Enfilade

Mary Linwood, Pomeranian Dog, detail, needlework, 68 × 86 cm
(Leicester Museum & Art Gallery)

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Now on view, as noted by Adam Busiakiewicz for the Art History News blog:

Mary Linwood: Art, Stitch, and Life

Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, 13 September 2025 — 22 February 2026

A retrospective of the Leicester textile artist Mary Linwood (1755–1845)

Leicester’s Mary Linwood was a celebrity artist in the early 1800s but has since been largely forgotten. She created detailed embroidered versions of famous British paintings using a technique known as needle painting. Linwood was not only a talented artist but also an innovator and entrepreneur. Alongside running a successful school for young ladies in Leicester, she exhibited her embroidered works in touring exhibitions and established the first gallery in London to be run by a woman. In her lifetime, Linwood was supported by the wealthy and powerful, and was widely respected and well known. Since her death, however, she has been overlooked and undervalued. This exhibition is the first retrospective of Mary Linwood’s work since 1945, featuring 14 embroidered works from the Leicester Museums collections. Alongside these historic pieces are new textile artworks by Ruth Singer, reflecting on Linwood’s life and legacy.

Ruth Singer, Lost Threads: Mary Linwood’s Legacy (2025), 60 pages, £15. Available for purchase here.

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It’s also a fine opportunity to remind readers of Heidi Strobel’s recent book, The Art of Mary Linwood: Embroidery, Installation, and Entrepreneurship in Britain, 1787–1845. –CH

Jacques-Louis David, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, detail, 1799, oil on canvas, 3.85 × 5.22 meters
(Paris: Musée du Louvre)

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From the press release for the exhibition:

Jacques-Louis David

Musée du Louvre, Paris, 15 October 2025 — 26 January 2026

Curated by Sébastien Allard and Côme Fabre, with assistance from Aude Gobet

David is a towering figure. Considered the father of the French School, revered for breathing new life into painting, he produced imagery that to this day inhabits the collective imagination: from The Death of Marat to Napoleon Crossing the Alps and The Coronation of Napoleon, his paintings are the filter through which we picture the great moments of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, while his portraits bring to life the society of this period.

Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Robertine Tourteau d’Orvilliers, née Rilliet (1772–1862), 1790, oil on canvas, 131 × 98 cm (Paris: Musée du Louvre / Adrien Didierjean / Sylvie Chan-Liat).

To mark the bicentennial of his death in exile in Brussels in 1825, the Musée du Louvre is offering a new perspective on a figure and body of work of extraordinary richness and diversity. The exhibition shines a light on the inventive force and expressive power of the art of Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), whose paintings are more intensely charged with feeling than is belied by their extreme rigour. The exhibition spans the long career of an artist who witnessed six different political regimes and actively participated in the French Revolution. It gathers 100 works on special loan, including the imposing, incomplete Tennis Court Oath (Château de Versailles, long-term loan from the Musée du Louvre), and the original version of his masterpiece, the celebrated Death of Marat (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels).

A project of such ambition could only be undertaken at the Louvre, which holds the largest existing collection of the artist’s paintings and drawings—including, first and foremost, his very large canvasses. The last major monographic exhibition devoted to David was held at the Louvre and the Château de Versailles in 1989 for bicentennial commemorations of the French Revolution. Enhanced by research conducted in the ensuing three decades, the 2025 exhibition will present a new survey revealing the unprecedented richness of David’s journey, combining artistic and political activity. Indeed, more than simply an artist observing this formative period in French history, spanning the years 1748–1825, he sought to be a prominent social actor.

The painter’s importance was unmatched in his day, for his Europe-wide artistic influence, as well as the high political offices he held in 1793–1794 alongside Robespierre, for which he suffered the consequences as a political exile after the fall of Napoleon.

The exhibition is curated by Sébastien Allard, Senior Heritage Curator, Director of the Department of Paintings, and Côme Fabre, Curator, Department of Paintings, and assisted by Aude Gobet, Head of the Department of Paintings Research Centre, Musée du Louvre. The exhibition design is by Juan-Felipe Alarcón, with graphic design by Philippe Apeloig.

Sébastien Allard, ed., Jacques-Louis David (Paris: Louvre éditions/ Hazan, 2025), 360 pages, €49.

The catalogue reflects the exhibition in offering new perspectives on David’s role and position, focusing on two essential aspects of his activity: his involvement during the French Revolution; and, after the fall of the First Empire and his exile to Brussels, his confrontation with the new generation—and Ingres, in particular—whose training he had largely overseen. The publication is divided into two parts. In the first, an essay by Sébastien Allard seeks to shift perceptions of the artist, examining his life as a coherent whole, in contrast to how historians have tended to fragment it according to the different political regimes David experienced. Sumptuous reproductions, including numerous details, help remove the proverbial dust from the image sometimes held of the painter’s work. The second part encompasses an essay by Côme Fabre on the connections between David and the Louvre; a biographical account by Aude Gobet; and a chronology of major David-related moments, from his death to today, by Morgane Weinling.

Now on view at the Middlebury College Museum of Art:

Le Petit Salon: The Journey of an 18th-Century Room from Paris to Vermont

Middlebury College Museum of Art, 8 July — 7 December 2025

The Middlebury College Museum of Art possesses a jewel of French neoclassicism, Le Petit Salon, a delicately painted, paneled room made around 1776 for a Parisian mansion. It was designed by Pierre-Adrien Pâris ( 1745–1819), subsequently the architect of court fêtes for Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. His client was the duc d’Aumont, a renowned collector and patron of the arts, who had the panels installed in his Paris home, now the Hôtel de Crillon on Place de La Concorde. Gifted to Middlebury in 1959, but held in storage since the 1990s, the room will be reassembled for the first time in three decades.

The exhibition follows the journey of Le Petit Salon from Paris to Middlebury via Manhattan, where for fifty years it formed part of the decor of the Bliss family’s Gilded Age mansion. At Middlebury, the Petit Salon became part of Le Château, the college’s French language dorm, itself a fanciful recreation of a 16th-century Norman manoir. The exhibition incorporates Pâris’s 1776 exquisite watercolor elevations of Aumont’s mansion, as well as studies from his long educational sojourn in Rome and Naples. Included in the exhibition are loans from Bowdoin College, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Fine Arts Museum of Besançon.

Gabriel Wick, Le Petit Salon: The Journey of an 18th-Century Room from Paris to Vermont (Saint-Remy-en-l’Eau: Monelle Hayot, 2025), 192 pages, €35.

Dirk Valkenburg, Study of Cashews, Maracujas, a Tropical Chicken Snake, and an Ameiva Lizard from Suriname, detail, 1706–08, oil on canvas, 40 × 48 cm (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper).

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Now on view at Utrecht’s Centraal Museum:

Valkenburg — Willem de Rooij

Centraal Museum Utrecht, 13 September 2025 — 25 January 2026

Dirk Valkenburg (1675–1721) was one of the first Europeans to depict Indigenous and enslaved people on Surinamese plantations, while also painting hunting still lifes and portraits of Dutch elites. The breadth of his oeuvre makes it particularly relevant for research into colonial image production and the ‘white gaze’. In this installation, Willem de Rooij displays 30 works in idiosyncratic combinations, inviting reflection on how these 18th-century Dutch elites used art to support and legitimise colonial ideology.

Since the early 1990s, Willem de Rooij (b. 1969) has created temporary installations in that explore the politics of representation through appropriation and collaboration. In 2005, he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale and has since exhibited in leading museums worldwide. A distinctive feature of his practice is the reuse and rearrangement of existing images and objects, often based on in-depth art-historical and cultural research. In doing so, he creates new meanings between diverse visual elements. Recent exhibitions include King Vulture (Akademie der Künste, Vienna) and Pierre Verger in Suriname (Portikus, Frankfurt). De Rooij teaches in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Amsterdam and lectures internationally.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the first comprehensive publication on Dirk Valkenburg’s oeuvre: a catalogue raisonné developed in collaboration with the RKD–Netherlands Institute for Art History. This volume, edited by Willem de Rooij and Karwan Fatah-Black—historian and expert in Dutch colonial history, (Leiden University)—includes new essays by international scholars and thinkers from various disciplines, including art history, anthropology, postcolonial, and queer studies.

William Blake, The Tyger (Plate 42, from Songs of Innocence and of Experience), detail, 1794, color-printed relief etching with hand coloring in watercolor (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).

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Now on view at YCBA:

William Blake: Burning Bright

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 26 August — 30 November 2025

Curated by Elizabeth Wyckoff and Timothy Young

One of the most compelling figures in the history of British art and poetry, William Blake (1757–1827) developed an idiosyncratic worldview during a tumultuous era that witnessed the American and French Revolutions. He expressed his radical perspectives on religious belief, politics, and society through highly original illuminated books, watercolors, paintings, and poetry. This exhibition showcases the Yale Center for British Art’s impressive collection of works by Blake, with special focus on the inventive hand-printed publications that bring to life his poetry and prophecies.

The YCBA’s extensive holdings include Blake’s most innovative and celebrated books, such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789–94) and The First Book of Urizen (1794). Blake’s mastery of watercolor painting and his phenomenal imaginative powers are evident in the one-of-a-kind illustrations for The Poems of Thomas Gray (between 1797 and 1798) and in the only fully hand-colored version of his culminating poem, the 100-page Jerusalem (1804–20). This stunning presentation highlights the artist’s ambitious vision and skill, as well as his unparalleled contributions to art, literature, and spirituality.

Born in London at a time of major social change and upheaval, Blake aspired to be an artist and a poet from a young age. During his apprenticeship, he developed an elegant black-and-white engraving style that he deployed in both commissioned and original prints and book illustrations. He is best known for devising an unorthodox technique to create colorful illuminated books that merged his poetry and his art. His most notable innovation was a method for printing text and image from a single copper plate. Blake’s work was largely unacknowledged during his lifetime, yet today his striking imagery and stirring words are widely celebrated.

Blake, the second volume in the YCBA’s Collection Series, examines the art and methods of William Blake through the lens of one of the great collections of his work. Written by Elizabeth Wyckoff, with an essay by Sarah T. Weston, the book features exquisite reproductions of his paintings, watercolors, prints, and illustrated books, including the only hand-colored copy of his epic poem Jerusalem.

Elizabeth Wyckoff, Blake (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2025), 136 pages, ISBN: 978-0300284577, $40. With an essay by Sarah Weston.

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Programs exploring multiple dimensions of Blake’s life, work, and legacy will accompany the exhibition. Please visit britishart.yale.edu for the most up-to-date information.

Opening Celebration
Thursday, September 4, 4pm
A conversation with exhibition curators Elizabeth Wyckoff, Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Timothy Young, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, followed by gallery talks and a reception.

The Enduring Influence of William Blake
Thursday, October 30, 5pm
Author John Higgs will talk with Timothy Young, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Songs from the Imagination: Music Inspired by the Poetry of William Blake
Thursday, November 20, 5pm
Yale Voxtet, the Institute of Sacred Music’s select group of graduate student singers, will perform in the Library Court.

Create Community: Imagined Worlds in the Art of William Blake and Hew Locke
Thursdays, October 2, 16, and 23, 5:30pm
This three-part workshop will explore William Blake: Burning Bright and Hew Locke: Passages through a close investigation of material and process. Enrollment is limited to twelve people, and preregistration is required.

Curator Tours
Thursdays, September 18, October 30, and November 20, 4pm

Docent Tours
Saturdays, 3pm

Opening this month at the NMWA:

Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750

National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, 26 September 2025 — 11 January 2026
Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, 7 March — 31 May 2026

Curated by Virginia Treanor and Frederica Van Dam

Maria Schalcken, Self-Portrait in Her Studio, ca. 1680, oil on panel, 17 × 13 inches (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2019.2094).

Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 showcases a broad range of work by more than forty Dutch and Flemish women artists, including Gesina ter Borch, Maria Faydherbe, Anna Maria de Koker, Judith Leyster, Magdalena van de Passe, Clara Peeters, Rachel Ruysch, Maria Tassaert, Jeanne Vergouwen, Michaelina Wautier, and more. Presenting an array of paintings, lace, prints, paper cuttings, embroidery, and sculpture, this exhibition draws on recent scholarship to demonstrate that a full view of women’s contributions to the artistic economy is essential to understanding Dutch and Flemish visual culture of the period.

Women were involved in virtually every aspect of artistic production in the Low Countries during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. During this period, colonial exploitation and the international slave trade enriched Europe’s upper and middle classes, fueling demand for art and other luxuries. From celebrated painters who excelled in a male-dominated field to unsung women who toiled making some of the most expensive lace of the day, to wealthy patrons who shaped collecting practices, women created the very fabric of the visual culture of the era. Within a thematic presentation that considers the intertwined influences of status, family, and social expectations on a woman’s training and career choices, this exhibition demonstrates the many ways in which women of all classes contributed to the booming artistic economy of the day. Whether their work was circulated within aristocratic social circles, sold on the open market, or commissioned by patrons, women shaped and molded the world around them from Antwerp to Amsterdam.

Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 is organized in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium.

The press release is available here»

Virginia Treanor and Frederica Van Dam, eds., Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 (Veurne: Hannibal Books, 2025), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-9493416277, $60. With contributions by Klara Alen, Frima Fox Hofrichter, Elena Kanagy-Loux, Judith Noorman, Catherine Powell-Warren, Inez De Prekel, Marleen Puyenbroek, Oana Stan and Katie Altizer Takata. Available in English and Dutch editions.

Frederica Van Dam is the Curator of Old Masters at MSK Ghent. Specializing in early modern Flemish painting, Dr. Van Dam co-curated Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution and led the first monographic show on Theodoor Rombouts (1597–1637). Virginia Treanor is the Senior Curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She earned her PhD in 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art from the University of Maryland. Since joining NMWA in 2012, Dr. Treanor has curated numerous exhibitions, including multiple installments of the Women to Watch series.

Now on view at the VMHC:

Un/Bound: Free Black Virginians, 1619–1865

Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond, 14 June 2025 — 4 July 2027

Bringing together artifacts and rich stories from across the Commonwealth, Un/Bound: Free Black Virginians, 1619–1865 tells the stories of free Black Virginians from the arrival of the first captive Africans in 1619 to the abolition of slavery in 1865. It is one of the first museum exhibitions to cover the subject in depth.

Through powerful artifacts, first-person accounts, and more than 200 years of stories, visitors will discover how Virginia’s people of color achieved their freedom, established communities, and persevered within a legal system that recognized them as free but not equal. Featured alongside artifacts spanning hundreds of years will be newly commissioned portraits by award-winning photographer Ruddy Roye, who TIME named ‘Instagram Photographer of the Year’, of some of the descendants of free Black Virginians who shared their stories and objects to help create the exhibition.

Building upon research about centuries of free Black Virginians and regional exhibitions focused on local communities, Un/Bound endeavors to encapsulate the broader, statewide story in depth and at a yet-to-be-seen scale through a collection of artifacts and rich histories told by descendants and experts. This exhibition was created by the VMHC in collaboration with subject matter experts and five institutions of higher education—Norfolk State University, Virginia State University, William & Mary, Longwood University and Richard Bland College—bringing together resources and knowledge to tell a compelling story of Virginia. The exhibition is on display alongside VMHC’s multiyear commemorative exhibitions and displays related to America’s 250th anniversary.

The accompanying book is published by D. Giles:

Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Melvin Patrick Ely, Sabrina Watson, Evanda Watts-Martinez, and Stephen Rockenbach, Un/Bound: Free Black Virginians, 1619–1865 (London: D. Giles, 2025), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1913875619, $30.

On the eve of the Civil War, around 60,000 Black men, women and children lived free in the state of Virginia, often alongside enslaved neighbours. This volume is a history documenting the richness and variety of their lives. Although many stayed in Virginia, living, working and thriving despite serious threats to their lives, some moved north or, further still, across the Atlantic to Liberia. In studying the lives of free Black Virginians prior to emancipation, this volume explores an under-told and inspirational story of Virginia’s past. By delving into collections across the Commonwealth, whether the records of the state or testimonies left by free Black people themselves, this new volume fills a critical gap in our understanding of Virginia’s Black history.

c o n t e n t s

Foreword — James W. Dyke, Jr., Tim Sullivan, and Alvin J. Schexnider
Acknowledgments — Jamie O. Bosket

Introduction — Elizabeth M. Klaczynski
1  Black Freedom in Slaveholding Virginia — Melvin Patrick Ely
2  The Christian Faith and Legacies of Liberation in Virginia’s Free Black Society — Evanda S. Watts-Martinez
3  Free Black People in Rural Virginia: Forms of Resistance — Sabrina G. Watson
4  Joseph Jenkins Roberts, Free Black Émigrés, and the Liberian Experiment — Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander
5  Education, Politics, and the Legacy of Free Black Virginians after Emancipation — Stephen Rockenbach
Afterword — Jamie O. Bosket

Contributors
Endnotes
Index