Enfilade

William Hodges and William Pars, The Pantheon, Oxford Street, London, 1770–72, by James Wyatt, oil on canvas (Leeds Museums and Art Galleries / Temple Newsam House)

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Press release (8 December 2015) from the RA:

Mavericks: Breaking the Mould of British Architecture
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 26 January – 20 April 2016

Curated by Owen Hopkins

Mavericks: Breaking the Mould of British Architecture is an installation that will chart the course of British architecture from the sixteenth century to the present day through the work of twelve maverick architects: Robert Smythson, Sir John Vanbrugh, James Wyatt PRA, Sir John Soane RA, Charles Robert Cockerell RA, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Charles Holden, H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, James Stirling RA, Cedric Price, FAT and Zaha Hadid RA.

Each of the twelve mavericks has charted his or her own course, often deliberately ignoring prevailing taste, fashion and ways of working. The installation comprises of images and photographs of these maverick architects’ work, situating their work within the broader context of architectural history, through an arresting colour-gradated design by Scott-Whitby Studio. Celebrating the original and the unorthodox, the installation will pose an intriguing alternative narrative to the history of British architecture.

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Owen Hopkins, Mavericks: Breaking the Mould of British Architecture (London: Royal Academy Publications, 2016), 128 pages, ISBN: 978-1910350393, £13 / $28.

The history of architecture is a story of continual innovation, and at certain points within that story come architects whose visions completely defy convention. Mavericks focuses on 12 such figures from the history of British archi­tecture, including Sir John Soane, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Cedric Price, and Zaha Hadid. From the stripped-back classicism of Soane’s Dulwich Picture Gallery to Hadid’s neofuturistic London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the architects’ work is bold, frequently controversial, and often radical. It is architecture that actively resists being pigeonholed into a particular style or period. What connects this naturally disparate group of free creative spirits is the way each has charted his or her own course, often deliberately evading conventions of taste, fashion, and ways of working. This book offers a fresh take on their creations, establishing new and sometimes surprising historical connections while proposing an intriguing alternative narrative to the history of British architecture.

Owen Hopkins is Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and has written widely on architecture for The Burlington Magazine, The Architectural Review, Apollo, Dezeen, RA Magazine, C20 Magazine, The Oxonian Review, Architects’ Journal and Building Design. He is author of Reading Architecture: A Visual Lexicon (Laurence King, 2012), Architectural Styles: A Visual Guide (Laurence King, 2014) and From the Shadows: The Architecture and Afterlife of Nicholas Hawksmoor (Reaktion, 2015).

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E V E N T S
All events take place at the Geological Society, Piccadilly; £12 / reductions £6

Does Architecture Need Mavericks?
Thursday 4 February, 6.30–8pm

Owen Hopkins introduces the Mavericks book and installation and chairs a debate exploring the role of unorthodox approaches and original thinking in architecture.

Maverick Architects – A Thing of the Past?
Thursday 25 February, 6.30–8pm

Faced with the crushing weight of student debt and an increasingly risk-averse building industry, the panel explore if there is any future for mavericks in architecture.

After the Age of ‘Starchitects’
Monday, 7 March, 6.30–8pm

What might life be like after the signature-style, icon-obsessed—and male-dominated—age of the ‘starchitect’? The panel explores.

The Artist as Maverick Architect
Monday, 21 March, 6.30–8pm

Sean Griffiths, co-founder of FAT, one of the architects featured in Mavericks, chairs this discussion exploring the different perspectives artists can bring to the making of architecture.

Britain’s Greatest Maverick Building – The Debate
Monday, 18 April, 6.30–8pm

Do you have a favourite quirky or unusual building? Let us know on Twitter for a chance for it to be included in this debate looking for Britain’s greatest maverick building: @architecture_RA #Mavericks

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Veduta della Piazza di Monte Cavallo (View of the Piazza di Monte Cavallo [now the Piazza del Quirinale with the Quirinal Palace]), from Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome), 1750, etching (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, The Arthur Ross Collection).

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Press release (11 December 2015) from the Yale University Art Gallery:

Meant to Be Shared: Selections from the Arthur Ross
Collection of European Prints at the Yale University Art Gallery
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 18 December 2015 — 24 April 2016
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, 29 January — 8 May 2017
Syracuse University Art Galleries, Syracuse University, 17 August — 19 November 2017

Curated by Suzanne Boorsch

The Yale University Art Gallery is delighted to announce Meant to Be Shared: Selections from the Arthur Ross Collection of European Prints at the Yale University Art Gallery, an exhibition presenting highlights of the more than 1,200 prints donated to the Gallery in 2012 by the Arthur Ross Foundation. Beginning in the late 1970s, philanthropist Arthur Ross (1910–2007) avidly collected works of art by some of the most renowned Italian, Spanish, and French printmakers of the last several centuries for his eponymous foundation. Highlights of the Arthur Ross Collection include works by Francisco Goya, the first artist whom Ross collected; Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s images of ancient and 18th-century Rome, which reflect Ross’s love of classicism and the Eternal City; and Édouard Manet’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem The Raven.

The Arthur Ross Collection comprises three major segments. The largest is a group of some 800 18th-century Italian works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Giovanni Antonio Canal (called Canaletto), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and his sons, and others. A group of close to 200 prints by the Spaniard Francisco Goya includes the three intriguing and enigmatic series of etchings he made in the second decade of the 19th century, during which Spain suffered, first, Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion, and then, with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the repressive rule of King Ferdinand VII. The third segment consists of about 200 French prints by some of the greatest artists of the 19th and 20th centuries: Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Daumier, Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

This inaugural exhibition features 19 of Goya’s profoundly mysterious Disparates (Los proverbios) (Follies [Proverbs]) series, made around 1816 to 1819 but not published in Goya’s lifetime, for fear of the Inquisition. Ten images from the Tauromaquia (The Art of Bullfighting; 1815, published 1816) series and nine of the Desastres de la guerra (Disasters of War; ca. 1810–11, published 1863) are on display as well. The installation also highlights illustrations of great works of literature—one of the salient themes of the French work—including Delacroix’s 13 lithographs illustrating William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1834–43) and some of his illustrations for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust (1827, published 1828), and Manet’s truly revolutionary illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven (1875).

An entire gallery is devoted to views of places that might have been visited on the Italian segment of the Grand Tour, the cultural tour of Europe that was deemed an essential cap to the classical education of young gentlemen, especially those from Britain. Sparkling views of the Venetian region by Canaletto set the stage. The largest section is devoted to Rome; this part of the exhibition features a spectacular six-by-seven-foot map of the Eternal City, published in 1748, designed by the surveyor Giovanni Battista Nolli, and 20 of Piranesi’s Vedute (Views; ca. 1748–60) of Rome. The final area focuses on images of Pompeii and Paestum, in southern Italy, where in the mid-18th century rediscoveries of ancient sites excited the intelligentsia across Europe.

The title of the exhibition, Meant to Be Shared, reflects the raison d’être of the collection. Arthur Ross collected these prints for his foundation with the express purpose, in the words of his widow, Janet C. Ross, “to lend first-class prints … to educational institutions in the United States and abroad that would not otherwise have access to such objects for study and enjoyment.” In this spirit, the inaugural exhibition travels to the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, Gainesville, in early 2017, and to the Syracuse University Art Galleries, New York, later that year. Gallery staff members have partnered with Harn Museum Director Rebecca M. Nagy and Syracuse University Art Galleries Director Domenic Iacono to plan ways to use the prints as teaching tools at each institution—including related university courses, public programs, and close-looking sessions—throughout the run of the exhibition. Suzanne Boorsch, the Gallery’s Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings and curator of the exhibition, explains, “Far and away the most difficult aspect of preparing this exhibition was to make a selection from the abundance of riches that constitute this extraordinary donation. The possibilities that the Arthur Ross Collection offers for exhibition, research, and teaching are virtually endless, and, indeed, this inaugural exhibition and the collection catalogue are just the beginning of the rewards to be reaped by the study and enjoyment of this gift.”

The Gallery’s mission of sharing its collections broadly honors both the legacy of Arthur Ross and the value of the work he collected. Jock Reynolds, the Gallery’s Henry J. Heinz II Director, states, “We are grateful that the Arthur Ross Foundation has chosen the Gallery to be the steward of this remarkable collection, ensuring its proper care and always sharing it generously with active learners of all ages.”

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P R O G R A M M I N G

Gallery Talks

Wednesday, December 9, 12:30 pm
“Piranesi’s Rome: The Vision of an 18th-Century Architect and Printmaker,” Jakub Koguciuk, Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art and Renaissance Studies, Yale University

Wednesday, February 24, 12:30 pm
“Bullfighting: Audience and Perspective in Prints by Antonio Carnicero, Francisco Goya, and Pablo Picasso,” Ian Althouse, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Yale University

Wednesday, February 24, 1:30 pm
“Las corridas de toros: Audiencia y mirada en el arte de Antonio Carnicero, Francisco Goya y Pablo Picasso” (in Spanish), Ian Althouse

Wednesday, April 13, 12:30 pm
“Intensité, Obscurité, Frivolité: The Proliferation of Print Media in 19th-Century France,” Lisa Hodermarsky, the Sutphin Family Senior Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery

Ryerson Lectures

Thursday, January 21, 5:30 pm
“Goya’s Prints in Context,” Janis A. Tomlinson, Director of University Museums, University of Delaware, Newark

Friday, February 5, 1:30 pm
“The Marriage of Venice and Rome, or What Makes Piranesi Great?,” Andrew Robison, the Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Friday, April 1, 1:30 pm
“From Paris to Tahiti: Paul Gauguin’s Innovative Prints,” Elizabeth C. Childs, the Etta and Mark Steinberg Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Washington University in Saint Louis

Performance

Thursday, March 31, 5:30 pm
Chamber Music of the 18th Century, Tiny Baroque Orchestra

Studio Programs

Friday, February 12, 1:30 and 3:00 pm
Printmaking Workshops
Inspired by the over 1,200 prints in the Arthur Ross Collection, Mauricio Cortes Ortega, M.F.A. candidate, and Caroline Sydney, SM ’16, both of Yale University, invite visitors to explore the art of printmaking. In this hands-on workshop, participants learn the basic techniques of intaglio printing and create a unique print of their own. Space is limited. Registration required; please call 203.432.9525.

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The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:

Suzanne Boorsch, Douglas Cushing, Alexa Greist, Elisabeth Hodermarsky, Sinclaire Marber, John Moore, and Heather Nolin, with a foreword by Janet Ross, Meant to Be Shared: The Arthur Ross Collection of European Prints (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 196 pages, ISBN: 978-0300214390, $60.

This important volume offers the first comprehensive look at the Arthur Ross Collection—more than 1,200 17th- to 20th-century Italian, French, and Spanish prints—and is published to mark the inaugural exhibition of the collection in its new home at the Yale University Art Gallery. Highlights include superb etchings by Canaletto and Tiepolo; the four volumes of Piranesi’s Antiquities of Rome, as well as his famous Vedute (Views) and Carceri (Prisons); Goya’s Tauromaquia in its first edition of 1816; an extremely rare etching by Edgar Degas; and numerous other 19th-century French prints, by Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Daumier, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, and others. The accompanying essays discuss the life of Arthur Ross, a significant philanthropist who funded several arts institutions; the formation of the collection and the art-historical significance of the works; and several thematic approaches to studying the collection, reinforcing its legacy as an important teaching resource.

Working replicas of John Harrison’s three remarkable timekeepers (H1, H2, H3) are highlights of the Ships, Clocks & Stars exhibition at Mystic Seaport; pictured is a detail of H3. Photo by Andy Price/Mystic Seaport.

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Press release (20 August 2015) for the exhibition, which was earlier on display at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich:

Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 11 July 2014 — 4 January 2015
Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut, 19 September 2015 — 28 March 2016

Mystic Seaport proudly presents Ships, Clocks & Stars: The Quest for Longitude, on tour from England for a limited time only. The award-winning exhibition, produced by the National Maritime Museum in London and sponsored by United Technologies Corp., reveals the race to determine longitude at sea. Spurred on by the promise of rich rewards, astronomers, philosophers, and artisans—including John Harrison and his innovative timekeepers—finally solved one of the greatest technical challenges of the 18th century.

For centuries, longitude (east-west position) was a matter of life and death at sea. Ships that went off course had no way to rediscover their longitude. With no known location, they might smash into underwater obstacles or be forever lost at sea. For a maritime nation such as Britain, growing investment in long distance trade, outposts and settlements overseas made the ability to accurately determine a ship’s longitude increasingly important.

Ships, Clocks & Stars celebrates the 300th anniversary of the British Longitude Act of 1714, which offered a huge prize for any practical way to determine longitude at sea. The longitude problem was so difficult that—despite that incentive—it took five decades to solve it. Through the latest research and extraordinary, historic artifacts—many from the collection of the National Maritime Museum and never before displayed outside the UK—the exhibition tells the story of the clockmakers, astronomers, naval officers, and others who pursued the long ‘quest for longitude’ to ultimate success.

In recent years, John Harrison has been cast as the hero of the story, not least in Dava Sobel’s bestselling book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Ships, Clocks & Stars provides a new perspective on this famous tale. While John Harrison makes a good story and his marine sea-watch was vital to finally solving the problem of longitude, this was against a backdrop of almost unprecedented collaboration and investment. Famous names such as Galileo, Isaac Newton, James Cook, and William Bligh all feature in this fascinating and complex history. Crucially, it was Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne’s observations and work on the Nautical Almanac at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich that demonstrated the complementary nature of astronomical and timekeeper methods. Combined, the two methods lead to the successful determination of longitude at sea and changed our understanding of the world.

“Mystic Seaport is very proud to bring Ships, Clocks & Stars to New England to tell this important story of scientific discovery, innovation, creativity, perseverance, and even adventure as different parties raced to find a solution,” said Steve White, president of Mystic Seaport. “This exhibit is more than the story of longitude: it is the story of human problem-solving, and it is as relevant today as it was in the eighteenth century.”

William Greatbatch, Tea Canister, Soup Plate, Teapot; Fenton, Staffordshire, England, 1765–1770, cream-colored earthenware, lead glaze (Charlotte: The Mint Museum)

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From The Mint Museum:

Portals to the Past: British Ceramics, 1675–1825
The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, opening 16 January 2015 (running for two years)

The Mint Museum’s collection of eighteenth-century British pottery and porcelain is widely respected for its scope and quality. The collection numbers over 2,000 objects and includes important examples of both salt-glazed and dry-bodied stoneware from Staffordshire; tin-glazed earthenware from Bristol, Liverpool, and London; and cream-colored earthenware from Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire. Notable eighteenth-century porcelain factories represented include Chelsea, Bow, and Vauxhall in London, Longton Hall in Staffordshire, Worcester, Bristol, and others. Individual works in the collection are exceptional because of their rarity, craftsmanship, provenance, or as representative examples of particular types or methods of production or decoration.

William Littler, Sweetmeat Stand; West Pans, East Lothian, Scotland, 1765–70, earthenware, lead glaze (Charlotte: The Mint Museum)

British Ceramics 1675–1825 presents more than 200 highlights of this collection in a new installation in the Alexander, Spangler, and Harris Galleries at Mint Museum Randolph. The objects are interpreted through a variety of thematic lenses—function, style, manufacturing technique, maker—to encourage visitors to engage with the objects in ways they find personally meaningful and interesting. The exhibition includes many objects that have never before been on view, as well as contemporaneous works of art in from the Mint’s holdings in other media, including paintings, furniture, fashion, and silver.

The exhibition’s opening follows the December release of a 270-page, illustrated catalogue, British Ceramics 1675–1825: The Mint Museum, produced by the museum in collaboration with D. Giles Limited, London. Both the catalogue and the exhibition honor the fiftieth anniversary of the museum’s purchase of the Delhom Collection of British and European ceramics.

Portals to the Past: British Ceramics 1675–1825 is presented by the Delhom Service League, ceramics affiliate of The Mint Museum, with additional support provided by Moore & Van Allen.

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From Giles:

Brian Gallagher, Barbara Stone Perry, Letitia Roberts, Diana Edwards, Pat Halfpenny, Maurice Hillis, and Margaret Ferris Zimmerman, British Ceramics 1675–1825: The Mint Museum (London: D. Giles Limited, 2015), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1907804366, £50 / $80.

British Ceramics 1675–1825 is an important and visually stunning new publication which highlights 200 of the best pieces from the The Mint Museum’s collection, selected on account of their rarity, craftsmanship, notable provenance, or as important examples of particular types, or methods of production, or decoration. Each object is illustrated in colour, and is accompanied by a catalogue entry including title, manufacturer, date, medium, marks, dimensions, description of other unique physical aspects (inscriptions or quote on the body of the vessel), provenance, previous publication history and exhibition history. Descriptive text for each piece covers unusual and pertinent aspects of its manufacture and history.

Brian Gallagher is the curator of Decorative Arts, The Mint Museum. Barbara Stone Perry is the former curator of Decorative Arts, The Mint Museum. Letitia Roberts is an independent scholar and consultant, and the former senior international specialist for European Ceramics and Chinese Export Porcelain at Sotheby’s, New York. Diana Edwards is a prolific writer and lecturer on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British ceramics, and advises numerous ceramics organizations. Pat Halfpenny is a highly respected expert on Staffordshire pottery, and is curator emerita of Ceramics and Glass and retired Director of Museum Collections at Winterthur Museum, Delaware. Maurice Hillis has published extensively on eighteenth-century English pottery and porcelain, and is the former chairman and current president of the Northern Ceramic Society, United Kingdom. Margaret Ferris Zimmermann lectured on ceramics for the Delhom Service League’s orientation program at The Mint Museum for many years and is the former editor of the American Ceramic Circle Journal.

Francis Towne, Inside the Colosseum, 1780
(London: The British Museum)

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Press release for the upcoming exhibition:

Light, Time, Legacy: Francis Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
The British Museum, London, 21 January — 14 August 2016

Curated by Richard Stephens

2016 is the bicentenary of Francis Towne’s death and his historic bequest to the British Museum of 75 uniquely beautiful watercolours made on his visit to Italy in 1780–81. To celebrate this generous gift the watercolours are all on display here—at their heart are 52 views of Rome that have not been shown together since 1805. Towne’s decision to give the Museum such a major group of his drawings, so that they could be seen in the wider context of a collection that charted the history of the graphic arts from its Renaissance beginnings, was both strategic and pioneering as it set a pattern for artists to donate their work that endures to this day, as seen in the recent gift of 200 prints made by the American artist Jim Dine.

Francis Towne, Near the Arco Scuro, 1780, watercolour with pen and ink and some gum arabic, 320 x 467 mm (London: The British Museum)

Towne was born in London in 1739 where he later trained and then moved to Exeter. He tried unsuccessfully to gain recognition in the London art world, and failed to be elected to the Royal Academy on eleven separate occasions. Towne gained artistic recognition in his posthumous legacy at the British Museum. At the start of the 20th century, through these watercolours, Towne became the poster boy for the ‘new Georgian’ revival of interest in 18th-century art. The clarity and abstracted economy of Towne’s watercolours were not only admired by the public but also by early 20th-century modernists, and he is today recognised as one of Britain’s greatest watercolour artists.

Through Towne’s vision, the exhibition will explore Enlightenment Britain’s relationship with the classical past and Ancient Rome. Towne travelled to Rome in 1780–81 during a period of political crisis in England when America was in revolt, a French invasion of England was anticipated and a highly divisive general election had just concluded. Towne, and his social circle, viewed ancient Rome as a catastrophic precedent for what they perceived as a corrupt ruling power in England. The ruins that Towne depicted in his landscapes signified a warning to contemporary society not to suffer the same fate as the fallen Roman Empire.

Italy had a transformational effect on Towne’s work. When Towne first arrived in Rome he started making excursions north of city, making rural sketches instead of focusing on the ancient monuments. Towne’s delicate early studies were eventually replaced with large scale bolder work when Towne depicted such subjects as the Colosseum and other iconic Roman ruins. The experience of Rome was much different in the 18th century, few ruins had been excavated and tourists were free to explore them.

When Towne returned to England in 1781, these watercolours played a central role in his subsequent career. Although he was never accepted by the London art establishment, he organised an exhibition of his life’s work in 1805 with the Museum’s watercolours at its centre. Towne bequeathed the watercolours of Rome and others to the British Museum in 1816, with a further selection by his executors arriving in 1818.

A new open access catalogue raisonné of Francis Towne’s work by the guest curator of this exhibition, Dr Richard Stephens, will be published online in early 2016 by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

The illustrated leaflet for the exhibition is available as a PDF file here»

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P R O G R A M M I N G

All events are free

Decline and Fall: Francis Towne and the Ruins of Rome
Tuesday, 26 January, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by exhibition curator Richard Stephens.

Light, Time, Legacy: Francis Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
Friday, 5 February, 13.30–14.15, BP Lecture Theatre. Booking essential.
Exhibition curator Richard Stephens gives a 45-minute illustrated introduction to the exhibition.

Theory and Practice in Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
Friday, 19 February, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by Timothy Wilcox, independent scholar.

The Selective Eye: Francis Towne’s Watercolours of Rome
Thursday, 21 April, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by art historian and curator Anne Lyles, independent speaker.

Magick Land? Francis Towne and His Response to Rome
Friday, 6 May, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by Jonny Yarker, Director of Lowell Libson Ltd.

Decline and Fall: Francis Towne and the Ruins of Rome
Wednesday, 15 June, 13.15–14.00, Room 90. Just drop in.
A gallery talk by exhibition curator Richard Stephens.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, East View of Fonthill Abbey, Noon, 1800, watercolour on paper
(Edinburgh: Scottish National Gallery)

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Press release for the exhibition:

Turner in January
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, 1–31 January 2016

In keeping with a long-standing tradition now stretching over a century, New Year’s Day at the Scottish National Gallery will be marked by the opening of Turner in January: The Vaughan Bequest, an annual display of works by the artist Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851).

An outstanding collection by one of the great masters of British painting was bequeathed to the Gallery in 1900 by Henry Vaughan, a London art collector with a passion for Turner and a connoisseur’s eye for quality. Vaughan stipulated that the 38 exquisite works—which encapsulates the artist’s entire career—could not be subjected to permanent display, since continual exposure to light would result in their fading. Instead, these precious works were to be exhibited to the public “all at one time, free of charge, during the month of January,” when daylight in Edinburgh is at its lowest levels. Faithfully following Vaughan’s request, all of the works will be exhibited and Turner in January runs throughout the month, providing a welcome injection of light and colour during the darkest month of the year.

Clara Govier, Head of Charities at People’s Postcode Lottery (PPL), said: “This is the fourth year that players of PPL have supported Turner in January at the Scottish National Gallery, and we’re thrilled—even as relative newcomers in the grand scheme of things—to be involved in such an established tradition. It’s great for players to see that their valuable support is helping to provide thousands of visitors—some who come to see the exhibition every year, some for the very first time—with the opportunity to keep playing a part in this wonderful legacy.”

Recognised as perhaps the greatest of all British artists, Turner was born in London in 1775 and proved himself as an accomplished draughtsman while still a youth, exhibiting at the Royal Academy at the tender age of fifteen. He was a prolific and innovative artist who went on to exploit every possibility of the watercolour medium to create stunning land-and seascapes. Travelling widely, at first with sketching tours in England, Wales and Scotland and then later across Europe, Turner gathered material for masterful watercolours and oil paintings, discovering the awe-inspiring mountainous landscapes which became a major pre-occupation in his work.

Many of the works in the display reveal a youthful Turner’s artistic talents, such as the early wash drawings of the 1790s, while others show how this skill would come to be fused with the peripatetic lifestyle which dominated Turner’s life and career, resulting in colourful and atmospheric watercolour sketches of Continental Europe, such as Chatel Argent, in the Val d’Aosta, near Villeneuve (after 1836) and Falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen, Side View (ca. 1841).

In his lifetime, Turner also managed three trips to Venice, first arriving there in 1819. The Vaughan Bequest features six of the artist’s stunning views of the city. In The Piazzetta, Venice (ca. 1835), one of Turner’s most spectacular Venetian studies, the Doge’s Palace and renowned St. Mark’s Basilica are dramatically illuminated by a bolt of lightning, an effect innovatively created by the artist by scratching away to reveal the paper once he had painted on it. Often, Turner would use his thumbnail and is reputed to have grown like an ‘eagle-claw’ for such a purpose. His third and final visit to the city in 1840 would see the artist produce a series of incredible works in which light itself appeared to have become the main subject, such as in The Grand Canal by the Salute, Venice (ca. 1840) and Venice from the Laguna (1840) where Turner’s consummate mastery of atmospheric lighting effects is clearly demonstrated.

As with many artists at the end of the 18th century, for Turner the vastness and tumultuous conditions of nature inspired senses of awe and terror. This life-long fascination—of the savageness of elemental forces—poured out of Turner’s art, namely in the form of avalanches, storms and mountainous seas. This can be seen in works from the bequest, such as Loch Coruisk, Skye (1831–34), with its miniature human figures set against a grand, stretching backdrop of painted swirls.

Turner’s Heidelberg (ca. 1846), a glowing, almost hallucinatory image of the ancient university town on the Rhine and one of his finest late works, will also be on display.

Also joining those from the bequest is the work East View of Fonthill Abbey, Noon (1800), a romantic view of the Gothic novelist William Beckford’s extraordinary cathedral-like mansion in rural Wiltshire, which was accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax in 1988 and loaned to National Trust for Scotland at Brodick Castle.

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Christopher Baker, J.M.W. Turner: The Vaughan Bequest (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2007), 120 pages, ISBN: 978-1903278895, £10.

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) was perhaps the most prolific and innovative of all British artists. His outstanding watercolours in the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland are one of the most popular features of its collection. Bequeathed to the Gallery in 1899 by the distinguished collector Henry Vaughan, they have been exhibited, as he requested, every January for over 100 years at the National Galleries of Scotland. Renowned for their excellent state of preservation, they provide a remarkable overview of many of the most important aspects of Turner’s career.

This richly illustrated book, provides an authoritative commentary on the watercolours, taking account of recent research, and addressing questions of technique and function, as well as considering some of the numerous contacts Turner had with other artists, collectors and dealers. The introduction concentrates on Henry Vaughan, one of the greatest enthusiasts for British art in the late nineteenth century, whose diverse collections have not previously been fully studied and appreciated. The book accompanies the annual display every January of this bequest of Turner watercolours.

Florist’s Sign and Bracket, 18th century, France, wrought iron and rolled iron, cut, polychromed, and gilded; fastened with rivets and rings. Sign: 28 × 21 × 5 inches (71.5 × 52.6 × 12.5 cm), bracket: 33 × 52 × 2 inches (84 × 132.5 × 6 cm) (Rouen: Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, inv. LS 2011.0.199)

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Now on view at The Barnes Foundation:

Strength and Splendor: Wrought Iron from the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, 19 September 2015 — 4 January 2016

Curated by Judith Dolkart with Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau

The world’s most important collection of wrought iron objects—door knockers, garden implements, jewelry, keyhole escutcheons, locks, bas reliefs, signs, strongboxes, surgical tools—from the Musée le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen will complement one of the most intriguing collections at the Barnes Foundation: the 887 pieces of European and American metalwork that punctuate the Foundation’s signature wall arrangements of old master and modern paintings.

Escutcheon, 18th century, France, wrought iron and rolled iron, stamped and with openwork, 19.3 × 16.4 × 0.8 cm (Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, Inv. LS S.N.3)

Albert C. Barnes underscored the formal affinities that these objects shared with the “motives and arabesques” in the paintings in his Gallery, neither identifying individual objects nor explaining their use. Often, he combined disparate objects—shoe buckles and door hinges, ladles and hasps—to create new forms. In a 1942 letter to the American artist Stuart Davis, Barnes noted that the anonymous craftsman of such functional items was “just as authentic an artist as a Titian, Renoir, or Cézanne.”

This exhibition will explore the fabrication, function, and intricate ornamentation of approximately 150 masterworks from the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen. They range in date from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, and they show iron as unexpectedly versatile, with its capacity to convey both masculine heft and an impossibly fragile delicacy that is hard to square with its industrial image. Objects ennobled with silver and gold inlays show iron as more than base metal. Some are deadly serious in their efficacy; others delight as much by their wit as by their exquisite intricacy—locks that represent their own function, for example, one with a built-in faithful guard dog or one with spring-loaded manacles ready to catch a lock-pick—an 18th-century sign in the shape of a greyhound that looks like something Calder might have made two centuries later, an early electrified bat-shaped night-light.

Assembled in the 19th century by Jean-Louis-Henri Le Secq Destournelles (1818–1882), the celebrated photographer of French architectural monuments, and his son Henri (1854–1925), the Le Secq collection was shown to great acclaim at the Exposition Universelle in 1900 and installed until the 1920s at the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris. In the early 1920s, Le Secq acquired the deconsecrated church of Saint-Laurent in Rouen, where he lived and arranged his extensive collection of European and Middle Eastern objects by type, in distinctive, often symmetrical, wall arrangements and in custom-made vitrines. Barnes, who traveled frequently to France as he built his collection, is believed to have visited Rouen to see this impressive holding. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue containing an essay on Barnes’s collecting of metalwork, one on the collection at Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, and short essays on groups of works, and an illustrated glossary of technical terms.

The exhibition is curated by Judith F. Dolkart, the Mary Stripp & R. Crosby Kemper Director of the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, and former Deputy Director of Art and Archival Collections and Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes Foundation. An expert on the art and culture of 19th-century France, Dolkart graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1989 and received an A.B. in fine arts in 1993 from Harvard-Radcliffe College, where she examined the work of Frank Stella for her thesis. In 1997, she earned an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. During her 2013 fellowship at the Center for Curatorial Leadership, Dolkart was mentored by the director of the Harvard Art Museums and had a week-long residency with the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania.

Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, curator in charge of the objets d’art at the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, selected the objects included in Strength and Splendor and authored the catalogue’s essay on the holdings in Rouen, as well as several entries on individual objects.

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The catalogue is available from The Barnes Foundation:

Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, with contributions by Richard Wattenmaker, François Boyenval, Hélène Thomas, and Bruno Varin, Strength and Splendor: Wrought Iron from the Musée le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen (Philadelphia: The Barnes Foundation, 2015), 175 pages, ISBN: 978-0984857869, $65.

The Le Secq collection is the most important holding of wrought iron in the world, combining artistic virtuosity, technological innovation, and whimsy. It was created by Jean-Louis Henri Le Secq Destournelles (1818–1882) and his son Henri-Jean Le Secq des Tournelles (1854–1925). The older Le Secq focused on masterpieces—exceptional objects. The younger Le Secq inherited his father’s enthusiasm and assembled an encyclopedic array of adornments, instruments, and tools, which he catalogued like natural history specimens. He gave the collection to the city of Rouen, where it has been spectacularly displayed in the deconsecrated church of Saint-Laurent since 1921. This catalogue covers some 150 of the most magnificent objects in the Le Secq collection, classed in ten categories—including locks and keys, decorative plaques, and everyday objects—with essays on the history of the Le Secq collection and on the place of
metalwork in the Barnes Foundation.

Vase in the shape of a dragon or ‘caquesseitão’; Milan, workshop of the Miseroni, possibly Gasparo Miseroni (act. 1550–70) (?) Rock crystal; second half of the 1500s (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado)

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Now on view at the Prado, this exhibition of sixteenth-century carved rock crystal includes items from the collection of the Grand Dauphin (1661–1711). The show also provides a convenient occasion to draw attention to the Prado’s newly designed website, which particularly showcases images. While such a feature might seem obvious for a museum website, it’s hardly been true in most cases to date (the press release detailing the site’s key features is available here).

From the Prado:

Transparent Art: Rock Crystal Carving in Renaissance Milan
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 14 October 2015 — 10 January 2016

Curated by Letizia Arbeteta Mira

The present exhibition offers visitors a unique opportunity to see a little known chapter in art history, namely that of carving hyaline quartz or rock crystal, a technique for which Milan was particularly celebrated in the second half of the 16th century. Due to their value, both material and artistic, these works were only within the reach of monarchs and the highest ranks of the European aristocracy.

The exhibition includes six magnificent examples loaned from two of the most important historical collections: that of the Medici, now in the Museo degli Argenti in Florence, and the collection of Louis XIV, now in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Another fourteen splendid pieces, now in the Prado, come from the collection assembled by the Grand Dauphin of France, son of Louis XIV, which was in part inherited by Philip V, the first Spanish Bourbon monarch, in 1711. The latter group, known as ‘The Dauphin’s Treasure’, entered the Prado in 1839. Although somewhat reduced over the course of its eventful history, it still includes important objects, particularly those in rock crystal. In total it has 47 hyaline quartz vessels, 2 in citrine quartz and 1 in smoky quartz. Various academic studies have attributed these pieces to leading workshops and masters, almost all of them Milanese.

Letizia Arbeteta Mira, Arte transparente: La talla del cristal en el Renacimiento milanés (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 2015), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-8484803362, 39€.

Press release (6 November 2015) from the Philadelphia Museum of Art:

Drawn from Courtly India: The Conley Harris and Howard Truelove Collection
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 6 December 2015 —  27 March 2016

Curated by Ainsley Cameron

A Prince and Courtiers in a Garden, ca. 1720–30, with later additions, India (Jodhpur or Bikaner, Rajasthan) (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2013-77-31).

The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents an exhibition of rare and masterful drawings created in the workshops of royal Indian courts over the course of four centuries. Drawn from Courtly India: The Conley Harris and Howard Truelove Collection features a wide range of sketches, preparatory studies, and compositional drawings that vividly depict mythological themes, verdant landscapes and architectural settings, portraits of prominent rulers, and scenes from the lives of Indian nobility. The Museum acquired these important works in 2013, many as a gift, and is presenting the collection in this exhibition for the first time.

While Indian paintings have long been sought after by museums and individual collectors, there has been only a limited interest in drawings. Yet drawings may be wonderful works of art in their own right, yielding a remarkable amount of information about workshop practices and artistic process. Conley Harris, a landscape painter, and the late Howard Truelove, an architectural designer, shared a passion for drawing. They began collecting Indian drawings after being inspired by their travels throughout that country. The collection they assembled over the course of more than a decade provides new insights into the artistic practices of the royal workshops that developed over generations, and offers fresh perspectives on Indian painting. Many of the works to which these collectors were drawn were created during the eighteenth century in the Hindu courts of western India and the Himalayan foothills, an area including the present-day states of Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu-Kashmir.

Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO, stated: “The ongoing development of the Museum’s collection has always represented our partnership with great collectors who have been as passionate as we are about sharing with everyone the finest works of art. In this regard we are especially fortunate to have acquired the marvelous collection assembled by Conley Harris and Howard Truelove, and we are enormously grateful to the collectors. This collection adds a new and important dimension to our holdings of Indian art, which is one of the most important in the country. It also enables us to bring to a broader audience this fascinating and delightful aspect of South Asia’s artistic heritage.”

The first section of the exhibition will feature a group of finished drawings and explore the relationship between court artists and their royal patrons. A second will focus on the innovative workshop process, examining how artists developed and revised drawings through techniques such as white wash corrections, color notations, and pouncing. The drawings in this section will highlight not only the artists’ adept handling of the medium, they will also testify to the collaboration of artists employed within a hierarchical workshop structure, demonstrating how skills were conveyed from master to apprentice. A third section, dedicated to the key moment when brush first meets paper, calls attention to the expressive power of the expert brushstroke. The fourth and final section of the exhibition invites visitors to respond to the works on display by creating their own drawings using workshop techniques.

The exhibition is organized by Ainsley M. Cameron, the Museum’s Ira Brind and Stacey Spector Assistant Curator of South Asian Art. She stated: “These works offer new ways of looking and thinking about Indian courtly drawing. People tend to approach the study of paintings or drawings from the perspective of the patron because so many of the artists’ names are unknown, but we are exploring the perspective of the artist, as maker—the gesture of an artist’s hand, the spontaneity of line, and the process through which ideas are born.”

About Conley Harris and Howard Truelove
Based in Boston, artist Conley Harris (born 1945) is a former faculty member of the department of art and art history at the University of New Hampshire. Harris is known for his lyrical landscapes of New England and the American West. Howard Truelove (1946–2012) was an architectural designer and vice president of design at the firm KlingStubbins in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His interior-design work ranged from public spaces in major office buildings to universities and museums. Harris often uses works in their collection as a source of inspiration, creating paintings that not only absorb motifs from South Asian and Persian miniature paintings, but also play with the idea of multiple layers, the palimpsest found in artists’ working sketches and so creatively reinterpreting the historical drawings for a new generation.

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The catalogue is distributed by Yale UP:

Ainsley Cameron, with an essay by Darielle Mason, Drawn from Courtly India: The Conley Harris and Howard Truelove Collection (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300215250, $35.

This publication presents the first in-depth survey of the Conley Harris and Howard Truelove Collection of Indian Drawings, which was recently acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This exceptional collection consists of 65 works on paper created between the 16th and 19th centuries. The Harris-Truelove Collection is uniquely and tightly focused on works from the royal courts of North India, and the majority of these drawings served as preparatory material for the opaque watercolor illustrations that have been widely collected and studied. This catalogue celebrates the assured line of the Indian draftsman and recognizes these drawings as accomplished works of art in their own right. The text details the process and technique involved in their production, and explores what can be revealed by the artist’s hand. The catalogue also contextualizes the role of art production in court culture, and reveals the intricacies of artistic workshop practice.

Ainsley Cameron is the Ira Brind and Stacey Spector Assistant Curator of South Asian Art, and Darielle Mason is the Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art, both at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.