Exhibition | Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World
From the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco:
Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World
Bunte Götter: Die Farbigkeit antiker Skulptur
Glyptothek, Munich, 2003
Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection, Frankfurt am Main, 2008
Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco, 28 October 2017 — 7 January 2018
Reconstruction (A1) of the so-called Chios kore from the Akropolis in Athens, 2012. Copy of the original: Athens, ca.500 BCE. Crystalline acrylic glass, with applied pigments in tempera. Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Polychromy Research Project, Frankfurt am Main, acquired in 2016 as gift from U. Koch-Brinkmann and V. Brinkmann (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco).
Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World will offer an astonishing look at Classical sculpture swathed in their original vibrant colors questioning the perception of an all-white ‘classical’ ideal. Ancient sculpture and architecture from Greece and Rome will be revealed as intended—garishly colorful, richly ornamented, and full of life—along with original sculpture from the Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome against the backdrop of the Legion of Honor’s neoclassical building.
To find out more about the exhibition, explore this digital offering from the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt:
In the eighteenth century there was already considerable debate about the extent to which ancient architecture and sculptures were painted. Two centuries later technical investigations with ultraviolet light and glancing light are providing new evidence about ancient polychromy. Investigations carried out in Munich’s Glyptothek in the 1960s resulted in important findings. In the 1980s a group of researchers associated with the archaeologist Volkmar von Graeve studied the polychromy of ancient works of art with the help of modern technological aids. At the time, Vinzenz Brinkmann was a member of von Graeve’s team. Later, as head of the Liebieghaus’s Department of Antiquities, he brought the research subject to Frankfurt.
By now the original painting of hundreds of Greek and Roman artworks around the world has been studied. Thanks to the development of new investigative methods, scholars have meanwhile been able to provide an increasingly precise sense of the kind and extent of the painting. Over the course of centuries of damage owing to wars or weathering it was lost. Even though only scant traces of pigment and scoring have survived, they can provide valuable information. Our newly won understanding of the original polychromy leads in many cases to surprising discoveries!
From FAMSF Publications:
Vinzenz Brinkmann, Renée Dreyfus, and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, eds., Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World (New York: Prestel, 2017), 192 pages, ISBN: 978 379135 7072, $40.
Although not widely known, antiquities were colored to dazzling and powerful effect. Polychromy—the painting of objects in a variety of hues—was a regular feature of the sculpture and architecture of most ancient cultures, especially in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Aegean, Greece, and Rome. When such works began to be rediscovered in the eighteenth century after prolonged exposure to the elements, their colored surfaces were often so faded that later sculptors evoked classicism by leaving white marble and bronze surfaces unadorned.
Published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Gods in Color: Polychromy in the Ancient World reintroduces the unexpected effect of these bright pigments. Through reconstructions of well-known sculptural works dating from Bronze Age Greece to Imperial Rome, readers can see firsthand how these objects would have appeared when they were first created. Complementing these reconstructions are many fine examples of original antiquities, many with surviving polychromy, from ancient Greece and Rome and beyond to Egypt and the Near East. Rounding out these offerings are breathtaking watercolors of Greece’s landscapes and monuments painted in 1805 and 1806 by English antiquarian Edward Dodwell and Italian artist Simone Pomardi.
This handsome volume features six essays alongside catalogue entries that describe the cultural contexts of the ancient works and the modern technological methods to uncover their original coloration. Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann offer a history of the research and scholarship of polychromy since the eighteenth century; with Heinrich Piening, they also describe the pigments and techniques used. Renée Dreyfus discusses polychrome examples from Egypt and the Near East to demonstrate the strong influences these cultures left on the classical world. Oliver Primavesi recounts the dilemma of eighteenth-century German archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who at once celebrated the “pure” form of classical Greek and Roman sculpture but became increasingly aware that such works were originally colored and ornamented. John Camp describes the Greek tour of Dodwell and Pomardi as they depicted classical monuments, some of which still retained their original color.
An enduring scholarly record, Gods in Color reveals how ancient sculpture is incomplete without color. White or monochrome sculpture, an inherited notion of the classical ideal, would have been as strange to the ancients as these color reconstructions might seem to us today.
• Vinzenz Brinkmann is head of the department of antiquities at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection, Frankfurt and professor of classical archaeology at Goethe University, Frankfurt.
• Renée Dreyfus is curator in charge of ancient art and interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
• Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann is an archaeologist of classical antiquity based in Frankfurt. She is also assistant lecturer of classical archaeology at Georg August University in Göttingen.
• John Camp is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Professor of Classics at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia and the director of the Agora excavations in Athens.
• Martin Chapman is curator in charge of European decorative arts and sculpture at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
• Louise Chu is associate curator of ancient art and interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
• Jens Daehner is associate curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
• Jonathan Elias is an Egyptologist and the director of the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium.
• Kenneth Lapatin is curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
• Rebecca Levitan is a PhD student in the history of art department at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Heinrich Piening heads the department of restoration and conservation, furniture and art objects of wood, at the Bavarian Department of State-Owned Palaces, Gardens, and Lakes in Germany.
• Oliver Primavesi is professor of Greek philology and philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. In 2007 he was a recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, an important research award given by the German Research Foundation.
• Andrew Stewart is Nicholas C. Petris Professor of Greek Studies and professor of ancient Mediterranean art and archaeology at the University of California at Berkeley and curator of Mediterranean archaeology at UCB’s Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.
Exhibition | Turner in Surrey
J.M.W. Turner, Thomson’s Aeolian Harp, 1809
(Manchester Art Gallery)
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Opening this month at The Lightbox:
Turner in Surrey
The Lightbox, Woking, Surrey, 18 November 2017 — 4 March 2018
For the first time ever, this exhibition explores J.M.W. Turner’s work produced on his various travels, stops, and periods of residence on the Thames, Wey Navigation and in the county of Surrey, prior to the London boundary changes of 1889.
It will explore how Turner retreated into nature, capturing both the beauty of the landscape and its rustic elegance. Open air sketches highlighting his swiftness of hand and the changing effects of nature will sit alongside finished works, completed in the studio. Combining pencil and oil sketches, finished oils and watercolours, the exhibition will feature Newark Abbey on the Wey and View of Richmond Hill and Bridge from Tate, and Thomson’s Aeolian Harp from Manchester Art Gallery. The exhibition will also give a rare opportunity to see personal possessions of the artist—his fishing rod, travelling watercolour box, and watercolour palette—from The Royal Academy of Arts.
Exhibition | Napoleon: Images of the Legend
From the Châteaux de Versailles:
Napoleon: Images of the Legend
Arras Musée des Beaux-Arts, 7 October 2017 — 4 November 2018
Curated by Frédéric Lacaille and Marie-Lys Marguerite
The exhibition will present a large selection of the Napoleonic collection from the palaces of Versailles and Trianon, which is the world’s largest on the subject. Visitors will be able to discover the history of Napoleon in chronological order, from General Bonaparte to the fallen Emperor.
The exhibition will also throw the spotlight on the Emperor’s close circle (family, important officers, imperial Court) and the Parisian and international societies of the time (artists, scholars, foreign sovereigns etc.) It will show how, from very early on, Napoleon wanted to write his own legend for posterity by commissioning multiple paintings commemorating key moments of his life. Paintings, sculptures, and furniture will reveal the wealth and quality of artistic production at the time and will lead visitors in the footsteps of Napoleon Bonaparte, whose unique destiny forever.
The exhibition is part of a partnership project between three major institutions: the region Hauts-de-France, the town of Arras, and the Palace of Versailles. This large-scale partnership was established in 2011, allowing collections from Versailles to be displayed in Arras. Major event-exhibitions are held alongside educational and cultural work in order to allow as many people as possible to discover the history and heritage of the Palace of Versailles.
The exhibition is curated by Frédéric Lacaille, Curator in charge of 19th-century paintings at the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, and Marie-Lys Marguerite, Director of Arras Musée des Beaux-Arts.
Frédéric Lacaille, ed., Napoléon: Images de la Légende (Paris: éditions Somogy, 2017), 280 pages, ISBN: 978 27572 12929, 28€.
Exhibition | Dancing with Death
From the Blanton:
Dancing with Death
Blanton Museum of Art, the University of Texas at Austin, 2 September — 26 November 2017
Organized by Elizabeth Welch
John Bell, Reclining Male Cadaver, from Anatomy of the Bones, Muscles, and Joints, by John Bell, 1794, engraving and etching (Austin: Blanton Museum of Art, The Karen G. and Dr. Elgin W. Ware, Jr. Collection, 2000.4).
By the year 1500, a new genre of visual and literary culture was thriving in Europe: the dance of death or danse macabre. Dancing with Death will feature works on paper spanning from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries that highlight this visual tradition of bringing death to life. By animating death and transforming a state of being into a character, Europeans both poked fun of and meditated on mortality. This exhibition highlights both sides of the macabre coin: fear of death and fun in life.
Organized by Elizabeth Welch, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Prints, Drawings, and European Paintings, Blanton Museum of Art
New Ashmolean Gallery: The Story of the World’s First Public Museum
From the press release (3 October 2017) . . .
New Ashmolean Gallery: The Story of the World’s First Public Museum
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, open from 3 October 2017
The world’s first public museum, the Ashmolean in Oxford, is celebrating a new permanent gallery called the ‘Ashmolean Story’, which opened earlier this month. The gallery marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the museum’s founder, Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) who gave his collection to the University of Oxford in 1677 and founded the Ashmolean in 1683. On display are many of the original artefacts, specimens, and curiosities that fascinated museum visitors of the seventeenth century.
Elias Ashmole was a leading intellectual of his day who studied at Oxford and was elected a founding Fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1661. A true Enlightenment polymath, he was interested in everything from natural history, medicine and mathematics, to alchemy, astrology, and magic—all popular disciplines in the seventeenth century. In founding a new public museum Ashmole’s vision was to create a centre for practical research and the advancement of knowledge of the natural world which, in his own words, “is very necessary to humaine Life, health, & the conveniences thereof.” He recommended that the Keeper (head) of the museum should be Oxford’s Professor of Chemistry, and the first incumbent was Dr Robert Plot, a noted scientist and naturalist.
Evoking the style and atmosphere of the original museum, the new gallery displays objects related to scientific enquiry and the quest for knowledge that would have captivated visitors in 1680s Oxford. These include a crystal ball probably used by Ashmole for ‘crystal-gazing’ and making predictions; medical equipment and samples like kidney stones, apothecary jars and powders; and an array of natural history specimens of exotic animals, fish, and birds. One such specimen that clearly confused Plot was a “Gigantick thigh-bone.” He recognized that it was a real bone but could not identify the species due to its enormous size and concluded that it must have been the remains of a giant man or woman. Now known to be part of a femur of a large meat-eating dinosaur, Plot’s illustration was nonetheless the first publication of a dinosaur bone. Plot’s tenure at the Ashmolean came to end in 1689/90 when he resigned both his university posts citing an insufficient salary.
Ashmole’s gift to the University included his own extensive collection of books, manuscripts, coins, medals, and other antiquities. It also included the celebrated Tradescant family collection of ‘Rarities’ that had been gifted to Ashmole by John Tradescant the younger. In 1683 Ashmole transferred everything to Oxford from London, sending it by barge in twenty-six large chests. Ashmole specified that the new museum should be housed in a building designed to promote scientific practice. In the original Ashmolean in Broad Street, Oxford, there was a repository for the collections on the first floor; a lecture theatre for natural history on the ground floor; and in the basement was a state-of-the-art chemical laboratory and anatomy room. He also provided statutes of governance to guide the museum in achieving its aims, and this original handwritten document is on display in the new gallery. The eighteen statutes include the establishment of a board of governors, an annual inspection and audit, and the cataloguing of all objects that came into the collection. They also established procedures for the care and security of objects, the admission of visitors and museum finances—a model for modern museums and galleries the world over.
While the collections have grown and shifted focus to art and archaeology, the purpose of the Ashmolean is little changed today. The museum’s main aim remains the preservation and display of the collections for enjoyment and the advancement of knowledge. The development of the new gallery has allowed the re-display of important pieces such as Guy Fawkes’ lantern—a favourite of museum visitors. It has also created space to bring out of storage works such as Ashmole’s portrait collection of scholars and scientists which includes the famous painting of Elizabethan astrologer and mathematician, John Dee.
The gallery development has also provided staff the opportunity to research and conserve objects from the founding collection. One of the most significant pieces that has been re-displayed is Powhatan’s Mantle. Made of four white-tailed deer hides sewn together and decorated with shells, this huge and fragile object is traditionally linked to Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas and chief of the Indigenous North American Powhatan people who lived in Virginia, the area settled by the English in the 1600s. The museum’s conservation team has investigated the mantle with the help of the Factum Arte Foundation using specialized photography and imaging. Archival research into the mantle indicates that it was probably displayed vertically on the wall from the seventeenth century. The loss of shells around the lower border suggests that people were able to touch it and may have taken shells as souvenirs of their visit.
Today, the mantle has proved equally popular. The Ashmolean’s 2017 annual appeal has asked members of the public to support a new high-tech display case for the iconic object. Donors to the appeal have been offered the chance to have their name or a dedication inscribed on the case and more than 200 people have made donations totalling nearly £52,000. Miss Laura Wilson who made a dedication for her grandmother, says: “As soon as I saw the Ashmolean Birthday Appeal for the preservation of Powhatan’s Mantle, I knew I had to donate. When I was a little girl, my grandmother, Margaret Pinsent, would often take me to the museum to explore and we would always look at the Mantle—we were in awe of its historical significance. A quarter of a century later and I am still enchanted by this marvelous object and indebted to my grandma for her investment in my education. I cannot wait to see the Mantle in the new gallery and to enjoy it for many years to come.” In addition to the public appeal, the new gallery has been made possible by a generous donation from Mr Stephen Stow, Fellow of the Ashmolean; a major grant from the Linbury Trust; and a £110,000 grant from the DCMS/Wolfson Galleries and Improvements Fund.
Dr Xa Sturgis, Director of the museum, says: “Thanks to the generosity of members of the public, institutional support and private donors, we have been able to mark Elias Ashmole’s 400th birthday with this new gallery. It is a celebration of Ashmole’s vision and of the role the Ashmolean has played in the development of museums and galleries in this country and across the world.”
John Glen MP, Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, says: “The Ashmolean Museum’s new gallery will mark 400 years since the birth of its founder Elias Ashmole and government is proud to support this fantastic space with £110,000 from the DCMS/Wolfson Museums & Galleries Improvement Fund. The public support for this project shows how well- loved the museum is and I wish all at the Ashmolean well for this exciting new chapter in its illustrious history.”
Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation, says: “There seems to be an increased interest in the collectors and stories behind the UK’s great museums—and the Ashmolean has a fascinating story to tell. Ashmole’s vision of a place of curiosity which fuels a quest for knowledge is still being realised. We hope there will be many more little Laura Wilsons visiting with their grandmothers and enjoying the delights this new gallery has to offer. The Wolfson Foundation is a charity supporting and promoting excellence, and we are delighted to be funding this through the DCMS/Wolfson Fund—which sends a strong message about the importance of shared public and charitable funding of these great collections.”
The Burlington Magazine, October 2017
The eighteenth century in The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 159 (October 2017)
A R T I C L E S
• Gauvin Alexander Bailey, “Rococo in Eighteenth-Century Beijing: Ornament Prints and the Design of the European Palaces at Yuanming Yuan,” pp. 778–88.
• J. P. Losty, “Eighteenth-Century Mughal Paintings from the Swinton Collection,” pp. 789–99.
R E V I E W S
• Rose Kerr, Review of John Ayers, Chinese and Japanese Works of Art in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen (Royal Collection Trust, 2016), pp. 822–23.
• Marjorie Trusted, Review of Alan Chong, ed., Christianity in Asia: Sacred Art and Visual Splendour (Asian Civilizations Museum, 2016), pp. 823–24.
• Milo Beach, Review of Terence McInerney, Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts: The Kronos Collections (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), pp. 824–25.
• Aida Yuen Wong, Review of Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, eds., Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West (Getty Publications, 2015), p. 826.
• David Bindman, Review of Elizabeth Einberg, William Hogarth: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2016), pp. 827–29.
• Robert O’Byrne, Review of Mark Clark, The Dublin Civic Portrait Collection: Patronage, Politics, and Patriotism, 1603–2013 (Four Courts Press, 2016), p. 832.
• Charles Beddington, Review of the exhibition Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe (The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 2017; Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2017; and The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2018), pp. 856–58.
Exhibition | The King of Spain’s Grandchildren by Mengs
From the Uffizi Galleries:
The King of Spain’s Grandchildren: Anton Raphael Mengs at the Pitti Palace
Pitti Palace, Florence, 19 September 2017 — 7 January 2018
Curated by Matteo Ceriana and Steffi Roettgen
Anton Raphael Mengs, Double Portrait of the Archdukes Ferdinando (1769–1824) and Maria Anna (1770–1809) di Asburgo Lorena, 1770–71 (Florence: Uffizi Galleries).
Barely twenty days after the opening of an exhibition at the Uffizi devoted to the purchase of two preparatory paintings by Luca Giordano and Taddeo Mazzi, the Uffizi Galleries are now launching a second exhibition to present the prestigious acquisition of yet another important painting in 2016, by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779), portraying Ferdinando and Maria Anna, two of the children of Archduke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine and of his consort María Luisa de Borbón y Sajonia, dressed in contemporary costume and depicted inside the Pitti Palace.
Eike D. Schmid: “The task of a living museum is to safeguard works of art, to preserve memory and to transmit culture through exhibitions and research, but also to allow its collections to ‘breathe’ with targeted additions closely linked to the story of the city, of its hinterland and of the collection of which they are going to become a part. Acquisitions, especially if they are so subtly motivated, are a crucial part of a museum’s life, particularly if they are the product of research guaranteeing both their provenance and a fertile interaction with the museum’s existing heritage.”
When this unfinished painting appeared on the antique market, it was instantly clear that it had to enter the collections of the Gallerie degli Uffizi so that we could showcase it in the Pitti Palace, because even if Anton Raphael Mengs did not paint the picture entirely in the palace, he certainly conceived it there. The young princes lived in the Pitti Palace with their family, under the watchful eye of governesses and tutors, of course, but more especially under that of their own parents, while the Boboli Garden was their playground.
We were eager to celebrate the new acquisition, which would not have been possible without the generous cooperation of the Galleria Virgilio in Rome, with an exhibition illustrating the historical and artistic environment in which the portrait was painted.
Mengs was born in Bohemia but soon moved to the west, becoming an adoptive Italian and Spaniard. He sought permission from King Charles III of Spain to travel to Rome so that he could both work and pursue his study of Classical antiquities and of the great Renaissance artists, chiefly that of Raphael after whom he had been named. The Spanish King, who loved Italy and had once almost governed Tuscany himself (eventually becoming the King of Naples), granted Mengs permission to make the trip but only on condition that he send him portraits from Florence of his young grandchildren, the children of his daughter María Luisa de Borbón y Sajonia and of Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine. The pictures, loaned to the exhibition by the Museo del Prado where they normally hang, were painted while Mengs was in the Tuscan capital from April 1770 to January 1771. The portraits show us Pietro Leopoldo’s two extremely young children dressed in Spanish court attire with the marks of royalty (the Golden Fleece) in the traditional dress of the Infantes, as reported in the Gazzetta Toscana published on 29 September 1770. Once finished, but before they were packed up and shipped to the Spanish court, the portraits were shown to the Florentine public in the Pitti Palace, where they were much admired both for their sparkling technique and for their accurate rendering of the sitters’ features.
Anton Raphael Mengs, Double Portrait of the Archduke Ferdinand (1769–1824) and Maria Anna (1770–1809), 1770–71 (Madrid: Museo del Prado).
At the same time as Mengs was painting these portraits of the children for their grandfather, the Spanish King, however, he must also have produced the picture recently purchased by the Uffizi Galleries portraying Ferdinando and Anna Maria with a totally different approach and in a very different spirit. The two children portrayed here, looking happier than the children depicted in many of Mengs’s other works, are shown in contemporary clothing, and the choice of full, resonant hues such as the green and pink of their attire instantly reveals this new spirit. The prince is dressed in boy’s costume and the feather hat in his right hand is the kind of headgear one might have worn for strolling or hunting, thus introducing a touching note of daily intimacy into the picture—a far cry from the stiff, ceremonial approach evinced in the official portraits now in Madrid. The painting must have been very much to the liking of Pietro Leopoldo, a man of stern tastes, an enlightened sovereign, a reformer, in fact a thoroughly ‘modern’ (not to say bourgeois) monarch in both his public and his private life. We are drawn to the picture because we can not only see the lesson of Velázquez in it, but we actually get a foretaste of Goya, a great admirer of Mengs, and even of Manet.
Johan Zoffany, Francis I, Grand Duke of Tuscany of the House of Lorraine (1708–1765), 1775 (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum).
The official court portrait painter to Pietro Leopoldo, however, was another German—albeit a naturalised Englishman—called Johann Zoffany. The exhibition showcases the portrait that he painted of Pietro Leopoldo’s first-born son Francis, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany of the House of Lorraine, which was painted for Francis’s paternal grandmother, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and which has been loaned by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Having doffed the dazzling turquoise attire of a Spanish Infante, we discover him in the courtyard of the Pitti Palace leaning against the majestic rustication, a small man fairly split between his government duties, his arms and his studies. This very fine portrait, which has returned to Florence for the first time since it was despatched to Vienna, depicts a boy who, while he may appear a little melancholic, is already very much aware of his imperial destiny.
The exhibition opens with portraits of the sitters’ grandparents, parents, and little cousins from Naples and Parma and closes with the self-portraits of the two painters from the Uffizi’s celebrated collection: Mengs’s famous, heroic self-portrait, bursting with emotion even though it is not yet Romantic, and Zoffany’s subtly ironic self-portrait in which he portrays himself with his small dog a painting that will come as a pleasant surprise to visitors after being specially restored for the exhibition.
Matteo Ceriana and Steffi Roettgen, I Nipoti del Re di Spagna: Anton Raphael Mengs a Palazzo Pitti (Livorno: Sillabe, 2017), 184 pages, ISBN: 978 888347 9687, $35.
Exhibition | Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment
While, as a rule, I don’t re-post announcements, because this one now includes important details that were previously omitted—additional information regarding the catalogue, venues, and the conferences—I’m glad to make an exception. I wish I could be there next weekend for what sure to be an amazing conference! –CAH
Jacques-Antoine-Marie Lemoine, Woman Standing in a Garden, 1783, black chalk and brush with gray wash on off-white laid paper; Antoine Vestier, Allegory of the Arts, 1788, oil on canvas; and Louis-Léopold Boilly, Conversation in a Park, oil on canvas. All on loan from The Horvitz Collection.
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From the Harn Museum of Art:
Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment: French Art from The Horvitz Collection
Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, 6 October — 31 December 2017
Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 26 January — 8 April 2018
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, 13 May — 19 August 2018
Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, dates TBA
Curated by Melissa Hyde and Mary D. Sheriff
Organized by Alvin Clark
Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment: French Art from the Horvitz Collection is primarily an exhibition of drawings but will include pastels, paintings, and sculptures selected from one of the world’s best private collections of French drawings. The exhibition will feature nearly 120 works by many of the most prominent artists of the eighteenth century, including Antoine Watteau, Nicolas Lancret, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, as well as lesser-known artists both male and female, such as Anne Vallayer-Coster, Gabrielle Capet, François-André Vincent, Philibert-Louis Debucourt. Ranging from spirited, improvisational sketches and figural studies, to highly finished drawings of exquisite beauty, the works included in the exhibition vary in terms of style, genre, and period.
Becoming a Woman will be organized into thematic sections that address some of the most important and defining questions of women’s lives in the eighteenth century. These include: how the stages of a woman’s life were measured; what cultural attitudes and conditions in France shaped how women were defined; what significant relations women formed with men; what social and familial rituals gave order to their lives; what pleasures they pursued; and what work they accomplished. The aim is to bring new insights to the questions of what it meant to be a woman in this period, by offering the first exhibition to focus specifically on representations of women of a broad range of ages and conditions.
The exhibition will offer fresh perspectives on a subject that still has direct relevance to our times but that has not been the focus of a significant exhibition for decades. Through its conceptual framework, thematic organization, and its emphasis on historical context, the exhibition will provide viewers opportunities to consider what issues pertaining to women’s lives seem to have changed or persisted through time and across space. Although the circumstances and the specifics have changed, many issues remain with us today and can still provoke contentious debates. Pay equity, reproductive rights, gender-discrimination, violence against women, work-family balance, the ‘plight’ of the alpha-female, and the devaluation of the stay-at-home mom, are but a few of the women’s issues that are still hotly contested in the media, in cultural production of all kinds, in politics, and in public and private life.
Becoming a Woman is curated by Melissa Hyde, Professor of Art History, University of Florida Research Foundation Professor, University of Florida, and the late Mary D. Sheriff, W.R. Kenan J. Distinguished Professor of Art History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the exhibition is organized by Alvin L. Clark, Jr, Curator, The Horvitz Collection and The J.E. Horvitz Research Curator, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg.
The catalogue is available from ArtBooks.com:
Melissa Hyde, Mary D. Sheriff, and Alvin Clark, Becoming a Woman in the Age of Enlightenment: French Art from The Horvitz Collection (Boston: The Horvitz Collection, 2017), 208 pages, ISBN: 978 099126 2526, $39.
François Boucher, Young Travelers, black chalk on cream antique laid paper, framing line in black ink, laid down on a decorated mount, 295 × 188 mm; Jacques-Louis David, Andromache Mourning the Death of Hector, pen with black ink and brush with gray wash over traces of black chalk on cream antique laid paper, 293 × 248 mm; Jean-Baptiste Greuze, The Chestnut Vendor, brush with gray and brown wash on cream antique laid paper, 385 × 460 mm. All works on loan from The Horvitz Collection.
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From the Lecture and Symposium Schedule:
Thinking Women: Art and Representation in the Eighteenth Century
A Symposium in Honor of Mary D. Sheriff
Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, 20–22 October 2017
• Keynote Address: “The Woman Artist and the Uncovering of the Social World,” Lynn Hunt, Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
Art, women, and society came together in surprising ways at the end of the eighteenth century. ‘Society’ only began to be conceptualized as an object for study at the end of the 1700s, in particular in reaction to the French Revolution. Art, especially engraving and painting, helped make society visible to itself. Women could join the art world but rarely as fully fledged members, and as a consequence they occupied a kind of in-between position that made them especially attuned to social relations. The life and work of Marie-Gabrielle Capet will be highlighted to show how the social world could be uncovered.
• “Fashion in Time: Visualizing Costume in the Eighteenth Century,” Susan Siegfried, Denise Riley Collegiate Professor of the History of Art and Women’s Studies, Department of Art History, University of Michigan
• “Beauty Is a Letter of Credit,” Nina Dubin, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History University of Illinois, Chicago
• “Chardin: Gender and Interiority,” Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, William Dorr Boardman Professor of Fine Arts, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University
• “The Global Allure of the Porcelain Room,” Meredith Martin, Department of Art History, New York University
• “Pictured Together? Questions of Gender, Race, and Social Rank in the Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray,” Jennifer Germann, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Ithaca College
• “Becoming an Animal in the Age of Enlightenment,” Amy Freund, Associate Professor & Kleinheinz Family Endowed Chair in Art History, Southern Methodist University
• “Marguerite Lecomte’s Smile: Portrait of a Woman Engraver,” Mechthild Fend, Reader in the History of Art, Department of History of Art, University College London
• “Exceptional, but not Exceptions: Women Artists in the Age of Revolution,” Paris Spies Gans, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, Princeton University
The final program, with times, is available here»
At the Ackland Art Museum at UNC, Chapel Hill, there will be a sister symposium in Mary’s honor entitled “Taking Exception: Women, Gender, Representation in the Eighteenth Century,” 1–3 February 2018.
Exhibition | Visitors to Versailles, 1682–1789
Press release for the exhibition:
Visiteurs de Versailles, 1682–1789
Château de Versailles, 24 October 2017 — 25 February 2018
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 16 April — 29 July 2018
Curated by Bertrand Rondot and Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide
With nearly 10 million visitors per year, Versailles is one of the most visited historic sites in the world. The palace and gardens of Versailles have attracted visitors ever since the small hunting lodge built by Louis XIII was transformed by Louis XIV into one of the most stunning residences in Europe, open to everyone according to the King’s will.
Cosmopolitan Versailles has welcomed French and foreign travellers, princes, ambassadors, artists, writers, and philosophers, architects, scholars, tourists on the ‘Grand Tour’, and day trippers from near and far. While some came to Versailles to see the King or win his favour, others were received officially by the Sovereign in the Palace, a place of intensive diplomatic activity. From the ambassadors of Siam in 1686 to the ambassadors of the Indian Kingdom of Mysore in 1788, representatives from almost every continent came to Versailles. Each visit was an opportunity to discover beautiful national dress and the originality of the gifts visitors brought with them. Gazettes, literary journals, and official memoires bore testimony to the most important visitors and the parties held in their honour.
The exhibition is the first on this subject and will turn the spotlight on these visitors through more than 300 works from the late 17th century to the French Revolution. With portraits and sculptures, court attire, travel guides, tapestries, Sevres and Meissen porcelain, display weapons and snuffboxes, the exhibition will reveal what visitors discovered upon arriving at Versailles, the sort of welcome awaiting them, what they saw and their impressions, the gifts or memories they left with. Visitors today will discover the palace through the eyes of those who have gone before them over the course of history.
Curators
Bertrand Rondot, Head Curator at the Palace of Versailles, in charge of furniture and objets d’art
Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide, Curator at the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Note (added 28 October 2017) — Relevant to the exhibition is this collection of essays, which grew out of a 2013 conference:
Caroline zum Kolk, Jean Boutier, Bernd Klesmann, and François Moureau, eds., Voyageurs étrangers à la cour de France, 1589–1789: regards croisés (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014), 392 pages, ISBN: 978 27535 34834, 22€.
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Note (added 12 April 2018) — The original posting listed the start date for the exhibition at The Met as April 9. More information on the latter venue is available here.
Exhibition | The World Turned Upside Down
Benjamin West, Death on the Pale Horse, 1796, oil on canvas, 128.5 × 59.5 cm
(Detroit Institute of Arts)
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Now on view at the Haggerty Museum of Art:
The World Turned Upside Down: Apocalyptic Imagery in England, 1750–1850
Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee, 6 October 2017 — 14 January 2018
All that can be annihilated must be annihilated
That the Children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery.
–William Blake, Milton, ca. 1804–11
The threat of apocalyptic destruction loomed large in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, which stood as one of the most powerful nations in the world. Cataclysmic change occurred frequently within and beyond its borders. Political upheavals, natural disasters, and new foreign adversaries led many to believe that the end was at hand. The French Revolution of 1789 in particular was widely seen as the spark of the oncoming apocalypse—whether this was a source of celebration or fear was a matter of significant debate.
At the same time, England’s artistic activity was growing significantly. The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768, and London’s art market saw exponential expansion. In this political and cultural climate, audiences were eager for subjects of destruction and terror. The rise of Romanticism, with its emphasis on the supernatural, grotesque, and terrifying, led artists to explore apocalyptic sources from the Bible to John Milton. Caricaturists couched contemporary events in the language of the apocalypse. Despite their satirical nature, these images often seem prophetic in light of the political changes to come.
The World Turned Upside Down explores the myriad ways that artists in England visualized the apocalypse in a period fraught with political, religious, economic, and cultural change. From political prints to monumental paintings, lavishly illustrated books to cheap pamphlets, apocalyptic imagery pervaded every aspect of English visual culture in this period. The diversity of artistic responses to the dramatic events of the time makes one thing clear: anxiety about the future—of one’s soul and of the English nation as a whole—was inescapable.
William Hogarth, Tailpiece, or The Bathos (detail), 1764, etching and engraving, 31.8 × 33.3 cm
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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