents Pierre Jean Mariette (1694–1774) but gave no reasons for this identification and did not provide any information on the object’s provenance. It will be argued here that a combination of visual and documentary evidence confirms the identification.
r e v i e w s
• Mark Bill, Review of the exhibition Reframing Reynolds: A Celebration (The Box, Plymouth, 2023), pp. 1124–27.
• Stephen Lloyd, Review of the refurbished Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque galleries at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, pp. 1130–33.
• Beth McKillop, Review of the exhibition China’s Hidden Century (The British Museum, London, 2023), pp. 1136–38.
• Satish Padiyar, Review of the exhibition Sade: Freedom or Evil (CCCB, Barcelona, 2023), pp. 1143–46.
• Malcolm McNeill, Review of Anne Farrer and Kevin McLoughlin, eds., Handbook of the Colour Print in China, 1600–1800 (Brill, 2022), pp. 1150–52.
• Edward Cooke, Review of Elisa Ambrosio, Francine Giese, Alina Martimyanova, and Hans Bjarne Thomsen, eds., China and the West: Reconsidering Chinese Reverse Glass Painting (De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 1152–53.
• David Ekserdjian, Review of the catalogue, Denise Allen, Linda Borsch, James David Draper, Jeffrey Fraiman, and Richard Stone, eds., Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022), pp. 1156–58. The book is available as a free PDF The Met’s website.
• Rowan Watson, Review of Christopher de Hamel, The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club (Allen Lane, 2022), pp. 1160–62.
• Stefan Albl, Review of Francesco Lofano, Un pittore conteso nella Napoli del Settecento: L’epistolario e gli affari di Francesco de Mura (Istituto Italiano Studi Filosofici, 2022), pp. 1163–64.
Exhibition | From Pencil to Burin: Drawings for Printmaking
Left: Manuel Salvador Carmona, Drawing of François Boucher (after Alexander Roslin), detail, 1760–61, black and red chalk (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado D658). Right: Manuel Salvador Carmona, Print of François Boucher (after Alexander Roslin), detail, 1761, etching and engraving (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado G2693). The original source was Roslin’s painted portrait of Boucher, now at Versailles; Salvador Carmona was admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture as an engraver on the basis of this print; it includes the inscription, “Gravé par Manuel Salvador Carmona pour sa reception à l’Academie en 1761.”
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From the press release (16 October 2023) for the exhibition:
From Pencil to Burin: Drawings for Printmaking in Goya’s Day
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 17 October 2023 — 14 January 2024
Curated by José Manuel Matilla and Ana Hernández Pugh
Until 14 January in Room D of the Jerónimos Building, the Museo del Prado presents the exhibition From Pencil to Burin: Drawings for Printmaking in Goya’s Day. It comprises a selection of 80 prints and drawings revealing the important role of these designs in the creation of intaglio prints in Spain from the mid-18th to the early 19th centuries. The exhibition includes works by a number of artists, while focusing on two key figures for the development of printmaking: Manuel Salvador Carmona (1734–1820), the artist possessed of the greatest technical command of engraving in Spain, and Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), whose remarkable artistic powers and particular understanding of etching opened up new directions in artistic creation.
Curated by José Manuel Matilla, Chief Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Prado, and Ana Hernández Pugh, author of the 2023 catalogue raisonné of Manuel Salvador Carmona’s drawings, the exhibition presents a survey of drawings made as preparatory designs for engravings, emphasizing both their functional and artistic importance. Visitors can see the techniques employed to transpose a composition to a copperplate, thus revealing how preparatory drawings played a significant role in the engraver’s understanding of the work.
The training of qualified draughtsmen and engravers in the second half of the 18th century allowed for the illustration of the texts that disseminated Enlightenment thought. While the prints of this period are well known, the preparatory drawings that acted as their starting point have been relegated to a secondary position in the history of art due to their functional nature. It was, however, the drawings that defined the compositions which were subsequently reproduced on copperplates with absolute precision and fidelity. The exhibition thus reveals a much broader artistic context, articulated around concepts that define the uses and techniques of prints to analyse different phases of the creative process. It shows the diversity of the phases and states through which an intaglio engraver had to pass in order to complete a work. Overall, the exhibition aims to reveal that it was only on the basis of a high quality drawing that a good print could be obtained.
José Manuel Matilla, Ana Hernández Pugh, Gloria Solache Vilela, and Sergio García, Del lapicero al buril: El dibujo para grabar en tiempos de Goya (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2023), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-8484806066, €35.
The digital brochure (in English) is available here»
Installation view of the exhibition From Pencil to Burin: Drawings for Printmaking in Goya’s Day (Museo Nacional del Prado, 2023). The freestanding wall presents the first section of the show, “The Drawing and the Printmaker’s Image.”
Exhibition | Claude Gillot
Claude Gillot, Scène de la comédie italienne: Une pantomime, pen and ink with red chalk wash and graphite drawing, 16 × 22 cm
(Paris: Musée du Louvre, INV 26748)
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300 years after his death, Gillot (1673–1722) was the subject of a spring show at The Morgan and a related symposium; a second exhibition opens next month at the Louvre:
Claude Gillot
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 9 November 2023 – 26 February 2024
Organized by Hélène Meyer and Xavier Salmon
A draughtsman and printmaker in the last years of the Grand Siècle, Claude Gillot is known for the inventiveness and originality of his works, heralding the freedom of expression and mores of the Régence period (1715–1723). With his parodies, witchcraft scenes, farces, and fairground improvisations, he is an artist known for satire, comedy, and performing arts. His countless drawings, coveted by collectors, nevertheless attest to extensive activity in a broad range of fields: illustration, theatre and opera, costume, and interior decoration. At the core of his work, a rich corpus of drawings illustrates his penchant for the comedy of the Comédie Italienne (Italian companies performing in France), with its pantomimes, acrobatics, and cross-dressing figures. A costume and set designer for the Paris Opera starting in 1712, Gillot was also a sought-after decorator, notably collaborating with Claude Audran III on private interiors and reinventing arabesque painting in the process.
Xavier Salmon, Hélène Meyer, and Jennifer Tonkovitch, Claude Gillot (1673–1722): Comédies, Fables, et Arabesques (Paris: Lienart, with the Musée du Louvre, 2023), ISBN: 978-2359064124, €32.
Exhibition | Dutch Art in a Global Age
Now on view at the NC Museum of Art and arriving at the Kimbell in the fall of 2024:
Dutch Art in a Global Age: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, 16 September 2023 — 7 January 2024
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 10 November 2024 — 9 February 2025
Jan van Huysum, Flowers in a Terracotta Vase, 1730, oil on panel, 80 × 61 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Promised gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art, L-R 13.2019).
In the seventeenth century, Dutch merchants sailed across seas and oceans, joining trade networks that stretched from Asia to the Americas and Africa. This unprecedented movement of goods, ideas, and people gave rise to what many consider the first age of globalization and sparked an artistic boom in the Netherlands.
Dutch Art in a Global Age brings together paintings by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Gerrit Dou, Jacob van Ruisdael, Maria Schalcken, Rachel Ruysch, and other celebrated artists from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s renowned collection. These are joined by prints, maps, and stunning decorative objects in silver, porcelain, glass, and more, from the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. Exploring how Dutch dominance in international commerce transformed life in the Netherlands and created an extraordinary cultural flourishing, the exhibition also includes new scholarship that contextualizes seventeenth-century Dutch art within the complex histories of colonial expansion, wealth disparity, and the transatlantic slave trade during this period.
Christopher D.M. Atkins, ed., Dutch Art in a Global Age (Boston: MFA Publications, 2023), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-0878468911, £54 / $60. With text by Christopher Atkins, Pepijn Brandon, Simona Di Nepi, Stephanie Dickey, Michele Frederick, Hanneke Grootenboer, Katherine Harper, Courtney Leigh Harris, Mary Hicks, Anna Knaap, Rhona MacBeth, Katrina Newbury, Christine Storti, Gerri Strickler, Claudia Swan, Jeroen van der Vliet, and Benjamin Weiss.
Exhibition | Hub of the World: Art in 18th-Century Rome
Gaspar van Wittel, known as Vanvitelli, The ‘Casino’ of Cardinal Annibale Albani on the Via Aurelia, 1719, oil on canvas, 74 × 135 cm
(Private Collection, United Kingdom)
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From the press release (via Art Daily) for the exhibition:
Hub of the World: Art in 18th-Century Rome
Nicholas Hall Gallery, New York, 6 October — 30 November 2023
This fall, Nicholas Hall presents Hub of the World: Art in 18th-Century Rome, organized in association with the Milanese Galleria Carlo Orsi. Presented at the Upper East Side gallery in New York, the exhibition celebrates the legacy of esteemed American scholar, connoisseur, and artist Anthony M. Clark (1923–1976), who would have turned 100 this year.
Pompeo Batoni, Saint Louis Gonzaga, ca. 1744, oil on canvas, oval, in an 18th-century frame, 81 × 67 cm (Private Collection, NY).
Considered one of the most influential and admired museum professionals of his generation, Clark made a profound impact on American collecting trends in the 1950s and 1960s through his taste for art made in 18th-century Rome, especially the paintings of the Pompeo Batoni. The exhibition brings together more than 60 works by artists who lived in or traveled to Rome in the 18th century, along with a selection of Clark’s personal notebooks and a portrait photograph on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
After graduating from Harvard, Clark began his career in 1955 at the Rhode Island School of Design before going on to prominent curatorial roles at the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, of which he later became director. He also taught art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and at Williams College, Williamstown. During his tenure at Mia and The Met, Clark made significant acquisitions for the institutions and organized world-class exhibitions as a pioneering American scholar of 18th-century Rome.
The Hub of the World brings to light the fundamental role Clark played in the revival of interest among American museums in collecting work from this period. Clark deeply believed in the importance of Roman Settecento painting, drawing, and sculpture, and this passion is brilliantly reflected in his scholarship and writings. As a curator, he consistently created a historic context for art by showing sculpture and decorative arts alongside paintings and drawings at a time when it was customary to maintain a ‘hierarchy’ of the arts by studying and displaying the mediums separately.
Domenico Corvi, The Liberation of Saint Peter, 1770, oil on canvas, 63 × 49 cm (Private Collection, Paris).
Tragically Clark succumbed to a heart attack at age 53 while jogging in his favorite city, where, at the time, he was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Born in Philadelphia, Clark worked closely with curators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art over the course of his career; and, in 2000, the PMA—in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston—mounted The Splendor of 18th-Century Rome, which was dedicated to his memory.
In the words of Nicholas Hall: “Anthony Clark was a larger-than-life character who changed the way we look at Old Masters. He rescued the art of 18th-century Rome from obscurity by dint of his own personal enthusiasm and brilliant scholarship. He had enormous personal charm: the son of the owner of two works in the exhibition remembers how, as a boy, he enjoyed Clark’s visits to see his parents. Clark, an avid ornithologist, later bequeathed to him a stuffed Green Woodpecker. Our exhibition is an homage to a great scholar, a tastemaker, and a dedicated museum professional.”
Hub of the World highlights the richness of the culture of 18th-century Rome with its extraordinary mixture of patronage, from popes and cardinals, to Roman aristocrats and visiting foreigners—including the German writer and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from whom the exhibition borrows its title. Goethe deemed Rome the “hub of the world,” writing that “the entire history of the world is linked up with this city.” Hall and Orsi have gathered a diverse selection of paintings, drawings, sculpture, and decorative arts that will provide a rare opportunity to experience the cosmopolitan appeal of 18th-century Rome.
Hubert Robert, Colonnade and Gardens at the Villa Medici, 1759, oil on canvas, 75 × 64 cm (Assadour O. Tavitian Trust).
Headlining the exhibition is View of the Villa Medici by Hubert Robert (1733–1808), painted in 1759 during the artist’s transformative time in Rome and on loan from the Assadour O. Tavitian Trust. A recent discovery, the exceptional work has rarely been on view to the public—previously only exhibited in the U.S. briefly at the National Gallery of Art. Other works on view include the Hemp Harvest in Caserta, executed by Jackob Philipp Hackert for the King of Naples; a portrait of the Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico by Anton Raphael Mengs that remained in the sitter’s family until the last decade; a unique view of the Villa Albani by Vanvitelli, recorded in the inventory of Cardinal Albani; a pair of oil on coppers by Angelika Kauffmann based on James Thomson’s pastoral poetry that newly resurfaced from a private Kenyan collection; a caricature painting by Joshua Reynolds, recently discovered at the estate where it has hung for over two centuries; A Vestal by Jacques-Louis David painted in Rome; a harbor scene painted on copper by Claude Joseph Vernet; Anton von Maron’s Portrait of Two English Gentlemen before the Arch of Constantine; the Rockingham Silenus, a 1st-century sculpture reworked by the celebrated Roman sculptor Bartolomeo Cavaceppi; a set of candelabras in the form of Antonius-Osirus by Luigi Valadier; and a console table designed by Antonio Asprucci, made for the Egyptian Room of the Palazzo Borghese. The exhibition pays tribute to Clark as an expert on Pompeo Batoni, as represented by a painting of Saint Louis Gonzaga and its preparatory drawing in red chalk, among several other works. Once belonging to Clark, a painting of the artist Paolo de Matteis by Pier Leone Ghezzi will also be showcased.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Nicholas Hall and Galleria Carlo Orsi will publish a fully illustrated catalogue with original essays by Italian art experts and renowned historians Edgar Peters Bowron, Alvar Gonzáles-Palacios, Melissa Beck Lemke, and J. Patrice Marandel.
Pier Leone Ghezzi, Four Samples of Classical Polychrome Marbles, 1726, watercolor on paper; from top left clockwise: ‘Diaspro Verde Fiorito, 16 × 21 cm, ‘Bianco e negro antico’, 19 × 24 cm, ‘Broccatello’, 19 × 21 cm, ‘Alabastro Orientale’, 19 × 23 cm (Private Collection, Italy). To be published by Dr. Adriano Aymonino in his upcoming book from MIT press, Paper Marbles: Pier Leone Ghezzi’s Studio di Molte Pietre (1726).
The Burlington Magazine, September 2023
The eighteenth century in the September issue of The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 165 (September 2023)
Bed, by Ince and Mayhew, 1768, mahogany and other woods, with original blue silk ‘flowered tabby’ in the ‘Large Antique Headboard’, tester and cornice, height 356 cm (Stamford: The Burghley House Collection).
a r t i c l e r e v i e w
• Lucy Wood, “The Industry and Ingenuity of William Ince and John Mayhew,” pp. 996–1001.
Fifty years ago, the question was asked what had become of the furniture made by Ince and Mayhew, one of the most successful and long-lasting firms of cabinetmakers in eighteenth-century London? A monograph by Hugh Roberts and Charles Cator, decades in the making, provides the answer in a revelatory picture of the achievements of these rivals of Thomas Chippendale.
r e v i e w s
• Christoph Martin Vogtherr, Review of the exhibition Rosalba Carriera – Perfection in Pastel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger, Dresden, 2023), pp. 1007–10.
• Christopher Baker, Review of the Redevelopment of the National Portrait Gallery, London (reopened in June 2023), pp. 1013–17.
• Raha Shahidi, Review of the exhibition catalogue L’Amour en scène! François Boucher, du théâtre à l’opéra, ed. by Hélène Jagot, Jessica Degain, and Guillaume Kzerouni (Éditions Snoeck, 2022), pp. 1029–31.
• Christopher Rowell, Review of Tessa Murdoch, ed., Great Irish Households: Inventories from the Long Eighteenth Century (John Adamson, 2022) and Conor Lucey, ed., House and Home in Georgian Ireland: Spaces and Cultures of Domestic Life (Four Courts Press, 2022), pp. 1038–40.
• Armin Kunz, Review of Mareike Hennig and Neela Struck, eds., Zeichnen im Zeitalter Goethes: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle aus dem Freien Deutschen Hochstift (Hirmer, 2022), pp. 1040–42.
Sewell Bequest, 2008,3008.1). Room 18 of the National Portrait Gallery, London, showing the newly acquired Portrait of Mai (Omai) by Joshua Reynolds (c. 1776) as the centrepiece of a group of eighteenth-century portraits (Photography by Dave Parry).
Print Quarterly, September 2023
The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 40.3 (September 2023)
a r t i c l e s
• Vitalii Tkachuk, “Averkiy Kozachkovskyi and Western Sources of Kyiv Prints, 1720s–40s,” pp. 265–86.
This article features the oeuvre of the Ukrainian engraver Averkiy Kozachkovskyi (active 1721–46), whose illustrated output by the press of the Orthodox monastery Kyiv of the Caves (Kyiv Pechersk Lavra) numbers about forty engravings. He primarily produced book illustrations, but also illustrated printed oaths taken by new members of the local student confraternity. His sources derived largely from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Catholic imagery from German, Flemish, and French schools, several of which are discussed in detail throughout the article, especially the compositions of Peter Paul Rubens. Such borrowings testify to the willingness of Orthodox recipients to accept imagery—unaltered in iconography or style—stemming from other denominations and cultures. The paper contributes to our knowledge of Ukrainian engraving and to the study of the global transfer of images during the early modern period.
• Nicholas J.S. Knowles, “Thomas Rowlandson’s The Women of Muscovy and Other Russeries after Jean-Baptiste Le Prince,” pp. 287–301.
This article discusses a previously unidentified series of prints by Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827), after Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1734–1781), mentioned only as a single lot in the sale of his art collection and studio contents. No definitive set of these “Various Dresses of the Women in Muscovy” has been found, but the author has identified several substantial groups in public and private collections; the largest of these, with twenty-two prints, is in the British Museum. Most of these Rowlandson impressions reside among Le Prince originals and have previously been catalogued as by or after Le Prince. As a series overall, five hundred and forty impressions are claimed to have been produced in the lot description. The article continues with an in-depth discussion of the series and its context. An appendix lists all known impressions of Rowlandson’s Women of Muscovy prints and their location.
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
• Mark McDonald, Review of Susan Stewart, The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture (The University of Chicago Press, 2020), pp. 322–25. This book explores the significance of ruins in Western art and literature, paying close attention to the evidentiary role of prints and how the printmaking process parallels the ruinous lifecycle of its subject matter. In the review, Piranesi is cited as a fascinating example of creating trompe l’oeil in his prints, while later discussions focus on the discovery and metaphorical associations of Rome’s antique ruins in the eighteenth century.
• David Bindman, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Edina Adam and Julian Brooks, William Blake: Visionary (Getty Publications, 2020), pp. 330–31. This brief review pertains to a previously rescheduled, now forthcoming, exhibition on William Blake at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The author examines the collecting of Blake in America and some of the curatorial choices for this anticipated show.
• Patricia Mainardi, Review of Pascal Dupuy and Rolf Reichardt, La caricature sous le signe des révolutions. Mutations et permanences, XVIIIe–XIXe siècles (Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2021), pp. 331–34. This book and review introduce the origins and rapid development of caricature during the French Revolutionary period, focusing on how topical imagery and signs manifested into an accessible visual language capable of being understood by ordinary citizens at the time. More importantly, many of these signifying tropes, such as severed heads and raids on government buildings have become universally recognisable up to the present day.
• Mark Bills, Review of Tim Clayton, James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022), pp. 353–57. This extensive review of the latest monograph on James Gillray highlights the British artist’s unique achievements in the world of graphic satire. The book bravely tackles some of his previously neglected areas, such as very early and pornographic prints, or previously unpublished ones that can now be contextualised. The same is true of Gillray’s interplay of word and image (his titles, conversations and commentary of the images), which the author believes is Clayton’s most original piece of scholarship in this book.
• Jeannie Kenmotsu, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Hans Bjarne Thomsen, ed., Japanische Holzschnitte: Aus der Sammlung Ernst Grosse / Japanese Woodblock Prints: From the Ernst Grosse Collection (Michael Imhof Verlag, 2018), pp. 357–60. This review recognises the value of this catalogue in bringing Ernst Grosse and his collecting practices to a larger audience, especially since the Museum Natur und Mensch’s collection of Japanese woodblock prints was a historically important case of intersection between European japonisme and ethnological approaches to non-Western cultures. Most of Grosse’s acquisitions were made through the art dealer Hayashi Tadamasa.
Exhibition | Liotard and The Lavergne Family Breakfast
The exhibition opens this fall at The National Gallery (with the press release available here) . . .
Discover Liotard and The Lavergne Family Breakfast
The National Gallery, London, 16 November 2023 — 3 March 2024
In the second of our ‘Discover’ exhibitions, which explore well-known paintings through a contemporary lens, we reunite for the first time in 250 years Swiss painter Jean-Étienne Liotard’s pastel and oil versions of The Lavergne Family Breakfast. With the pastel and oil works side by side, the exhibition presents a rare opportunity to compare the difference in technique and effect between the two.
Jean-Etienne Liotard, The Lavergne Family Breakfast, 1754, pastel on paper stuck down on canvas, 80 × 106 cm (London: National Gallery, accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by HM Government from the estate of George Pinto, 2019, NG6685).
Long regarded as Liotard’s masterpiece, The Lavergne Family Breakfast (executed in Lyon in 1754) is the artist’s largest and most ambitious work in pastel. Despite the medium’s notorious delicacy, Liotard skilfully reproduced complex textures: the sheen on the metal coffee pot, the shiny ceramic jug, the silky fabrics and reflections, in the black lacquer tray. Liotard was extremely versatile, producing works in pastel, oil, enamel, chalk, and even on glass. Highly unusually, he returned to The Lavergne Family Breakfast 20 years later to make an exact replica in oil.
Liotard (1702–1789) worked across the length and breadth of 18th-century Europe. Following four years in Constantinople, he grew a long beard, adopted Turkish dress, and nicknamed himself ‘the Turkish painter’. The exhibition showcases the raw materials used to make pastels as well as drawings, paintings, and miniatures that seek to bring this idiosyncratic artist to life.
Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, with contributions by Iris Moon, Discover Liotard & The Lavergne Family Breakfast (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), 120 pages, ISBN: 978-1857097023, $20.
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