Enfilade

Thomas Gainsborough, Landscape with Figures, Herdsman and Cattle at a Pool, and Distant Church, mid- to late 1780s, watercolor and gouache with lead white on beige laid paper, fixed with gum, varnished with mastic (The Clark, gift of the Manton Art Foundation in memory of Sir Edwin and Lady Manton, 2007.8.76).

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From the press release for the exhibition:

Pastoral on Paper

The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 8 March — 15 June 2025

Curated by William Satloff, with Anne Leonard

The idyllic tranquility of the lives of shepherds became a prominent subject in literature, music, and the visual arts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A new exhibition at the Clark Art Institute, Pastoral on Paper, explores artistic depictions of rural life by considering their representations of the people and animals who inhabited the landscapes. The exhibition is on view in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper in the Clark’s Manton Research Center from March 8 until June 15, 2025.

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with the Voyage of Jacob, 1677, oil on canvas (The Clark, 1955.42).

“The Clark’s works on paper collection is rich with beautiful drawings, etchings, and watercolors depicting these pastoral scenes,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark. “We were delighted when our graduate student intern William Satloff proposed the concept of an exhibition that would give us the opportunity to share so many of these exceptional works of art together. Many of the objects in this presentation have not been on view in quite some time, so it will be a wonderful opportunity for our visitors.”

Satloff, a member of the Class of 2025 in the Williams College/Clark Graduate Program in the History of Art, curated the exhibition under the direction of Anne Leonard, the Clark’s Manton Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. Satloff has served as a curatorial intern at the Clark since 2023.

“In the Berkshires, we are fortunate to be surrounded by rolling hills, grazing cows, meandering streams, and picturesque barns,” said Satloff. “Moved by these same features, early modern artists created pastoral landscapes. The exquisite works in this exhibition offer an opportunity for us to reflect on our relationship with land both in art and in the world around us.”

Selected primarily from the Clark’s strong holdings of drawings by Claude Lorrain (French, 1604/5–1682) and Thomas Gainsborough (English, 1727–1788) and supplemented with select loans of Dutch Italianate artworks, the exhibition analyzes pastoral imagery to examine how artists construct their own visions of an idealized landscape. This exhibition features thirty-eight works, including nine drawings, three etchings, and one painting by Claude (Lorrain is typically referred to by his first name) and ten Gainsborough drawings.

Claude perfected the genre of idealized landscape, consolidating the developments of sixteenth-century Italian landscape painters and fusing a sensitive observation of nature with the lofty nobility of classical values. He lived and worked in Rome from the 1620s until his death; there, he influenced the Dutch Italianates—northern European artists who traveled to Italy and embraced the local style of landscape painting. A century later Thomas Gainsborough developed a new kind of nostalgic, pastoral landscape, inflecting the naturalism of Claude and the Italianates with a yearning for the bygone days of a simpler country life.

a c c e s s i n g  a r c a d i a

The term ‘Arcadia’ derives from the mountainous Greek province of the same name, and according to myth, it was the domain of Pan, the half-man, half-goat satyr who was revered as the god of pastures and woodlands. In antiquity, Arcadia was known for its population of pastoralists—cowherds, goatherds, shepherds, swineherds—who were celebrated across the ancient world for the skillful singing they did while tending their flocks. The Latin poet Virgil wrote an immensely influential set of ten poems, the Eclogues, about the herdsmen of Arcadia.

Agostino Carracci, Omnia Vincit Amor, 1599, engraving on paper (The Clark, gift of Mary Carswell, 2017.11.1).

During the Renaissance, the intellectual movement known as humanism brought renewed interest in the culture—and particularly the poetry—of ancient Greece and Rome. Although Renaissance humanism waned in the sixteenth century, Virgil’s pastoral poetry continued to inspire artists and writers through the nineteenth century and beyond. Over time, ‘Arcadia’ developed into a general term for an idealized vision of rural life.

Agostino Carracci’s (Italian, 1557–1602) engraving, Omnia vincit Amor (1599), is a visual pun derived from a famous line in Virgil’s tenth Eclogue: “Love conquers all.” Amor is the Latin name for Cupid, the god of desire and erotic love. Pan is both the Greek name of Faunus, the shepherd-god of pastures and woodlands, and the Greek word for “all,” which in Latin is “omnia.” Taken together, Cupid’s victorious combat with the goat-legged god becomes a visual translation of Virgil’s poetry.

Nicolaes Berchem, The Cows at the Watering Place (The Cow Drinking), 1680, etching on paper (The Clark, 2023.15).

In The Cows at the Watering Place (The Cow Drinking) (1680), Nicolaes Berchem (Dutch, 1620–1683) conjures a timeless scene of rural life, full of tranquility and contentment. A shepherd has brought his cows and goats to drink from a stream on a warm, bright day. The animals wade and drink in the water, and a group of people lounge leisurely along the bank. The shepherd, recognizable by his long pole, talks with a seated man who has come to fill his jug, while a woman washes her feet in the stream. An overgrown ruin occupies the midground. At the top of this structure, beneath the vines, is a shadowy relief carving of a knight on horseback slaying a monster—an ambiguous reference to a gallant past.

Christoffel Jegher (Flemish, 1596–1652/53) collaborated with the celebrated Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577–1640) to produce the monumental woodcut Rest on the Flight into Egypt (after 1632), which corresponds closely to the right side of Rubens’s oil painting Rest on the Flight to Egypt with Saints (1632–35). Jegher presents the Christ Child sleeping contentedly in the Virgin Mary’s arms at the edge of a dense forest. Two putti, or cherubs, wrestle with a lamb, while a third motions them to be quiet. In the background, Joseph slumbers at the base of a twisting tree while the donkey drinks from a brook.

With its winding river, elegant trees, and grand Romanesque castle, the scene in Landscape with the Voyage of Jacob (1677) is an idealized vision of the countryside near Rome, where Claude spent most of his career. The tiny camels hint at a biblical story, perhaps Jacob’s journey into Canaan, but the other figures scattered across the landscape, such as the herdsman, cows, sheep, dog, and fishermen, give way to another revelation—that the painting is essentially a poetic celebration of the bounty of the natural world.

i d e a l i z e d  l a n d s c a p e

Claude and Gainsborough were known to draw landscapes en plein air—meaning that they worked outdoors, directly from the natural environment. Though both artists studied natural features for inspiration, their approach to landscapes varied considerably. Claude’s idealized drawings featured a diffuse light and airy atmosphere aligned with the sensibilities of the Italian countryside. Gainsborough observed nature through a different lens, focusing on the English countryside. Still, each artist endeavored to draw a more pleasing, idealized landscape. Claude often added figures or trees in the foreground to create the illusion of deeper pictorial space. Gainsborough, too, would sometimes make adjustments to the observed landscape—for example, drawing a cluster of trees to one side to balance out the composition.

Claude was fascinated by how ancient and modern Rome melded in the landscape. The early Christian church of Sant’Agnese Fuori le Mura (ca. 300s–600s) attracted Claude on more than one occasion. By the seventeenth century, it was surrounded by farms and open pastures. In A View of Sant’ Agnese Fuori le Mura (1650–55), instead of showing the church surrounded by grazing animals, Claude used hills and trees to obscure any sense of historical specificity. While the identifiable architecture indicates the place from where the artist sketched, the building’s late-antique style imparts a temporal mystique evocative of Arcadia.

Thomas Gainsborough, Extensive Wooded Landscape with a Bridge over a Gorge, Distant Village and Hills, ca. 1786, black and white chalks with stumping on beige laid paper, fixed with skim milk and/or gum (The Clark, 2007.8.75).

Claude often went on sketching expeditions around the Roman countryside in the company of fellow artists. On several occasions, he traveled west from Rome along the Tiber River to the town of Tivoli. Nestled in the Sabine Mountains, Tivoli had long been admired for its ancient ruins and scenic vistas. The German painter Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688) recounted an excursion he and Claude made to Tivoli: “we began to paint entirely from nature […] the mountains, the grottoes, valleys, and deserted places, the terrible cascades of the Tiber, the temple of Sibyl, and the like.” The Cascades of Tivoli (ca. 1640), on view in this section of the exhibition, depicts such a scene.

Gainsborough usually sketched the English landscape outdoors directly from nature, such as with Extensive Wooded Landscape with a Bridge over a Gorge, Distant Village and Hills (ca. 1786). This practice prompted artist Sir Joshua Reynolds (English, 1723–1792) to remark that Gainsborough, his bitter rival, “did not look at nature with a poet’s eye.” As such he went against the prevalent tendency in eighteenth-century England, where most artists derived their landscapes from Virgil’s Eclogues and Claude’s idyllic Italian scenes. Fashionable collectors displayed paintings and prints of idealized Mediterranean landscapes in their homes, setting the trend of “Italian light on English walls.”

r u i n s  a n d  c o t t a g e s

In pastoral works, architecture is often placed in the midground or background to suggest human habitation of a landscape. In the seventeenth century, pastoral architecture took the form of ruins, indicating that ancient people once held dominion over the land. These ruined buildings—surrounded by overgrown trees and shrubbery—invite viewers to reflect on the greatness of past civilizations, the transience of their glory, and the sublime power of time and nature. In the eighteenth century, pastoral landscapes also came to include cottages, barns, and shacks. By including architectural features within pastoral landscapes, artists may sometimes be making moral, social, and political statements about rural life and land management.

Jean Jacques de Boissieu, The Entrance to a Forest with a Cottage on the Right, 1772, etching and drypoint on laid paper (The Clark, 1993.3).

In A Wooded Landscape with a Classical Temple (ca. 1645), Claude constructs an imaginary landscape by placing ancient-looking architecture amid dense foliage and rolling hills. Although the bridge visible in the background has been identified as Rome’s famous Milvian Bridge (completed in 109 BCE), there are no clear referents for either the fortress pictured behind the bridge or the classical temple on the left.

Bartholomeus Breenbergh’s (Dutch, 1598–1657) Ruins in a Landscape (ca. 1620s) is an early example of Northern European artists’ fascination with ancient architecture. In the shadow of the cavernous ruin, the figures look tiny. Trees grow atop the ruin, juxtaposing the persistence of nature with the ephemerality of Rome’s greatness. Breenbergh moved to Rome in 1619, where he helped found the Roman Society of Dutch and Flemish Painters called the Bentvueghels (active ca. 1620–1720). This intellectual and social group, famous for its drunken initiation rituals, included several prominent Italianate landscape painters, such as Jan Asselijn (Dutch, 1610–1652) and Karel Dujardin (Dutch, 1626–1678).

In Dujardin’s The Ruins of a Temple, in the Foreground Two Men and a Dog (1658), two figures overlook a ruin-strewn landscape from a distance, allowing viewers to insert themselves within the pastoral scene rather than observing it as a spectacle. One of the foreground figures sits with a notebook and a writing instrument in his hand, suggestive of the sketching tours that seventeenth-century artists took throughout the countryside around Rome. Though the figure is representative of the common practice of working outdoors, Dujardin actually created this etching in his studio in the Hague.

Pastoral on Paper is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by William Satloff, Class of 2025, Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art.

Daniel Garnier, Silver Chandelier, made in London, 1691–97, silver and iron (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Museum Purchase, 1938-42). Fashioned for King William III of England sometime between 1691 and 1697, this chandelier hung at St. James’s Palace in London. It is believed to have been sold for its silver value by King George III when it was seen as outdated. After remaining in private hands for more than a century, it was auctioned in 1924 to William Randolph Hearst, the prominent American newspaperman. Colonial Williamsburg acquired the chandelier shortly before WWII.

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From the press release (3 April 2025) for the exhibition:

Silver from Modest to Majestic

DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, 24 May 2025 — 24 May 2028

Work is currently underway at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg on a new exhibition featuring more than 120 objects from the museum’s extensive collection of 17th- to 19th-century silver. Silver from Modest to Majestic will be on view in the museum’s newly relocated Mary Jewett Gaiser Silver Gallery, on the main floor of the museum until 24 May 2028.

The exhibition’s scope is wide-ranging, from a 49-lb chandelier made for a monarch to a simple spoon made by a Williamsburg silversmith, all displayed in brilliantly lit cases against dark blue backgrounds. While silver has long been associated with wealth and aristocracy, the items featured in this exhibition were crafted for use in nearly every setting imaginable ranging from churches, classrooms, and kitchens to businesses, battlefields, and bedrooms. One thing that every piece on display has in common is a powerful story. Some are objects of great beauty created with the highest level of skill, while others have lengthy pedigrees. Knowing who made a piece and who used it lets Colonial Williamsburg curators pinpoint that object in a time and a place, and then bring it forward through history, allowing it to tell its tale.

“Collecting objects where we know the ‘who, when, and where’ of their manufacture, plus their provenance, allows us to exhibit silver items which transcend the differences between artistic, historical, and functional,” said Erik Goldstein, Colonial Williamsburg’s senior curator of mechanical arts, metals and numismatics. “These particular objects are the pinnacle of early silver, no matter how humble they may be.”

This new exhibition replaces the museum’s previous silver exhibition, Silver from Mine to Masterpiece, which was on view from 2015 to 2023. While the former exhibition had a larger percentage of British silver, nearly half of the objects on display in the new exhibition are examples of early American-made silver, many of which were created for everyday use by ordinary people. Early colonists originally relied on imported British silver wares, but over time, the innovation, skill, and entrepreneurship of those early American tradespeople resulted in the establishment of a robust and exciting cohort of American silversmiths producing items that were touched by everyone from elite to enslaved individuals.

“Our collection of British silver is justly famous, but our decision to build a collection of American silver terrifically advances the museums’ goal of telling the varied stories of so many different craftspeople and consumers, each of whom influenced the tastes and styles of colonial America,” said Grahame Long, executive director of collections and deputy chief curator.

Punch Ladle, possibly made in Williamsburg, ca.1740–70, silver and wood (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Gift of A. Jefferson Lewis III in memory of Elizabeth Neville Miller and Margaret Prentis Miller Conner, 2023-101; photo by Jason Copes). This worn and lovingly preserved ladle, believed to have been made locally, descended in the Prentis family of Williamsburg.

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Visitors to Colonial Williamsburg will experience firsthand how the pieces featured in Silver from Modest to Majestic connect to the lives of Williamsburg’s 18th-century residents. One item in the exhibition—a silver punch ladle, owned by the Prentis family of Williamsburg and passed down in the family for 250 years—served as the model for a reproduction punch ladle created by Williamsburg’s silversmiths that visitors will find in the corner cupboard at the Williamsburg Bray School after it opens to the public in June 2025. Archaeological records show that Ann Wager, headmistress of the Williamsburg Bray School, had punch wares.

“Having the Prentis family’s original ladle gave us a wonderful opportunity to reproduce a piece that we know was used by an 18th-century Williamsburg family and put it in the context of the Bray School where it helps to tell that story,” said Goldstein.

Caddy Spoon, marked by Hester Bateman (1708–1794), London, 1789–90, silver (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Gift of Mr. E. Palmer Taylor, 1998-92; photo by Jason Copes). Many now-anonymous British women worked in the silversmithing trade, producing small items like buttons or finishing and polishing larger wares. Standing out is Hester Bateman, who ran a thriving silversmith business after the death of her husband. She specialized in affordable items aimed at the rising middle class. When Bateman retired in 1790, the business was carried on by her sons and one of her daughters-in-law.

Other recently acquired highlights of the silver exhibition include the earliest-known Virginia-made horse racing trophy awarded to a horse named Madison in 1810; an Indian Peace medal struck by the U.S Mint during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency as a diplomatic gift for a Native American chief; and a church communion cup made in Massachusetts around 1670, the earliest piece of American silver in the Foundation’s collection. These pieces will join some of the extraordinary older items from the collection including a cache of British silver made between 1765 and 1771, which was discovered in 1961 in a field near Suffolk, Virginia. While the origins of the buried treasure, and the reason that no one ever returned to retrieve it, remain unknown to this day, this collection is a reminder of the high monetary—and not just aesthetic―value of silver in early America.

The objects on display in Silver from Modest to Majestic represent the work of a few dozen known silversmiths including Paul Revere (1735–1818), a hero of the American Revolution who learned the trade of silversmithing from his father; Myer Myers (1723–1795), the son of a Jewish refugee who became known as the leading silversmith of New York; and Hester Bateman (1708–1794), a female silversmith in London who ran a thriving business after the death of her husband, specializing in affordable items aimed at the rising middle class. Many items in the exhibition are unmarked, made by unknown makers including enslaved silversmiths. Even the items that are credited to known makers could have been made by smiths employed, apprenticed, or enslaved to the master of the shop. To learn exactly how the items in Silver from Modest to Majestic were created, visitors to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg can visit the Silversmith shop in Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Area where artisan historians preserve the trade by practicing it as their 18th-century counterparts would have.

This exhibition is generously funded by The Mary Jewett Gaiser Silver Study Gallery Endowment. Admission to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg is free.

Now on view at the Museum of the Royal Estate of Marly:

Maisons de Plaisance des Environs de Paris de Louis XIV à Napoléon III

Musée du Domaine royal de Marly, Marly-le-Roi, 11 April — 31 August 2025

Curated by Anaïs Bornet

Dès la Renaissance, en Ile-de-France, une élite fortunée quitte la ville à la belle saison et s’installe dans de somptueuses résidences « aux champs » pour s’y détendre et s’y divertir. La maison de plaisance est un lieu de représentation autant que de détente. Elle incarne la richesse et le goût de son propriétaire. Estampes, peintures et objets décoratifs des XVIIe, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles témoignent de cette histoire qui a contribué à façonner le paysage francilien. Ces œuvres illustrent un art de vivre et les transformations sociales de la fin de l’Ancien Régime et du XIXe siècle : divertissements en vogue, désir d’intimité et de confort, place des femmes et développement de la bourgeoisie, lien avec la nature… Environ soixante-dix œuvres empruntées à des collections publiques et privées prennent place au sein du parcours permanent du musée du Domaine royal de Marly pour dialoguer avec ses collections.

Also, see the recent publication:

Anaïs Bornet and Francesco Guidoboni, eds., Maisons de plaisance des environs de Paris (Rome: Edizioni Artemide, 2023), 232 pages, ISBN: 978-8875754402, €30.

William Hogarth, The Rake’s Progress, Plate 1, published 25 June 1735, etching and engraving
(Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, 1975.203)

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Now on view at Oberlin:

Hogarth’s Progress

Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio, 31 January — 10 August 2025

Organized by Marlise Brown

English artist William Hogarth (1697–1764) used his art to hold up a moralizing mirror to all levels of 18th-century society. From rakes to harlots and aristocrats to the clergy—no one was exempt from his biting yet humorous art.

In 1731, Hogarth began creating a series of artworks that he termed ‘modern moral subjects’, which focused on the immoral bend of contemporary London while satirizing the vice and folly of his characters. This exhibition focuses on his first two ‘modern moral subjects’: The Harlot’s Progress (1732), which is a narrative in six scenes, and The Rake’s Progress (1735), which is completed in eight scenes. These sets, offered on subscription, sold out quickly because they were immensely popular with people from all walks of life in England.

Hogarth’s term ‘progress’ was inspired by the book The Pilgrim’s Progress, first published by the English author John Bunyan in 1678. However, unlike the protagonists in Bunyan’s moralizing Christian allegory, Hogarth’s ‘Harlot’ and ‘Rake’ do not grow or learn from life’s experiences. Instead, Hogarth’s narrative series exposes the shallowness of aristocracy, the vices and indulgences of modern London, and showcases complicated ideas in a new form of visual theater.

Organized by Marlise Brown, Assistant Curator of European and American Art.