Exhibition | A Revolution of the Palette
Now on view at the Norton Simon:
A Revolution of the Palette: The First Synthetic Blues and Their Impact on French Artists
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 17 July 2015 — 4 January 2016
Curated by John Griswold
The accidental discovery of Prussian blue in an alchemist’s laboratory around 1704 helped to open up new possibilities for artistic expression at the dawn of the Enlightenment. A Revolution of the Palette explores the use of this pigment, followed by the introduction of cobalt blue and synthetic ultramarine, by French artists from the Rococo period to the threshold of Impressionism.
Marie-Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of Theresa, Countess Kinsky,1793, oil on canvas, 54 x 39 inches, 138 x 100 cm (Pasadena: Norton Simon Art Foundation)
A new palette available to artists, thanks largely to the addition of Prussian blue in the 18th century, helped fuel the heated philosophical debates regarding Newtonian color theory. The fascinating new capabilities of artists to exploit sophisticated color relationships based on scientific optical principles became a core precept of Rococo painting, or peinture moderne as it was called at the time. Exquisite examples of the early use of Prussian blue by Fragonard and his immediate circle demonstrate their technical achievements. Paintings by Vigée-Lebrun, Prud’hon and Ingres show the masterful use of Prussian blue as Neoclassicism took hold. The sophisticated, subtle manipulations of color in academic painting of the period, exemplified by Ducis’ Sappho Recalled to Life by the Charm of Music and Degas’ early and ambitious emulation of a Poussin composition, The Rape of the Sabines, rely heavily on the ability of the new blues to deftly modulate tone and hue in ways never available to earlier painters.
As revolutionary as this new blue color proved to be, Prussian blue was a mere precursor to the explosion of available colors brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the French government played an active role in catalyzing innovation at the dawn of the 19th century, as the country emerged from the Revolution with its economy in disarray. Chemist Louis Jacques Thénard’s development of the next synthetic blue, a vivid cobalt blue pigment, was inspired by the traditional cobalt oxide blue glazes seen on 18th-century Sèvres porcelain. An exquisite lidded vase on loan from the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens illustrates this.
The third synthetic blue to emerge was the culmination of centuries of searching for a cheap, plentiful, high-quality replacement for the most valuable of all pigments: natural ultramarine. This was a color derived from lapis lazuli, a rare, semiprecious gemstone mined almost exclusively in Afghanistan since the 6th century, and imported to Europe through Venice. It is famously known to have been more costly than gold during the Renaissance. Natural ultramarine provided a brilliant, royal blue hue, but only if coarsely ground and applied in a comparatively translucent glaze over a light-reflecting ground. Other blue colors, such as smalt, which was essentially composed of particles of colored glass, were available to help achieve the lovely hues of ultramarine, but the poor covering ability of the paint and the difficulty of its preparation and use were familiar limitations.
In 1824, the French government announced a competition among chemists to develop a true synthetic ultramarine. The prize was finally awarded in 1828 to Jean-Baptiste Guimet. Painters at last had an affordable, fully balanced palette of cool and warm colors spanning the full spectrum. This fact, combined with the innovation of ready-mixed tube oil colors, greatly facilitated the direct representation of nature. The ability of painters to capture a wide range of observed natural effects in the landscape en plein air are represented by the works of Corot, Guigou, Monticelli and Dupré. A Revolution of the Palette closes with two canvases representing the Impressionists’ full realization of the wide-open possibilities made possible by these new blues: Guillaumin’s The Seine at Charenton (formerly Daybreak), and Caillebotte’s Canoe on the Yerres River.
Exhibition | An Elegant Society: Adam Buck, Artist in the Age of Austen
Adam Buck, First Steps, 1808. Watercolour, 28 x 35 cm
(Private Collection)
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Press release (23 April 2015) from the Ashmolean:
An Elegant Society: Adam Buck, Artist in the Age of Jane Austen
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 16 July — 4 October 2015
Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, 4 February — 9 April 2016
Curated by Peter Darvall
Well-known to collectors and Jane Austen enthusiasts, Irish artist Adam Buck (1759–1833) was one of Regency England’s most sought-after portrait painters. He worked in Ireland for twenty years, becoming an accomplished miniaturist; but moved to London in 1795 and immediately gained a roster of star clients including the Duke of York and his scandalous mistress, Mary Anne Clarke. This summer exhibition celebrates Adam Buck’s influence on Georgian art and style, showing over sixty works from private collections including watercolours, small portraits and miniatures, examples of his decorative designs for porcelain and fans, and his prints.
Buck was born to a family of silversmiths in Cork, the second of four surviving children. His younger brother, Frederick (1765–1840), became an established miniature painter who worked in Cork his entire life. Details of Adam’s career before he moved to London are elusive, but his early work is in many ways that of the quintessential Regency miniaturist. His first known pictures, dating from the late-1770s to the early-1780s, show an innate appreciation of the established Neoclassical style: his sitters are often shown in profile; their gowns styled like Grecian goddesses; group portraits arranged like a frieze. In emigrating to London in 1795, Buck took the route of many fellow Irishmen including several Cork-born artists and writers such as James Barry (1741–1806) and Alexander Pope (1759–1847). Buck’s first London home was in Piccadilly. As soon as he arrived, he began to exhibit at the Royal Academy where he showed a surprising total of 179 works over the following 38 years.
His success as a society artist was almost instant. By 1799 he had executed a full-length portrait of the Prince of Wales in his Garter Robes. He exhibited two portraits of Prince Frederick, Duke of York, at the Royal Academy in 1804 and 1812. Buck was also introduced to Mary Anne Clarke (1776–1852), the most celebrated of the Duke’s well-known mistresses. She was a famous beauty and maintained a fabulous household in London, subsidising her extravagant lifestyle by selling her influence with the Duke who was Commander in Chief of the Army. Rumours claiming that she could obtain commissions and appointments for a fee culminated in a parliamentary enquiry into the Duke’s conduct. While the Duke was ridiculed in caricatures and lampoons, Mary Anne, who put up a spirited defence of her role in the affair, became a public heroine. Her image was circulated in flattering portraits by Buck and other artists which were engraved and widely published. In 1813 she finally overreached herself and was imprisoned for nine months for libel, before leaving the country for Boulogne where she died in 1852.
Buck’s work was made popular largely through prints after his watercolours, chiefly published in London by William Holland and Rudolph Ackermann. His images, refined and elegant, contrasted with the savage caricatures and ribald pictures of contemporary artists like James Gillray and Isaac Cruikshank. The difference was humorously summed up in a Thomas Rowlandson print with the title, Buck’s Beauty and Rowlandson’s Connoisseur (1800), in which a rake in wig and frock coat, one of Rowlandson’s stock characters, leers through an eye-glass at a demure, pink-cheeked girl, drawn in Buck’s distinctive manner. With his name made in association with the colourful ranks of Regency society, Buck, from 1810 onwards, made a new reputation for himself with his sentimental images of women and children under titles such as The First Steps in Life and Mother’s Hope. By 1829 his work had been reproduced by at least twenty-eight different printmakers in England and by several in France and America.
Peter Darvall, Guest Curator, says: “I hope, with this exhibition and monograph on Adam Buck’s work, to bring his art to the attention of a wider audience. Buck was a hugely influential artist during his own time and his elegant portraits of royalty and officers, and his charming illustrations of Georgian life and manners have had an enduring impact on the popular imagination of Regency society.”
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From the Ashmolean shop:
Peter Darvall and Jon Whiteley, Adam Buck, 1759–1833 (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum Publications, 2015), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1910807002, £20.
Adam Buck (1759–1833) was an Irish portrait painter, print-maker and miniaturist from Cork who migrated to London c.1795. His name is well-known to collectors and historians of British prints and watercolours and for many years his work has appeared regularly in sale catalogues. And yet, while there have been a few short articles published on his contribution to print-making, ceramic decoration and the study of Greek vases, it is surprising that no serious attempt has previously been made to collate the little that is known about his life and work. Moreover, he has never been the subject of a monographic exhibition apart from one at the Leicester Gallery in 1925 and, more recently, a small exhibition at the Cynthia O’Connor Gallery in Dublin in 1984 and another at the Alpine Gallery in London, mounted by Andrew Kimpton, in 1989.
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Note (added 6 February 2015) — At the Crawford Art Gallery, a distilled version of the show is entitled Adam Buck: A Regency Artist from Cork.
Exhibition | Yo, el Rey: La Monarquía Hispànica en el arte
The exhibition press release, via Art Daily (13 July 2015) . . .
Yo, el Rey: La Monarquía Hispànica en el arte
Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, 1 July — 18 October 2015
Curated by Abraham Villavicencio
The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA) presents the exhibition Yo, el Rey. La Monarquía Hispànica en el arte, curated and produced by the Museo Nacional de Arte. This is a comprehensive exhibit that offers the audience, through national and international masterpieces, a review of the figure of the Hispanic sovereign. The exhibition approaches the mechanisms and representation forms of the monarch with a selection of 200 works, amongst which are paintings, drawings, sculptures, textiles, jewelry, silverware, armors and historic documents.
Important international loans have been obtained through the leadership and management of the Museo Nacional de Arte, which come from the Museo Nacional del Prado, Colecciones Reales del Patrimonio Nacional, Museo de América, and Museo Lázaro Galdiano, from Spain; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Hispanic Society of America and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, from the United States, as well as national collections, such as the National Museum of Art of San Carlos, Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Museo Franz Mayer, and Museo Regional de Querétaro. It also has the invaluable participation of religious institutions: Catedral de Sevilla, Catedral Metropolitana de la Cuidad de México, Templo de San Felipe Neri La Profesa, Museo de la Basílica de Guadalupe and more than 20 private collections.
It is important to address the decisive contribution of the Museo Nacional de Arte to the conservation of our national patrimony, because thanks to this exhibition many pieces have been restored in benefit of a better preservation of novohispanic pieces, among them the Retrato de Carlos III from Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz.
The exhibition, which was curated by Abraham Villavicencio, Vice-royalty Art curator of the Museo Nacional de Arte, is developed in four thematic cores that revolve around the King as a unifying figure of the American kingdoms, and a vast politic system known as the Hispanic Monarchy.
La herencia iconográfica del pasado antiguo refers to the significance of the founding myths of royalty and kingdom, showing how, through symbolic elements of the Roman, Indigenous and German past, the image of the Hispanic monarch was built.
La efigie real. Recursos plásticos y retóricos suggests the constitution of the sovereign’s body image through attributes denoting power, which enhance the idea of authority among the royal houses of the Spanish Empire: the Habsburgo and the Borbón.
The third core, La monarquía mesiánica y el imaginario religioso, explores the king’s performance as patron of the church through his representation and the narrow link between the state and ecclesiastic institutions.
The exhibition closes with Ecos de la monarquía en el México independiente, in which the figures of Fernando VII, Agustín de Iturbide, and Maximiliano I of Mexico appear as witnesses of the survival of the mythic, politic and religious imageries of the viceroyalty of the Nueva España, even in the independent Mexico.
Jean Ranc Carlos de Borbón y Farnesio, niño (futuro Carlos III de España), hacia 1724. Óleo sobre lienzo. 145.5×116.5cm (Madrid: Prado)
According to Agustín Arteaga, director of the Museo Nacional de Arte, “the topic acquires a new vitality when being presented as an exhibition, not only for the scholars of the viceroyalty but for everyone who wants to familiarize himself with the works that are a part of the . . . past in which an empire, with particular forces and dynamics, was constituted.”
The exhibition articulates the development of political and juridical elements which visitors will be able to appreciate as a rich heritage that seeks to value the Hispanic, novo Hispanic, and Mexican creators as a group with the same political and cultural identity. Therefore, under the same curatorial speech, pieces from some of the most recognized European painters of the XVI and XVII centuries—the Siglo de Oro—up to the XIX century are reunited: Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Goya, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Francisco de Zubarán and Jean Ranc, with renowned novo Hispanic and Mexican artists, such as Cristóbal de Villalpando, Juan Correa, Baltasar de Echave Orio, Manuel Tolsá, Santiago Rebull and Felipe Sojo, amongst others.
The exhibition catalogue, with a bilingual edition, conjugates texts of six specialists from the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the Colegio de México, the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, the Museo Nacional del Virreinato, and the Museo Nacional de Arte. The publication addresses political, legal, iconographical, and theological dimensions, besides making the historical and artistic transformations obvious with approximately 200 color illustrated pieces that narrate the construction of the image of the Hispanic monarch in the Indias. In addition, all the texts of the exhibit rooms will be displayed in English and Spanish.
The Museo Nacional de Arte recognizes and appreciates the support of: El Patronato del Museo Nacional de Arte, Amigos MUNAL Arte Mexicano: Promoción y Excelencia AC, Iberdrola, British Airways-Iberia, and NH Hotels for the efforts made towards the creation of new projects.
Exhibition | Scottish Artists 1750–1900: From Caledonia to the Continent
Press release (5 May 2015) from the Royal Collection Trust:
Scottish Artists 1750–1900: From Caledonia to the Continent
The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, 6 August 2015 — 7 February 2016
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 18 March — 9 October 2016
Allan Ramsay, Queen Charlotte with her two Eldest Sons, ca. 1764-69 (London: Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 404922)
From the romantic landscapes of Caledonia to exotic scenes from the Continent, a new exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse is the first dedicated to Scottish art in the Royal Collection. Bringing together over 80 works, including paintings and drawings by the celebrated artists Allan Ramsay and Sir David Wilkie, Scottish Artists 1750–1900: From Caledonia to the Continent tells the story of royal patronage and of the emergence of a distinctive Scottish school of art.
Allan Ramsay (1713–1784) was the first Scottish artist of European significance. A pre-eminent figure of the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that swept across Europe in the 18th century, Ramsay maintained close friendships with philosophers such as David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In 1760 he was commissioned to paint George III’s State portrait and subsequently became the first Scot to be appointed to the role of Principal Painter in Ordinary to His Majesty. Depicting the King in sumptuous coronation robes and breeches of cloth of gold, Ramsay produced the definitive image of George III and the most frequently copied royal portrait of all time.
Ramsay worked as a court artist, painting members of the royal family and producing copies of the coronation portrait for the King to send as gifts to ambassadors and governors. He enjoyed a good relationship with the Queen Consort, and his painting Queen Charlotte and her Two Eldest Sons, 1764, considered to be among Ramsay’s greatest works, combines the grandeur of a royal portrait with the intimacy of a domestic scene.
Over half a century later, Fife-born artist Sir David Wilkie (1785–1841) gained even wider recognition than Ramsay. His vivid, small-scale scenes of everyday life, inspired by those of the Dutch masters, were shown at the Royal Academy to great acclaim. Wilkie attracted the attention of the Prince Regent (the future George IV), who was acquiring 17th-century Dutch and Flemish genre paintings for his own collection. The artist’s reputation was sealed with two high-profile royal commissions – Blind-Man’s-Buff, 1812, and The Penny Wedding, 1818, which shows the uniquely Scottish custom of wedding guests contributing a penny towards the cost of the festivities and a home for the newly married couple.
George IV’s visit to Scotland in 1822, the first by a reigning British monarch for nearly two centuries, offered a major opportunity for royal patronage. Artists were given prime access to all of the events in the two-week programme, which was masterminded by the writer Sir Walter Scott. The entrance of the King to his Scottish residence is captured in Wilkie’s The Entrance of George IV to Holyroodhouse, 1822–30. The King is shown being presented with the keys to the Palace, while crowds of enthusiastic spectators clamber over every part of the building to see him.
After suffering a nervous breakdown, brought on by overwork and a series of family tragedies, Wilkie set off on a prolonged visit to the Continent. He was one of the first professional artists to visit Spain after the Spanish War of Independence of 1808–14. Wilkie’s travels proved to be a turning point in his art, which became much broader in style and took inspiration from contemporary events. On the artist’s return in 1828, the King summoned Wilkie to Windsor and purchased five continental pictures—A Roman Princess Washing the Feet of Pilgrims, 1827, I Pifferari, 1827, The Defence of Saragossa, 1828, The Spanish Posada, 1828, and The Guerilla’s Departure, 1828—and commissioned The Guerilla’s Return, 1830. The same year, the King appointed Wilkie to the position of Principal Painter in Ordinary, a post that the artist continued to hold under William IV and Queen Victoria.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert saw their roles as patrons of the arts as part of the duty of Monarchy. Several pictures by Scottish artists were among the birthday and Christmas presents exchanged by the royal couple throughout their married life, including works by Sir Joseph Noël Paton (1821–1901), David Roberts (1796–1864), James Giles (1801–1870) and John Phillip (1817–1867). Queen Victoria had a deep love of Scotland and commissioned artists to record the country’s ‘inexpressibly beautiful’ scenery, including that of her recently acquired estate, Balmoral, in the Highlands. Among those artists was the Glaswegian William Leighton Leitch (1804–1883), who was appointed the Queen’s drawing master in 1846. Of all the Scottish artists whose work was collected by Victoria and Albert, it was William Dyce who was most in tune with Prince Albert’s tastes. Dyce was inspired by the early Italian art so admired by Albert, who purchased Dyce’s The Madonna and Child, 1845, and the following year commissioned a companion picture, St Joseph.
In the same period, the publication of travel books and growing interest in foreign cultures encouraged artists to seek inspiration abroad. David Roberts introduced British audiences to scenes of Egypt and the Holy Land, and was the first independent professional artist to travel extensively in the Middle East. A View of Cairo, 1840, shows the medieval Gate of Zuweyleh, and was one of Roberts’ first paintings of the region to be exhibited. Queen Victoria commissioned two Spanish pictures from Roberts as gifts for Prince Albert: A View of Toledo and the River Tagus, 1841, and The Fountain on the Prado, Madrid, 1841.
In the mid-19th century, there was a growing interest in Spanish culture, which was heavily romanticised in the literature of the day. When the artist John Phillip travelled to the country, his subject-matter changed from Scottish rural scenes to Spanish street life. Queen Victoria commissioned Phillip’s A Spanish Gypsy Mother, 1852, and purchased ‘El Paseo’, 1854, for Prince Albert. The Prince gave the Queen The Letter Writer of Seville, 1854, for Christmas. After a visit to the Royal Academy in 1858, Victoria acquired The Dying Contrabandista as a Christmas gift for the Prince that year. John Phillip was Queen Victoria’s favourite Scottish artist and, on his death in 1867, he was mourned by the monarch as ‘our greatest painter’.
Some notable Scottish works entered the Royal Collection in 1888, on the occasion of the opening of the Glasgow International Exhibition of Science, Art and Industry by the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII). This exhibition, held in Kelvingrove Park, was one of a series of international exhibitions and world fairs that dominated the cultural scene in the second half of the 19th century and the largest to be held in Scotland. The Prince and Princess of Wales were presented with ‘two elegant albums of paintings by members of the Glasgow Art Club’, including work by the Glasgow Boys: Sir James Guthrie (1859–1930), EA Walton (1860–1922) and Robert Macaulay Stevenson (1860–1952).
Scottish Artists 1750–1900: From Caledonia to the Continent is part of the Edinburgh Art Festival.
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Distributed in the U.S. by The University of Chicago Press:
Deborah Clarke and Vanessa Remington, Scottish Artists 1750–1900: From Caledonia to the Continent (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2015), 210 pages, ISBN: 978-1909741201, $25.
Throughout its history, Scotland has produced a wealth of great works of art, and the Scottish Enlightenment in particular provided a powerful impetus for new forms of art and new artistic subjects. This survey of Scottish art in the Royal Collection brings together more than one hundred reproductions of works from the Enlightenment to the twentieth century to highlight the importance and influence of this period, while also sharing recent research on the subject.
The first book devoted to Scottish art in the Royal Collection, Scottish Artists fully explores this rich artistic tradition, incorporating discussions of artists whose inspiration remained firmly rooted in their native land, such as Alexander Nasmyth and James Giles, as well as artists who were born in Scotland and traveled abroad, from the eighteenth-century portraitist Allan Ramsay to David Wilkie, who traveled to London and is well-known for his paintings portraying everyday life. Broadly chronological, the book also traces the royal patronage of Scottish artists throughout the centuries, including works collected by monarchs from George III to Queen Victoria, and the official roles, Royal Limner for Scotland and King’s Painter in Ordinary.
Exhibition | La Manufacture des Lumières: La Sculpture à Sèvres
Opening at Sèvres in September:
La Manufacture des Lumières: La Sculpture à Sèvres de Louis XV à la Révolution
Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres, 16 September 2015 — 18 January 2016
Curated by Guilhem Scherf
Jean-François Duret, La Mandoline ou La conversation espagnole, 1772 (Collection Sèvres—Cité de la céramique, SCC.2012.2.1)
Raconter l’histoire de la sculpture à Sèvres, de la création de la Manufacture par la volonté de Louis XV et de Madame de Pompadour jusqu’à la période révolutionnaire, permet de dévoiler tour à tour l’excellence du goût des élites de l’Ancien Régime pour la perfection des objets d’art et l’explosion d’une thématique nourrie par le siècle des Lumières.
La sculpture à Sèvres relève d’un processus minutieux partant d’un modèle en terre pour aboutir au biscuit de porcelaine. La surface de porcelaine, non émaillée mais polie, permet ainsi de rivaliser le marbre. Le biscuit de porcelaine, inventé par la Manufacture vers 1752, connait immédiatement un immense succès et a concurrencé la production venant de Chine puis celle de sa grand rivale saxonne, la Manufacture de Meissen.
Les artistes de la Manufacture ont su créer et diffuser des sujets remplis de charme, de délicatesse et de vie sur les thèmes de l’enfance, de la fable et de l’allégorie, de la littérature et de la vie quotidienne tout en innovant dans le domaine du portrait et de l’iconographie politique. Les biscuits exécutés sous la direction des sculpteurs du roi (Falconet, Pajou, Boizot), parfois inspirés par des compositions de Boucher ou de Coypel, ont délecté les amateurs du temps les plus exigeants.
L’exposition présente plus de 80 terres cuites et 120 biscuits de porcelaine, mais aussi des dessins, des estampes, ainsi que des modèles et des moules en plâtre originaux. Cette richesse des collections patrimoniales complétée par des prêts extérieurs, permet de montrer au mieux cette apothéose du goût et de l’excellence artistique que fut la création au XVIIIe siècle des célèbres biscuits de Sèvres.
Cet événement a été rendu possible grâce à la restauration financée par la Fondation BNP Paribas, des modèles originaux en terre cuite du XVIIIe siècle, étape initiale à la production des sculptures en porcelaine.
Après une introduction historique et technique, le parcours de l’exposition se décompose en dix sections. Elles abordent les thèmes du goût pour l’enfance, les animaux, la fable et l’allégorie, le surtout de table, la vie contemporaine, les sujets littéraires, les œuvres religieuses, les portraits, les statuettes des grands hommes et, enfin, la décennie révolutionnaire.
Aujourd’hui, la fabrication de biscuits se poursuit dans les ateliers de la Manufacture de Sèvres, pour certains issus du répertoire de Sèvres, pour d’autres fruits de l’imagination des artistes contemporains invités.
Le commissariat général de l’exposition est assuré par Guilhem Scherf, conservateur en chef au département des sculptures du musée du Louvre, spécialiste de la sculpture du XVIIIe siècle et auteur de nombreux ouvrages. La scénographie est confiée à Cécile Degos.
Le catalogue est édité sous la direction de Tamara Préaud par les éditions Faton. Une première partie traite de la Manufacture de Sèvres, des techniques et de la restauration des terres cuites et du dialogue des arts (l’estampe, la sculpture, le costume). La deuxième est le catalogue des œuvres exposées, selon dix sections. Quant à la dernière partie, elle présente le catalogue sommaire illustré de l’ensemble des sculptures du XVIIIe siècle conservées à Sèvres – Cité de la céramique.
La Cité de la céramique – Sèvres & Limoges et la Société Pyramis Design ont signé un accord de mécénat de compétence en matière de digitalisation 3D. Dans le cadre de l’exposition, grâce à cette technologie, une lecture inédite du surtout de table La Conversation espagnole sera proposée aux visiteurs, en regard de l’œuvre originale.
Tamara Préaud, ed., La Sculpture à Sèvres au XVIIIe Siècle (Dijon: Éditions Faton, 2015), 432 pages, 45€.
Exhibition | Gardens & Groves: George Washington’s Mount Vernon
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Now on view at Mount Vernon:
Gardens & Groves: George Washington’s Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon, Virginia, 22 February 2014 — 30 May 2016
Countless photographs testify to the beauty of Mount Vernon’s landscape. Two hundred years after its creation, it continues to delight. Although the beautiful gardens, sweeping lawns, and inviting paths seem perfectly natural, these features were all carefully planned by George Washington. When he returned to Mount Vernon after the American Revolution, General Washington found the estate in need of extensive repairs and improvements. The buildings and grounds surrounding the Mansion lacked an overall design, having evolved over time with an eye more for practical function than beauty.
Between 1785 and 1787, George Washington completely transformed Mount Vernon’s grounds into a landscape very similar to the one that survives today. During this break from public affairs, few days passed without the General working on the landscape. To update Mount Vernon, Washington had his free and enslaved workers install such picturesque features as sweeping lawns, groves of trees, curving paths, vistas, and hidden walls (called “ha-has”). From laying out paths to tagging trees for transplanting, the General was involved in every aspect of designing and installing his gardens and grounds.
From the exhibition press release (27 January 2014) . . .
Mount Vernon invites visitors to explore George Washington’s design for the grounds of his estate, through the exhibition, Gardens & Groves: George Washington’s Landscape at Mount Vernon, on view until May 2016. Gardens & Groves is the first museum exhibition to focus specifically on Washington’s landmark achievements as a landscape designer combining rarely-seen original documents, artworks, and books with period garden tools, gorgeous landscape photography, and a stunning scale model of the Mount Vernon estate. In Gardens & Groves, visitors can view the first president’s spyglass, watering can, and garden roller, in addition to reading Washington’s notes and instructions for Mount Vernon’s landscape in his own hand.
Kitchen garden at Mount Vernon
“Each year, more than a million visitors enjoy the remarkable beauty of Mount Vernon’s gardens and grounds,” said Mount Vernon curator, Susan Schoelwer. “But few realize that the views that we enjoy today were all carefully planned by George Washington himself. Gardens & Groves aims to change that, as visitors have the opportunity to ‘unpack’ the landscape surrounding the Mansion, following in Washington’s footsteps to examine each of the elements in the design.”
The exhibit presents five 18th-century views of Mount Vernon—oil paintings of both river and land fronts of the Mansion, by Edward Savage; two detailed drawings of the layout of the grounds, by English admirer Samuel Vaughan; and a recently-acquired image of the Washingtons relaxing on the piazza in 1796, by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the US Capitol Building (due to their fragility, the Vaughan and Latrobe drawings were on view in Gardens & Groves through August 17, 2014).
“Bringing these five important works together presents a rare opportunity to see Mount Vernon through the eyes of artists who visited during George Washington’s lifetime,” said Mount Vernon exhibition curator Adam T. Erby. “These artworks record details of the landscape that we would not otherwise know—information that continues to inform our ongoing research and restoration efforts.”
Watering Pot, made in France or England, 18th century, copper, iron.
At the center of Gardens & Groves is a fascinating 8’x 9’x 11’ model of Mount Vernon’s landscape as Washington last saw it in 1799. Developed by Mount Vernon historians, archaeologists, and curators, this state-of-the-art model has returned home from a national tour in Mount Vernon’s traveling exhibition, Discover the Real George Washington: New Views from Mount Vernon. In addition to delighting viewers with its intricate craftsmanship, the model incorporates countless scenes from daily life—laundry drying in the laundry yard, a sailing ship on the Potomac, just-planted trees along the bowling green.
Such details introduce a broad view of the landscape, revealing two separate, but intersecting landscapes that existed at Mount Vernon: the pleasure grounds of the planter and the working spaces of the enslaved community. Gardens & Groves also tells the stories of the men and women, both hired and enslaved, who created and maintained George Washington’s gardens, and visitors will see some actual artifacts that they used, including a copper watering can and archeologically-recovered flower pot fragments.
An interactive touchtable will demonstrate the evolution of the landscape at Mount Vernon over time. Visitors will be able to scroll through three topographical maps created by Mount Vernon’s preservation staff, reconstructing the appearance of the landscape when Washington inherited the property, during an early renovation, and as it finally appeared at the end of Washington’s life. On each of the maps, visitors will be able to click on individual elements to bring up more information about a particular feature.
A list of ten facts about the landscape at Mount Vernon is available here»
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Published this spring in connection with the exhibition:
Susan P. Schoelwer, ed., The General in the Garden: George Washington’s Landscape at Mount Vernon (Mount Vernon: Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 2015), 208 pages, ISBN: 978-0931917486, $35.
The General in the Garden provides an engaging, informative, and richly illustrated introduction to George Washington’s landscape at Mount Vernon—arguably the best-documented, best-preserved complex of gardens and grounds to survive from eighteenth-century America.
The book’s three essays, by Adam T. Erby, J. Dean Norton, and Esther C. White, chronicle Washington’s transformation of the estate in the years between the American Revolution and the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the stewardship of its gardens by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association since 1860, and the archaeology that led to the recent restoration of Washington’s showplace upper garden. Mount Vernon assistant curator Adam Erby examines Washington’s critical role in developing Mount Vernon’s landscape, arguing that the general drew on British design sources and gardening manuals but adapted them to his own circumstances, creating a truly American garden. J. Dean Norton, Mount Vernon’s director of horticulture, traces the evolution of the estate’s landscape and recreated gardens across the two centuries since Washington’s death. And Esther White, Mount Vernon’s director of historic preservation and research, shows how groundbreaking archaeological methods facilitated the discovery of Washington-era garden beds and borders of flowers, shrubs, and vegetables in his upper garden—a remarkable find that yielded one of the most significant eighteenth-century garden recreations of our time. Also included is a lavishly illustrated guide to Mount Vernon’s landscape features, introducing Washington’s beloved estate to a modern audience.
An interview with the authors of the book is available here»
Exhibition | New for Now: The Origin of Fashion Magazines
Magasin des Modes Nouvelles Françaises et Anglaises (1 Juin 1789), Pl. 1, 2 et 3
(Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum)
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Press release (20 May 2015) from the Rijksmuseum:
New for Now: The Origin of Fashion Magazines
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 12 June — 27 September 2015
From 12 June, the Rijksmuseum presents a major retrospective of its rich collection of costume and fashion prints for the first time. The change in women’s and men’s fashion from the year 1600 up to and including the first half of the 20th century, and the development of the fashion magazine into the fashion glossies we know today, can be seen in more than 300 prints. The exhibition was designed by designer and co-curator Christian Borstlap, in collaboration with fashion illustrators Piet Paris and Quentin Jones.
The publishers of fashion prints did everything to make their product as attractive as possible. They attracted skilled illustrators for this purpose, some of whom went on to become specialists in this area: true ‘fashion illustrators’. The trick was to portray the models on the prints as skillfully as possible and with a great sense of elegance. The printmaker was responsible for transferring the design sketches onto an engraving that could reproduce the design. A so-called ‘colourist’ subsequently added colours to each individual image by hand.
New for Now shows prints by fashion designer Paul Poiret, among others. His ‘Fashion is Art’ statement marked the beginning of a new era. He presented his designs in two artfully designed series of works in bright opaque colours, which served as an inspiration for a number of artistically high-quality fashion magazines.
Many of the prints shown are from two important collections acquired by the Rijksmuseum in 2009: The Raymond Gaudriault Collection and The MA Ghering-van Ierlant Collection. All 8,000 prints from these collections can be seen online from June 2015. This is the result of a multi-year project in which the prints were catalogued, described and digitalised.
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The catalogue is available from the Rijksmuseum:
Georgette Koning and Els Verhaak, New For Now: The Origin of Fashion Magazines (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2015), 204 pages, 20€.
Fashion changes constantly, but the desire to be ‘in fashion’ is eternal. For centuries people have eagerly followed the latest fashion trends. But how did one keep up in an age without internet, fashion blogs, Pinterest and glossy fashion magazines? New for Now explores how trends were spread before Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar appeared on the shelves. From the costume book in the 16th century by way of individual, hand-coloured fashion plates to the first fashion magazine to roll off the presses in 1785: Cabinet des Modes. There was no stopping after this, and one fashion magazine appeared hard on the heels of the other, reaching an absolute high point in the Gazette du Bon Ton in 1912, full of magnificent art deco illustrations.
Exhibition | Tavole Barocche: Banchetti, Feste e Nature Morte
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From Gioia Oggi:
Tavole Barocche: Banchetti, feste e nature morte tra
XVII e XVIII secolo dalla Collezione Corsi di Firenze
Castello Svevo di Gioia del Colle (Ba), 11 April — 28 June 2015
Curated by Francesco Di Ciaula
Nell’anno dell’Expo di Milano, dedicato alle tematiche dell’alimentazione, le suggestive sale del Castello Svevo di Gioia del Colle (Ba) ospitano dall’11 aprile al 28 giugno 2015 la mostra Tavole Barocche, promossa dalla Regione Puglia e dal Comune di Gioia del Colle.
La mostra, a cura di Francesco Di Ciaula ed organizzata dalla società Sistema Museo, espone dipinti raffiguranti nature morte, paesaggi e scene conviviali tra XVII e XVIII secolo, provenienti dalla Collezione Corsi di Firenze conservata presso il Museo Bardini, una delle istituzioni museali più importanti del capoluogo toscano. L’esposizione è allestita nel Castello di Gioia del Colle, tra i più affascinanti manieri realizzati dalle maestranze dell’Imperatore Federico II Hohenstaufen, il Sovrano tedesco che fece della Puglia del XIII secolo la sua terra d’elezione. Tra la magnifica Sala del Trono, così nominata per la presenza dell’imponente seggio reale, la Sala del Camino, la Torre de’ Rossi e il Gineceo, si sviluppa armoniosamente la mostra, ricca di opere importanti per la storia dell’arte del Seicento e del Settecento italiano e fiammingo, come quelle del Gobbo dei Carracci, lo Spadino, Giovan Battista Ruoppolo, Jacopo da Empoli, Gian Domenico Ferretti, della bottega dell’Arcimboldo e del seguito di Pieter Brueghel il Giovane. Due le sezioni di mostra, incentrate sulla cultura del cibo e della tavola: la prima espone la rappresentazione degli alimenti nel genere della natura morta, che si impone in maniera decisiva nel Seicento. I dipinti sono dominati dalla variegata presenza di carni, selvaggina, pesci, frutti e ortaggi realizzati da artisti soprattutto di ambito toscano e romano-napoletano. La seconda sezione, arricchita dalle opere di autori fiamminghi, presenta i piaceri conviviali: prevalgono scene di banchetto e di festa, riscontrabili sia nei rituali opulenti e fastosi delle classi aristocratiche sia nelle immagini di contesti umili e popolari, nei quali l’alimentazione più che piacere della tavola diviene ricerca di appagamento della fame.
Le Sezioni
Il tema delle quaranta opere esposte, il cibo e la tavola, si rifà al mondo fisico puramente rappresentato, in un contesto di pittura profana dell’epoca barocca, il cui chiaro richiamo alle esperienze dei sensi conduce l’osservatore verso una visione seducente delle cose naturali. La nascita della natura morta, al centro della prima sezione della mostra, è paradigmatica di un interesse, presente già negli ultimi decenni del XVI secolo tra Fiandre e Italia settentrionale, della possibilità di indagare il reale negli aspetti più dettagliati e “microscopici”, considerati “laterali” nella pittura di storia. L’illusionismo, tutto teatrale, di credere di poter toccare, annusare, assaggiare i cibi sul piano della tela, accentua questa visione di una riproduzione della realtà riconoscibile come vita e vissuto quotidiano dove gli stessi alimenti, fuori da ogni intendimento retorico, suscitano desideri e ricordi sensoriali. Il processo di crescita e decadenza della frutta e dei vegetali, in connessione con l’idea del tempo che scorre, pone la natura morta come specchio della vita della materia, le cui forme assumono più o meno colore e spessore dall’impatto con la luce, l’unico elemento in grado di interagire con lo spazio della scena. Nella seconda sezione della mostra, illustrante i piaceri conviviali, i dipinti di ambito fiammingo e francese, raffiguranti feste aristocratiche tra parchi e boschi, fanno riferimento alla fusione del momento della tavola con l’intrattenimento di danze e musiche. Sempre fiamminghe le scene campestri illustranti i pasti del mondo contadino e le colazioni borghesi, mentre nelle vedute urbane del Settecento fiorentino si osserva la vita brulicante delle città, tra fiere e mercati. Le dispense e le cucine, come luoghi della conservazione e della cottura dei cibi, assumono anch’esse una rilevanza artistica, espressione di una concezione fortemente naturalistica e verosimile della realtà, priva ormai del puro idealismo del Rinascimento.
Le Opere
Come incipit del percorso di visita, accanto al trono di Federico, sono collocate la Primavera, l’Estate e l’Inverno eseguiti dalla bottega dell’Arcimboldo, l’enigmatico pittore lombardo cinquecentesco, il quale inventò la conversione del corpo umano in figura vegetale, facendo delle sue opere una prefigurazione della nascita della natura “in posa”. Nell’insieme delle nature morte qui presenti spiccano i dipinti, la Frutta e la Natura morta con cacciagione e frutta, legati a due tra gli esponenti più rappresentativi del genere in Italia, come Pietro Paolo Bonzi, detto il Gobbo dei Carracci e il Maestro S.B., noto come lo Pseudo Salini, i quali riflettono le innovazioni caravaggesche dei primi capolavori romani del Merisi, connotate da un intenso e “contemplativo” naturalismo. Nel caso del secondo pittore si nota la ripresa di modelli nordici, nell’iconografia degli animali da selvaggina, e una carica cromatica tipica della scuola napoletana del Seicento alla quale egli era legato, che in mostra è splendidamente rappresentata dalla tela attribuita a Giovan Battista Ruoppolo, la Natura morta di cucina. La natura morta fiorentina è presente nelle opere della cerchia di Jacopo da Empoli, il pittore che, formatosi sulla pittura manierista fiorentina, “importa” a Firenze nei primi decenni del XVII secolo il nuovo genere proveniente dalle botteghe romane, tramite la presenza nelle collezioni Medicee di varie tele raffiguranti “pose” di animali e vegetali. I fasti del Barocco romano sono evocati dalla Natura morta di frutta e zucche di Giovanni Paolo Castelli detto lo Spadino, e la grande tela di Michelangelo Pace detto da Campidoglio, Natura morta di fiori e frutta con papere che si abbeverano ad una fontana. La seconda parte della mostra è aperta dai convivi immersi liberamente nel contesto naturale di parchi, boschetti e giardini, con l’allusione all’imprescindibile legame tra cibo ed Eros. La cornice fiabesca delle tele fiamminghe qui esposte, Festa nel parco del Castello e Convivio, con i meravigliosi sfondi di castelli dall’aspetto ancora medievale, dona alla scena un’atmosfera sognante e ovattata, tipica della vita di corte. Ancora di scuola fiamminga, della prima metà del Seicento, sono le due tele che illustrano la piacevolezza del mangiare immersi nella natura, il Banchetto all’aperto e il Paesaggio estivo, nei quali gli atteggiamenti dei personaggi richiamano una disinvoltura borghese nell’atto della consumazione dei pasti e dello stare a tavola. La presenza in mostra di un’opera come Interno di osteria con contadini, attribuibile a un artista del seguito di Pieter Brueghel il Giovane, ci permette di cogliere l’elemento grottesco di una scena di festa contadina, dove l’aspetto di preparazione e consumazione del pasto assume una grandissima forza espressiva, tipica dell’arte bruegheliana. La descrizione della vita umile degli ultimi, in una chiave legata ai costumi alimentari, viene espressa dalla presenza di una tela del pittore del Settecento bolognese, Stefano Gherardini, Interno di osteria con personaggi, formatosi sulla scia del Crespi, e da Il Pulcinella malato, eseguito da un seguace di Pier Leone Ghezzi, il grande caricaturista romano attivo nella Roma della prima metà del XVIII secolo. In posizione dominante, nella bellissima Sala del Camino, svetta il Bacco e Arianna del pittore Rococò fiorentino Gian Domenico Ferretti, il cui dipinto celebra il Dio del vino, dell’ebbrezza, della trasformazione e della rigenerazione della vegetazione. Seguendo un suadente percorso tra dipinti ricolmi di frutta, selvaggina, pesci, tavole imbandite e paesaggi animati da feste aristocratiche, colazioni campestri e fiere cittadine, si assiste alla rivelazione di una cultura artistica dominata dal trionfo della Natura mater, la procreatrice dei prodotti della terra, raffigurata nei paesaggi come luogo di bucolico abbandono, dove Eros e le Dee della fertilità e dell’abbondanza giacciono felici sul verde rigoglioso di un prato primaverile.
Il Castello
Tra le opere fortificate di epoca federiciana presenti in Puglia, il castello di Gioia del Colle è una di quelle che conservano più integro l’impianto architettonico, definito dall’ampio cortile quadrangolare, le poderose torri angolari e le cortine con paramento a conci bugnati. L’originaria struttura di epoca bizantina fu ampliata in epoca normanna. Fin dal 1500 storici, viaggiatori e studiosi hanno attribuito a Federico II la sistemazione definitiva del castello così come appare attualmente. Parte integrante della visita al monumentale Castello di Gioia del Colle sono le sale del Museo Archeologico, dove è presente una sistematica esposizione dei numerosi corredi delle necropoli di Monte Sannace e Santo Mola che coprono un ampio arco cronologico, dall’inizio del VI al III/II secolo a.C. Vasi geometrici e figurati, armi in bronzo, fibule e statuine fittili definiscono la consueta composizione dei corredi funerari del glorioso centro indigeno, ma anche delle più ampie comunità peucete.
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The catalogue is available from Artbooks.com:
Francesco Di Ciaula, Tavole Barocche: Banchetti, feste e nature morte tra XVII e XVIII secolo dalla Collezione Corsi di Firenze (Foggia: Claudio Grenzi, 2015), 96 pages, ISBN: 978-8884315830, $53.
Exhibition | Velvet Paintings: 18th-Century Pastels
Now on view at The Huntington:
Velvet Paintings: 18th-Century Pastels from The Huntington’s Art Collections
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Gardens, San Marino, CA, 16 May — 7 November 2015
Curated by Melinda McCurdy
Rosalba Carriera, Girl with a Rabbit, ca. 1720–30, pastel on paper (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Gardens: Adele S. Browning Memorial Collection)
The art of pastel painting reached its greatest height in 18th-century Europe. Praised for its bright white luminosity and velvety surface and constrained in size by its delicacy and the technical limitations of its materials, pastel possessed a decorative quality that suited the smaller-scale rooms of rococo interiors. These properties also made it particularly useful in portraiture, where the powdery medium’s ability to diffuse light produced likenesses more convincing than those worked in oils. Despite their fragile nature, the minimal presence of oil binders and lack of surface varnish meant that pastels retained their freshness and vibrancy long after oil paintings darkened with age. This exhibition features nine 18th-century pastels from The Huntington’s holdings, which have not been on public view for nearly a decade. Still-sparkling works by masters of the medium such as Rosalba Carriera, Francis Cotes, and William Hoare, brilliantly demonstrate why the late 17th-century French art theorist Roger de Piles called pastel “the most commodious type of painting.”
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In a posting for Home Subjects (25 June 2015), the curator of the exhibition Melinda McCurdy considers the reasons why pastels were widely perceived in the eighteenth century as especially suitable for domestic interiors—and welcomes your comments.
Exhibition | Rich and Tasty: Vermont Furniture to 1850
On view this summer at the Shelburne Museum:
Rich and Tasty: Vermont Furniture to 1850
Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, 25 July — 1 November 2015
Stand, attributed to Lemuel Bishop, Charlotte, Vermont, ca. 1815. Cherry, birch, mahogany, basswood and brass, 28 x 18 x 15 inches. Private Collection
This exhibition and accompanying catalogue will introduce and identify Vermont high style furniture, previously known only to decorative arts scholars, historians, and collectors. The project arrives twenty years after Shelburne Museum published a seminal checklist of early Vermont Furniture and is the result of two decades of scholarship. The exhibition will feature pieces that will illuminate the craft practices and regional economics that help define Vermont furniture’s stylistic features and unexpected aesthetic innovations, referred to as “rich and tasty” by one Vermont cabinetmaker.
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Jean M. Burks and Philip Zea, eds., Rich and Tasty: Vermont Furniture to 1850 (Shelburne, Vermont: Shelburne Museum, 2015), 180 pages, ISBN: 978-0939384112, $30.
Two landmark 1995 publications, The Best the Country Affords: Vermont Furniture 1765–1850 and Vermont Cabinetmakers & Chairmakers Before 1855: A Checklist, reintroduced Vermont high style furniture to decorative arts scholars, historians, and collectors. Equipped with this seminal knowledge, a small cadre of Vermont connoisseurs started scouring country auctions, adding signed and well-documented pieces to their private collections. Twenty years later, it is time to bring these pieces together and share them with the public. This catalog and the accompanying exhibition advances the understanding of Vermont high style furniture—from its features, craftsmanship, and economics, to its unexpected aesthetic innovations. The authors identify key eighteenth-century Vermont pieces before covering a variety of topics, including clockmaking, chairmaking, the half sideboard, furniture from Woodstock, and furniture from Vermont factories. Seventy-five full-color photographs by acclaimed Boston photographer David Bohl and extended catalog entries display furniture from all over the Green Mountain State.
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