Enfilade

Willem van de Velde the Younger, A Royal Visit to the Fleet in the Thames Estuary, 1672, detail, 1672–94, oil on canvas, 165 × 330 cm (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, BHC0299). More information is available here»

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Now on view at Greenwich:

The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art, and the Sea
Queen’s House, Greenwich, 2 March 2023 — 14 January 2024

Curated by Allison Goudie and Imogen Tedbury

In the winter of 1672–73, two celebrated Dutch artists arrived in London. Willem van de Velde the Elder (1610/11–1693) was renowned for his highly accurate drawings of ships and maritime life. He would even go to sea himself, paper in hand, to capture naval battles as they were raging. His son, Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633–1707), was a famed painter. From calm coastal scenes to fierce storms, his work captured the many moods of the ocean.

The Burning of the Royal James at the Battle of Solebay, 28 May 1672, tapestry designed by Willem Van de Velde the Elder, made by Thomas Poyntz, 1672 (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum).

King Charles II offered them a studio space at the Queen’s House in Greenwich and each a salary of £100 a year to create drawings and paintings of ‘Sea Fights’. Here they worked, creating magnificent paintings and tapestries, as well as thousands of detailed sketches, drawings, and designs. The National Maritime Museum has the largest collection of works by the Van de Veldes in the world, and now, 350 years on from their first arrival in England, the Queen’s House will once again become a home for these artists, whose work would inspire generations of marine painters, including J.M.W. Turner. The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art and the Sea follows the journey of these émigré artists and explores how they changed the course of British maritime art.

“The Van de Velde collection at Greenwich is remarkable not only for its sheer size but for what it reveals about how a 17th-century artist’s studio functioned,” says Dr. Allison Goudie, Curator of Art. “This exhibition celebrates this extraordinary aspect of the Van de Velde collection here, and the unique connection it now has with the Queen’s House, the location of the Van de Veldes’ studio for over 20 years.”

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Note (added 8 October 2023) — The posting was updated to include Dr. Goudie and Dr. Tedbury as the curators of the exhibition.

Charles Willson Peale, The Edward Lloyd Family, 1771, oil on canvas, 48 × 57 inches
(Winterthur Museum, 1964.0124 A)

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Having closed in March at the VMFA, the exhibition opens this month at the Frist Art Museum:

Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, 8 October 2022 — 19 March 2023
Frist Art Museum, Nashville, 26 May — 13 August 2023

Curated by Leo Mazow

Explore the guitar as visual subject, enduring symbol, and storyteller’s companion. Strummed everywhere from parlors and front porches to protest rallies and rock arenas—the guitar also appears far and wide in American art. Its depictions enable artists and their human subjects to address topics that otherwise go untold or under-told. Experience paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and music in a multimedia presentation that unpacks the guitar’s cultural significance, illuminating matters of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and identity.

Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art is the first exhibition to explore the instrument’s symbolism in American art from the early 19th century to the present day. Featuring 125 works of art, as well as 35 musical instruments, the exhibition demonstrates that guitars figure prominently in the visual stories Americans tell themselves about themselves—their histories, identities, and aspirations. The guitar—portable, affordable, and ubiquitous—appears in American art more than any other instrument, and this exhibition explores those depictions as well as the human ambitions, intentions, and connections facilitated by the instrument—a powerful tool and elastic emblem.

The works in Storied Strings are divided into nine sections: Aestheticizing a Motif, Cold Hard Cash, Hispanicization, Parlor Games, Personification, Picturing Performance, Political Guitars, the Guitar in Black Art and Culture, and Re-Gendered Instruments. The exhibition also features smaller thematically arranged niche spaces, including The Blues, Women in Early Country Music, the Visual Culture of Early Rock and Roll, Hawaii-ana, and Cowboy Guitars.

Storied Strings is curated by Leo Mazow, the Louise B. and J. Harwood Cochrane Curator of American Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He has authored and coauthored a number of books, including Edward Hopper and the American Hotel, Thomas Hart Benson and the American Sound, and Picturing the Banjo.

Leo G. Mazow, Storied Strings: The Guitar in American Art (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2022), 264 pages, ISBN: ‎ 978-1934351222, $40.

C O N T E N T S

Alex Nyerges, Director’s Foreword
Acknowledgments
Lenders to the Exhibition
Guitar Parts Diagram

1  Introducing the Guitar in American Art
2  An American Guitar Primer (Dobney)
3  Hispanicization
4  The Guitar in Black Art and Culture
5  Personification
6  Guitar-Wielding Women
7  Aestheticizing the Motif
8  Cold Hard Cash
9  Political Guitars (Nichols)
10  Wood, Strings, and Stories (Deloria)

Endnotes
Checklist of Works in the Exhibition
Selected Bibliography
Index

Carlo Labruzzi, The Colosseum seen from the Palatine Hill, Rome, graphite, pen and brown and grey ink, watercolour.

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On view this summer at the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the SKD:

Connecting Worlds: Artists and Travel / Ferne, so nah: Künstler, Künstlerinnen und ihre Reisen
Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 8 July – 8 October 2023

Artists and travel have for centuries been intertwined where the desire to explore beyond the confines of one’s home has provoked a truly astonishing outpouring of creativity, much of which was captured through drawings and prints. Comprising over 100 such works, Connecting Worlds: Artists & Travel will be the first exhibition to approach the subject through the lens of artists’ experiences of travel from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Select works by contemporary artists offer further inspiring perspectives on the topic of travel and connectivity.

Why did artists travel? What did they take with them? With whom did they travel and meet? How did they record their journey? Addressing such questions, the exhibition invites visitors on their own creative journey by confronting them with works by major artists, amongst them Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Angelika Kauffmann, for whom travel expanded their artistic and intellectual horizons and circles of friendship.

Divided into three sections ‘On the Road’, ‘Destination Rome’, and ‘Dresden’, the exhibition begins by exploring artists on the road and what they regarded as important to record in sketchbooks and individual sheets. Primary amongst these are nature studies reflecting a fascination with the outdoors but also architecture and local inhabitants. The main destination was Rome, with its incomparable remains of antiquity and as the seat of the Catholic Church that celebrated its religious and institutional life through processions and public spectacle.

Upon returning to their homelands, artists often used their drawings as the source for prints and paintings, thereby disseminating knowledge of their experience to a wider audience. The exhibition ends with Dresden under Augustus the Strong, a center of glamorous festivities, ambitiously competing with other international courts. This last chapter of the exhibition explores a different kind of travel through images and stories of landscapes, plants, animals, and cultures previously unknown in Europe that were brought back by courtly and military expeditions. The visual recordings of distant worlds in books and prints allowed for imaginary travel and enabled a sense of connectivity with places and people from near and far.

This international exhibition project is a collaboration between the Kupferstich-Kabinett and the Katrin Bellinger Collection, London, and is made possible by the complementary strengths of the two collections: the Kupferstich-Kabinett, with its extensive holdings on the themes of travel and science in the early modern period, and the Katrin Bellinger Collection, with its focus on representations of artists engaged in the creative process. The project is supplemented by prominent loans from national and international collections.

The catalogue is published by Paul Holberton and distributed by The University of Chicago Press:

Anita Viola Sganzerla and Stephanie Buck, eds., Connecting Worlds: Artists and Travel (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2023), 274 pages, ISBN: 978-1913645489, £45 / $55.

Der Medailleur Jacques-Antoine Dassier setzte 1753 Charles de Montesquieu ins Medaillenrund. In dessen Hauptwerk De l’Esprit des lois von 1748 entfaltete er eine Theorie der Gewaltentrennung, die erheblichen Einfluss auf die Entwicklung des modernen Verfassungsstaates hatte (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Münzkabinett, ex Slg. Thomas Würtenberger / Karsten Dahmen)

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From the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin:

Ius in nummis: Die Sammlung Thomas Würtenberger
Bode-Museum, Berlin, 26 May 2023 — 7 April 2024

Eine Sonderausstellung des Münzkabinetts der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin

Ius in nummis: Die Sammlung Thomas Würtenberger ist in ihrer Breite einzigartig. Sie wurde über den Zeitraum eines halben Jahrhunderts zusammengetragen und umfasst mehr als 3.000 Objekte—vornehmlich Medaillen und einige Münzen—mit dem Fokus auf die neuzeitliche Rechtsgeschichte Westeuropas in zunehmend globaler Perspektive. Jedes Objekt erschließt dabei ein Stück juristischer Vergangenheit.

Iūs, iūris, n. bedeutet unter anderem Recht. Regeln und Gesetze ordnen und durchdringen seit Jahrtausenden den Alltag der Menschen. Recht und Gerechtigkeit bilden dabei dynamische Spannungsfelder. Rechtshandlungen und Rechtsauffassungen gehen von Individuen aus. Rechtsstaat und Unrechtsstaat oder Verfassungsstaat und Willkürherrschaft erinnern an die Konsequenzen gelebter Wertesysteme. Die Rechtsgeschichte erkundet mittels vielfältiger Quellen Ereignisse wie Rechtssetzungen und Rechtsakte, aber auch individuelle Rechtspersonen und Rechtskulturen.

nummus -ī, m. bezeichnet eigentlich Münzen und Geldstücke, doch hat es sich bewährt, auch ein verwandtes Medium unter diesen Begriff zu fassen: die Medaille. Für die Rechtsarchäologie bietet sie eine ergiebige Primärquelle. Von Moses bis zu den Menschenrechten eröffnet die Medaillenkunst ein weites Panorama der Inszenierung von Recht.

Die Ausstellung Ius in nummis: Ein Sammlungsüberblick in zwölf Segmenten

Das Münzkabinett hat es sich zur Aufgabe gesetzt, die Sammlung Würtenberger zu verwahren und zugänglich zu machen. Die digitale Erfassung seit 2020 ist die Voraussetzung der ersten systematischen Erschließung dieses Kulturguts. Ausstellung, Katalog und Begleitprogramm sind dicht am Puls laufender Forschungsarbeiten um diese wichtige Neuerwerbung angesiedelt. Präsentiert wird zunächst die Fragestellung der Spezialsammlung „Ius in nummis“. Weiterführend geht es aber nicht zuletzt um die Erkenntnispotenziale numismatischer Quellen für die Rechtsgeschichte.

Weitgehend geschlossen überliefert, zeigen numismatische Objekte das nahezu vollständige Bild einer erfolgreichen Kulturtechnik. Je nach Materialität und Auflage exklusiv oder für Jedermann halten sie Personen, Dinge und Ereignisse fest. Als mobile und beständige Medien können Medaillen über politische, religiöse und kulturelle Barrieren hinweg von Mensch zu Mensch gehen. Und bisweilen künden die Oberflächen dieser handlichen Denkmale von wechselvollen Objektgeschichten.

Die Ausstellung bietet innerhalb des thematisch, geografisch und diachron vielfältigen Bestandes eine erste Orientierung. Zwölf Segmente präsentieren anhand von Schwerpunkten einen Sammlungsüberblick. Von Symbolen, Individuen, Strukturen, Institutionen, bis hin zu Revolutionen und Verfassungsfragen werden dabei stets weiterhin aktuelle Themen im Medaillenrund vergleichbar.

Heutige Perspektiven auf Fragen von Recht und Gerechtigkeit

Eine eigens für Ius in nummis ins Leben gerufene Edition des Berliner Medailleurkreises flankiert die Ausstellung. Aktuelle Perspektiven auf die großen und kleinen Fragen von Recht und Gerechtigkeit kommentieren im Medaillenrund die Ausstellungsthemen. Beteiligt sind der Berliner Medailleurkreis sowie Mitglieder der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Medaillenkunst.

Zur Ausstellung wird ein Begleitband erscheinen.

From the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Neuchâtel:

Léopold et Aurèle Robert. Oh saisons…
Musée des beaux-arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds / Musée d’art et d’histoire, Neuchâtel, 14 May — 12 November 2023

The Neuchâtel artist Léopold Robert (1794–1835), who enjoyed European acclaim during his lifetime, embodies the myth of the Romantic painter, doomed to a tragic fate and shrouded in mystery.

Educated in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and later in the studio of Jacques-Louis David, Robert moved to Italy in 1818. His genre paintings brought him great popular success during the first half of the 19th century but were less fulsomely received by the critics. The Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel and the Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds have joined forces to pay tribute to the work of Léopold Robert and his brother Aurèle (1805–1871). The exhibition also re-examines Aurèle’s role, considering him not only as a ‘disseminator’ of Léopold’s oeuvre, but also as an artist in his own right. The joint exhibition focuses on Léopold Robert’s unfinished Seasons cycle and features works from both institutions as well as several prestigious loans. The exhibition in La Chaux-de-Fonds is given over to ‘Spring’, while Neuchâtel celebrates ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’. The exhibition also explores how these masterpieces were produced and circulated, and examines their depiction of music, dance, and the beauty ideal. The exhibition is enriched by contributions from artist Gina Proenza that offer a direct, contemporary response to the historical works of Léopold and Aurèle Robert.

The catalogue (in French) is distributed by ACC Art Books:

David Lemaire and Antonia Nessi, eds., Léopold & Aurèle Robert (Scheidegger & Spiess, 2023), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-3858818874, £45.

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Note (added 26 October 2023) — The posting was updated to correct the dates of the exhibition (here originally given as 15 May — 15 October).

Now on view in Derby:

Hogarth’s Britons: Succession, Patriotism, and the Jacobite Rebellion
Derby Museum & Art Gallery, 10 March — 4 June 2023

Curated by Jacqueline Riding and Lucy Bamford

William Hogarth, The March of the Guards to Finchley, 1749–50, oil on canvas (London: The Foundling Museum).

No other artist defines our image of 18th-century Britain quite like William Hogarth. His vibrant narrative paintings, reproduced and circulated widely through print, engaged with some of the most pressing social and political issues of the times. Amongst these was Jacobitism, a campaign to restore the exiled Stuart dynasty to the throne of Great Britain. This exhibition explores Hogarth’s response to this threat, including the last and most serious of all attempts: the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’) with support from France, the Jacobite Army would eventually reach Derby before retreating back north to Scotland and defeat at the Battle of Culloden.

Led by Derby Museums, Hogarth’s Britons has been produced in partnership with the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery and is the first exhibition of Hogarth’s works to be staged in Derby. It brings many pieces that have never before been seen in the city, including Hogarth’s masterpiece, The March of the Guards to Finchley (Foundling Museum, London). Others, such as the newly discovered portrait of the Prince by Allan Ramsay (National Galleries of Scotland), will be returning to Derby for the first time since the rebellion of 1745. The exhibition also brings together items from national and private collections, representing local divided loyalties and the experience of life under Jacobite-army occupation.

Hogarth’s Britons: Succession, Patriotism, and the Jacobite Rebellion is co-curated by Jacqueline Riding, acclaimed art historian and author of Jacobites (2016) and Hogarth: Life in Progress (2021); and Lucy Bamford, Senior Curator of Art at Derby Museums.

Jacqueline Riding, Hogarth’s Britons (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2023), 120 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1913645458, £18 / $25.

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Note (added 29 February 2024) — The original posting was updated to include information on the catalogue.

From the Musée des Arts Décoratifs:

Des cheveux et des poils / Hair and Body Hair
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 5 April — 17 September 2023

Curated by Denis Bruna

Poster for the exhibition Des cheveux et des poils © Aurélien Farina. Jacob Ferdinand Voet, Portrait of a Man, before 1689 (Sotheby’s / Art Digital Studio); model photographer: © Virgile Biechy.

Following the success of the exhibitions La mécanique des dessous (2013), Tenue correcte exigée! (2017), and Marche et démarche (2019), the Musée des Arts Décoratifs continues its exploration of the relationship between the body and fashion with an exhibition on hair styles and body hair grooming. Des cheveux et des poils (Hair & Hairs) demonstrates how hairstyles and the grooming of human hair have contributed to the construction of appearances for centuries. Hair is an essential aspect of one’s identity and has often been used as a means of expressing our adherence to a fashion, a conviction, or a protest while invoking much deeper meanings such as femininity, virility, and negligence, to name just a few.

Through 600 works, from the 15th century to the present, the exhibition explores themes inherent in the history of hairstyles, as well as questions related to facial hair and body hair. The trades and skills of yesterday and today are highlighted with iconic figures: Léonard Autier (favorite hairdresser of Marie-Antoinette), Monsieur Antoine, the Carita sisters, Alexandre de Paris, and more recently studio hairdressers. Great names in contemporary fashion such as Alexander McQueen, Martin Margiela, and Josephus Thimister are present with their spectacular creations made from this unique material that is hair.

Fashion and Extravagance

The exhibition opens with the evolution of feminine hairstyles as a social indicator and marker of identity. In the Middle Ages, in response to the command of Saint Paul, the wearing of the veil was imposed on women until the 15th century. Gradually, women abandoned it in favor of extravagant hairstyles that were constantly renewed. In the 17th century, hairstyles such as ‘to the Hurluberlu’ (dear to Madame de Sévigné) and ‘to the Fontange’ (after the name of Louis XIV’s mistress) were emblematic of a real fashion phenomena. Around 1770, high hairstyles known as Poufs appeared, among the most extraordinary of Western hair modes. Finally, in the 19th century, women’s hairstyles—whether inspired by ancient Greece, or known as ‘the giraffe’, in curls, or ‘the Pompadour’—could be just as convoluted.

To Beard or Not to Beard

After the hairless faces of the Middle Ages, a turning point occurred around 1520 with the appearance of the beard, symbol of courage and strength. In the early 16th century, the three great Western monarchs: Francis I, Henry VIII, and Charles V were young and wore beards, which were then associated with the virile and warrior spirit. From the 1630s until the end of the 18th century, the hairless face and the wig were the hallmarks of courtiers. Facial hair did not reappear until the early 19th century with the mustache, sideburns, and beard: the period was by far the hairiest in the history of men’s fashion. A multitude of small objects used (mustache wax, brushes, curling irons, wax, etc.) attest to the enthusiasm for mustaches and beards. During the 20th century, the rhythm of bearded, mustached, and smooth faces continued, until the return of the beard among Hipsters in the late 1990s. The maintenance of hairiness among these young urbanites has given rise to the profession of barber, which had disappeared since the 1950s. Today, the thick beards tend to give way to the mustache that had deserted faces since the 1970s.

Keeping, eliminating, hiding, or displaying hair on other parts of the body is a subject also addressed in the exhibition through the representation of nude bodies in visual arts and written testimonials. Hairiness is rare, or even absent from ancient painting. The hairless body is synonymous with the antique and idealized body, while the hairy body is associated with virility or triviality. Only enthusiasts of virile sports such as boxing and rugby, as well as erotic illustrations or medical engravings, show individuals covered in hair. Around 1910–1920, when women’s bodies were exposed, advertisements in magazines touted the benefits of hair removal creams and more efficient razors to eliminate them. In 1972 actor Burt Reynolds posed naked with his hairy body on display for Cosmopolitan magazine, but fifty years later, an abundance of hair is no longer in fashion, even for men. Since 2001, athletes being photographed naked for calendars like Les dieux du stade (The Gods of the Stadium) have had rigorously controlled hairiness.

Between True and False

Marisol Suarez, Braided wig, © Katrin Backes.

Hair styling is an intimate act. Moreover, a well-born lady could not show herself in public with her hair down. A painting by Franz-Xaver Winterhalter, dated 1864, depicting Empress Sissi in a robe and with her hair untied, was strictly reserved for Franz Joseph’s private cabinet. Louis XIV, who became bald at a very young age, adopted the so-called ‘bright hair’ wig, which he then imposed on the court. In the 20th century, Andy Warhol had the same misfortune: the wig he wore to hide his baldness became an icon of the artist. Nowadays, hairpieces and wigs are used in high fashion, during fashion shows or, of course, to compensate for hair loss.

The natural hair colors and their symbolism are presented along with what they convey. Blonde is said to be the color of women and childhood. Red hair is attributed to sultry women, witches, and some famous stage women. As for black hair, it would betray the temperament of brown and brunettes. From the experimental colorations of the 19th century to the more certain dyes from the 1920s: artificial colors are not forgotten. The work of the hairdresser Alexis Ferrer who makes digital prints on real hair is also presented.

Trades and Skills

The exhibition reveals the different hair professions: barbers, barber-surgeons, hair stylists, wigmakers, ladies’ hairdressers, etc., through archival documents and a host of small objects: signs, tools, various products, and the astonishing perming machines and dryers of the 1920s.

In 1945, the creation of haute coiffure elevated the profession to the rank of an artistic discipline and a French savoir-faire. 20th-century hairdressing was marked by Guillaume, Antoine, Rosy and Maria Carita, and Alexandre de Paris styling princesses and celebrities. Nowadays, great hairstyling is mainly expressed during the fashion shows of prestigious fashion houses. Sam McKnight, Nicolas Jurnjack, and Charlie Le Mindu were invited to the exhibition to create extraordinary hairstyles for top models and show business personalities.

A Hairy Century

Finally, a special focus will allow us to evoke the iconic hairstyles of the 20th and 21st centuries: the 1900 chignon, the 1920s garçonne haircut, the 1930s permed and notched hair, the 1960s pixie and sauerkraut, the 1970s long hair, the 1980s voluminous hairstyles, the 1990s gradations and blond streaks, not to mention afro-textured hair.

The arrangement of hair in a particular form can reveal belonging to a group and manifest a political and cultural expression in opposition to society and the established order. More ideological than aesthetic, the Iroquois crest of the punks, the neglected hair of the grunges, or the shaved heads of the skinheads are strong moments of hair creativity.

Wearing the hair of another, known or unknown, has an eerie dimension, and this superstition seems well-entrenched. Despite these apprehensions, some creators choose to transcend this familiar material into fashion objects. This is the case of contemporary designers such as Martin Margiela, Josephus Thimister, and Jeanne Vicerial. The question of identity, treated lightly or more deeply, is often at the heart of the reasoning, whether the hair is real or fake.

Presented in the Christine & Stephen A. Schwarzman’s fashion galleries of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the exhibition is curated by Denis Bruna, Curator in Chief, Fashion and Textile Department, Collections before 1800. The scenography is by David Lebreton of the Designers Unit agency. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs has benefited from exceptional loans from the Château de Versailles, the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, the Musée du Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay.

Denis Bruna, ed., Des cheveux et des poils (Paris: Les Arts Décoratifs, 2023), 288 pages, ISBN: ‎978-2383140139, €55. With contributions by Marie Brimicombe, Denis Bruna, Yanis Cambon, Astrid Castres, Pierre-Jean Desemerie, Ana Escobar Saavedra, Saga Esedín Rojo, Louise Guillot, Guillaume Herrou, César Imbert, Sophie Lemahieu, Maëva Le Petit, Aurore Mariage, Anne-Cécile Moheng, Sophie Motsch, Marie Olivier, Dominique Prevôt, Hélène Renaudin, Raphaël Sagodira, and Bastien Salva.

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Diane Pernet provides a useful summary with lots of images and an interview with Denis Bruna here»

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Note (added 11 August 2023) — Rosa Lyster reviewed the show for The NY Times: “Big Hair and Big Thoughts at a Paris Museum,” The New York Times (28 July 2023). An exhibition with over 600 items explores the evolution of women’s hairstyles, questions around body hair, and more. But hair is never just hair.

Now on view at the Musée Nissim de Camondo:

Doucet et Camondo: une passion pour le XVIIIe siècle
Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris, 16 March — 3 September 2023

Curated by Juliette Trey

Between 1906 and 1912, the celebrated couturier and great patron of the arts, Jacques Doucet (1853–1929), lived in an hôtel particulier built especially to house his collection of 18th-century art on the Rue Spontini in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Drawings held a particularly important place in it. The exhibition Doucet et Camondo: une passion pour le XVIIIe siècle evokes the mansion through the watercolors done by the decorator Adrien Karbowsky (1855–1945) and forges the link between Doucet and Moïse de Camondo (1860–1935), who purchased some of the items in his collection from Doucet.

Les Arts Décoratifs et l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) présentent, au musée Nissim de Camondo, une exposition consacrée à la riche collection d’œuvres d’art du XVIIIe siècle constituée par Jacques Doucet. Célèbre couturier et grand mécène, Jacques Doucet (1853–1929) est aussi l’un des plus importants collectionneurs de son temps. Une sélection de dessins, photographies et documents d’archives conservés à l’INHA retrace l’histoire de ce prestigieux patrimoine. L’exposition dévoile les décors éphémères de l’hôtel particulier situé rue Spontini dans le XVIe arrondissement que Doucet fait spécialement édifier pour accueillir cet ensemble de tableaux, dessins, sculptures, meubles et objets d’art du XVIIIe siècle. Elle met en lumière les œuvres ayant appartenu à Jacques Doucet, conservées notamment au musée Nissim de Camondo, ancien hôtel particulier de Moïse de Camondo, tissant ainsi le lien entre ces deux grands collectionneurs.

More information is available here»

Juliette Trey, Jacques Doucet et Moïse de Camondo: Une Passion pour le XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: Les Arts Décoratifs / INHA, 2023), 48 pages, €12.

Johan Zoffany, The Family of Sir William Young, 1767–69, oil on canvas; 45 × 66 inches (National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery). Formerly in the Philip Sassoon Collection.

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From the press release (17 November 2022) for the exhibition:

The Sassoons
The Jewish Museum, New York, 3 March — 13 August 2023

Organized by Claudia Nahson and Esther da Costa

The Jewish Museum presents The Sassoons, an exhibition that reveals the fascinating story of a remarkable Jewish family, highlighting their pioneering role in trade, art collecting, architectural patronage, and civic engagement from the early 19th century through World War II. The exhibition follows four generations from Iraq to India, China, and England, featuring a rich selection of works collected by family members over time.

Torah finials, England, probably London, 1804, dedicated in 1834/35 (Hebrew inscription date), silver parcel gilt, and enamel, 6 inches (Collection of Jane and Stuart Weitzman). Formerly in the Reuben and Flora Sassoon Collections.

Over 120 works—paintings, Chinese art, illuminated manuscripts, and Judaica—amassed by Sassoon family members and borrowed from numerous private and public collections are on view. Highlights include Hebrew manuscripts from as early as the 12th century, many lavishly decorated; Chinese art and ivory carvings; rare Jewish ceremonial art; and Western masterpieces including paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and magnificent portraits by John Singer Sargent of various Sassoon family members. The Sassoons explores themes such as discrimination, diaspora, colonialism, global trade, and war that not only shaped the history of the family but continue to define our world today.

The exhibition narrative begins in the early 1830s when David Sassoon, the patriarch of the family, was forced to leave his native Baghdad due to the increasing persecution of the city’s Jewish population. Establishing himself in Mumbai (then Bombay) and initially involved in the cotton trade, his vision led the family from Iraq to India, China, and finally England where his descendants gradually settled over the decades. His activities soon grew to include the opium trade, which had escalated after the collapse of the East India Company in the mid-19th century, ending its monopoly and allowing private companies to engage in this profitable enterprise. He aligned with and benefitted from British colonial interests soon extending his business to China and England by deploying his eight sons to oversee new branches in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and London.

Although less known, the Sassoon women were discerning collectors. The exhibition will pay special attention to these unsung patrons of art. Rachel Sassoon Beer became the first woman in Britain to edit two newspapers, The Sunday Times and The Observer, and played a crucial role reporting on the Dreyfus affair in Britain. Her painting collection, sold at auction in 1927, listed, among other great works, one drawing and 15 paintings by Corot, a Constable, and a Peter Paul Rubens. Of a younger generation, Hannah Gubbay, a Sassoon on both her father’s and her mother’s side, was a major collector of 18th-century art, furniture, and porcelain, as was her cousin, Mozelle Sassoon.

Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of the Artist with His Wife and Daughter, ca. 1748, oil on canvas, 36 × 28 inches (London: National Gallery; acquired under the acceptance-in-lieu scheme at the wish of Sybil, Marchioness of Cholmondeley, in memory of her brother, Sir Philip Sassoon, 1994). Formerly in the Philip Sassoon Collection.

The exhibition also highlights the distinguished properties of the Sassoons in the United Kingdom. A Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party, Sir Philip Sassoon made active use of his three great residences, Park Lane (now destroyed) and Trent Park in London, and Port Lympne in Kent. Surrounded by landscaped gardens (in the case of Trent Park and Port Lympne) and filled with priceless works of art, all three were used by the government for high-profile cabinet meetings and receptions of foreign dignitaries and celebrities. Paintings of Port Lympne by Sir Winston Churchill, a frequent visitor, are featured.

The last section of the exhibition focuses on the service of a younger generation of Sassoons in the First World War. Sir Victor Sassoon served in the Royal Flying Corps, barely surviving an airplane crash that left him permanently disabled. Sir Philip Sassoon, private secretary to Field Marshal Douglas Haig, recruited his artist friends including John Singer Sargent to cover the war, and several of these works will be on display. A very different war is experienced through the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon. Though a brave and much decorated soldier, his graphic and shocking portrayal of the trenches and fierce criticism of the establishment were emblematic of a generation scarred by war’s brutality. Some of the journals he wrote and illustrated during battle, including his famous anti-war statement, will be on view.

During the Second World War, some 18,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Shanghai fleeing Nazi Europe. They were able to survive the war thanks to the money raised by members of the Baghdadi Jewish community who resided in the city at the time. Prominent among them was Sir Victor Sassoon who donated considerable funds and placed several buildings at the disposal of the International Committee for European Immigrants.

Numerous private and public collections have contributed loans to the exhibition including His Majesty King Charles III, the British Museum, the National Gallery of London, the National Trust of Britain, the Tate, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the British Library, the Houghton Hall Collection, the Cambridge University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Israel Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Yale Center for British Art.

The Sassoons is organized by Claudia Nahson, Morris and Eva Feld Senior Curator at the Jewish Museum, New York, and Esther da Costa Meyer, Professor Emerita at Princeton University. The exhibition design is by Leslie Gill and Adam Johnston, Leslie Gill Architect; graphic design by Miko McGinty.

Esther da Costa Meyer and Claudia J. Nahson, The Sassoons (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 256 pages, ISBN: ‎ 978-0300264302, $60.