Exhibition | Antoine Watteau: The Draughtsman
Opening in October at the Städel Museum:
Antoine Watteau: The Draughtsman / Der Zeichner
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 19 October 2016 — 15 January 2017
Teylers Museum, Haarlem, 2 February — 14 May 2017
Jean Antoine Watteau, Standing Male Figure (Nicolas Vleughels?), ca. 1718–19 (Frankfurt: Städel Museum)
The French painter Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) is among the great masters of draughtsmanship. His sensitive studies in red, black and white chalk capture female and male models, observations of details and spontaneous ideas, and develop that world of cheerful companies and mutually attentive conviviality that would come to be called fêtes galantes (‘courtship parties’).
In cooperation with the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Städel Museum is planning an exhibition of drawings by Antoine Watteau for the autumn of 2016. Both institutions have in their possession substantial holdings of works by the artist, who can be considered one of the most outstanding draughtsmen in the history of French art. His innovative style—characterized by a combination of spontaneity, ease and intimacy on the one hand and observation of the utmost precision on the other—contrasts starkly with the formal tradition of the academically oriented artists of his time. With its psychological sensitivity, the new, virtuoso art reflects the spirit of the dawning Enlightenment.
Watteau is relatively little known in Germany, despite the fact that in the eighteenth century he was one of the Frederick the Great’s favourite artists. The last exhibition to be devoted here to Watteau took place in 1984. Among the works in the Stadel Museum’s painting collection is the earliest version of the Embarkation for Cythera, which—owing in part to the two further versions in the Louvre and Charlottenburg Palace—represents what is presumably the artist’s most famous pictorial invention. Enhanced by a small selection of further paintings, the Städel Museum’s Embarkation for Cythera will form the core of the presentation of approximately fifty choice drawings from the holdings of the participating institutions as well as a number of other prominent German, Dutch, and French collections. Approximately twenty drawings by such artists as François Boucher, Nicolas Lancret, or Jean-Honoré Fragonard will supplement this selection, bearing testimony to Watteau’s impact on later generations of artists.
Martin Sonnabend and Michiel Plomp, Antoine Watteau: Der Zeichner (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2016), 260 pages, ISBN: 978-3777426549, 35€.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Note (added 19 October 2016) — The original posting listed the title of the exhibition as Antoine Watteau: Drawings / Zeichnungen and did not include the exhibition catalogue.
Exhibition | A Swede in Paris: The Tessin Collection
François Boucher, The Triumph of Venus, 1740, oil on canvas, 130 × 162 cm
(Stockholm: Nationalmuseum)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Opening in October at the Louvre:
A Swede in Paris in the 18th Century: The Tessin Collection
Un Suédois à Paris au 18e siècle: La collection Tessin
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 20 October 2016 — 16 January 2017
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, 5 February — 14 May 2017
Organized by Xavier Salmon, Guillaume Faroult, Juliette Trey, Magnus Olausson, and Carina Fryklund
Louis Tocqué, Portrait of Carl Gustaf Tessin, 1741, oil on canvas (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum)
Although not officially bearing the title, Count Carl Gustaf Tessin acted as Swedish ambassador in Paris from 1739 to 1741. A passionate collector of paintings and drawings during those three years, he became a friend of Pierre-Jean Mariette and acquired works at the remarkable Crozat sale in 1741.
Heavily in debt on his return to Sweden, Tessin was obliged to sell part of his collection of paintings to King Frederick I, who gave them to Queen Louisa Ulrika. In 1750 the count also had to part with his collection of drawings, which was acquired by Crown Prince Adolf Frederick.
Organized in tandem with the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, now home to the greater part of Tessin’s collection, the exhibition takes a combined chronological and thematic approach to his modus operandi. In doing so, it also provides an insight into the art market and Parisian taste in the mid-18th century.
Programming includes:
Magnus Olausson | Les relations artistiques entre la France et la Suède au XVIIIe siècle
Musée du Louvre, 24 October 2016, 6:30pm
Guillaume Faroult, Xavier Salmon, and Juliette Trey | Présentation d’exposition
Musée du Louvre, 27 October 2016, 12:30pm
Xavier Salmon | Les maisons de Carl Gustaf Tessin
Musée du Louvre, 31 October 2016, 6:30pm
Guillaume Faroult | Carl Gustaf Tessin, un goût parisien pour la peinture
Musée du Louvre, 7 November 2016, 6:30pm
Xavier Salmon, Guillaume Faroult, and Juliette Trey, Un Suédois à Paris au 18e siècle: La collection Tessin (Paris: Coédition Liénart), 254 pages, ISBN: 235906178X / ISBN: 978-2359061789, 35€.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Press release from the Nationalmuseum:
The 18th century marked a peak in the artistic relationship between France and Sweden. French art was very influential in Sweden, and conversely a Swedish count, Carl Gustaf Tessin, played a significant role in the artistic life of the French capital for a brief but intense period.
Tessin served as Swedish ambassador in Paris from 1739 to 1742. In this role, he was involved in top-secret political negotiations, but the enduring legacy of his time in France was the extensive contacts he made in the art world and the many works of art he acquired.
No other personal art collection assembled in 18th-century Paris remains as intact as Tessin’s, which documents how artistic styles and tastes evolved in the city at the height of the Rococo period. The collection now belongs to Nationalmuseum, where it is one of the crown jewels.
An exclusive selection of 120 notable works from the Tessin collection is on show at the Louvre in autumn 2016. A lavishly illustrated catalogue has been published to coincide with the exhibition, featuring various articles about Tessin and his collection based on new research. This co-production by Nationalmuseum and the Louvre is the first of its kind for many years. The exhibition will move on, in a modified version, to the Morgan Library in New York, where it goes on show in spring 2017.
Note — Programming, catalogue information, and the Nationalmuseum press release were added 13 October 2016. The original posting also did not include The Morgan as a venue, though a separate posting did address the exhibition in New York.
Exhibition | Art and Stories from Mughal India
Press release for the exhibition now on view at the CMA:
Art and Stories from Mughal India
The Cleveland Museum of Art, 31 July — 23 October 2016
Curated by Sonya Rhie Quintanilla
Women Enjoying the River at the Forest’s Edge, ca. 1765. Mughal, Murshidabad or Lucknow. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 33.1 × 24.9 cm (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.351).
Art and Stories from Mughal India presents the story of the Mughals— and stories for the Mughals—in 100 exquisite paintings from the 1500s to 1800s. The exhibition and accompanying Mughal painting collection catalogue celebrate the Cleveland Museum of Art’s centennial with works drawn from the 2013 landmark acquisition of the Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim Collection of Deccan and Mughal paintings, many exhibited and published for the first time. Complementing the paintings are 39 objects including costume, textiles, jewelry, arms and armor, architectural elements and decorative arts, some on loan from other prominent institutions, such as the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, the Brooklyn Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University. These objects resonate with details in the paintings and bring the sumptuous material culture of the Mughal world to life.
“The Cleveland Museum of Art has long boasted a particularly fine holding of Indian art, and with the acquisition of the Benkaim collection of Mughal paintings, we are now fortunate to have an extraordinary representation of one of its most celebrated artistic traditions,” said William M. Griswold, Director. “This exhibition—beautifully curated and magnificently installed—vividly evokes the richness and cosmopolitanism of one of the world’s great empires.”
The Mughal Empire existed for more than 300 years, from 1526 until the advent of British colonial rule in 1858. It encompassed territory that included vast portions of the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan. The Mughal rulers were Central Asian Muslims who assimilated many religious faiths under their administration. Famed for its distinctive architecture, including the Taj Mahal, the Mughal Empire is also renowned for its colorful and engaging paintings, many taking the form of scenes from narrative tales.
Art and Stories from Mughal India is organized into eight sections based on the Persian idea of the nama. Nama may be translated as any of a number of English words, among them: book, tale, adventure, story, account, life and memoir. Paintings were integral to the production of namas in book form for royal collections in Mughal India. Art and Stories from Mughal India sets the paintings, now long separated from their bound volumes, into their nama contexts. Four of the exhibition’s sections focus on a specific nama: a fable, a sacred biography, an epic, and a mystic romance. Many of the paintings, long celebrated for their vivid color, startling detail and alluring sense of realism, are displayed double-sided to show complete folios from albums and manuscripts, a constant reminder of their original status as part of a larger book or series.
“The paintings are products of a powerful, multiethnic dynasty of rulers who valued art and literature as essential elements of court life,” said Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, the George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art. “They were made to inspire awe and delight, and this exhibition aims to do the same by making them accessible to audiences today.”
Sumptuously designed to evoke the spaces of Mughal palace interiors and verandas where paintings were kept and viewed, the exhibition opens with a 25-foot-long 16th-century floral arabesque carpet, rarely seen because of its scale. The first two galleries are devoted to Mughal paintings made for Akbar, the third Mughal emperor (r. 1556–1605), who saw to it that his copies of fables, adventures and histories were accompanied by ample numbers of paintings. On view are some of the earliest works from Akbar’s reign by celebrated artists, such as Basavana (Basawan) and Dasavanta (Daswanth), from the Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot), and the culminating scene from the Hamza-nama (Adventures of Hamza), 70 cm in height, one of the few surviving pages from this massive 1,400-folio project in which the Mughal style became thoroughly synthesized.
The next two galleries explore the relationship between Akbar and his oldest son, Salim, whose birth in 1569 was cause for great celebration. By 1600, Salim was ready to lead the empire and mutinously set up his own court where he brought paintings, artists and manuscripts from Akbar’s palace and commissioned new works, such as the illustrated Mir’at al-quds (Mirror of Holiness), a biography of Jesus written in Persian by a Spanish Jesuit priest at the Mughal court, completed in 1602. Like the Tutinama (Tales of a Parrot), the Mir’at al-quds manuscript is remarkable not only for its historical importance and artistic beauty, but because it survives nearly intact, though unbound, with few missing pages. Both manuscripts, crucial for the study of Mughal painting, are kept in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and most of their folios have never before been shown.
The story of the Mughals continues with works made for and collected by Emperor Jahangir—the name Prince Salim took after the death of Akbar in 1605—as well as his son Shah Jahan (r. 1627–58) and grandson Alamgir (r. 1658–1707). This period spanning the 17th century saw the production of some of the most exquisite paintings and objects ever made for the Mughals. Textiles, courtly arms, garments, jades, marble architectural elements and porcelains bring to life the painted depictions of the Mughal court’s refined splendor at the height of its wealth.
Concluding the exhibition is a large, dramatic gallery, painted black in keeping with depictions of the interiors of 18th-century Mughal palaces, with paintings framed in gold, hookah bowls, jewels, a vina, lush textiles and a shimmering millefleurs carpet. The assemblage celebrates the joy in Mughal art of the mid-1700s. The scenes predominantly take place in the world of women and the harem, where the emperor Muhammad Shah (r. 1719–48), who was largely responsible for the reinvigoration of imperial Mughal painting, grew up, sheltered by his powerful mother from the murderous intrigues that wracked the court after the death of Alamgir in 1707.
Throughout the exhibition viewers will note the international character of Mughal art and culture. Flourishing during the Age of Expansion between the 1500s and 1700s, Mughal India was the source for goods and natural resources coveted throughout the Western world, and visitors to the exhibition will encounter the origins of familiar aspects of current daily life in the works of art on view.
To complement Art and Stories from Mughal India, the Cleveland Museum of Art has developed a free, innovative CMA Mughal exhibition app, in which the exhibition’s curator, Sonya Rhie Quintanilla, relates stories and describes paintings. The app includes hyperlinks to an audio glossary of names and terms, and 100 tweetable facts illustrated with a related detail image from the 100 paintings on view. CMA Mughal—available now for download from the iTunes Store for Apple devices running iOS9 and above—is the first in a series of exhibition apps that will be available for use after the exhibition ends.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From D. Giles, Ltd:
Sonya Rhie Quintanilla with Dominique DeLuca and essays by Mohsen Ashtiany, Marcus Fraser, Catherine Glynn, Ruby Lal, and Pedro Moura Carvalho, Mughal Paintings: Art and Stories, The Cleveland Museum of Art (London: Giles, 2016), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-1907804892, £50 / 70.
The mighty Persian warrior Rustam; the Israelite prophets; the Christian Messiah; the Mughal emperors; and the women of the harem—Mughal paintings tell the stories of these figures from epic poetry, holy texts, and the history of the Mughals, one of the greatest empires of the early modern period. Captured in this unique art form, Mughal paintings blend Persian and Indian themes and styles, along with Central Asian and European elements. The results are works of great beauty: intense and delicate, detailed and luxurious, with a distinctive character of their own.
The Cleveland Museum of Art holds one of the leading collections of Indian art in the United States, illustrated here in stunning detail. The provenance, publication history, and technical information of each manuscript painting is also accompanied by full transcriptions of Persian and Arabic calligraphy. This, the third volume in a series dedicated to the Cleveland Museum’s special conservation collections, casts new light on these stunning paintings.
Sonya Rhie Quintanilla is the George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at The Cleveland Museum of Art. Mohsen Ashtiany is is currently a research scholar and editor on the Encyclopaedia Iranica at the Center for Iranian Studies of Columbia University. Marcus Fraser is is an independent scholar, cataloguer, curator, and specialist consultant in Islamic and Indian manuscripts and painting. Catherine Glynn served from 1970 to 1980 as assistant and associate curator of Indian and Islamic art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Pedro Moura Carvalho has served as deputy director, Art and Programs, at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, before which he was the deputy director and chief curator of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum in Singapore. Ruby Lal is professor of South Asian Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University, Atlanta.
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)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
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.
leave a comment