Exhibition | Count Cozio and the Myth of Stradivari
Installation of the exhibition Il conte Cozio e il mito di Stradivari: Capolavori in Piemonte tra ‘700 e ‘800 at Palazzo Madama in Torino (2025).
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Now on view at Palazzo Madama:
Count Cozio and the Myth of Stradivari
Masterpieces in Piedmont between the 18th and 19th Centuries
Palazzo Madama, Torino, 19 September — 23 November 2025
Curated by Giovanni Accornero and Duane Rosengard
On the occasion of the 270th anniversary of the birth of Count Ignazio Alessandro Cozio di Salabue, this exhibition celebrates and sheds light on the legacy of this remarkable collector, born in Casale Monferrato on 14 March 1755. Unlike other collectors of his time, Cozio did not merely acquire valuable stringed instruments. By studying their provenance and construction, he became a true pioneer of what we now call the modern organological approach.
Through his collaboration with the violin maker Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Cozio succeeded in purchasing from Paolo Stradivari twelve of his father Antonio’s violins—including the legendary ‘Messiah’, built in Cremona in 1716 and considered the most famous Stradivari violin in the world. Cozio also acquired the entire contents of Stradivari’s workshop: moulds, tools, cardboard patterns, and drawings. This invaluable heritage—a portion of which is presented in the exhibition—today stands as the historical memory of the Cremonese violin-making tradition.
The exhibition retraces Cozio’s life as a collector through seven sections, displaying 20 stringed instruments of exceptional historical importance, twelve of which once belonged to him. Many of these instruments are being shown to the public for the very first time. Among them is the 1668 violin by Nicolò Amati, inherited from Cozio’s father, which has never before been exhibited. The journey is enriched by rare plucked string instruments, representing a significant part of the production of violin makers active in Turin during the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Archival documents from Cozio’s Carteggio accompany the display, offering new insights into both the Count himself and the musical world in which his passion for string instruments flourished. A special section is dedicated to the Teatro Regio of Turin, featuring the unprecedented display of violins once owned by Piedmontese virtuosos Gaetano Pugnani (Giuseppe Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, 1736) and Giovanni Battista Viotti (Antonio Stradivari, 1718), alongside two rare portraits of the musicians. Along the exhibition path, visitors will encounter the interactive 3D installation “The Shape of Sound,” which allows them to explore a faithful 3D replica of the ‘Salabue-Berta’ violin. The ‘Salabue-Berta’ violin was built in Turin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in 1774 and is also presented in the exhibition. This section is further enhanced by the presence of a bench copy crafted by Luiz Amorim, a tangible bridge between historical mastery and contemporary craftsmanship.
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The Strad adds this bit of information about one of the portraits of Battista Viotti: “the exhibition includes the famous portrait of Viotti by the French portraitist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, marking its first public display. The painting recently resurfaced on the antiques market, having previously been considered lost in the early 20th century.”
Call for Papers | Switzerland between the Sublime and Picturesque
From ArtHist.net:
Switzerland between Sublime and Picturesque
Swiss Drawings and Prints in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Die Schweiz zwischen sublim und pittoresk
Forschungen zur Schweizer Zeichnung und Druckgraphik im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert
Zurich, 5 June 2026
Proposals due by 1 November 2025
Im Rahmen der Ausstellung Gletscher und Stromschnellen. Gezeichnete Schweiz um 1800 in der Graphischen Sammlung der ETH (1.4.–5.7.2026) organisiert das Kunsthistorische Institut der Universität Zürich ein Symposium zu Forschungen zu Zeichnungen und Druckgrafik in der Schweiz im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Die eintägige Tagung findet am Freitag, 5. Juni 2026, in Zürich statt und soll eine Plattform zur Diskussion aktueller Projekte zur Kunst in der Schweiz aus der akademischen Forschung und Museumswelt bieten.
Mit dem aufkommenden Alpentourismus in der zweiten Hälfte 18. Jahrhundert wurde eine intensive Zeichnungspraxis und vielfältige Bildproduktion in der Schweiz entwickelt. Kunstschaffende begleiteten Naturforscher auf Expeditionen, dokumentierten Gletscher, geologische Phänomene und Pflanzen, und lieferten damit unverzichtbares Bildmaterial für wissenschaftliche Publikationen. Dem gegenüber stand die wachsende Nachfrage eines breiteren Reisepublikums nach Bildern der von ihnen bereisten und neu entdeckten Orten in der Schweiz im Sinne von Souvenirs. Geschäftstüchtige Künstler wie Johann Ludwig Aberli und andere aus dem Kreis der Schweizer Kleinmeister sahen darin ihre Chance: Illustrationen zu Reisebeschreibungen und einzelne Veduten in kleinen Formaten, die sich gut transportieren liessen, waren ihre Antwort. Sie prägten nachhaltig das landschaftliche Bild der Schweiz. Gleichzeitig beflügelte diese Bildproduktion die Zusammenarbeit von Künstler:innen, Verleger:innen und Wissenschaftler:innen. Topographisch getreue Naturauffassung und künstlerische Imagination standen in enger Wechselwirkung. Dabei zeigen sich zwei Hauptstrategien: Zum einen wird eine pittoreske Landschafts- und Genremalerei etabliert, die sich besonders durch eine Idealisierung des idyllischen Schweizer Bauernlebens auszeichnet, zum anderen erfährt die Bergwelt eine Erhöhung bis hin zu einer einschüchternden Monumentalität.
Die Kunst der Schweizer Kleinmeister bot in den vergangenen Jahren Anlass für wertvolle Grundlagenforschung. Der Fokus lag dabei grösstenteils auf der Beschäftigung mit den druckgrafischen Erzeugnissen, während der Blick auf das Medium der Zeichnung bisher nur marginal vertieft wurde. Die Zeichnung war im Werkprozess der Künstler:innen jedoch zentral. Aus dem folgend umrissenen Themenspektrum freuen wir uns deshalb besonders über Vortragsvorschläge, die sich mit Zeichnungen sowie Fragen rund um Material und Technik beschäftigen. Die an der Konferenz präsentierten Projekte sollen ein Schlaglicht auf punktuelle Vertiefungen und Spezialisierungen werfen, aber auch breitere Verbindungen zur europäischen Kunst der Zeit aufzeigen. Die Vorträge sollen einerseits die oben beschriebene Kreation eines Schweizbildes und dessen Rezeption beleuchten. Andererseits sollen das Verständnis für die vielfältige künstlerische Arbeit, die Künstlerausbildung, die Netzwerke unter den Kunstschaffenden und die Handelsbeziehungen zu international tätigen Verlegern, Buch- und Kunsthändlern in der Schweiz im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert das Themenspektrum erweitern.
Es dürfen Arbeitsberichte zu aktuell laufenden sowie kürzlich abgeschlossenen Projekten vorgestellt werden. Die Einreichung von interdisziplinären und praxisorientierten Beiträgen, die sich an der Schnittstelle von Forschung, Museumsarbeit und Konservierung/Restaurierung befinden, sind explizit erwünscht.
Die Referate sollen max. 20 Minuten lang sein. Themenvorschläge können in englischer oder deutscher Sprache eingereicht werden. Bitte senden Sie ein Kurzexposé zu Ihrem Beitrag (max. 1 Seite) sowie einen kurzen tabellarischen Lebenslauf in einer einzigen PDF-Datei bis am 1. November 2025 per E-Mail an Linda Vogel, linda.vogel@khist.uzh.ch. Sie werden bis Ende Dezember 2025 über die Teilnahme informiert. Bei Bedarf kann ein Reisekostenzuschuss beantragt werden.
Im Anschluss wird ein Tagungsband publiziert. Die Beiträge sind bis am 1. September 2026 in druckreifer Form einzureichen. Weitere Informationen werden rechtzeitig kommuniziert.
Bei Fragen stehen Ihnen Dr. Michael Matile (michael.matile@uzh.ch) und Linda Vogel MA (linda.vogel@khist.uzh.ch) gerne zur Verfügung.
Exhibition | Squalor City: William Hogarth’s London
From the press release for the exhibition:
Squalor City: William Hogarth’s London
Pruzan Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 23 September — 13 December 2025
Curated by Miya Tokumitsu
William Hogarth, Night, 1738, etching, from the suite of four etchings The Four Times of Day (Davison Art Collection, Wesleyan University, Gift of George W. Davison (BA Wesleyan 1892), 1943.D1.102.4; photo by T. Rodriguez).
Wesleyan University’s Pruzan Art Center will highlight 18th-century British prints by William Hogarth from the Davison Art Collection, the first exhibition focused on the works of Hogarth at Wesleyan in three decades.
A peerless storyteller with great satirical flourish, William Hogarth (1697–1764) brings spectators into the raucous streets and parlors of Georgian London, at once the center of a mighty empire and, in the artist’s view, a den of grifters, social climbers, cynics, and fools. Though his images teem with references to actual personalities and places of 18th-century London, Hogarth’s concerns were more universal than specific. With a balance of humor and sincerity, his art contends with the quandaries of how to hew to a moral path within a competitive, market-driven society; how to build social institutions that serve their communities faithfully; and fundamentally, what kind of society the people of a given time and place ought to build—all questions that demand our attention in the present.
Squalor City draws from the Davison Art Collection’s deep holdings of Hogarth’s prints. It features several complete series by Hogarth, including The Harlot’s Progress, The Rake’s Progress, Marriage à la Mode, and The Four Stages of Cruelty, along with other works by the artist. The exhibition is curated by Miya Tokumitsu, the Donald T. Fallati and Ruth E. Pachman Curator of the Davison Art Collection.
Tokumitsu has found it important to highlight different strengths of the Davison Art Collection across the three previous exhibitions since the Pruzan Art Center opened in February 2024. This, the fourth exhibition in the space, will be the first show in the Goldrach Gallery dedicated wholly to historical art. “As the United States prepares to mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, now seems an apt time to take a measured look at the colonial power from which our state emerged—England during the Georgian era,” Tokumitsu said. “This was William Hogarth’s world, which he documented and critiqued in his art. Many of the issues Hogarth contends with remain of immediate concern.”
Tokumitsu said Hogarth was an engaging storyteller and excelled in creating serial narratives. “While each sheet in his various series is entertaining and meaningful in its own right, viewing Hogarth’s complete series allows spectators to glean the fullness of his creativity and narrative verve,” Tokumitsu said.
Tokumitsu noted that George W. Davison strove to collect canonical works of European graphic art, and that Hogarth is a towering figure in this history. “Hogarth’s prints were instrumental to the tradition of satire and caricature in print, and his influence extends to Francisco de Goya and Honoré Daumier,” Tokumitsu said. “Contemporary artists, including David Hockney, continue to find Hogarth’s work meaningful for their practice.”
The Pruzan Art Center’s Goldrach Gallery is located at 238 Church Street in Middletown, between Wesleyan’s Olin Memorial Library and the Frank Center for Public Affairs. The Davison Art Collection holds more than 25,000 works of art on paper, including prints, photographs, and drawings. The print collection is one of the foremost at a college or university in the United States. The collection supports teaching and learning in many ways, and was established at Wesleyan University with the founding gifts of George Willets Davison, class of 1892.
Exhibition | Le Petit Salon
Now on view at the Middlebury College Museum of Art:
Le Petit Salon: The Journey of an 18th-Century Room from Paris to Vermont
Middlebury College Museum of Art, 8 July — 7 December 2025
The Middlebury College Museum of Art possesses a jewel of French neoclassicism, Le Petit Salon, a delicately painted, paneled room made around 1776 for a Parisian mansion. It was designed by Pierre-Adrien Pâris ( 1745–1819), subsequently the architect of court fêtes for Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. His client was the duc d’Aumont, a renowned collector and patron of the arts, who had the panels installed in his Paris home, now the Hôtel de Crillon on Place de La Concorde. Gifted to Middlebury in 1959, but held in storage since the 1990s, the room will be reassembled for the first time in three decades.
The exhibition follows the journey of Le Petit Salon from Paris to Middlebury via Manhattan, where for fifty years it formed part of the decor of the Bliss family’s Gilded Age mansion. At Middlebury, the Petit Salon became part of Le Château, the college’s French language dorm, itself a fanciful recreation of a 16th-century Norman manoir. The exhibition incorporates Pâris’s 1776 exquisite watercolor elevations of Aumont’s mansion, as well as studies from his long educational sojourn in Rome and Naples. Included in the exhibition are loans from Bowdoin College, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Fine Arts Museum of Besançon.
Gabriel Wick, Le Petit Salon: The Journey of an 18th-Century Room from Paris to Vermont (Saint-Remy-en-l’Eau: Monelle Hayot, 2025), 192 pages, €35.
Exhibition | Valkenburg — Willem de Rooij
Dirk Valkenburg, Study of Cashews, Maracujas, a Tropical Chicken Snake, and an Ameiva Lizard from Suriname, detail, 1706–08, oil on canvas, 40 × 48 cm (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper).
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Now on view at Utrecht’s Centraal Museum:
Valkenburg — Willem de Rooij
Centraal Museum Utrecht, 13 September 2025 — 25 January 2026
Dirk Valkenburg (1675–1721) was one of the first Europeans to depict Indigenous and enslaved people on Surinamese plantations, while also painting hunting still lifes and portraits of Dutch elites. The breadth of his oeuvre makes it particularly relevant for research into colonial image production and the ‘white gaze’. In this installation, Willem de Rooij displays 30 works in idiosyncratic combinations, inviting reflection on how these 18th-century Dutch elites used art to support and legitimise colonial ideology.
Since the early 1990s, Willem de Rooij (b. 1969) has created temporary installations in that explore the politics of representation through appropriation and collaboration. In 2005, he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale and has since exhibited in leading museums worldwide. A distinctive feature of his practice is the reuse and rearrangement of existing images and objects, often based on in-depth art-historical and cultural research. In doing so, he creates new meanings between diverse visual elements. Recent exhibitions include King Vulture (Akademie der Künste, Vienna) and Pierre Verger in Suriname (Portikus, Frankfurt). De Rooij teaches in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Amsterdam and lectures internationally.
The exhibition will be accompanied by the first comprehensive publication on Dirk Valkenburg’s oeuvre: a catalogue raisonné developed in collaboration with the RKD–Netherlands Institute for Art History. This volume, edited by Willem de Rooij and Karwan Fatah-Black—historian and expert in Dutch colonial history, (Leiden University)—includes new essays by international scholars and thinkers from various disciplines, including art history, anthropology, postcolonial, and queer studies.
Print Quarterly, September 2025
David Lucas, after John Constable, A Mill, 1829, mezzotint, 182 × 250 mm
(Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. P.145-1954)
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The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 42.3 (September 2025)
a r t i c l e s
• Elenor Ling and Harry Metcalf, “John Constable’s Working Relationship with David Lucas on the English Landscape Series,” pp. 272–85. This article examines the collaborative partnership between John Constable (1776–1837) and his engraver David Lucas (1802–81) using the mezzotint print series English Landscape as a case study, based particularly on the technical examination of various impressions and plates.
• Niklas Leverenz, “Lithographs from Shanghai of the East Turkestan Engravings, 1890,” pp. 301–06. This short article examines the popularity of the East Turkestan engravings depicting the 1755–60 Qianlong Emperor’s conquest. Leverenz specifically discusses a set of 34 photolithographs printed in 1890 by the photographer Herman Salzwedel (active c. 1877–1904) in Shanghai.
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
Claude Gillot, The Speculator Raised by Fortune to the Highest Degree of Wealth and Abundance, 1710–11, counterproof of engraving, with additions in red chalk, 255 × 220 mm (Paris, Private collection).
J.-Louis Darcis, after Guillaume Lethière, Portrait of Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1795, engraving, platemark 355 × 305 mm, page 440 × 320 mm (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France).
• Dagmar Korbacher, Review of Andaleeb Badiee Banta, Alexa Griest and Theresa Kutasz Christiensen, eds., Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400–1800 (Goose Lane Editions, 2023), pp. 307–10.
• Daniel Godfrey, Review of Gwendoline de Mûelenaere, Early Modern Thesis Prints in the Southern Netherlands: An Iconological Analysis of the Relationship between Art, Science, and Power (Université Catholique de Louvain, 2022), pp. 310–12.
• Meredith M. Hale, Review of Julie Farguson, Visualising Protestant Monarchy: Ceremony, Art and Politics after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714 (The Boydell Press, 2021), pp. 313–15.
• Rena M. Hoisington, Review of Jennifer Tonkovich, Claude Gillot: Satire in the Age of Reason (Paul Holberton, 2023), pp. 315–17.
• Michael Snodin, Review of Orsola Braides, Giovanni Maria Fara, and Alessia Giachery, eds., L’arte di tradurre l’arte: John Baptist Jackson incisore nella Venezia del Settecento (Leo S. Olschki, 2024), pp. 317–19.
• Benito Navarrete Prieto, Review of Ana Hernández Pugh and José Manuel Matilla, Del lapicero al buril. El dibujo para grabar en tiempos de Goya (Museo del Prado, 2023), pp. 320–24.
• Giorgio Marini, Review of Ilaria Miarelli Mariani, Tiziano Casola, Valentina Fraticelli, Vanda Lisanti, and Laura Palombaro, eds., La storia dell’arte illustrata e la stampa di traduzione tra il XVIII e il XIV secolo (Campisano Editore, 2022), pp. 324–28.
• Julie Mellby, Review of Roberta J. M. Olson, Audubon as Artist: A New Look at The Birds of America (Reaktion Books, 2024), pp. 328–29.
• Thea Goldring, Review of Esther Bell and Olivier Meslay, eds., Guillaume Lethière (Clark Art Institute, 2024), pp. 347–52.
Exhibition | William Blake: Burning Bright
William Blake, The Tyger (Plate 42, from Songs of Innocence and of Experience), detail, 1794, color-printed relief etching with hand coloring in watercolor (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).
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Now on view at YCBA:
William Blake: Burning Bright
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 26 August — 30 November 2025
Curated by Elizabeth Wyckoff and Timothy Young
One of the most compelling figures in the history of British art and poetry, William Blake (1757–1827) developed an idiosyncratic worldview during a tumultuous era that witnessed the American and French Revolutions. He expressed his radical perspectives on religious belief, politics, and society through highly original illuminated books, watercolors, paintings, and poetry. This exhibition showcases the Yale Center for British Art’s impressive collection of works by Blake, with special focus on the inventive hand-printed publications that bring to life his poetry and prophecies.
The YCBA’s extensive holdings include Blake’s most innovative and celebrated books, such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789–94) and The First Book of Urizen (1794). Blake’s mastery of watercolor painting and his phenomenal imaginative powers are evident in the one-of-a-kind illustrations for The Poems of Thomas Gray (between 1797 and 1798) and in the only fully hand-colored version of his culminating poem, the 100-page Jerusalem (1804–20). This stunning presentation highlights the artist’s ambitious vision and skill, as well as his unparalleled contributions to art, literature, and spirituality.
Born in London at a time of major social change and upheaval, Blake aspired to be an artist and a poet from a young age. During his apprenticeship, he developed an elegant black-and-white engraving style that he deployed in both commissioned and original prints and book illustrations. He is best known for devising an unorthodox technique to create colorful illuminated books that merged his poetry and his art. His most notable innovation was a method for printing text and image from a single copper plate. Blake’s work was largely unacknowledged during his lifetime, yet today his striking imagery and stirring words are widely celebrated.
Blake, the second volume in the YCBA’s Collection Series, examines the art and methods of William Blake through the lens of one of the great collections of his work. Written by Elizabeth Wyckoff, with an essay by Sarah T. Weston, the book features exquisite reproductions of his paintings, watercolors, prints, and illustrated books, including the only hand-colored copy of his epic poem Jerusalem.
Elizabeth Wyckoff, Blake (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2025), 136 pages, ISBN: 978-0300284577, $40. With an essay by Sarah Weston.
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Programs exploring multiple dimensions of Blake’s life, work, and legacy will accompany the exhibition. Please visit britishart.yale.edu for the most up-to-date information.
Opening Celebration
Thursday, September 4, 4pm
A conversation with exhibition curators Elizabeth Wyckoff, Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Timothy Young, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, followed by gallery talks and a reception.
The Enduring Influence of William Blake
Thursday, October 30, 5pm
Author John Higgs will talk with Timothy Young, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.
Songs from the Imagination: Music Inspired by the Poetry of William Blake
Thursday, November 20, 5pm
Yale Voxtet, the Institute of Sacred Music’s select group of graduate student singers, will perform in the Library Court.
Create Community: Imagined Worlds in the Art of William Blake and Hew Locke
Thursdays, October 2, 16, and 23, 5:30pm
This three-part workshop will explore William Blake: Burning Bright and Hew Locke: Passages through a close investigation of material and process. Enrollment is limited to twelve people, and preregistration is required.
Curator Tours
Thursdays, September 18, October 30, and November 20, 4pm
Docent Tours
Saturdays, 3pm
Exhibition | Nusantara: Six Centuries of Indonesian Textiles
Ceremonial Weaving (Palu), late 18th–early 19th century, cotton, warp-faced plain weave, warp ikat, made in Sulawesi, Indonesia, 195 × 154 cm (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Robert J. Holmgren and Anita E. Spertus, 2017.48.4).
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From the press release for the exhibition:
Nusantara: Six Centuries of Indonesian Textiles
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 12 September 2025 — 11 January 2026
Organized by Ruth Barnes with the assistance of Arielle Winnik
Celebrating the largest collection of Indonesian textiles in the Western Hemisphere
The Yale University Art Gallery is pleased to present Nusantara: Six Centuries of Indonesian Textiles, a sweeping exhibition that celebrates the elaborate textile heritage of Indonesia and explores the ancient interisland links found in this vast maritime region. Presenting more than 100 examples of unparalleled craftsmanship and artistic innovation, the exhibition offers a singular opportunity to dive deep into the cultural and historical significance of one of the finest collections of Indonesian textiles in the Western Hemisphere.
The wide array of textiles from the 14th to the 20th century displayed in the exhibition are drawn from the Gallery’s holdings. Central to the Gallery’s Department of Indo-Pacific Art, the textile collection boasts approximately 1200 examples from Indonesia and Sarawak (Malaysia). Significant pieces include over 600 textiles originally acquired by Robert J. Holmgren and Anita E. Spertus, later presented to the Gallery by Thomas Jaffe. This group features weaving from maritime Southeast Asia, where textiles are not just artistic creations but serve an important role in ceremonies and rituals. They also embody gender roles and social status, reflecting the wearer’s identity and heritage.
The Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Sulawesi hold an important place within the Gallery’s collection, counting more than 200 and 100 examples each, respectively. The remainder of the collection encompasses textiles from regions throughout Indonesia, showcasing the country’s rich cultural diversity.
Indonesia has historically been at the crossroads of major trade routes, resulting in a blend of Indigenous and foreign influences. In the 10th and 11th centuries, Indonesian textiles began to show the Influence of Indian designs. The impact of Chinese and later Islamic cultures is also evident, yet these borrowed motifs were transformed into distinctively Indonesian traditions. Drawing its title from the original name for the Indonesian archipelago, Nusantara, the exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to view the full range of rich imagery and technical mastery of this remarkable art form.
The exhibition is made possible by Hunter Thompson, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and the Robert Lehman, B.A. 1913, Endowment Fund. It was organized by Ruth Barnes, the Thomas Jaffe Curator of Indo-Pacific Art, with the assistance of Arielle Winnik, the Donna Torrance Assistant Curator of Indo-Pacific Art.
Exhibition | Thomas Patch and the British Grand Tour
Opening this week at the Lewis Walpole Library:
Caricatures, Campagna, and Connoisseurs:
Thomas Patch and the British Grand Tour in Eighteenth-Century Italy
Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT, 10 September — 15 December 2025
Curated by Hugh Belsey
Known primarily as a caricature artist, Thomas Patch (1725–1782) in fact engaged in a much wider array of activities. He was a landscape painter, experimental printmaker, and a dealer of antiquities and old master paintings. He was also among the first scholars of early Renaissance art. This exhibition will explore the many aspects of Patch’s art, life, and associations with the British community of diplomats, tourists, artists, and collectors in Italy.
Hugh Belsey, a graduate of the Universities of Manchester and Birmingham, has lectured to groups in Europe, America, Australia, and Britain. For twenty-three years he was the curator of Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury (UK) where he formed one of the largest collections of the artist’s paintings and drawings. In 2004 he was awarded an MBE in recognition of his museum work. His long-awaited catalogue of portraits by Thomas Gainsborough was published by Yale University Press in February 2019, and was awarded the William W.B. Berger Prize for British Art History in 2020.
The exhibition brochure is available at the Library’s website»
Exhibition Lecture | Caricatures, Campagna, and Connoisseurs
Presented by Hugh Belsey, guest curator and independent scholar
Thursday, October 16, 7pm
Space is limited and advance registration is required.
Exhibition | Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750
Opening this month at the NMWA:
Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, 26 September 2025 — 11 January 2026
Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, 7 March — 31 May 2026
Curated by Virginia Treanor and Frederica Van Dam
Maria Schalcken, Self-Portrait in Her Studio, ca. 1680, oil on panel, 17 × 13 inches (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2019.2094).
Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 showcases a broad range of work by more than forty Dutch and Flemish women artists, including Gesina ter Borch, Maria Faydherbe, Anna Maria de Koker, Judith Leyster, Magdalena van de Passe, Clara Peeters, Rachel Ruysch, Maria Tassaert, Jeanne Vergouwen, Michaelina Wautier, and more. Presenting an array of paintings, lace, prints, paper cuttings, embroidery, and sculpture, this exhibition draws on recent scholarship to demonstrate that a full view of women’s contributions to the artistic economy is essential to understanding Dutch and Flemish visual culture of the period.
Women were involved in virtually every aspect of artistic production in the Low Countries during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. During this period, colonial exploitation and the international slave trade enriched Europe’s upper and middle classes, fueling demand for art and other luxuries. From celebrated painters who excelled in a male-dominated field to unsung women who toiled making some of the most expensive lace of the day, to wealthy patrons who shaped collecting practices, women created the very fabric of the visual culture of the era. Within a thematic presentation that considers the intertwined influences of status, family, and social expectations on a woman’s training and career choices, this exhibition demonstrates the many ways in which women of all classes contributed to the booming artistic economy of the day. Whether their work was circulated within aristocratic social circles, sold on the open market, or commissioned by patrons, women shaped and molded the world around them from Antwerp to Amsterdam.
Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 is organized in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium.
The press release is available here»
Virginia Treanor and Frederica Van Dam, eds., Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600–1750 (Veurne: Hannibal Books, 2025), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-9493416277, $60. With contributions by Klara Alen, Frima Fox Hofrichter, Elena Kanagy-Loux, Judith Noorman, Catherine Powell-Warren, Inez De Prekel, Marleen Puyenbroek, Oana Stan and Katie Altizer Takata. Available in English and Dutch editions.
Frederica Van Dam is the Curator of Old Masters at MSK Ghent. Specializing in early modern Flemish painting, Dr. Van Dam co-curated Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution and led the first monographic show on Theodoor Rombouts (1597–1637). Virginia Treanor is the Senior Curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She earned her PhD in 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art from the University of Maryland. Since joining NMWA in 2012, Dr. Treanor has curated numerous exhibitions, including multiple installments of the Women to Watch series.
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