Enfilade

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From the Städel Museum:

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu: A Contemporary of Städel’s / Ein Zeitgenosse Städels
Städel Museum, Frankfurt, 11 February — 10 May 2015

Curated by Jutta Schütt

Self-Portrait of Jean-Jacques de Boissieu, 1796, etching.

Jean-Jacques de Boissieu (1736–1810) was already a highly acclaimed artist beyond France in his lifetime. Not only princes but also private collectors like Johann Friedrich Städel were fascinated with the landscapes, genre scenes, and portraits depicted in the artist’s drawings and prints. The founder of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut acquired over twenty drawings and far more than two hundred etchings by de Boissieu, which still rank among the central holdings of the Städel’s Department of Prints and Drawings. Created in a period of historically revolutionary events, de Boissieu’s oeuvre mirrors the landscape and life of the province around the artist’s native city of Lyon with an almost irritatingly unexcited and serious steadiness. His etched landscapes and portraits as well as his subtly nuanced brush and chalk drawings reveal a progressive realism that hints at a bourgeois understanding of art independent of any academic norms.

Snuffbox with Flowers, Berlin, Germany, ca. 1765, from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (formerly in the collection of Frederick II of Prussia, 1712–1786), photo Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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A loan exhibition from the V&A, Close-Up and Personal includes 28 boxes in LA and nearly 60 in Cambridge. As reported by Paula Weideger for The Financial Times in 2009, the history of the fate of the collection is complicated, thanks partially to Arthur Gilbert’s conflicted relationship with LACMA, where he served as a member of the board of trustees. From LACMA:

Close-up and Personal: Eighteenth-Century Gold Boxes
from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 6 September 2014 — 1 March 2015
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 24 March — 6 September 2015

“So small a thing imposes on people,” remarked the notorious Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (1725–1798), who also carefully selected the type of tobacco to send inside such boxes when he presented them as gifts. Taking snuff and carrying it with you in an elaborate container was a universal practice in 18th-century Europe. A year before the death of the Elector of Cologne, one of the most powerful men in Europe at the time, Casanova had been given a snuffbox decorated with the Elector’s portrait. Going incognito to the Ridotto (the famous gambling halls of Venice), it was important that Casanova use an accessory he had not been seen with before. However, the very distinctive gold box with the Elector’s portrait eventually betrayed him when a former lover remembered it.

Double Snuffbox with Maps, ca. 1757, possibly Berlin, Germany, from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

You yourself may recognize some of the gold boxes on view at LACMA through March 1, 2015. Carefully collected by Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert in Los Angeles, they are here on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Designed to carry just a small amount of powdered tobacco, the fine decorations of these pocket-sized containers have to be examined close up. The proximity of the viewing experience makes it very personal, intensifies the response, and can be a powerful experience when shared. Even today, a common reaction when examining them is wonderment, but these complex objects also have the potential to spark a wide range of emotions. Infinitely customizable, gold boxes became the most versatile form of gift in the 18th century.

Unlike the cups of precious metal that continue to lend themselves to specific types of acknowledgment such as loyalty of service or achievements in sport, these portable presents made it possible to communicate a spectrum of sentiments in a variety of social situations. While the double snuffbox covered with maps detailing maneuverings in the Seven Years’ War was probably made in Berlin or among the Prussian allies, other examples are less readily attributable to one side of the conflict. The same imagery would have been understood as a political statement and demonstration of allegiance by participants on either side.

Pierre-Philippe Choffard, Design for an Oval Gold Box, 1759, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Elite production of the flashiest boxes was controlled by Frederick II, King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, who banned imports from France (the unrivalled center of production at the time) “for the best [interest] of the gold workers in Berlin.” He presented some of his lavish commissions to courtiers and other sovereigns, and the local industry flourished under his patronage. Frederick’s personal enjoyment of these intensely bejeweled trinkets, and appreciation for their artistry, inspired him to engage with the manual process of designing them himself. Often the precious metal of the boxes is marked, revealing the places, names, and sometimes dates attached to their making and circulation. However, the designers, royal or otherwise, upon whose creativity all gold snuffboxes depend, cannot be as readily identified. A design on paper signed ‘Choffard fecit 1759’ for a box bearing the mark of maker Jean Ducrollay, is the great exception. However, we have very little information about Pierre-Philippe Choffard as a man or an artist.

Tantalizing details are a major characteristic of gold boxes, and eccentric examples have captivated many onlookers through their puzzling appearance. Like other curious objet d’art, such as the elephant supported musical vanity box (called a nécessaire), some snuffboxes were more than just containers. In the form of gadgets or figurines, they beg to be picked up and turned over in the hand. For example, a delicate box imitating a wicker basket reveals (when the lid is lifted) a cornucopia of fruit painted to fool the eye.

James Cox, Nécessaire, ca. 1770, from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

You would have to travel to Strawberry Hill near London, the residence of Horace Walpole (1717–1797), to see a truly bizarre example of a snuffbox commissioned exclusively as a curiosity rather than a functional object. Exploiting the genre’s reputation for erudite encoding and connoisseurial delectation, it titillates through its command of wit. An elaborate ruse, it was conceived by the French patron of the arts Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (1697–1780) as a fake declaration of love from a social rival of hers to Walpole, the fourth Earl of Orford and a famous English collector. Her good friend was completely taken in by the exquisite portrait-clad box containing a flattering letter, and he wrote to the marquise about the excitement it gave him. Although the prank was at his expense, he seems to have been rather tickled by the incident. In the introduction to the catalog of his private collections, he recounts the practical joke as an enticement to his readers.

There can be no joking about the significance of the display of gold snuffboxes in the Koenig Gallery. Nothing prepares you for the power of these petite and precious masterpieces of extraordinary design and making. To really understand their attraction, you must encounter the real thing. And once you do, you will have an insider’s view of the preoccupations and passions of 18th-century aristocrats as well as an admiration for the genius of the best makers and designers of the period. With their curious shapes, elaborate surfaces, and the intriguing thoughts they express, gold boxes are some of the most delightful objects ever made.

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Press release from the Musée Cognacq-Jay:

Lumières: Carte Blanche à Christian Lacroix
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, 19 November 2014 — 19 April 2015

Curated by Christian Lacroix and Rose-Marie Mousseaux

In celebration of its grand reopening, the Musée Cognac-Jay has offered Christian Lacroix a creative carte blanche.

Established in 1928 by the founder of the La Samaritaine department store, Ernest Cognacq, in 1990 the museum was transferred to the Hôtel Donon, a recently-renovated sixteenth-century townhouse in the Marais district. The Musée Cognacq-Jay is home to a collection of emblematic eighteenth-century artworks, selected by its founder to be displayed in wood-panelled rooms representative of “the artistic décor of French life.”

Renowned for his creative collaborations with museums, Christian Lacroix has accepted the dual challenge of reimagining the ‘guiding narrative’ of the exhibition spaces while exploring a concept which has shaped his own approach to his art—the fascination exerted by the eighteenth century. He has curated contributions from over 40 contemporary artists, invited to reflect upon ten key themes identified in Ernest Cognacq’s collections with a view to enhancing our understanding of the Age of Enlightenment and its continued relevance in our own era.

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Christian Lacroix
Visions of the Enlightenment

My perspective on the Age of Enlightenment is simply that of someone who is passionate about that era. It is an indirect perspective of the late 19th and early 20th century, when the Cognacqs built up their collection in consultation with ‘enlightened’ art historians. However, I admit that its influence on my work is less clear, as I see myself as more Dionysian than Apollinian. I can only gratefully advocate everything that the Enlightenment brought about in terms of social progress, political thinking, the fight against obscurantism, tolerance and a thirst for knowledge, as demonstrated by the encyclopaedists. All the more so given that, paradoxically, this seemingly unshakeable knowledge, these foundations that were thought to be the definitive basis of modern societies were suddenly undermined, disputed and denied in the early 21st century. If only for these reasons, it is interesting to make these connections between the 18th century and our own times. However, in my opinion we should also consider 19th-century taste—the ‘century of the pastiche’—when almost nothing new was created. Post-Napoleon III, decorative arts did nothing but ‘sample’ previous centuries, just as the Romantic period revived the medieval troubadour. There was no sign of pure, ex nihilo ‘contemporary creativity’, unlike what was emerging in England and the northern countries. From 1880 to 1910, people were expected to live in accordance with good taste—that is, past tastes—as the middle class post-Napoleon III adopted the style of the pre-Revolution enlightened aristocracy. I must confess that, beyond my appreciation and respect for the Age of Enlightenment, I am not impervious to all the rococo froth it created and inspired in the second half of the 19th century and beyond, with the somewhat risqué ‘marquise’, ‘shepherdess’ style, which was basically bourgeois and borderline kitsch. Contemporary artists often look back upon the 18th century from this angle.

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Rose-Marie Mousseaux, Director of the Musée Cognacq-Jay
A Return to the Museum’s Founding Vision

The Musée Cognacq-Jay is more than just a general collection of 18th-century art. It is an evocation of the taste in the 1900s for the Age of Enlightenment. The artistic collaboration with Christian Lacroix happened at exactly the same time as we were rethinking our vision of the Musée Cognacq-Jay, its place among Paris’s museums today, and what it has to offer in terms of revealing the appeal of the 18th century. To develop our 21st-century perspective, we had to go back to the founding vision of Ernest Cognacq, philanthropist and founder of the La Samaritaine department store who bequeathed the works to the City of Paris.

The exhibition design had not been reviewed since the museum moved premises in 1990, although the thematic display of the works had changed over time. This resulted in the creation of a temporary exhibition space but also led to an imbalance between the number of exhibits and the space in the rooms to display them. The empty galleries detracted from the ‘charm’ of the tour through the wood-panelled rooms. Finally, when the exhibits in the collection underwent the statutory inspection of their condition and physical integrity, we were able to look at each item in greater detail and consider its importance and meaning in the context of the collection as whole.
Today, the challenge is to make the museum’s layout clearer by structuring it around better defined themes. By giving Christian Lacroix carte blanche, we were able to identify ten recurring themes within the collection and structure them around two key aspects of 18th-century society—the importance of social occasions and the emergence of the individual. The layout has therefore been designed to go beyond the chronological limits of the temporary exhibition and incorporate several of the themes explored in the museum’s future permanent exhibition spaces. We adopted the same approach when deciding how to present each theme.

Christian Lacroix played a key role in presenting the collections in a way that was both physical and conceptual. The carte blanche that we gave him marks a highlight in the history of the Musée Cognacq-Jay. The temporary exhibition that he has curated combines contemporary works with historical exhibits and is an opportunity to reconsider our perspective of the Age of Enlightenment, its promises, and disappointments by inviting visitors to explore and reflect upon its legacy.

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The New Museum Layout

Thanks to Christian Lacroix’s input, we have been able to rethink how the museum’s collections are displayed and show the exhibits in a new light by presenting them in a more structured way that reflects the personalities of Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jay. The themes explored as part of this new layout reflect the different motifs found in the collection, which were influenced by the choices made by Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jay as collectors and by the major artistic movements of the 18th century.

The tour begins in the introductory room, which explains the history of the collection and its founders. After that, the exhibition is structured around ten different themes:
• Sensory experience and knowledge in the 18th century (room 2)
• Shows, balls, and sociability (rooms 3 and 4)
• Paris, capital of the Enlightenment (room 5)
• Europe’s artistic economy (rooms 6 and 7)
• 18th-century exoticism (room 8)
• The classical model (room 9)
• Childhood and education (rooms 10 and 11)
• Portraits and the emergence of the individual (rooms 12, 13 and 15)
• The age of Boucher (room 14)
• Fables, stories, and novels (room 17)

Throughout the exhibition, Christian Lacroix draws links between the museum’s collections and photographs, textiles, design pieces, and installations by contemporary artists. In doing so, he encourages visitors to reflect on how the Age of Enlightenment has influenced today’s society and gain a better understanding of its cultural legacy.

Details are available from the press kit, available as a PDF file here»

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It seems to me that the historiographical layers involved with the new presentation of the museum are also playing out in curious ways with the fate of La Samaritaine, the department store founded by Ernest Cognacq; Adan Gopnik provides commentary in “The View from a Bridge: Shopping, Tourism, and the Changing Face of Luxury,” The New Yorker (8 December 2014), pp. 42–47. –CH

Looking ahead to the summer at Dulwich:

Prud’hon: Napoleon’s Draughtsman
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 23 June — 15 November 2015

In coordination with London’s celebrations surrounding the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, Dulwich Picture Gallery presents Prud’hon: Napoleon’s Draughtsman, the first UK exhibition devoted to Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758–1823), a painter and draughtsman who, through his distinctive and unconventional vision, emerged as one of the most exceptional talents working in post-Revolutionary Paris.

Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Seated Nude with Arm Extended, black and white chalk on blue-tinted (Gray: Le Musée Baron Martin)

A selection of 13 works on paper will celebrate Prud’hon as court artist to Napoleon and Joséphine Bonaparte and as one of France’s greatest draughtsmen. The display will focus on the artist’s extraordinary life studies in white and black chalk, remarkable for their ethereal forms, subtlety of light and shade, and mastery of expression. Whether sketched quickly or finished to perfection, the drawings reveal Prud’hon’s working processes, exploring the constant experimentation that led to the unique blend of Romantic expression and Neoclassical forms that marked him out amongst his contemporaries.

Prud’hon, unlike many of his contemporaries, drew from the live model throughout his career giving him the freedom to focus on certain forms or details without the confines of specific commissions. His drawings, which range from preparatory studies for interior decoration to allegorical compositions (conveying meaning through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, and events) not only demonstrate his incredible skill but also provide a sense of contact with the heart and mind of the artist. On his preferred medium of thick blue paper you can catch a glimpse of his ideas unfolding beneath his chalk, an expression of his thoughts at the moment of creation.

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Known for its outstanding collection of drawings, pastels, and prints by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, the Musée Baron Martin in Gray is housed in an eighteenth-century château (refurbished between 1777 and 1783), built on the site of a medieval fortress (the fourteenth-century tower remains). More information is available here.

Press release (24 November 2014) from The Huntington:

The U.S. Constitution and the End of American Slavery
The Huntington, San Marino, California, 24 January — 20 April 2015

Curated by Olga Tsapina

In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens will illuminate the complexities of ending slavery with an exhibition drawn from its renowned collections of American historical manuscripts and prints. “The U.S. Constitution and the End of American Slavery” will be on view in the West Hall of the Library from January 24 until April 20, 2015.

Thomas Jefferson, notes on the 12th Amendment, ca. 1803 (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens)

“The exhibition follows a long, tortuous, and bloody road that led to that fateful vote,” said Olga Tsapina, the Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts and curator of the exhibition. On January 31, 1865, Schuyler Colfax, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, called for a vote on a joint resolution that would amend the Constitution to abolish slavery throughout the United States and empower Congress to “enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” After the clerk read the tally—119 ayes to 56 nays, with eight abstaining—the House erupted in wild jubilation. American slavery was dead. “The 119 congressmen who voted ‘aye’ on January 31, 1865, accomplished two things that seemed nearly impossible—abolishing slavery and amending the U.S. Constitution,” Tsapina added.

Many hurdles stood in the way of ending slavery: racism, fear, political partisanship, economic interests, and the lack of political will, to name a few. The Constitution presented the most formidable obstacle. The very same national charter that had created a republic dedicated to liberty also guaranteed the rights of Americans who owned human property, said Tsapina. For example, the Constitution mandated that each state respect the other states’ laws, even while Southern states permitted ownership of slaves. “But this is just one area of the Constitution that was problematic,” she added. “There were many others, and they all factored into what was a tremendously complicated—and daunting—matter.”

The conflict between the foundational principles of liberty and the reality of American slavery proved to be irreconcilable. After decades of increasingly bitter discord, it finally broke the Union apart, plunging the nation into civil war in 1861. Even the war failed to end human bondage. That was achieved only by changing the Constitution in a way its framers could not have imagined.

Featuring some 100 manuscripts, rare books, prints, and photographs, most exhibited for the first time, the exhibition will offer Huntington visitors a rare opportunity to experience the history of what Colfax called “that great measure, which hereafter will illuminate the highest place in our History” through the extraordinary breadth and depth of The Huntington’s collections.

The exhibition includes the writings of abolitionists and slave masters; runaway slaves and slave speculators; African American emigrants to Liberia and members of the Underground Railroad; and legal scholars and leaders of political parties. Visitors will see manumissions (formal documents freeing slaves from servitude) and slave traders’ business correspondence, letters from Civil War battlefields, and congressional speeches and resolutions, as well as political cartoons representing viewpoints from both sides of the partisan divide.

The display includes a 1796 letter by President George Washington discussing the fate of his runaway slave, Ona Marie ‘Oney’ Judge; Thomas Jefferson’s notes on amending the Constitution; a notebook from the famous abolitionist John Brown; and the writings of Francis Lieber, the celebrated author of the U.S. Army military code that was praised as “better than the Emancipation Proclamation.” The exhibition will feature letters and manuscripts from The Huntington’s famous collection of Abraham Lincoln material, including Lincoln’s record of his debates with Stephen A. Douglas and a copy of the 13th Amendment signed by the president.

“‘The U.S. Constitution and the End of American Slavery’ tells a complex and fascinating story in which the fate of American slavery was decided not only on Civil War battlefields, but also in courtrooms, the debating floors of state legislatures and the chambers of the U.S. Congress, as well as in proverbial smoke-filled rooms,” said Tsapina.

From The Huntington:

Working Women: Images of Female Labor in the Art of Thomas Rowlandson
The Huntington, San Marino, California, 20 December 2014 — 13 April 2015

Thomas Rowlandson, A French Frigate Towing an English Man o’ War into Port, no date, pen and watercolor (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens; Gilbert Davis Collection)

As one of Britain’s premier draftsmen, Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827) lent his vast talent to the comic depiction of a wide range of topics, from politics to pornography. His satirical views of Georgian society are among his strongest work, and The Huntington’s collection focuses primarily on this aspect of his oeuvre. Rowlandson’s observations of the follies of the world around him provide us with a view of late 18th- and early 19th-century England that goes beyond what we see in aristocratic portraits or in the prose of Jane Austen, which portray a world of grand ladies and gentlemen and genteel manners.

This display of 11 rarely-exhibited watercolors from the collection focuses on Rowlandson’s depiction of women. His subjects are primarily those who were most visible within the public sphere—street vendors, servants, actresses, and prostitutes as they plied their various trades—with an occasional glance at the foibles of the upper class. Eschewing complex political or philosophical messages, Rowlandson’s images, though humorous, provide a fascinating glimpse into the reality of women’s lives at this time.

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The Museum of Liverpool, the International Slavery Museum, and the Victoria Gallery and Museum celebrate the activism and legacy of Edward Rushton (1756–1814) with a trio of exhibitions:

Unsung – Liverpool’s Most Radical Son: Edward Rushton
The Museum of Liverpool, 7 November 2014 — 10 May 2015
International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, 7 November 2014 — 10 May 2015
Victoria Gallery and Museum, University of Liverpool, 7 November 2014 — 10 May 2015

What made a Liverpool bookseller, and former seaman, publican, and newspaper editor who was blind, take on George Washington, the President of the United States of America, over his personal and public failure to liberate enslaved Africans?

Moses Haughton (1773–1849), Portrait of Edward Rushton (Liverpool: Royal School for the Blind)

Edward Rushton’s knowledge of slavery was first hand—as a West Indies sea boy from the age of ten he had experience of both the slave trade and plantation slavery. In Caribbean waters his life was saved by an African sailor, Quamina, whom he had befriended, and who lost his own life in consequence. Two years later, at eighteen, Rushton was the only crewmember who tended the enslaved Africans infected with the epidemic eye disease, trachoma. Rushton caught the infection and became blind.

Surviving a period of poverty, he opened a bookshop on Paradise Street, which became a hub for Liverpool’s ‘Friends of Freedom’. Rushton was then able to establish the Liverpool School for the Indigent Blind—still in existence today—second only in the world to the Paris school.

Edward Rushton used his pen to support the revolutionary struggles in America, France, Haiti, Ireland, and Poland and was a friend to all who were oppressed whether by human exploitation or human frailty. At the heart was his plea to respect human rights. He saw the press gang as a “a National Stain” and slavery as the “ the Foulest Stain.” Rushton’s poetry broke the mould and gave a voice to the powerless and dispossessed across the world. His work reached a wide audience—it was published on both sides of the Atlantic in newspapers, collected volumes, in broadsides and put to music.

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Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and led by DaDaFest as part of DaDaFest International 2014, Unsung began last year in Liverpool as a city-wide project celebrating the social activism and legacy of Edward Rushton on the bicentenary of his death. Kathleen Hawkins wrote about the project for the BBC back in November.