Exhibition | Thomas Gainsborough: Methods of Making
Thomas Gainsborough, Wooded Landscape with Old Peasant and Donkeys outside a Barn, ca. 1755–57, oil on canvas 49.5 x 59.7 cm (Gainsborough’s House, accepted by HM Government in lieu of Inheritance Tax and allocated to Gainsborough’s House in 2015).
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From Gainsborough’s House:
Thomas Gainsborough: Methods of Making
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 22 October 2016 — 19 February 2017
This exhibition marks the culmination of a conservation research project, generously funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and carried out in partnership with the University of Cambridge’s Hamilton Kerr Institute. Focusing on a single painting from the Gainsborough’s House collection, it sheds new light on the artist’s early painting technique and methods of working.
The painting in question was allocated to Gainsborough’s House in 2015 through the government’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme. Titled Wooded Landscape with Old Peasant and Donkeys outside a Barn, it has long been recognized as a significant work from Gainsborough’s Suffolk period, demonstrating his growing interest in the sentimental depiction of simple country folk. The identity of the principal subject is unknown, although an additional figure study by Gainsborough appears to represent the same man. Traditionally known as A Suffolk Costermonger, this mysterious character was reputedly well known in the Ipswich area.
A central part of the project has been the conservation and technical examination of the painting, carried out by Kari Rayner. Through the removal of yellowed varnish and overpaint, details previously obscured have been made visible. As part of her research, Kari has also created a partial reconstruction, revealing how Gainsborough’s canvas was prepared and how the paint was applied. The opportunity to view this reconstruction alongside the original painting affords a rare glimpse into the artist’s working methods.
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From the accompanying pamphlet detailing Rayner’s reconstruction:
Reconstruction by Kari Rayner, after Thomas Gainsborough, Wooded Landscape with Old Peasant and Donkeys outside a Barn, 2016.
The purpose of this reconstruction, carried out by Kari Rayner at the Hamilton Kerr institute, was to gain firsthand experience emulating Gainsborough’s painting technique. This type of study results in an increased understanding of the material aspects of a work of art and can provide unforeseen insights into the artist’s processes, interests, and influences. Unlike a replica, which reproduces a work in full, a reconstruction leaves the canvas support, priming, and underlayers of paint exposed so that the method of creation is visible to the viewer. This particular painting was an ideal candidate for reconstruction due to its excellent condition: treatment in the spring of 2016 ensured that discoloured varnish and past restorations did not significantly affect the appearance of the work.
During the process of reproducing Peasant and Donkeys, the painting’s minutest details were scrutinized. it soon became apparent that this was a highly experimental work in Gainsborough’s Suffolk period. He was clearly learning during the process of its execution, adjusting colours and tonal relationships as he painted. playing with the recession of space and varying the level of detail, he expertly guides the viewer’s eye through the work: his development of the composition is truly visionary. The observation of such details, facilitated by the creation of this reproduction, has led to an increased appreciation of Gainsborough’s skill as an artist at this formative early stage in his career.
Exhibition | French Drawings from the Time of Gainsborough
From Gainsborough’s House:
French Drawings from the Time of Gainsborough
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 22 October 2016 — 19 February 2017
Curated by Christoph Vogtherr
Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Tête de Jeune Fille
This exhibition brings together over 40 drawings from public and private collections, many being on public display for the first time. French Drawings from the Time of Gainsborough covers the period between the Régence (1715 and 1723) and the Revolution (1789–99), when French drawing was the undisputed reference point for the quality and the teaching of drawing in Europe. Curated by the French eighteenth-century specialist Christoph Vogtherr, Director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the exhibition features the great artistic personalities of the age such as Françoise Boucher (1703–70), Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), and Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), and through their work explores the function and development of drawing in France during the period.
Gainsborough was deeply influenced by French drawing and received training from Hubert-François Gravelot (1699–1773) when he was in London in the 1740s. As Christoph Vogtherr notes in the exhibition catalogue:
“Artists in England closely observed the French situation, often with a fair degree of envy. Important commissions in England, mainly private, were given to Italian—and increasingly also French—painters, and English collectors bought French works. The market for engravings was largely shaped by French engravers until well into the second half of the eighteenth century.”
The selection of works on display, which include figure studies, landscapes and genre scenes, are particularly close to Gainsborough’s own works on paper that are held in our permanent collection. This exhibition is an opportunity to see some of the finest examples of French drawings exhibited for the first time and gives a greater understanding of drawing in the age of Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88).
New Book | Le Comte de Caylus et Edme Bouchardon
In noting the Bouchardon exhibition at the Louvre this fall, I omitted this publication from Somogy, which accompanies the show (along with an exhibition catalogue and a catalogue raisonné). –CH
Marc Fumaroli, Le Comte de Caylus et Edme Bouchardon: Deux réformateurs du goût sous Louis XV (Paris: Somogy, 2016), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-2757211861, 7€.
Tout semblait éloigner, dans l’ordre social et dans ses apparences, le grand seigneur Anne Claude de Caylus, né sur les marches du trône, et le roturier de province, né dans une obscure famille de sculpteurs champenois, Edme Bourchardon, sinon leur foi ardente et commune dans la supériorité des Anciens et un zèle commun et acharné à remonter la pente du déclin. (…) La rencontre en janvier 1733 entre Caylus l’amateur savant et réformateur et Bouchardon, jeune sculpteur déjà célèbre à Rome et en Europe comme la réincarnation française des sculpteurs grecs Polyclète et Polygnote, infléchit leurs deux carrières alliées dans le grand dessein de faire revivre en France et ensuite en Europe le pur goût grec et « à la grecque ». (…) Un peu forcé, comme l’avait été le retour de Poussin à Paris en 1640, le voyage Rome-Paris de Bouchardon, en 1732–33, ramena en France le nouvel archétype du grand artiste « à l’antique », pierre angulaire éventuelle de la reconstruction de l’Académie royale et d’une restauration de son système éducatif, accusé d’avoir dégénéré les intentions de ses fondateurs.
Marc Fumaroli, né en 1932, historien de la littérature et des arts de l’Ancien Régime français, est membre de l’Académie française, professeur émérite au Collège de France, président honoraire de la Société des Amis du Louvre. Il est l’auteur de L’École du silence, le sentiment des images au XVIIe siècle (Paris, Flammarion, 1994), de Peinture et pouvoirs, de Rome à Paris aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Dijon, Faton, 2007), et de Paris – New York et retour, voyage dans les arts et les images (Paris, Fayard, 2009, et Flammarion, 2011, quatrième édition). Il prépare une ample biographie du comte de Caylus en son siècle, un essai sur la réception du Traité du Sublime de Tacite à Winckelmann, de Kant à Adorno, et un recueil d’articles sur l’art français sous la monarchie à paraître aux éditions Gallimard.
Exhibition | The Art of Alchemy
Alchemists Revealing Secrets from the Book of Seven Seals, The Ripley Scroll (detail), ca. 1700
(Los Angeles: The Getty, 950053).
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Press release (5 October 2016) from The Getty . . . (with The Getty Alchemy Collection available here)
The Art of Alchemy
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 11 October 2016 — 12 February 2017
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, May — August 2017
Curated by David Brafman with Rhiannon Knol
Long shrouded in secrecy, alchemy was once considered the highest of arts. Straddling art, science, and natural philosophy, alchemy has proven key to both the materiality and creative expression embedded in artistic output, from ancient sculpture and the decorative arts to medieval illumination, and masterpieces in paint, print, and a panoply of media from the European Renaissance to the present day. Drawing primarily from the collections of the Getty Research Institute as well as the J. Paul Getty Museum, the exhibition The Art of Alchemy examines the impact of alchemy around the world on artistic practice and its expression in visual culture from antiquity to the present.
The Entire Earthly, Natural, and Dark Man, 1723. From Johann Georg Gichtel, Theosophia Practica (Practical Theosophy) (Leiden, 1723), pl. before p. 25. 2611–134.
“Alchemy is a fascinating subject that cuts across continents and epochs,” said Thomas W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute. “It is because the Getty Research Institute collections are so diverse and intricately connected that we are able to deeply investigate and present this often misunderstood subject. This exhibition reflects the human ambition to explore and understand the wonders, the materiality, and the laws of nature since the earliest times. Imagination, curiosity, scholarship, enchantment, science, philosophy, and chemistry amalgamate in the artistic processes of alchemy.”
On view at the Getty Research Institute from October 11, 2016, through February 12, 2017, The Art of Alchemy features more than 100 objects, including manuscripts and rare books, prints, sculpture, and other works of art dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 20th century and coming from across Europe and Asia. The exhibition was organized in partnership with the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, where it will be on view in 2017, and is curated by David Brafman, associate curator of rare books with assistance from Rhiannon Knol.
The Art of Alchemy approaches the subject from a global perspective, tracing how alchemy historically bonded art, science, and natural philosophy in visual cultures throughout the world. From its origins in Classical and Eurasian antiquity to the advances made and spread throughout the Islamic world and the ‘silk’ routes of Central Asia, material and intellectual exchange across cultures reached mediaeval Europe, and catalyzed alchemy’s ‘golden age’ from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. The persistence of its spirit is still present in artistic expression and technocratic trends of the modern day, and the historical echoes of this chemical obsession with artificial reproduction also resound throughout more modern technologies of art, from chromolithography in the Industrial Age to the media that now claim artistic boasting rights as the ultimate chemical mirrors of nature: photography and the liquid crystal displays of the digital world.
“Alchemy was a science tinged with spirituality and infused with a spritz of artistic spirit. Most people think of alchemy as a fringe subject when really it was a mainstream technology and worldview that influenced artistic practice and expression throughout the world,” said David Brafman, curator of the exhibition. “Alchemy may well have been the most important human invention after that of the wheel and the mastery of fire. Certainly it was a direct consequence of the latter.”
Alchemical Equipment, from Traité de Chymie [Treatise on Chemistry], ca. 1700, pp. 10–11
(Los Angeles: The Getty, 950053.2). View a digitized version of this book.
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The exhibition is presented in three parts: ‘Alchemical Creation’, ‘Alchemy and Creativity’, and ‘Alchemical Culture’.
Alchemical Creation explores alchemy’s origins in Greco-Egyptian antiquity, illustrated by ancient artifacts reflecting alchemical theories and techniques, including a second-century mummy portrait painted with red lead, an early example of synthetic pigments with both medicinal and artistic applications. This union of Greek and Egyptian thought flourished in the ancient city of Alexandria, producing the legendary sage Hermes Trismegistos, whose fabled Corpus Hermeticum provided the philosophical blueprint of alchemical theory. At the same time, the flow of materials and technologies between the ancient Mediterranean, Middle East, India, and China along the Silk Routes of Eurasia spread these ideas widely, inspiring dazzling glass imitations of precious stones and gems, as well as scientific developments in the use of mysterious metals like mercury to create synthetic gold—or at least, its appearance—through gilding techniques.
This section also explores alchemical ideas about the nature of creation itself, which was the secret alchemists worked to unlock in order to harness the powers of nature for their own imaginative ends. Renaissance books depict the act of divine creation as analogous to that of a draftsman or an artist, linking the creativity of the artist (or alchemist) with that of the prime mover and igniting centuries of debate over the scope and legitimacy of the art of alchemy.
The section Alchemy and Creativity illustrates how practical alchemy and its larger scientific and spiritual concerns crucially influenced both artistic practice and expression. The centerpiece of this section is the twenty-food long Ripley Scroll, a cryptic, hand-painted 18th-century manuscript scroll named for a Catholic clergyman and poet George Ripley. This unusual art object is filled with fantastical allegorical symbolism depicting the operations of alchemy and the creation of the fabled ‘philosophers’ stone’.
The Body as Alchemical Laboratory, Engraving in Joachim Becher, Physica subterranea (Leipzig, 1738), frontispiece, The Getty Research Institute Alchemical techniques for the synthetic production of color became an industrial mainstay for artistic applications in medieval and renaissance Europe, the most important of which was mercury sulfide: vermilion red—often referred to by alchemical texts as the philosophers’ stone itself. While alchemists experimented with the production not only of all the colors of the rainbow, but also effects in glassmaking, inks, dyes, oil paints, ceramic glazes, and metallurgical techniques, their laboratory pursuits in turn inspired psychedelic symbolic imagery for the expression of science through art. Images such as the hermaphrodite, or the ‘Chemical Wedding’, were used to depict chemical bonding—a metaphor which appears in both European and Chinese art—while various other chemical actions and substances were depicted as dragons, lions, birds, and even tiny humans within laboratory vessels. Their vaunting ambitions of playing God increasingly inspired alchemists to create and commission elaborate works of art encompassing their understanding of the entire universe through an alchemical lens, from the operations of the heavens to the anatomy of the human form.
While some of these chemical techniques were the purview of expert alchemists toiling in their labs, some of the techniques were simple and could be duplicated by the average artist, craftsman, or apothecary. By the Renaissance, diaries with scribbled notes and diagrams became commonplace, as did a publishing market for ‘secret’ recipe books for both art and medicine catering to not just artists but also female heads of household, such as the ‘Secrets’ of the Venetian woman Isabella Cortese, published in 1565. Also on view in the exhibition are the personal notebooks of the artists Hans Hanberg and Francesco Boccaccino, containing designs for furnaces, laboratory notes, and even a few accidental stains and singes.
The third section of the exhibition, Alchemical Culture, explores how the successes achieved by the experimental spirit of alchemy continued to spark creative inspiration from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, while advances in technology continually fed the ambitions of the human imagination. Alchemists’ expertise in the management of mines and the other material resources of empire building attracted rulers whose technocratic ambitions were fueled by the discovery of a new world and its bounty of untapped natural resources. Patrons were not motivated simply by the possibility of filling the treasury with gold made to order, however; alchemical efforts also included perfecting the soul, relieving pain and sickness, and even proposing social utopias modeled after the divinely designed intelligent order of the cosmos.
The spirit of alchemy persisted into the Industrial Age, even after its transformation into the field of chemistry. The Bayer pharmaceutical company developed a rainbow of aniline coal tar dyes from petroleum waste, while at the same time working on a new, more effective painkiller—which would eventually be patented as ‘heroin’. The age of plastics also renewed the alchemical urge to imitate nature, offering the possibilities of imitation horn, ivory, and gemstones for the creation of everything from costume jewelry to life-saving medical devices. The discovery in 1888 of liquid crystals, which now provide the primary canvas of our digital world, inspired the scientific illustrator Ernst Haeckel to write Kristallseelen (‘Crystal Souls’), on display at the Getty, proposing that this new form of matter—which although not alive, seemed to move and grow in response to stimuli—was a sign of the ultimate unity of all matter, animated by a divine creative spark.
Concurrent with the GRI exhibition, the Getty Museum will present the complementing exhibition The Alchemy of Color in Medieval Manuscripts, which looks at how book illuminators drew from alchemy for pigments and inks as well as imitation gold for lavish manuscripts.
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Lecture by David Brafman | Chemical Rainbows and Liquid Crystal Souls: The Spirit of Alchemy in the History of Art
Wednesday, 18 January 2017, 7:00pm
The Art of Alchemy Colloquium
Thursday, 19 January 2017
Exhibition Preview | The Great Spectacle: The Royal Academy
In the latest issue of PMC Notes (October 2016), pp. 4–7.
The Great Spectacle: The Royal Academy and its Summer Exhibitions, 1769–2017
Royal Academy of Arts, London, opening June 2018
Curated by Mark Hallett and Sarah Turner
The Royal Academy’s summer exhibition is the world’s longest running annual display of contemporary art. Ever since 1769, and at a succession of locations ranging from Pall Mall to Piccadilly, the Academy’s exhibition rooms have been crowded for some two months each year with hundreds of paintings and sculptures produced by many of Britain’s leading artists. Over the last two hundred and fifty years, these spectacular displays of art—dominated by what has become a famously crowded and collage-like arrangement of pictures across the Academy’s walls—have provided thousands of artists with a crucial form of competition, inspiration, and publicity, and captured the interest of millions of visitors.
As well as expressing the Academy’s own ambitions and achievements, these exhibitions have played a central role within London’s and the nation’s art world. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they provided the main forum within which Britain’s artists could showcase their individual practice and compete with their rivals for popular and critical acclaim. Today, even as they continue to feature the works of many distinguished painters and sculptors, they are just as famous for providing hitherto unknown, sometimes amateur practitioners with the opportunity of seeing their creations hanging alongside the works of their more celebrated peers. These exhibitions thus offer a unique prism through which to view the history of the Royal Academy itself, and of modern British painting and sculpture more generally.
Our exhibition, which has the working title, The Great Spectacle: The Royal Academy and its Summer Exhibitions, 1769–2017, is intended to tell the story of these displays, and in doing so to provide an innovative, illuminating, and visually stunning means of commemorating the Academy’s first 250 years. . .
The exhibition, which is due to open in June 2018, and which will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue and an online chronicle (for which, see Jessica Feather’s Spotlight feature following this article), will occupy a run of ten gallery rooms at the Royal Academy. Furthermore, visitors to the display will have the opportunity of moving directly from The Great Spectacle into the 2018 Summer Exhibition itself, thereby bringing the story full circle.
The full article is available here»
Exhibition | Maria Theresa: Strategist – Mother – Reformer
A preview of a series of exhibitions opening next spring in Vienna:
Maria Theresa: Strategist – Mother – Reformer
300 Jahre Maria Theresia: Strategin – Mutter – Reformerin
Vienna, 15 March – 29 November 2017
To mark the third centenary of the birth of Maria Theresa, on 13 March 2017 a major exhibition will be launched exploring the life and influence of one of the most important rulers in European history.
Maria Theresa’s reign lasted for forty years, from 1740 to 1780. After a turbulent period at the beginning of her rule, the Habsburg monarchy entered a golden age. In the fields of state administration and foreign policy, Maria Theresa, the daughter of Charles VI, enacted measures that were to have a decisive influence on the further development of the monarchy. Although the monarch had a sceptical attitude towards the ideals of the Enlightenment, this epoch is still seen as a period of reform in which the Habsburg lands underwent a distinct process of modernization.
Under Maria Theresa courtly pomp and ceremony reached a final zenith before the sober-mindedness of the Josephine era that followed and the fall of the ancien régime in the French Revolution.
The idealization of Maria Theresa as the great ‘mother of the nation’ was a phenomenon that started well before her death. Thanks to her sixteen children she became a symbolic figurehead during her own lifetime. The exhibition examines the image of Maria Theresa as a family person and explores the often very complicated relationships between the individual members of the family.
The dark sides of this forceful monarch are also explored. Her intolerance towards other faiths, the creation of the mythic figure of Maria Theresa and her transformation into a positive figure of identification for the Habsburg dynasty are all subjected to critical examination.
This major jubilee exhibition is being mounted by Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. in cooperation with KHM-Museumsverband. Various aspects of the monarch’s life and work will be explored at four different venues:
Family and Legacy
Vienna Imperial Furniture Collection (Hofmobiliendepot)
In the ‘Hofmobilieninspektion’, an institution founded by Maria Theresa in 1747 to administer the court holdings of furniture, the exhibition examines the family circle, the personal destinies and the dynastic marriage policy pursued by Maria Theresa together with the legacy of her status as a mythic figure that continued long after her death.
Alliances and Enmities
Schloss Hof
Around 1775 Maria Theresa had a dower apartment furnished for herself at Schloss Hof, her country residence in Lower Austria. On the piano nobile of the palace the exhibition deals with her initial difficulties in establishing her rule, wars and peace agreements, losses and gains of territory as well as Maria Theresa’s powerful creative political will.
Modernization and Reforms
Schloss Niederweiden
Also located in the Marchfeld region of Lower Austria, the small and intimate Schloss Niederweiden was used for hunting parties and celebrations. At this exhibition venue the focus will be on the major domestic reforms enacted by Maria Theresa that were to change the state substantially.
Women Power and Joie de Vivre
Imperial Carriage Museum (Kaiserliche Wagenburg)
At the Imperial Carriage Museum, the focus will be on Maria Theresa’s projection of her own image, caught as she was between the sometimes conflicting priorities of her identity as a woman and the ‘masculinity’ of her power as a ruler. Ornate coaches, liveries, uniforms and gowns will recreate the resplendence of formal court occasions and exuberant festivities.
Exhibition | Brest: Port of Liberty
Now on view at the National Maritime Museum in Brest:
Brest: Port of Liberty at the Time of American Independence
Brest: Port de la Liberté au temps de l’indépendance américaine
Musée National de la Marine, Brest, 30 June 2016 — 30 April 2017
In the context of the 240th anniversary of American independence, the naval museum in Brest presents its new exhibition Brest: Harbor of Liberty at the Time of the American Revolution. Upstream of the centenary celebrations of the American landing in Brest in 1917, this exhibition recalls the strong ties between France and the United States. It traces the commitment of Louis XVI’s France in the war between the North American colonies and Britain from 1775 to 1783 and highlights the strategic role played then by the port of Brest.
In February 1778 the Scottish privateer John Paul Jones arrived in Brest. He was the first officer of the American Navy in which young Louis XVI entrusted a ship. France had to engage with the colonial side in the struggle against the British crown. The freedom of the young American nation was preparing on the banks of the Penfeld . . . The exhibition, indoor and outdoor, the discovery of the port city and the major role of Brest in the American war in the late Enlightenment.
Commissioner
Jean-Yves Besselièvre, Administrateur du musée national de la Marine à Brest
Lénaïg L’Aot-Lombart, Adjointe chargée de médiation
Scientific advice
Alain Boulaire, docteur d’État en histoire, Olivier Corre, docteur en histoire
Marjolaine Mourot, Conservateur en chef du patrimoine, chef du service Conservation au Musée national de la Marine
Exhibition | Views of the Grand Tour from The Hermitage
From the exhibition website:
Città del Grand Tour dall’Ermitage e Paesaggi Apuani da Collezioni Italiane
Fondazione Giorgio Conti, Palazzo Cucchiari, Carrara, 9 July — 23 October 2016
Curated by Sergej Androsov and Massimo Bertozzi
For centuries, knowing Italy—its extraordinary artistic heritage and millennial civilisation, as well as the nature and human qualities of a beautiful and complicated country—was a significant part of the cultural development of the elite class of all Europe. The Voyage of Italy was an experience to have at least once in a lifetime for the youth of the most important European families, both the noble ones and the rising trade and financial ones, between the very end of the 17th century and the first half of the 19th. The voyage became a true and authentic mania for all the classes that could afford it.
The Grand Tour was more than a simple touristic journey: it was a period of extraordinary development in contact with exceptional history and culture. Every European cultured man from that age dreamt to do at least one trip to Italy, for the signs of the classic past, both Greek’s and Roman’s, for the wonderful bucolic landscapes and to appreciate a kind of happy-go-lucky way of living, in which the daily challenges were tempered by an infinity of festivals and parties and countless occasions for entertainment and show. Rome was the favourite destination, but the voyage pace—both outward and the return—was set by the stops, longer and shorter ones, in the main cities scattered along the route, with mandatory deviations to Venice, Florence, and Naples.
Hubert Robert, View of the Colosseum (St Petersburg: The Hermitage Museum).
An important role, for choosing both the routes and what to see and keep in the memory, was played by scholars, art dealers, and painters who were able to produce images, not only for monuments, but also for the events which characterised the voyage of Italy, for each traveller personally.
For this exhibition, some traditional Grand Tour views have been assembled as a gallery of ‘portraits’ of places, imagination, and memory. Thus, they do not pay attention to the appearance of the Italian landscape only, but also to the nature of the men who have built that landscape. These views can nurture those psychological sensations that the Italy image gives to the Italians’ character, especially abroad and at least in the mind of those people who could see it only once, but who wanted to remember it forever.
So, some other painting are together with the ones of some Grand Tour ‘pioneers’, such as the Flemish Jan Miel and Hendrik Frans van Lint, the Dutch Johannes Lingelbach, the German Philipp Hackert, the French Hubert Robert, true and authentic reference points of the foreign groups visiting Rome or Naples, across the various ages. These painting are by a wide rank of Italian landscape painters, from Giovanni Paolo Panini to Ippolito Caffi, from Giulio Carlini to Angelo Inganni, to arrive at the naturalist turning point by Giovanni Fontanesi.
Included are the most appreciated Italian postcards: from The Arch of Titus by Hendrik Frans van Lint to The Colosseum by Hubert Robert, from View of the Bay of Baiae by Carlo Bonavia to View of Rome, with Castel Sant’Angelo by Ippolito Caffi, from The Grand Canal by Antonio de Pian to the Piazza del Duomo (Milan Cathedral Square) by Angelo Inganni.
Also represented are the peculiarities of the local traditions and the strange Italian way of life: The Charlatan by Jan Miel, the chaotic Market Square by Johannes Lingelbach; and also the celebration, from the lavish one in front of the Palazzo del Quirinale by Antonio Cioci, to the noisy Venice Carnival, in the Concert in the Gondola by Friedrich Paul Nerly, and the private party which they seem to prepare to in The Tolstoy Family in Venice by Giulio Carlini.
But Rome was still the capital of Christianity and here it is the allusive Saint Paul’s Sermon, in the Ruins of Ancient Rome, by Giovanni Paolo Panini; and also the people and visionary devotion of the Prayer to the Virgin Mary by Joseph Severn or the cozy and composed one of In the Church of S. Maria della Pace by Anselmo Gianfanti.
Next to the classic views of the Grand Tour, the exhibition places a section on the ‘discovery’ of the Apuan landscape, with artworks from the Museo Civico of Reggio Emilia, Archivio di Stato di Massa, Provincia di Massa-Carrara and private collections, to represent one of the many pleasant places for which Italy has always been considered as the garden of Europe. A territory whose nature suggested strong emotions to the ancient travellers, from Petrarch to Michel de Montaigne, comes to the attention of modern travellers, thanks to the view of its mountains, shaping the far or close horizon of a large area, from Florence to Lucca and Pisa, in addition to the coast of Liguria or the northern part of the Tyrrhenian Sea, from Lerici with its Poets’ Bay to Livorno. In conclusion, an attractive landscape not only for travellers, but also for the people visiting the art cities nearby or the coast.
The first views of the Apuan territory must be attributed to foreign travellers staying nearby, like the English Admiral William Paget or his fellow countrywoman Elisabeth Fanshawe, or the Swiss painter and writer Julie Goldenberger who settled down here and also spent her last years in Carrara. But there are also ones from professional painters, such as Saverio Salvioni from Massa, who painted for a long time the wide panoramas of the Carrara quarry at the beginning of the 19th century, or Giovanni Fontanesi from Emilia who, showing the interest for the territory images, dedicated a great deal of his output to the Ligurian-Apuan landscapes. The exhibition path ends with the painting Michelangelo Quarries of Carrara Marbles (1860–1865) by Antonio Puccinelli. It represents the perfect summary of the work of an artist loyal to the Purism of his masters (Bezzuoli and Minardi) while telling the ‘history painting’, but who adheres to a new way of looking at the sentimental suggestion of the landscape, in the Apuan area.
Sergej Androsov and Massimo Bertozzi, Citta del Grand Tour dall’Ermitage e Paesaggi Spuani da Collezioni Italiane (Carrara: Fondazione Giorgio Conti, 2016), 131 pages, $59.
Conference | European Portrait Miniatures
From the conference flyer:
European Portrait Miniatures: Artists, Functions, and Collections
The Tansey Miniatures Foundation, Bomann-Museum, Celle, 11–13 November 2016
The conference is being held on the occasion of the opening of the sixth exhibition of the Tansey Miniatures Foundation and the publication of the accompanying catalogue Miniatures from the Baroque Period in the Tansey Collection.
Both conference venues are within walking distance (20 minutes) from the railway station. Trains from Hannover take approximately 25 to 45 minutes (Deutsche Bahn, Metronom, and S-Bahn).
For registration, please contact Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten, Head of the Residence Museum at Celle Castle, juliane.schmieglitz-otten@tansey-miniatures.com. For more information, please contact Bernd Pappe, Art Historian and Restorer, bernd.pappe@tansey-miniatures.com. Conception IT Coordination by Birgitt Schmedding, Photo Designer, birgitt.schmedding@tansey-miniatures.com.
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F R I D A Y , 1 1 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
15:00 Registration
16:30 Welcome and opening of the exhibition Miniatures from the Baroque Period in the Tansey Collection
S A T U R D A Y , 1 2 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
9:00 Objects, Agencies, and Social Practices
• Ulrike Kern (Frankfurt), The Limner’s Language: Words and Concepts Related to Miniature Painting in England
• Miranda L. Elston (Chapel Hill, North Carolina), Hilliard’s Miniatures: Enacted Desire within the Elizabethan Court
• Eloise Owens (New York), The Hand behind the Likeness: Women’s Practice as Portrait Miniaturists in Eighteenth-Century England
• Christoph Großpietsch (Salzburg), Portrait Miniatures of Mozart: Problems of Authenticity
• Violaine Joëssel (Geneva), A Quest for Legitimacy: The Practice of Miniature Painting in Colonial America
• Dimitri Gorchko (Moscow), ‘… et que tout ait un nom nouveau’: Portrait Miniatures of Napoleon’s Marshals, Generals, and Colonels: Analysis and Identification
13:00 Lunch
14:15 Politics and Representation
• Delia Schffer (Kassel), Power through Relations: Duke Louis of Württemberg‘s Family Ties in a Series of Miniature Portraits
• Sarah Grandin (Paris), Density in the ‘Boîte à Portrait’ under Louis XIV
• Stefanie Linsboth (Vienna), From Large-Scale Paintings to Precious Miniatures: Maria Theresa’s Portrait Miniatures
• Karin Schrader (Bad Nauheim), ‘Taking the Veil’: Miniatures of Royal Widows from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
16:30 Coffee
17:00 Special Techniques and Materials
• Tatjana Wischniowski (Dresden), Oil-Based Paint under a Layer of Water: Arnaud Vincent de Montpetit’s ‘Eludoric Painting’, a Rare Miniature Painting Technique
• Emma Rutherford, Alan Derbyshire, and Victoria Button (London), The Drawings of John Smart (1742–1811): Function, Purpose, and Line
S U N D A Y , 1 3 N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
9:00 Miniature Collections
• Lucy Davis (London), Famous Women in the Miniatures at The Wallace Collection
• Catherine Hess (San Marino, California), Up Close and Personal: Portrait Miniatures at The Huntington Art Collections
• Isabel M. Rodríguez-Marco (Madrid), The Collection of Portrait Miniatures and Small Portraits in the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid
• Paul Caffrey (Dublin), European Enamels from the National Gallery of Ireland Collection
• Wladyslaw Maximowicz (Bergamo), The Portrait Miniature in Russian Provincial Collections
• Reetta Kuojärvi-Närhi (Helsinki), Small Treasures in Finland: Paul Sinebrycho as a Miniature Collector
13:00 Lunch
14:15 Miniature Painters
• Halgard Kuhn (Hannover), Peter Boy (c. 1650–1727): Medallions and Miniatures by the Frankfurt Baroque Goldsmith and Enamel Painter as Integrating Parts in Golden Jewellery
• Karen Hearn (London), The ‘Small Oil Colour Pictures’ of Cornelius Johnson (1593–1661)
• Marco Pupillo (Rome), Francesco Antonio Teriggi, a Miniaturist in the Service of Joseph Bonaparte
• Roger and Carmela Arturi Phillips (Ringwood), The True and Flawed Genius of John Engleheart
• Stephen Lloyd (Liverpool), Copying Portraits in Miniature in Regency England: The Work of William Derby (1786–1847) for the 13th Earl of Derby at Knowsley Hall
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The exhibition catalogue is distributed in North America and Japan by The University of Chicago Press (with information on the other five volumes published thus far from The Tansey Foundation). . .
Bernd Pappe and Juliane Schmieglitz-Otten, eds., Miniatures from the Baroque Period in the Tansey Collection / Miniaturen des Barock aus der Sammlung Tansey (Munich: Hirmer Publishers, 2016), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-3777426389, $64.
The Tansey miniatures, now held by the Bomann Museum in Celle, represent one of the most significant collections of European miniature paintings. This volume is the sixth in a series exploring the collection in key periods. Each volume presents new photographic reproductions of the miniatures at actual size and with close-up photographs that show important details. This volume covers portrait miniatures created throughout the Baroque period of the seventeenth-century, with more than one hundred representative works. Essays by specialists in the field offer insights into the artworks, their patrons, and the period. The resulting book is as informative as it is beautiful, a stunning testament to a bygone age and a once-popular form.
Exhibition | Drawings by William Stukeley
On view next month in Spalding:
Drawings by William Stukeley
Ayscoughfee Hall Museum, Spalding, 5–16 October 2016
Presented by the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society
John Stukeley, Stukeley’s House at Holbeach (Spalding Gentlemen’s Society).
These drawings by William Stukeley (1687–1765) have recently been cleaned, conserved, and mounted under a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This is the first time they have ever been displayed in public. They are beautiful in their own right, examples of a drawing skill that used to be common before photography was invented in the nineteenth century.
Stukeley was born in Holbeach, a town he visited frequently as an adult. He was a founder member of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society in 1710 and a noted antiquarian. The drawings on display are important for several reasons, not least for the light they shed on Stukeley’s role in shaping the evolution of garden design in Britain in the eighteenth century.
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