Exhibition | Simeon De Witt: Mapping the Revolution
From the exhibition press release (23 September 2015). . .
Simeon De Witt: Mapping the Revolution
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1 September 2015 — 31 July 2016
Curated by Jenevieve DeLosSantos with Donna Gustafson
Ezra Ames, Portrait of Simeon De Witt, 1804 (Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers, photo by Jack Abraham)
When General George Washington led troops into colonial New Jersey during the early months of the Revolutionary War, he did not have access to an app—or even adequate drawings on paper—to guide him across the region. But in 1776, Simeon De Witt (1756–1834), the sole graduate that year from Rutgers (then known as Queen’s College), joined the Continental Army to fight the British. As a signature project of Rutgers 250, the year-long celebration of the university’s founding in 1766, the Zimmerli Art Museum presents Simeon De Witt: Mapping the Revolution, on view through July 31, 2016. The exhibition honors De Witt’s crucial role during the Revolutionary War and, throughout the rest of his life, documenting the geography of New York State (he was a native of Ulster County). It also explores the practice of 18th-century cartography through his original maps and tools.
“As we get ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Rutgers in 2016, this exhibition reminds us of the important role that New Jersey and its citizens played in the colonies’ efforts to win their independence and form a new democracy,” observed Jenevieve DeLosSantos, who organized the exhibition while working as a graduate curatorial assistant at the Zimmerli and recently received her PhD in Art History from Rutgers. By 1780, De Witt was named surveyor general and sketched maps of New Jersey’s uncharted land, working directly under George Washington. His topographic renderings were a valuable resource to the Commander-in-Chief as he navigated the terrain and evaded British forces.
After the successful conclusion of the war, De Witt built a career with accomplishments that aided new Americans who were instrumental in the early stages of westward expansion. In 1784, De Witt was appointed Surveyor General of the State of New York, a post he held for 50 years. In 1802, he drafted the first large-scale map of the state to be printed. It was the most detailed to date—depicting newly established cities, towns, and county lines—and distributed to salons and offices as an accurate reference of the Empire State’s geography. An 1804 version of this map is on view, on loan from Special Collections and University Archives at Rutgers University Libraries. The map is accompanied by several of De Witt’s original drafting tools, on loan from the Albany Institute of History and Art, and a field compass commonly used during the era, also from Special Collections. These historical objects provide insight into the resources available to De Witt at the time.
The Zimmerli’s 1804 three-quarter length portrait of De Witt in a stately interior captures him in the prime of his life. He thoughtfully gazes beyond the frame of the image, surrounded by the tools of his profession: a telescope, a globe. De Witt’s hand rests on a table, with the top portion of the aforementioned map of New York State visible. That it was painted by the prominent portrait artist Ezra Ames (1768–1836), who lived in Albany, New York, indicates De Witt’s status as an accomplished and respected member of society. More than 700 portraits have been attributed to Ames; among them, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and the first governor of New York, George Clinton.
The selection includes other items that indicate the popularity of Revolution-era subjects in fine art and popular culture during the nation’s early decades. The Zimmerli’s recently cleaned and conserved portrait of George Washington was painted by Jane Stuart around 1840. The daughter of the renowned portraitist Gilbert Stuart, she opened her own studio after his death in 1828 and sold her work; especially popular were replicas of her father’s portrait of the country’s first president. Also on view are prints that depict important battles in New Jersey during America’s War for Independence, including a map by English engraver William Faden that depicts the positions of Washington’s troops in New Jersey and Pennsylvania at the beginning of the war.
Simeon De Witt: Mapping the Revolution is organized by Jenevieve DeLosSantos, PhD Art History, Rutgers University and Graduate Curatorial Assistant, 2013–2015, with the assistance of Donna Gustafson, Curator of American Art and Mellon Director for Academic Programs. The exhibition is a signature project of Rutgers 250, a yearlong celebration beginning November 10, 2015, to mark the university’s 250th anniversary. Complete information and a list of related events can be found at 250.rutgers.edu.
The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum houses more than 60,000 works of art, ranging from ancient to contemporary art. The permanent collection features particularly rich holdings in 19th-century French art; Russian art from icons to the avant-garde; Soviet nonconformist art from the Dodge Collection; and American art with notable holdings of prints. In addition, small groups of antiquities, old master paintings, as well as art inspired by Japan and original illustrations for children’s books, provide representative examples of the museum’s research and teaching message at Rutgers. One of the largest and most distinguished university-based art museums in the nation, the Zimmerli is located on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Established in 1766, Rutgers is America’s eighth oldest institution of higher learning and a premier public research university.
Exhibition | The Italian Travels of Louis-François Cassas
Opening in November at the Musée des Beaux-Arts:
Voyages en Italie de Louis-François Cassas (1756–1827)
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Tours, 21 November 2015 — 22 February 2016
Louis-François Cassas compte parmi les grands artistes voyageurs du XVIIIe siècle. L’exposition dévoile ici les dessins de l’artiste réalisés lors de son Grand Tour en Italie. Cette manifestation s’inscrit dans le thème transversal et séduisant du voyage et de l’Italie dans toute sa diversité archéologique, urbaine, insulaire… à la fin du Siècle des Lumières. La découverte récente de nombreux dessins inédits en Angleterre est venue confirmer l’opportunité de cette exposition : cinquante dessins prêtés par le National Trust et provenant de la collection du marquis de Bristol à Ickworth (Suffolk) seront montrés pour la première fois en France.
L’exposition s’articulera autour des deux grands voyages en Italie de L.-F. Cassas et de ses différents mécènes tous grands amateurs et collectionneurs, à l’origine de l’évolution de la carrière de l’artiste. Parmi les 116 œuvres exposées figurent des prêts de musées français et étrangers prestigieux : Paris : Bibliothèque Mazarine, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Fondation Custodia / New-York : Metropolitan Museum of Art / Londres : Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Trust : Ickworth (Suffolk), The Bristol Collection / Cologne : Wallraf-Richartz Museum / Vienne : Albertina Museum, et de collections privées.
Le premier voyage en Italie, 1778–83
Le Grand Tour pour le plaisir de dessiner
Grâce au mécénat du duc de Chabot, Cassas découvre l’Italie et peut obtenir une chambre d’externe à l’Académie de France à Rome. Seront évoquées les grandes étapes de cette pérégrination : Lyon, Genève, les Alpes, Bologne, Parme, Rome, Naples, Paestum… Invité à Venise au printemps 1782, puis à Trieste par le Baron Pittoni, Cassas travaille alors pour l’Empereur Joseph II jusqu’aux frontières de l’Empire ottoman. À l’automne 1782, Cassas part en Sicile travailler pour l’abbé de Saint-Non. Ses vues de Messine, de Catane, du Val di Noto… seront particulièrement remarquées.
Le second voyage en Italie, 1787–92
Les années romaines d’un artiste indépendant
Le nouveau mécène de Cassas, le comte de Choiseul- Gouffier (1752–1817), ambassadeur de France à Constantinople, permit à l’artiste de découvrir les provinces de l’Empire ottoman de 1784 à 1786. Désormais c’est dans son atelier à Rome, Piazza di Spagna, que Cassas accroche ses aquarelles de Palmyre, du Caire, de la Corne d’Or, de Chypre… qui suscitent l’admiration, notamment celle de Goethe, et des amateurs qui font le Grand Tour. Trois maquettes de monuments romains, provenant de la collection de Cassas, restaurées pour l’exposition : le Temple de la Fortune Virile, le Temple de Tivoli et l’Arc de Constantin, seront exceptionnellement présentées.
The catalogue will be available from Artbooks.com:
Sophie Join-Lambert, Louis-François Cassas (1756–1827): Ses Voyages en Italie et Ses Mécènes (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2015), 280 pages, ISBN: 978-8836631636, $65.
Exhibition | Bawdy Bodies: Satires of Unruly Women
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Opening next week at The Lewis Walpole Library:
Bawdy Bodies: Satires of Unruly Women
The Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT, 24 September 2015 — 26 February 2016
Curated by Hope Saska and Cynthia Roman with contributions by Jill Campbell
Characterized by comically grotesque figures performing lewd and vulgar actions, bawdy humor provided a poignant vehicle to target a variety of political and social issues in eighteenth-century Britain. Bawdy Bodies: Satires of Unruly Women explores the deployment of this humorous but derisive strategy toward the regulation of female behavior. The exhibition will present satirical images of women from a range of subject categories including the royal family, aging members of fashionable society, disparaged mothers, political activists, gamblers, medical wonders, artists, performers, and intellectuals.
The exhibition is co-curated by Hope Saska, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Art Museum of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Cynthia Roman, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings at the Lewis Walpole Library, with contributions by Yale Professor of English Jill Campbell. It will be on view at the Lewis Walpole Library, 154 Main Street, Farmington, Connecticut, on Wednesdays from 2:00 to 4:30 pm and by appointment.
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P U B L I C L E C T U R E
Amelia Rauser | Rock, Paper, Scissors: Dimensionality and
Neoclassical Aesthetics in the Art and Fashion of the 1790s
28 October 2015, 5:30 pm, Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall
In the 1790s, women dressed in imitation of antique statuary. Yet most devotees of the style had never seen the originals they emulated; rather, they were inspired by print representations of them, and this process of translation—from three-dimensional sculptures into two-dimensional paper representations and then back into fabric gowns swathed around moving bodies—created several interesting effects, including a pronounced emphasis on contour. This lecture will discuss the way 1790s fashionable dress was mediated by print, and connect this phenomenon to the contemporary vogue for John Flaxman’s outline drawings and other aspects of neoclassical taste.
Amelia Rauser is the author of Caricature Unmasked: Irony, Authenticity, and Individualism in Eighteenth-Century English Prints (2008). Her new project, “Living Statues: Neoclassical Culture and Fashionable Dress in the 1790s—London, Paris, Naples,” is a study of the radical style of undress in the 1790s and its connection to contemporary aesthetic, political, and scientific thought. Dr. Rauser is Professor of Art History at Franklin & Marshall College.
G R A D U A T E S T U D E N T W O R K S H O P S
Limited enrollment by application
Jill Campbell (Yale University) | ‘We are an injured body’: Collectivity and the Female Body
2 October 2015, Lewis Walpole Library
Amelia Rauser (Frankin & Marshall College) | Expressive Bodies in Eighteenth-Century Satirical Prints
30 October 2015, Lewis Walpole Library
Details for all of these events can be found here»
Exhibition | Aristocratic Life in the Eighteenth Century
From the Musée National de la Renaissance:
Être et paraître, la vie aristocratique au XVIIIe siècle:
Trésors cachés du Musée national de la Renaissance
Château de La Roche Guyon, 11 April — 29 November 2015
Curated by Muriel Barbier
Sortis exceptionnellement des réserves du musée national de la Renaissance, des objets d’art du XVIIIe siècle retracent en dix tableaux les thèmes majeurs de la vie aristocratique à l’époque des Lumières. Au travers de quatre-vingt-cinq oeuvres, le quotidien de l’aristocratie du XVIIIe siècle revit dans les grands salons du château de La Roche Guyon ornés de leurs lambris d’époque et dépourvus de mobilier.
Une journée ordinaire dans une demeure seigneuriale au siècle des Lumières. L’exposition, articulée en dix vitrines, suit le déroulement d’une journée de la haute société des Lumières, en abordant les thèmes suivants : toilette et soins, parure et élégance, arts de la table, lecture et écriture, jeux et divertissements, priser et fumer, ouvrages de dames, prières et dévotions, armes d’apparât et chasse. Cette présentation, entend faire comprendre la fonction de ces objets, la préciosité de leur décor et leur utilisation. Elle propose une autre approche des arts décoratifs non fondée sur l’évolution des stymes et des techniques mais sur l’histoire des civilisations et des moeurs.
Muriel Barbier, Être et paraître: La vie aristocratique au XVIIIe siècle (Artlys, 2015), 142 pages, ISBN: 978-2854956108, 18€.
Bénédicte Bonnet Saint-Georges reviewed the exhibition for La Tribune de l’Art (21 August 2015).
Exhibition | Le Roi est Mort!
As reported by the AFP:
To mark the 300th anniversary of the Sun King’s death on Tuesday, the Palace of Versailles turned to modern-day town crier Twitter to relay his slow and agonising demise from gangrene. “Breaking News. Louis XIV passed away,” the palace said from its account @CVersailles at 0615 GMT (8:15am) on Tuesday, after livetweeting the king’s illness as if it were taking place today.
The hashtag #leroiestmort (“the king is dead” in English) was rolled out to mark the anniversary of his death at 76 years old on September 1, 1715. With 72 years on the throne, king Louis XIV was the longest-reigning monarch in European history, overseeing a period of glory in France in which he built the glittering palace west of Paris. . . .
The tweets will continue up to his funeral (the schedule is available here), all as a perfect build-up to the exhibition at Versailles, which opens next month:
The King Is Dead!
Châteaux de Versailles, 27 October 2015 — 21 February 2016
Curated by Béatrix Saule, Hélène Delalex, and Gérard Sabatier
Scenography by Pier Luigi Pizzi
The death of the king, both as a man and an institution, was a key moment in the construction of the public perception of the monarchy, combining religion (the death of a Christian) and politics (the death and resurrection of the king, who never dies). From his final death throes to the burial it resembled a performance, a great Baroque show of huge significance to courtly society, which was affected more than ever by it.
The exhibition—the first on the subject—will look back on the details of the death, autopsy and funeral of Louis XIV, which strangely are little known, and to situate them in the funeral context of European sovereigns from the Renaissance period to the Enlightenment. It also discusses the survival—often paradoxical—of this ritual from the French Revolution to the contemporary era.
The exhibition will bring together works of art and historical documents of major importance from the largest French and foreign collections, including ceremonial portraits, funeral statues and effigies, gravestones, the manuscript for the account of the autopsy of the king, coins from the Saint-Denis Treasury, gold medals, emblems and ornaments, and furniture of funeral liturgy. Some of the pieces on display have never been exhibited in public.
Exhibiting these masterpieces has required grand scenography effects. Scenographer Pier Luigi Pizzi was asked by Béatrix Saule, the exhibition’s Head Curator, to design the layout for this great Baroque show. Across the nine sections, visitors will discover a veritable funeral opera conducted by the artist.
The subject of the exhibition will not fail to surprise, and is scientifically rigorous. It is based on an international research program on royal ceremonies in European Courts, undertaken over the course of three years at the Palace of Versailles Research Centre under the leadership of Professors Gérard Sabatier and Mark Hengerer and with the participation of a team representing a range of disciplines, from coroners to liturgists, from medieval to contemporary historians.
Curated by Béatrix Saule, Director and Head Curator of the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, assisted by Hélène Delalex Conservation Officer at the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, and Gérard Sabatier, Emeritus Professor. Scenography by Pier Luigi Pizzi.
Additional information is available at the exhibition website.
Exhibition | De Versailles à La Motte Tilly: L’abbé Terray
Press release for the exhibition now on view at the Château de La Motte Tilly:
De Versailles à La Motte Tilly: L’abbé Terray, Ministre de Louis XV
Château de La Motte Tilly, 29 May — 20 September 2015
Curated by Gwenola Firmin and Vincent Bastien
Après Sacres Royaux, de Louis XIII à Charles X au palais du Tau à Reims et Le salon de George Sand à Nohant, en 2014, la troisième exposition du partenariat entre le Centre des monuments nationaux et le château de Versailles se tiendra au château de La Motte Tilly (Aube) du 29 mai au 20 septembre 2015. Cette nouvelle exposition conjointe est consacrée à l’abbé Joseph Marie Terray (1715–1778), ministre des finances de Louis XV, à l’occasion du tricentenaire de sa naissance.
L’abbé Terray et La Motte Tilly
Joseph Marie Terray bénéficie, à ses début, de l’héritage financier de son oncle, premier médecin de la princesse Palatine, belle-sœur de Louis XIV. Nommé abbé de Notre-Dame de Molesme, au diocèse de Langres, en octobre 1764, il devient, le 23 décembre 1769, contrôleur général des Finances de Louis XV. Après le renvoi du duc de Choiseul en 1770, il est l’un des hommes forts du ministère dit du Triumvirat. Incarnation de l’ascension sociale du XVIIIe siècle, talentueux réformateur, grand homme de l’histoire économique et politique du règne de Louis XV, l’abbé Terray, malgré l’appui constant de Madame de Pompadour puis de Madame Du Barry, est très impopulaire. Il mène en effet une politique financière, certes efficace et progressiste, mais aussi brutale et autoritaire. Le ministre occupe finalement la prestigieuse charge de directeur des Bâtiments du Roi en août 1773. Mais, un an plus tard, il démissionne avec l’avènement de Louis XVI et se retire à La Motte Tilly, tout en rêvant secrètement d’être rappelé au gouvernement.
Son domaine de La Motte Tilly, parfait exemple de l’architecture du XVIIIe siècle, est sa résidence de 1748 à son décès en 1778. La demeure et son parc, comprenant aujourd’hui près de 1080 hectares, témoignent d’un certain art de vivre au Siècle des Lumières. L’actuel château, élevé à partir de 1755, est l’œuvre de l’architecte parisien François-Nicolas Lancret (1717–1789), le neveu du célèbre peintre de scènes galantes, Nicolas Lancret. L’implication de l’abbé Terray dans les différents chantiers de sa demeure de plaisance s’amplifie à mesure que sa carrière politique prend de l’importance.
L’exposition
Présentée dans les anciens appartements du ministre, l’exposition De Versailles à La Motte Tilly. L’abbé Terray, ministre de Louis XV retrace l’ascension et la vie du maître des lieux, personnage historique parmi les plus influents de la fin du règne de Louis XV mais aussi parmi les plus controversés du XVIIIe siècle. Réunis pour la première fois, des documents d’archives, des objets d’art précieux, des dessins et des tableaux contribuent également à mettre en lumière le domaine de La Motte Tilly, chef-d’œuvre architectural trop longtemps ignoré. L’exposition est enfin l’occasion unique de présenter un somptueux portrait conservé dans les collections versaillaises : l’effigie officielle du ministre tout puissant peinte par Alexandre Roslin à la demande de Terray en 1773. Ce dernier y est figuré au sommet de sa gloire.
L’exposition est rendue possible grâce au prêt d’œuvres des collections du musée national de Versailles et de Trianon, ainsi qu’aux concours généreux du musée du Louvre, de l’abbaye de Chaalis, de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, de la Bibliothèque municipale de Versailles, des Archives nationales, des Archives départementales de l’Aube et de plusieurs collections particulières.
Ce parcours historique est conçu par Gwenola Firmin, conservateur, en charge des peintures du XVIIIe siècle au château de Versailles, assistée de Vincent Bastien, docteur en Histoire de l’art, chargé de mission.
Le partenariat entre le CMN et le château de Versailles
Le partenariat établie en 2013 entre le CMN et le château de Versailles instaure un dialogue entre des collections trop souvent méconnues et des hauts lieux du patrimoine national. Des expositions temporaires conjointes permettent aux deux institutions d’unir leurs ressources afin de donner au plus grand nombre la possibilité de découvrir ou de redécouvrir quelques pages de l’Histoire de France. En 2014, les expositions Sacres royaux, de Louis XIII à Charles X au palais du Tau à Reims et Le salon de George Sand au domaine de Nohant ont attiré au total près de 76 000 visiteurs.
Gwenola Firmin and Vincent Bastien, De Versailles à la Motte Tilly: L’abbé Terray, Ministre de Louis XV (éditions du Patrimoine / Centre des Monuments Nationaux, 2015), 48 pages, ISBN: 978-2757704714, 12€.
The full dossier de presse is available as a PDF file here»
Galleries Reopen at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum
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From the Bavarian National Museum:
Barock und Rokoko
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich, open from 9 July 2015
Seit dem 9. Juli 2015 ist der zum Englischen Garten gelegene Westflügel des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums nach mehrjähriger Sanierung wieder für den Besucher zugänglich. Auf rund 1500 m² werden mehr als 600 einzigartige kunst- und kulturhistorische Glanzstücke des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts in neuem Licht präsentiert. Skulpturen, Möbel, Gemälde, Uhren, Porzellan, Goldschmiedewerke, Prunkwaffen und Tapisserien künden von Vorlieben, Alltag und Entwicklungen jener Epoche.
Im Hauptgeschoss des Museums wird damit der kunst- und kulturhistorische Rundgang fortgesetzt, der sich in erster Linie an bayerischen Kurfürsten Maximilian I., Ferdinand Maria, Max Emanuel und Karl Albrecht und ihren Kunstvorlieben orientiert. Erstmals präsentiert sind große Teile der Kunstsammlung des Kurfürsten Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz, dessen Kunstschätze aus Düsseldorf und Mannheim um 1800 nach München kamen. Bei den nun neu ausgestellten Werken handelt es sich um einen Großteil der Objekte, die das Haus Wittelsbach dem Museum kurz nach dessen Gründung 1855 übergeben hat.
Ein eigener Saal widmet sich Facetten des barocken Gartens und dem von der Natur inspirierten Kunsthandwerk. Ein weiterer Raum, das sogenannte Landshuter Zimmer aus dem Stadtpalais der Freiherren von Stromer in Landshut, veranschaulicht die Wohnwelt des Adels im 18. Jahrhundert. Einen weiteren Schwerpunkt der Sammlung bilden schließlich die Skulpturen des Barock und Rokoko, allen voran die Werke von Johann Baptist Straub und Ignaz Günther.
In der Vermittlung beschreitet das Museum neue Wege. Medienstationen mit Touchscreens ermöglichen den Besuchern spannende Blicke hinter verschlossene Schranktüren oder auf tickende Uhrwerke.
Additional images are available here»
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The catalogue, published by Sieveking Verlag, is available from Artbooks.com:
Renate Eikelmannn, Barock und Rokoko: Meisterwerke des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (München: Sieveking Verlag, 2015), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-3944874364, 25€ / $45.
The collections of Baroque and Rococo art at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum are among the most important in Europe. Many of the works created by the international artists and craftsmen represented at the museum are outstanding achievements. Sculptures, furniture, paintings, clocks, porcelain objects, goldsmith work, sumptuously decorated weapons, and tapestries bear witness to the tastes and trends of the era. The succession of rulers who had a profound impact on Bavaria between the Thirty Years’ War and the French Revolution provides the chronological focus for this catalogue of selected works: Bavarian electors Maximilian I, Ferdinand Maria, Max Emanuel, and Karl Albrecht, as well as Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm, whose art collection arrived in Munich by way of family succession. The publication also includes a look at the domestic environments of the nobility and the eighteenth-century passion for gardens. Baroque and Rococo sculptures constitute a cornerstone of the museum’s collections, especially works by Munich sculptors Johann Baptist Straub and Ignaz Günther. Their masterpieces, produced for churches and monasteries as well as for aristocratic patrons, are now considered quintessential examples of southern German Rococo.
Display | American Made
John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), The Western Brothers, 1783, oil on canvas, 50 × 62 inches (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens)
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From The Huntington:
American Made: Selections from The Huntington’s Early American Art Collections
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Gardens, San Marino, CA, 5 September 2015 — 4 January 2016
While a portion of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art is closed for expansion and reinstallation, 25 selections from among the earliest works in the collection are spotlighted in a temporary installation, focusing on masterworks in various media that were made between 1700 and 1868. Paintings by the most influential American artists of the period, such as Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and Frederick Edwin Church, are joined by representative furniture, silver, and sculpture from the colonial, Federal, and Civil War periods.
Exhibition | Canaletto’s Vedute Prints
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), La Libreria. V. (The Library,
Venice), ca. 1740–44. Etching on laid paper (Hood Museum of Art,
Dartmouth College: Gift of Jean Weil in memory of Adolph Weil Jr.,
Class of 1935, PR.997.5.37)
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Press release (13 July 2015) for the exhibition now on view at the Hood Museum of Art:
Canaletto’s Vedute Prints
Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, 10 January — 8 March 2015
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1 August — 6 December 2015
Beginning August 1, 2015, the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, will present an exhibition of thirty etchings from the museum’s collection that represent a nearly complete set of Venice-inspired prints by Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768). Known as Canaletto, the artist is famous for his luminous, sweeping views of the Grand Canal and Piazza San Marco. The Vedute, a series of prints he made in the early 1740s, reveal another, often more modest, side of Venice. These scenes are intimate in scale and depict an extraordinary variety of subject matter, encompassing both real and imaginary views, from urban portraits to bucolic landscapes. This exhibition presents the full range of Canaletto’s Vedute project while celebrating the legacy of Adolph J. ‘Bucks’ Weil, Dartmouth Class of 1935, an astute and generous collector who assembled this remarkable suite of etchings and over his lifetime amassed one of the most impressive collections of Old Master prints in the country.
Mr. Weil’s many extraordinary gifts to the Hood include exceptional prints by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacques Callot, and Francisco Goya. The Vedute etchings were donated to the museum by Jean K. Weil, following the wish of her late husband. Through this exhibition devoted to Canaletto, the Hood is honored to highlight an important facet of Mr. Weil’s distinguished collection in recognition of the one hundredth anniversary of his birth.
It is difficult to imagine an artist more intimately associated with a city than Canaletto. For centuries, his name has been synonymous with topographical cityscapes of Venice known as vedute (views). His meticulously detailed paintings of such familiar vistas as the Grand Canal and Piazza S. Marco celebrate the city’s stunning beauty and became coveted mementoes for English gentlemen to bring home from the Grand Tour. Given his fame as a landscape painter and the demand for his trademark Venetian scenes, it is remarkable that he turned, albeit very briefly, to a new medium and format for his art.
Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal), Title Plate, Vedute Series, ca. 1744, etching on laid paper (Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College: Gift of Jean Weil in memory of Adolph Weil Jr., Class of 1935; PR.997.5.22)
In the early 1740s, Canaletto embarked on a project to create a series of etchings dedicated to (and most likely financed by) Joseph Smith, the British consul to the Venetian Republic, who acted as his agent on behalf of foreign collectors. Unlike his painted views of Venice, the Vedute prints present an unexpected side of the artist and offer an alternate window into eighteenth-century Venetian life. Creative and at times whimsical, the scenes are often pastiches of real places and imaginary views. With few exceptions, they are not of the expected landmarks but show the more humble, everyday aspects of the city, such as modest dwellings and little byways; others are fantasies, ranging from elaborate caprices to intimate backyard scenes and wild landscapes. The Vedute prints thus reveal an unknown artist and a hidden city and its environs, beyond the vision packaged for tourists and outsiders.
Canaletto, after years of precisely transcribing the glory of Venetian tourist sites, clearly delighted in the creative freedom of this project, combining disparate elements to create a romantic portrait of the Venice he knew so well. With unfamiliar etching tools in hand, he flourished with newfound spontaneity and economy of line. Even in the few recognizable Venetian scenes included in the series—La Libreria, for example—Canaletto downplays the soaring architecture to focus on the activities of everyday Venetian life, such as children playing, nuns promenading, and merchants haggling.
Offering creative combinations of fantasy and reality, inventive conflations of the romantic past with a precarious present, and a peek at the domestic side of Venice, the Vedute represent a significant departure from Canaletto’s previous work. Equally, they reveal an unexpected virtuosity in a medium that was entirely new to the artist. The reason for Canaletto’s shift to printmaking at the peak of his fame as a landscape painter remains unclear. In part, the Vedute prints may have been an answer to the artist’s critics and detractors, who favored a more imaginative, rather than topographical, approach. For all of their inventiveness and skillful yet spontaneous execution, they are now considered some of the finest examples of etching of the eighteenth century.
The Canaletto exhibition is complemented by an installation of eight late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American etchings of Venice by James McNeill Whistler and his circle, all of them drawn from the Hood’s collection. Whistler, who greatly admired Canaletto, was a major influence in the development of the late nineteenth-century American etching revival.
Canaletto’s Vedute Prints will be on view at the Hood from August 1 through December 6, 2015. It is accompanied by a twenty-page booklet with essays by former Hood Assistant Curator for Special Projects Sarah G. Powers and Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Curator of Collections Margaret Lynne Ausfeld. The booklet was co-published with the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, located in Mr. Weil’s hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, where a version of the exhibition was on view in the spring of 2015. The MMFA also benefited from donations from Mr. Weil’s outstanding collection of prints, including several impressions of Canaletto’s Vedute etchings.
To celebrate the exhibition, Frederick Ilchman, Chair, Art of Europe, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, will deliver a lecture titled “Viewing Eighteenth-Century Venice with Canaletto and Casanova” in the Hood Museum of Art Auditorium on Friday, October 23, at 5:00pm. A reception will follow in Kim Gallery. Dartmouth College Studio Art Professor Louise Hamlin will also give a lunchtime gallery talk titled “Canaletto from an Artist’s Perspective” in the exhibition gallery on Tuesday, October 6, at 12:30pm.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, and generously supported by the William Chase Grant 1919 Memorial Fund.
Exhibition | Murat, King of Naples
Now on view in Naples:
Murat re di Napoli: A passo di carica
Il Palazzo Reale, Naples, 19 May — 29 September 2015
Dal 19 maggio al 29 settembre 2015 nel Salone d’Ercole del Palazzo Reale di Napoli si terrà un’interessante mostra sul decennio francese a Napoli ed in particolare sul periodo di regno di Gioacchino Murat (1767–1815).
La mostra è organizzata dalla Soprintendenza Beni ai Architettonici di Napoli, assieme con l’Ambasciata di Francia in Italia ed il Consolato francese a Napoli in occasione del bicentenario della morte di Gioacchino Murat e sarà uno degli appuntamenti più importanti a Napoli tra la primavera e l’estate del 2015.
Murat re di Napoli. A passo di carica, propone in mostra oltre 150 pezzi molti dei quali provengono da collezioni di musei francesi e vengono esposti per la prima volta in Italia: tra questi due famose spade quella a lama ricurva che Murat impugna nella campagna d’Egitto e la spada cerimoniale da “Maresciallo dell’Impero.”
Tante le opere interessanti tra dipinti, incisioni, porcellane, miniature che consentono di ricostruire il “Decennio francese” quando dal 1806 due re francesi si succedettero sul trono del Regno di Napoli. Il primo fu Giuseppe Bonaparte, fratello di Napoleone che regno fino al 1808 quando poi andò in Spagna: gli seguì suo cognato Gioacchino Murat, che regnò fino al 1815. In quel periodo Ferdinando IV di Borbone fuggiva in Sicilia per poi riorganizzare la riconquista del suo regno. Il 13 ottobre 1815 Murat fu catturato e fucilato dai reparti borbonici a Pizzo Calabro ed il Regno di Napoli ritornò in possesso di Ferdinando IV di Borbone, che l’8 dicembre 1816 cambiò nome e prese il titolo di Ferdinando I, re del nuovo Regno delle Due Sicilie.
La mostra, che non a caso si chiama Murat re di Napoli. A passo di carica celebra, attraverso interventi multimediali e pannelli esplicativi, l’intenso cambiamento che si ebbe a Napoli in quel periodo. La città subì infatti una grande modernizzazione e fu ridisegnata dai progetti e dalle trasformazioni urbanistiche volute dal giovane sovrano. Nel decennio tra l’altro ci fu l’abolizione della feudalità, l’introduzione dello Stato moderno e del Codice civile, la creazione di un’organizzazione moderna dello stato con nuove intendenze, tribunali, uffici provinciali e la riforma dell’Università in cui, attraverso la Scuola di Ponti e strade, fu creata anche l’attuale Facoltà di Ingegneria.
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