Exhibition | Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court
Detail of a side table, bronzes by Pierre Gouthière after designs by Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin and François-Joseph Bélanger, 1781 (New York: The Frick Collection; photo by Michael Bodycomb)
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Opening in November at The Frick:
Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court
The Frick Collection, New York, 16 November 2016 — 19 February 2017
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 16 March — 25 June 2017
Curated by Charlotte Vignon
The Frick Collection is organizing the first exhibition to focus on Pierre Gouthière (1732–1813), the great French bronze chaser and gilder who worked for Louis XV and Louis XVI. The exhibition will shed new light on the artist’s production, life, and workshop through the presentation of approximately thirty objects from public and private collections. Attributed with certainty to Gouthière, these works include clocks, vases, firedogs, wall lights, and mounts for Chinese porcelain and hardstone vases. The exhibition is organized by Charlotte Vignon, Curator of Decorative Arts, The Frick Collection. Based on new art historical and technical research, the exhibition and catalogue promise to transform our understanding of one of the greatest artists of eighteenth-century France.
Pierre Gouthière became a master ciseleur-doreur (chaser-gilder) in 1758, during the reign of Louis XV. Little is known of his early years, but by 1765 he was gilding a number of pieces in both bronze and silver for François-Thomas Germain, the sculpteur-orfèvre du roi (sculptor-goldsmith to the king). In 1767 Gouthière began to work for the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi, an institution responsible for providing the king’s personal effects as well as organizing his entertainment, thus starting a long career at the service of the French court. His works were so admired by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette that in addition to commissioning objects directly, they also acquired masterpieces at the auction organized in December 1782 after the death of the Duke of Aumont, an avid admirer of Gouthière’s production. The exhibition will bring the finest works, which are now in private and public collections in Europe and the United States, to New York for the first time. Besides Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Gouthière’s clientele included the Count of Artois, the Countess Du Barry, the Duke of Duras, the Duchess of Mazarin, Princess Kinsky, the Marquis of Marigny, and the King of Poland. He collaborated with some of the period’s most highly regarded sculptors, including Louis-Simon Boizot. Unfortunately, Gouthière’s wasteful expenditures and a series of financial setbacks—including the huge uncollectable sum owed to him by Madame Du Barry and the death in the early 1780s of two of his most important clients, the Duke of Aumont and Duchess of Mazarin—forced him to declare bankruptcy in 1787. A remarkable blue marble and gilt-bronze table commissioned for the latter—now a well-known highlight of the Frick’s decorative arts holdings—inspired this exhibition and fresh study of Gouthière’s oeuvre.
Soon after his death in 1813, Gouthière was lauded by collectors, critics, and art dealers as one of the most important eighteenth-century French artists, a fame that has not faded in subsequent centuries. One consequence of the artist’s reputation among the most important French and British collectors was the appearance of copies and overly generous attributions to Gouthiere. Indeed, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, French decorative arts pieces of great quality (and not only those featuring gilt bronze) were falsely attributed to Gouthière, and many of these attributions remain today. The exhibition of only those works that can be attributed to Gouthière with certainty will create a new corpus that will help establish further attributions. As part of the project, conservators undertook a technical study of Gouthière’s bronze and gilding techniques. The data provides both the basis for a much-needed reevaluation of the attribution and chronology of Gouthière’s oeuvre and elucidates his workshop practices.
In conjunction with the exhibition, a major publication will be published by The Frick Collection in association with D Giles, Ltd. This will be the first English-language monograph on Gouthière as well as the first comprehensive presentation of his work since 1986 (an essay on him by Christian Baulez, longtime Curator at Versailles and now Conservateur Général Honoraire du Patrimoine, was included in Vergoldete Bronzen: Bronzearbeiten des Spätbarock und Klassizismus by Hans Ottomeyer and Peter Pröschel). The text in the Frick catalogue is by exhibition curator Charlotte Vignon and Christian Baulez with contributions by Anne Foray-Carlier (Musée des Arts Décoratifs), Joseph Godla (The Frick Collection), Helen Jacobsen (The Wallace Collection), Luisa Penalva (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon), Emmanuel Sarméo (Château de Versailles), and Anna Saratowicz (Royal Castle, Warsaw). Included are essays on Gouthière’s life and work, a reevaluation of his style in the context of the development of Neoclassicism, and an exploration of his relationship with François-Joseph Bélanger, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Louis-Simon Boizot, and other great architects and sculptors of the period. A section of the catalogue is also devoted to the results of the technical study. A French-language edition of the publication is also planned.
Christian Baulez and Charlotte Vignon, with contributions by Anne Forray-Carlier, Joseph Godla, Helen Jacobsen, Luisa Penalva, and Emmanuel Sarméo, Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court (London: Giles, 2016), 408 pages, ISBN: 978-1907804618, £55 / $80.
Exhibition | 300 Years of the Cemetery for Foreigners in Rome
Rudolph Müller, The Protestant Cemetery in Rome with the Tomb of Julius August Walther von Goethe (1789–1830), ca. 1840s
(Klassik Stiftung Weimar)
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From Rome’s Non-Catholic Cemetery for Foreigners:
At the Foot of the Pyramid: 300 Years of the Cemetery for Foreigners in Rome
Ai piedi della Piramide, Il cimitero per gli stranieri a Roma – 300 anni
Am Fuße der Pyramide: 300 Jahre Friedhof für Ausländer in Rom
Casa di Goethe, Rome, 23 September — 13 November 2016
Curated by Nicholas Stanley-Price
“The most beautiful and solemn cemetery I have ever beheld” declared the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Since the height of the Grand Tour, non-Catholic foreigners dying in Rome have been buried in front of the pyramid-tomb of Caius Cestius. In 2016 the Protestant Cemetery (now officially the Non-Catholic Cemetery for Foreigners) in Rome will celebrate its 300th anniversary. For this occasion the Cemetery, in partnership with the Casa di Goethe, has planned an exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints from the 18th to early 20th centuries to illustrate the history of this place dedicated to citizens of Protestant faith who died in papal Rome.
The curator of the exhibition is Dr Nicholas Stanley-Price. It is sponsored by the 15 embassies that administer the Cemetery (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America), under the Presidency of H.E. Peter McGovern, Ambassador of Canada in Italy.
The area of today’s cemetery was made available in 1716 by Pope Clement XI, initially to serve as a burial-ground for members of the Stuart court in exile from Britain. After a few decades, permission was given to erect funerary monuments to those buried there. The first such monument, which survives today, is to Georg Anton Friedrich von Werpup from Hanover, who died in 1765. His grave and that of the chamberlain to the Marquis of Ansbach, Wolf Carl Friedrich von Reitzenstein († 1775), are depicted in a drawing by Jacob Philipp Hackert (Vienna, Albertina).
They were followed by many others. It is the last resting-place not only of August von Goethe, son of the poet, but also numerous painters, sculptors, architects, as well as poets and scholars who lived in Rome or nearby. Among others, we mention Christopher Hewetson († 1799), the sons of Wilhelm von Humboldt († 1803 e 1807), John Keats († 1821) and Percy Bysshe Shelley († 1822), John Gibson († 1866), Gottfried Semper († 1879), Antonio Gramsci († 1937) and Gregory Corso († 2001).
Famous artists such as Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Bertel Thorvaldsen, William Wetmore Story and John Gibson designed funerary monuments for the Cemetery. Their fascination with the place has in turn inspired other artists to produce paintings, poems or monuments: from Goethe to Schinkel, from Oscar Wilde to d’Annunzio, and from Turner to Munch. The exhibition will, for the first time, provide a panorama of how European and American artists of different periods have depicted the Cemetery in paintings, drawings and prints, documenting at the same time the gradual changes in the appearance of the Cemetery. Some of the exhibits will be overall views of the area adjacent to the Pyramid and others of individual tombs. Various depictions of night-time funerals illustrate the difficult conditions in which the Protestants had to be buried. In addition to works by the artists already mentioned, there will be works by Jacques Sablet, Bartolomeo Pinelli, Salomon Corrodi, Walter Crane and others. The loans, already confirmed, come from different European museums and from private collections in Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and the United States of America. The exhibition catalogue will be published in three different editions (English, German and Italian).
Exhibition | Everyday English: The Hooker Ceramics Collection
Bristol, Double-Ogee Cup and Saucer, ca. 1775; Hard-paste porcelain (Collection of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Gift of Mrs. Charlotte Stout Hooker, 2008.DA.2.31.2a, b)
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From Dixon Gallery and Gardens:
Everyday English: The Charlotte Stout Hooker Gift of English and Continental Ceramics
Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, 31 July — 9 October 2016
Everyday English considers the marketing and consumption of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English porcelain through the Dixon’s Charlotte Stout Hooker Gift of English and Continental Ceramics. Everyday English also highlights Mrs. Hooker’s accomplishments as a collector, exhibiting both her popular useful wares and rare ornamental finds.
From Laura Gray McCann’s posting for Dixon’s blog (8 January 2016) . . .
In 2008, the Dixon received 384 pieces of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English porcelain and pottery, and Asian and Continental ceramics from the collection of Mrs. Charlotte Stout Hooker. Mrs. Hooker’s collection was a natural fit for the Dixon—the nascence of her English porcelain came from her mother, Warda Stevens Stout, whose collection of eighteenth-century German porcelain came to the Dixon in 1985. Mrs. Hooker continued to collect, adding a more popular dimension to her collection. In 2003, Art & Antiques Magazine named her one of the top 100 collectors in the country.
Now, it is time to put the spotlight on the Hooker Collection! As we did with the Stout Collection, we are publishing a catalogue of the Hooker collection, The Charlotte Stout Hooker Gift of English and Continental Ceramics. The catalogue celebrates Mrs. Hooker’s achievements as a collector and provides the public with a record of the works in collection. The release of the catalogue will coincide with an exhibition of the Hooker Collection, Everyday English: The Charlotte Stout Hooker Gift of English and Continental Ceramics this summer. . .
Exhibition | Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture
Opening in August at the Yale University Art Gallery:
Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 19 August, 2016 — 8 January 2017
Curated by Patricia Kane
Christopher Townsend and Samuel Casey, Desk and Bookcase, Newport, R.I., 1745-50. Mahogany and sabicu (?) with silver hardware. Private collection.
This groundbreaking exhibition presents a comprehensive survey of Rhode Island furniture from the colonial and early Federal periods, including elaborately carved chairs, high chests, bureau tables, and clocks. Drawing together more than 130 exceptional objects from museums, historical societies, and private collections, the show highlights major aesthetic innovations developed in the region. In addition to iconic, stylish pieces from important centers of production like Providence and Newport, the exhibition showcases simpler examples made in smaller towns and for export. The exhibition also addresses the surprisingly broad reach of Rhode Island’s furniture production, from the boom of the export trade at the turn of the 17th century and its steady growth throughout the 18th century to the gradual decline of the handcraft tradition in the 19th century. Reflecting on one of New England’s most important artistic traditions, Art and Industry in Early America encourages a newfound appreciation for this dynamic school of American furniture making.
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And due out in October from Yale UP:
Patricia Kane with Dennis Carr, Nancy Goyne Evans, Jennifer Johnson, and Gary Sullivan, Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 504 pages, ISBN: 978-0300217841, $85.
The most comprehensive publication available to date on the topic, Art and Industry in Early America examines furniture made throughout Rhode Island from the earliest days of the settlement to the late Federal period. This stunning volume features more than 200 illustrations of beautifully constructed and carved objects—including chairs, high chests, bureau tables, and clocks—that demonstrate the superb workmanship and artistic skill of the state’s furniture makers. Written by distinguished scholars, the book presents new information on the export trade, patronage, artistic collaboration, and the small-scale shop traditions that defined early Rhode Island craftsmanship. In addition to iconic, stylish pieces from important centers of production like Newport and Providence and by well-known makers such as John Goddard and Samuel and Joseph Rawson, Jr., the catalogue showcases simpler examples made in smaller towns. More than 100 catalogue entries detail marks and inscriptions, bibliography, and provenance and feature many new photographs, encouraging a deeper understanding of this dynamic school of American furniture making.
Patricia E. Kane is the Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery.
Exhibition | Versailles: Treasures from the Palace
Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces), 1678–84
(Château de Versailles)
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Press release (18 July 2016) from the NGA:
Versailles: Treasures from the Palace
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 9 December 2016 — 17 April 2017
The NGA has revealed details of the sumptuous treasures from the Palace of Versailles, which will be on show in Canberra this December. Versailles: Treasures from the Palace is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see and experience a mesmerising period in French history in Australia. For the first time ever, the treasures will travel from France to entice visitors into a world of power, passion and luxury through this epic exhibition. More than 130 paintings, intricate tapestries, gilded furniture, monumental statues and other objects from the Royal gardens, and personal items from Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette, will bring to life the reigns of three kings, their queens and mistresses in a fascinating and tumultuous period of French history. The exhibition will celebrate the lives, loves, and passions of the people of Versailles through a full program of activities including music performances, children’s programs, and public events.
François Hubert Drouais, The Sourches Family (‘Le Concert Champêtre’), 1756, oil on canvas (Château de Versailles, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christophe Fouin)
“We are delighted to bring the grandeur of the culture of Versailles exclusively to Canberra and make it possible for all Australians to access and appreciate the social, political and cultural aspects of this unique phenomenon. If ever absolute power can be expressed through unbridled opulence, this is it,” said Gerard Vaughan, NGA Director.
“Along with astonishing treasures, like the marble bust of Louis XIV, or the glamorous formal portrait of Marie- Antoinette, we are bringing to Australia the entire 1.5 tonne statue of Latona and Her Children from one of the main fountains of the Palace of Versailles,” said Dr Vaughan. “The authenticity of this cultural experience will leave a lasting imprint on all our visitors.”
The exhibition contrasts small personal items, such as the precious golden reliquary which belonged to Louis XIV’s mother, or Marie-Antoinette’s hand-crafted chair and harp, with huge works including six-metre tapestries from the most important Gobelins series ever produced for Louis XIV, and a monumental conversation piece of the Sourches family which requires individual freight.
“Versailles is at the heart of French cultural expression as much as the NGA is the heart of Australian visual expression and we are very excited to bring this historic exhibition to Australia,” said Catherine Pégard, President of the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles.
“The opportunity to send such important French treasures has been made possible because of the major restoration program at Versailles, and we are thrilled to see that the outcome of the work will be the enjoyment of thousands of Australians,” said Christophe Lecourtier, Ambassador of France to Australia.
“The NGA is bringing to Canberra yet another spectacular show, which will attract people from all over the country and the world this summer,” said Andrew Barr, ACT Chief Minister. “These shows are important to the local tourism sector and I’m confident that this show will be another success for the Gallery.”
Exhibition | In the Light of Naples: The Art of Francesco de Mura
Francesco de Mura, The Visitation, ca. 1750, oil on canvas, 37 × 46 1/2 inches
(Winter Park: Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College)
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Opening in September at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum:
In the Light of Naples: The Art of Francesco de Mura
Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, 17 September — 18 December 2016
Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 20 January — 2 April 2017
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, 21 April — 2 July 2017
Curated by Arthur Blumenthal
In the Light of Naples: The Art of Francesco de Mura will be the first-ever exhibition of the art of Francesco de Mura (1696–1782), arguably the greatest painter of the Golden Age of Naples. The Cornell Museum owns a major painting by De Mura, The Visitation, which is the impetus for this show.
Francesco de Mura, the indisputable leader in his day of the Neapolitan School and the favorite of the reigning Bourbon King Charles VII, was the chief painter of decorative cycles to emerge from the studio of Francesco Solimena (1657–1747), the celebrated Baroque artist. De Mura’s refined and elegant compositions, with their exquisite, light, and airy colors, heralded the rococo in Naples, and his later classicistic style led to Neo-Classicism. De Mura’s ceiling frescoes rivaled those of his celebrated Venetian contemporary, Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770). Yet, today, he lacks his proper place in the history of art. This show seeks to answer why this is so: If he was so celebrated and admired in his lifetime, why is De Mura so little known today?
The exhibition—which, in 2017, will travel to the Chazen Museum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Loeb Art Center at Vassar College—will feature more than 40 works by De Mura from such collections as Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Art Institute, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and other public and private collections. In addition, there will be loans from Naples, Paris, and London.
Included will be the Cornell Museum’s recently acquired Solimena painting, as well as the Cornell’s newly identified oil by a follower of Solimena. Dr. Arthur Blumenthal, Director Emeritus of the Cornell, is the Guest Curator of the show, which will have a scholarly catalogue with essays by such art historians as Nicola Spinosa, former Superintendent of the National Museums in Naples and foremost expert on De Mura. Through De Mura’s original creations in the exhibition, the Cornell will finally be giving this richly deserving Neapolitan artist—the last Baroque artist—his due.
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Catalogue available in September from Artbooks.com:
Arthur Blumenthal, ed., In the Light of Naples: The Art of Francesco de Mura, (London: Giles, 2016), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-1907804854, $50.
Francesco de Mura (1696–1782), one of the greatest painters of the Golden Age of Naples, at last gains the attention he deserves in this first-ever scholarly publication. De Mura’s refined and elegant compositions, with their exquisite light and color, heralded the Rococo in Naples, while his later classicistic style led to the simplicity and sculptural quality of Neoclassicism. In the Light of Naples: The Art of Francesco de Mura reveals the power of his work through more than 200 colour illustrations, including details from his great frescoes, as well as images of many of his key paintings—published here for the first time. The indisputable leader in his day of the Neapolitan School and the favorite of the reigning Bourbon King Charles VII (1735–59), Francesco de Mura was the chief painter of decorative cycles to emerge from the studio of Francesco Solimena (1657–1747), the great Baroque artist. Outstanding works in Naples include the enormous oil painting of The Adoration of the Magi (ca.1728) for the church of Santa Maria Donnaromita, and the stunning frescoes of The Adoration of the Magi (1732) in the apsidal dome of the church of the Nunziatella and, on the ceiling of the nave of the same church, The Assumption of the Virgin (1751). Nearly a third of De Mura’s works were destroyed in the American and British bombing of Naples during World War II, including, most tragically, his series of frescoes at the abbey of Monte Cassino.
Arthur Blumenthal is Director Emeritus of Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College.
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Note (added 21 December 2016) — Malcolm Bull reviews the exhibition for The Burlington Magazine 158 (December 2016), pp. 1006–07:
In the mid-eighteenth century, Francesco de Mura (1696–1782) was universally acknowledged to be the leading artist in Naples . . . But his fortune since then has been less favourable . . . Most of De Mura’s work remains in situ, making it hard to mount a representative exhibition. In these circumstances it is not surprising that this, the first-ever exhibition of the artist’s work, In the Light of Naples: The Art of Francesco de Mura at Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL (to 18th December), where this reviewer saw the show, required a decade of planning by its curator, Arthur Blumenthal. The result is, however, a triumph. . . Although this is a small exhibition, there is enough to convince even the most skeptical viewer that De Mura is an artist of the first rank (1006).
Exhibition | Versailles and the American Revolution
Now on view at Versailles:
Versailles and the American Revolution / Versailles et l’Indépendance Américaine
Château de Versailles, 5 July — 17 October 2016
Curated by Valérie Bajou
Louis-Léopold Boilly, Portrait de La Fayette, 1788 (RMN-Grand Palais / Château de Versailles)
From 5 July to 2 October 2016, on the occasion of the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Palace of Versailles dedicates an exhibition highlighting the war during which the fate of three countries met: the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.
As the first country to recognise the United State of America as a new nation, it was France’s duty to commemorate the event, especially at Versailles where this decision was taken, where the War of Independence was supported, and where the peace treaty with England was signed in 1783. The exhibition aims to remind viewers of facts that are often forgotten but which bear testimony to the circumstances, scale, and consequences of France’s involvement in the war.
The exhibition recounts the events and highlights the context of French and English rivalry after the Seven Years’ War as well as internal divisions in the French side, the American side between ‘patriots’ and ‘loyalists’, and the English side due to some opposition to the way the settlers were treated. It recounts the decision-making process at Versailles, the personalities of key figures—notably Benjamin Franklin—and the exact locations in the palace where discussions were held. Finally, it explains the international spread of the fighting—from India across the Mediterranean Sea, to the shores of America—and the human losses due to the violence and scale of the battles, the largest of both the 18th and 19th centuries.
The War of Independence has been interpreted by artists from all three countries; so iconic works seen for the first time outside the USA will illustrate the exhibition’s discourse. The generosity of the loans granted must also be stressed, a key example being the Diamond Eagle of George Washington from the Society of the Cincinnati.
The exhibition is the result of scientific collaboration with researchers from American museums and universities, the Congress, and the Society of the Cincinnati, as well as French, Spanish, and English historians. It aims to present different points of view in order to avoid presenting a perspective of the events which is too narrow.
The exhibition will be held in an unusual location, the Battles Gallery, near The Battle of Yorktown, which represents the deciding battle of 1781. Commissioned in 1835 by Louis-Philippe, a year after the death of Lafayette, this commemorative painting indicates that the memory of the war and the sacrifices made had not been forgotten but were kept alive on the other side of the Atlantic like a debt of blood, also explaining the fervour in the famous expression of 1917: “Lafayette, here we are!”
Valerie Bajou : Curator in chief at the national museum of the Palaces of Versailles and Trianon
Scenographer : Loretta Gaïtis
A symposium opened the exhibition on July 5; the programme is available as a PDF file here.
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The catalogue is available from ACC Distribution:
Valérie Bajou, ed., Versailles and the American Revolution (Montreuil: Gourcuff Gradenigo, 2016), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-2353402465, £35 / $40.
Published to accompany an exhibition at the Palace of Versailles, this catalogue is a collective work bringing together contributions from French, American, and British specialists in this field, which together shed light on the importance of the relationship between France and America in the closing years of the Ancien Régime. During the reign of Louis XVI, the Palace of Versailles—the seat of power and government in France—played a crucial role in the history of America, in its struggle for independence, and in the recognition of the United States by the great European powers. In tracing this remarkable story, the catalogue demonstrates the constant interest displayed in the fledgling United States by the French monarchy.
Richly illustrated throughout, it documents the events of the War of Independence, before exploring the consequences of the entry of France into the war, the siege of Yorktown, and the peace treaty signed at Versailles in 1783. Finally, it analyses the origins and development of the mythology of the ‘American Revolution’ in both France and the United States, a source of enduring inspiration for artists and history painters.
Exhibition | Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment
Opening in September at the Louvre:
Bouchardon: A Sublime Idea of Beauty / Une idée du beau
Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 14 September — 5 December 2016
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 10 January — 2 April 2017
Curated by Anne-Lise Desmas, Edouard Kopp, Guilhem Scherf, and Juliette Trey
Edme Bouchardon, Femme nue de dos, bras gauche le long du corps (RMN-Grand Palais/Louvre / Michel Urtado)
The Musée du Louvre and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles pay tribute to Edme Bouchardon (1698–1762), a renowned French sculptor and draftsman, who was considered an exceptional artist in his own time. The son of an architect-sculptor, he trained at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris before spending a productive period at the French Academy in Rome (1723–32). Learning of Bouchardon’s great reputation, the director of the King’s Buildings summoned him back to France, where he quickly received a studio and lodgings at the Louvre. Accepted into the Academy in 1735, he thus became Sculptor to the King.
Listed in the Encyclopédie—Diderot and d’Alembert’s encyclopedic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and trades—as the continuator of Puget and Girardon, Bouchardon was regarded by his contemporaries as the advocate of artistic renewal, “the greatest sculptor and the best draftsman of his century” (Cochin).
While many studies have shed new light on our understanding of Neoclassicism, this exhibition—the first major monograph on Bouchardon’s oeuvre—will be an opportunity to comprehend the sculptor’s style, a perfect balance between classical influence and life-like rendering.
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Juliette Trey, avec la participation d’Hélène Grollemund, Inventaire général des dessins du musée du Louvre. Ecole française. Edme Bouchardon (1698–1762): Catalogue raisonné (Paris: Mare & Martin / Musée du Louvre, 2016), 720 pages, ISBN: 979-1092054651, 110€.
Le musée du Louvre conserve un fonds très important de dessins (1038 feuilles) attribués à Edme Bouchardon dont le catalogue sommaire a été publié par Jean Guiffrey et Pierre Marcel en 1907 et 1908 (Inventaire général des dessins du musée du Louvre et de Versailles, Ecole française, vol. I et II). La dernière étude monographique sur l’artiste date de 1910 (Alphonse Roserot, Edme Bouchardon, Paris, Librairie centrale des beaux-arts).
L’inventaire des dessins de Bouchardon est organisé de manière chronologique, présentant les feuilles dans l’ordre de leur réalisation, et thématique. Il est divisé en trois parties, correspondant aux trois étapes essentielles de la carrière de Bouchardon : Rome (1723–1732), qui compte essentiellement des copies d’antiques, de peintures et de sculptures, exécutées par l’artiste lors de son séjour à l’Académie de France ; Paris (1733–1748), qui rassemble les dessins pour les sculptures qui firent la gloire de Bouchardon, notamment l’Amour taillant son arc dans la massue d’Hercule et la fontaine de Grenelle ; la statue équestre de Louis XV (1748–1762), chantier colossal qui occupa toute la fin de la carrière du sculpteur et pour lequel le fonds du Louvre s’élève à près de 440 dessins. Chaque partie puis chaque thème sont introduits par un court texte de présentation. La plupart des notices sont également commentées avec l’identification du modèle copié ou de la sculpture préparée, présentant les oeuvres en rapport, les estampes gravées d’après le dessin. L’étude matérielle des dessins a fait l’objet d’une grande attention, avec un relevé systématique des filigranes, permettant une étude chronologique nouvelle et fine des dessins.
Enfin, l’ouvrage est complété par une présentation générale de l’artiste, une chronologie, un index, auxquels s’ajoute un chapitre dédié aux dessins rejetés pour lesquels de nouvelles attributions sont parfois proposées.
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From ArtBooks.com:
Guilhem Scherf, et al., Edme Bouchardon (1698–1762): Sculpteur et Dessinateur du Roi (Paris: Somogy, 2016), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-2757210697, $80.
From ArtBooks.com:
Anne-Lise Desmas, Edouard Kopp, Guilhem Scherf, and Juliette Trey, Bouchardon: Royal Artist of the Enlightenment (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2017), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-1606065068, $80.
One of the most imaginative and fascinating artists of eighteenth-century France, Edme Bouchardon was instrumental in the transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism and in the artistic rediscovery of classical antiquity. Much celebrated in his time, Bouchardon created some of the most iconic images of the age of Louis XV. His oeuvre demonstrates a remarkable variety of themes (from copies after the antique to subjects of history and mythology, portraiture, anatomical studies, ornament, fountains and tombs), media (drawings, sculptures, medals, prints), and techniques (chalk, plaster, wax, terracotta, marble, bronze).
With five essays by experts on Bouchardon’s sculpture and graphic arts, more than 140 catalogue entries, and a detailed chronology, this book aims to demonstrate the originality of Bouchardon’s art within the cultural and social context of the period, while suggesting the subtle relationship between, as well as the relative autonomy of, the artist’s two careers as a sculptor and a draftsman. This lavishly illustrated publication represents an unprecedented and thorough survey on this major and unique artist from the Age of Enlightenment, offering indepth scholarship based on unpublished material.
Anne-Lise Desmas is curator and head of the Department of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Édouard Kopp is the Maida and George Abrams Associate Curator of Drawings at the Harvard Art Museums. Guilhem Scherf is chief curator in the Department of Sculpture at the Louvre. Juliette Trey is curator in the Department of Graphic Arts at the Louvre.
Exhibition | Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck
Press release (20 May 2016) from The National Gallery:
Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck
The National Gallery, London, 23 June — 4 September 2016
Curated by Anne Robbins
Works of art are models you are to imitate, and at the same time rivals you are to combat. –Sir Joshua Reynolds
Spanning over five hundred years of art history, Painters’ Paintings presents more than eighty works, which were once in the possession of great painters: pictures that artists were given or chose to acquire, works they lived with and were inspired by. This is an exceptional opportunity to glimpse inside the private world of these painters and to understand the motivations of artists as collectors of paintings.
The inspiration for this exhibition is a painter’s painting: Corot’s Italian Woman, left to the nation by Lucian Freud following his death in 2011. Freud had bought the Italian Woman ten years earlier, no doubt drawn to its solid brushwork and intense physical presence. A major work in its own right, the painting demands to be considered in the light of Freud’s achievements, as a painter who tackled the representation of the human figure with vigour comparable to Corot’s. In his will, Freud stated that he wanted to leave the painting to the nation as a thank you for welcoming his family so warmly when they arrived in the UK as refugees fleeing the Nazis. He also stipulated that the painting’s new home should be the National Gallery, where it could be enjoyed by future generations.
Anne Robbins, curator of Painters’ Paintings says: “Since its acquisition the painting’s notable provenance has attracted considerable attention; in fact, the picture is often appraised in the light of Freud’s own achievements, almost eclipsing the intrinsic merits of Corot’s canvas. It made us start considering questions such as which paintings do artists choose to hang on their own walls? How do the works of art they have in their homes and studios influence their personal creative journeys? What can we learn about painters from their collection of paintings? Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck is the result.”
Thomas Gainsborough, Girl with Pigs, 1781–82 (The Castle Howard Collection). Owned by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The National Gallery holds a number of important paintings which, like the Corot, once belonged to celebrated painters: Van Dyck’s Titian; Reynolds’s Rembrandt, and Matisse’s Degas among many others. Painters’ Paintings is organised as a series of case studies each devoted to a particular painter-collector: Freud, Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck. Painters’ Paintings explores the motivations of these artists—as patrons, rivals, speculators—to collect paintings. The exhibition looks at the significance of these works of art for the painters who owned them—as tokens of friendship, status symbols, models to emulate, cherished possessions, financial investments or sources of inspiration.
Works from these artists’ collections are juxtaposed with a number of their own paintings, highlighting the connections between their own creative production and the art they lived with. These pairings and confrontations shed new light on both the paintings and the creative process of the painters who owned them, creating a dynamic and original dialogue between possession and painterly creation.
Half the works in the exhibition are loans from public and private collections, from New York and Philadelphia, to Copenhagen and Paris. A number of them have not been seen in public for several decades.
Dr. Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery says: “Artists by definition live with their own pictures, but what motivates them to possess works by other painters, be they contemporaries—friends or rivals—or older masters? The exhibition looks for the answers in the collecting of Freud, Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck.”
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792)
As the inaugural President of the Royal Academy, Reynolds was one of the most significant figures of the British art world in the 18th century; for him, collecting was a life-long passion, which he likened to “a great game.” Reynolds had a vast collection of drawings, paintings, and prints that informed both his teachings and supported his ideas about what constituted great art: style of Van Dyck (The Horses of Achilles, 1635–45, The National Gallery, London), Giovanni Bellini (The Agony in the Garden, about 1465, The National Gallery, London), after Michelangelo (Leda and the Swan, after 1530, The National Gallery, London), Poussin (The Adoration of the Shepherds, about 1633–34, The National Gallery, London), and Rembrandt (The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, about 1634–35, The British Museum, London).
Gainsborough’s Girl with Pigs (1781–82, Castle Howard Collection), bought by Reynolds in 1782, also illustrates Reynolds’s interest for the work of his contemporaries, demonstrating the breadth of his taste, but also its changeability—soon after, Reynolds tried to exchange his Gainsborough for a Titian.
Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830)
Lawrence was the leading British portraitist of the early 19th century. He was largely self-taught and hugely influenced by Sir Joshua Reynolds, following in his footsteps to become President of the Royal Academy. Like Degas, Lawrence was a voracious, obsessional collector, using the proceeds of the sale of his society portraits to amass an incomparable collection of Old Master drawings. An inventory upon his death listed some 4,300 drawings, including Carracci’s immense A Woman borne off by a Sea God (?) (about 1599, The National Gallery, London) and a number of paintings including Raphael’s Allegory (about 1504, The National Gallery, London) and Reni’s Coronation of the Virgin, (about 1607, The National Gallery, London).
This section of the exhibition places Lawrence’s collecting within his social world. The paintings he acquired established his reputation as a great connoisseur, and his advice was much sought by influential friends such as John Julius Angerstein and Sir George Beaumont, whose collections came to form the nucleus of the National Gallery holdings. Beyond his acquisitive zeal, the prodigiously gifted Lawrence also sought to gain information about his favoured artists’ methods. An exceptional loan from a private collection, his portrait of the Baring Brothers (Lawrence, Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, John Baring and Charles Wall, 1806–07) demonstrates his absorption of the tradition of Renaissance male portrait, here injected with Lawrence’s trademark dash and virtuosity.
The full press release is available here»
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From Yale UP:
Anne Robbins, Painters’ Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-1857096118, £15.
In this intriguing book, Anne Robbins explores the little-known history of artists collecting paintings. Focusing on the collections of Freud, Matisse, Degas, Leighton, Watts, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Van Dyck, she assesses the ways painters benefited from owning someone else’s work, their motivations for collecting, and how the history of a painting’s ownership influences our own view of both the artist and the work. Robbins investigates paintings as the sources of creative inspiration and their use in teaching theories of art. She also examines how painters acquired the paintings they desired, whether through auction, dealerships, gift or exchange, and how they cared for the works: storing them, displaying them, and, in some cases, flaunting them for self-promotion. Robbins ultimately argues that the acts of acquiring art and of art making evolve in tandem—with rich connections between works owned and works painted.
Anne Robbins is associate curator of Post-1800 paintings at the National Gallery, London.
Exhibition | Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts
Press release (14 June 2016) from The Met:
Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue, New York, 14 June — 12 September 2016
Curated by Navina Haidar and Courtney Stewart
Detail of The Village Beauty. Probably painted by the artist Fattu (active ca. 1770–1820). Illustrated folio from the dispersed ‘Kangra Bihari’ Sat Sai (Seven Hundred Verses). Punjab Hills, kingdom of Kangra, ca. 1785. Opaque watercolor, ink, and gold on paper; narrow yellow and white borders with black inner rules; dark blue spandrels decorated with gold arabesque; painting 18.7 x 13.2 cm, page 20.6 x 14.9 cm. Promised Gift of the Kronos Collections, 2015 (SK.082).
Compelling episodes from the epic and poetic literature of the Indian subcontinent dominate the nearly 100 masterful paintings—most a 2015 promised gift by Steven M. Kossak from his family’s Kronos Collections—on display at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Created mainly between the 16th and the early 19th century for the royal courts of Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills in northern India, the works on view in the exhibition Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections are meant to move the soul and delight the eye. Suffused with the powerful imagery of the myths of the past, Indian painting expressed a new way of seeking the divine through bhakti, or personal devotion. The collection was assembled over nearly four decades by Mr. Kossak, formerly a curator in The Met’s Department of Asian Art.
“We are delighted to present this exhibition of Steve Kossak’s generous promised gift,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Met. “These distinguished paintings constitute one of the premier collections of this material in private hands, and their eventual addition to The Met collection will transform the Museum’s holdings of Rajput painting. It is a significant addition to Steve’s legacy at The Met after serving for two decades as a curator.”
The exhibition is organized into three major sections: Early Rajput and Rajasthan, early Pahari (Punjab Hills), and later Pahari. Within each room, the paintings will be shown in relation to the literary traditions of Indian Hinduism. Rajput court painting was mainly intended for royal delectation, to amplify through the artistic fantasy manifest in the pictures, well-known religious, quasi-religious, and secular texts and subjects. The power and magic of the images transcends the subjects they portray.
Under the patronage of their Rajput rulers, many of the principalities of north India developed and nurtured a distinctive painting style. This galaxy of stylistic expression is amply demonstrated in the exhibition through compelling examples of the Early Rajput Style; the later schools of Bikaner, Bundi, Kishangarh, Kota, and Mewar; as well as many of the small courts of the Punjab Hills: Bahu, Bahsoli, Bislalpur, Chamba, Guler, Kangra, Mandi, Mankot, and Nurpur.
Painted on paper in opaque watercolor and ink, they are often heightened with gold and silver. Whites are often raised to simulate pearls and reflective beetle-wing casings stand in for emeralds. Many of the paintings have never before been exhibited publicly.
Concurrent with the exhibition is a small, thematically related display, Poetry and Devotion in Indian Painting: Two Decades of Collecting (June 15–December 4, 2016) in the Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries for the Arts of South and Southeast Asia, Indian Painting Gallery, Gallery #251. Recognizing the contributions of Mr. Kossak to the Department of Asian Art, where he was a curator from 1986 to 2006, it features 22 of the dozens of Rajput and Pahari paintings that were acquired during his tenure, including a large intricately painted and printed cloth pichwai (temple hanging).
The exhibition was organized by Navina Haidar, Curator, and Courtney Stewart, Senior Research Assistant, of The Met’s Department of Islamic Art. Exhibition design is by Daniel Kershaw, Exhibition Design Manager; graphics are by Constance Norkin, Graphic Design Manager; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers, all of the Museum’s Design Department.
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The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:
Terence McInerney, with essays by Steven Kossak and Navina Najat Haidar, Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1588395900, $50.
This splendidly illustrated publication features over 90 important paintings from the predominantly Hindu Rajput tradition of Indian painting, and are highlights from the Kronos Collection, one of the finest holdings of Indian art. These remarkable works—most of them published and illustrated here for the first time—were painted between the 16th and 18th centuries for the Indian royal courts in Rajastan and the Punjab Hills. Many of the paintings are characterized by their brilliant colors and vivid depictions of scenes from Hindu epics, mystical legends, and courtly life. Along with an informative entry for every work and a personal essay by expert and collector Steven M. Kossak, the book contains an extensive essay by Terence McInerney that outlines the history of Indian painting, with a special emphasis on the Rajput courts, and provides an overview of the subject with fresh insights and interpretations.
Terence McInerney is an independent scholar, dealer, and author of numerous articles on Indian painting. Steven M. Kossak is a former curator in the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and a distinguished collector.
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