Enfilade

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 It is believed to have been sold for its silver value by King George III when it was seen as outdated.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.

Ancestral Great Lakes artist, Quilled headband, mid-18th century; hide, birchbark, porcupine quills, natural dyes, and linen thread; 6 × 32 × 9 cm (Toledo Museum of Art, purchased with funds from The Joseph and Kathleen Magliochetti Fund, 2023.375).

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From the press release for the exhibition (the Rachel Ruysch show will also be on view at TMA starting April 12). . .

Return to Turtle Island: Indigenous Nation-Building in the Eighteenth Century

Toledo Museum of Art, 1 March — 29 June 2025

Curated by Johanna Minich, with the Great Lakes Research Alliance at the University of Toronto

The Toledo Museum of Art is pleased to present Return to Turtle Island: Indigenous Nation-Building in the Eighteenth Century, an exhibition that showcases recently acquired Eastern Woodlands objects and offers a rare exploration of early Indigenous artistry and diplomacy. This will be the first time these works, acquired by TMA in 2023, will be shown together by a public institution. The exhibition honors the remarkable journey of these cultural emissaries and welcomes them home.

Turtle Island, a name given to the North American continent by Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and other Indigenous peoples, references the origin story of a landmass built on the back of a great turtle, symbolizing the interconnectedness of land and life.

Ancestral Great Lakes artist, Quilled and beaded finger-woven pouch, mid-18th century; wool, birchbark, glass beads, silk, porcupine quills, natural dyes, tin, deer fur, and hide, 38 × 38 × 1 cm (Toledo Museum of Art, purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 2023.357).

“Return to Turtle Island offers a unique window into a period of dynamic interaction between Indigenous and European communities in North America,” said Johanna Minich, the museum’s consulting curator of Native American art. “These objects represent far more than material goods—they serve as symbols of artistic knowledge, cultural exchange, and diplomacy that shaped early American history.”

Featuring 24 objects, including quillwork, beadwork, moosehair embroidery, and birchbark artforms acquired by TMA in 2023, this exhibition examines how Indigenous nations used these objects as tools of cultural expression, political alliance, and commerce during a time of dynamic interaction with European settlers.

“This exhibition exemplifies the Toledo Museum of Art’s strategy: That a relentless commitment to quality results in global and inclusive art history.” said Adam Levine, Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey Director, President, and CEO. “By showcasing these extraordinary objects, we are fostering a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of cultures and their enduring contributions to our shared history.”

The exhibition highlights the artistic skills of women and how their creative output was an integral part of nation-building, diplomacy, and economic sustainability. Indigenous leaders exchanged gifts and knowledge with their French and English allies during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, which had lasting implications for both Native and European communities.

Highlights include
• A quilled and beaded finger-woven pouch, a testament to the artistry of its makers.
• Beaded and quilled fingerwoven pictorial garter pendants, symbolizing the significance of proper attire when forming alliances.
• A birchbark model canoe and three dolls with assorted equipment, showcasing the cross-cultural artistic exchanges of the era.

The objects were originally collected through gift exchanges and purchases during the 18th century by Scottish officer Alexander Farquharson during his military travels through New York and Canada. For centuries, they remained in his family estate in Scotland before returning to North America in the early 2000s. TMA acquired the collection in late 2023.

To ensure the ethical conservation and presentation of these objects, TMA is collaborating with the Great Lakes Research Alliance (GRASAC) at the University of Toronto. Drawing on a network of Indigenous scholars and knowledge keepers, GRASAC provides guidance on the care and contextual display of these significant artworks.

“This collaboration with GRASAC ensures that the legacy of these objects is preserved with the utmost respect,” Minich added. “By working with descendants of their makers, we honor the original purpose of these works: sharing knowledge and strengthening relationships.”

Return to Turtle Island: Indigenous Nation-Building in the Eighteenth Century is made possible with the generous support of Presenting Sponsors Susan and Tom Palmer; Season Sponsors Taylor Automotive Family and the Rita Barbour Kern Foundation; Platinum Sponsor AGC of Northwest Ohio; and additional funding from the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.