Exhibition | Duke Herzog Anton Ulrich, A Collector’s Travels
Founded in 1754, the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig explores the origins of its foundation collection on the 300th anniversary of Anton Ulrich’s death:
Fürst von Welt: Herzog Anton Ulrich—Ein Sammler auf Reisen
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig, 10 April — 20 July 2014
Balthasar Permoser (1651–1732), Bust of Duke Herzog Anton Ulrich (Braunschweig: Anton Ulrich Museum)
Anlässlich des 300. Todestages Anton Ulrichs von Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1633–1714) präsentiert das Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum die Kabinett-Ausstellung Fürst von Welt. Herzog Anton Ulrich—ein Sammler auf Reisen vom 10. April bis zum 20. Juli 2014 in der Kemenate der Burg Dankwarderode. Die Sonderschau würdigt den vielseitig begabten Herzog, der angeregt durch seine Liebe zur Kunst den Grundstein für eine der bedeutendsten Kunstsammlungen Deutschlands legte.
Die Ausstellung in der Burg Dankwarderode führt in sechs Kapiteln die Besucherinnen und Besucher durch die verschiedenen Lebensstationen des schillernden Sammlungsgründers, beginnend mit seinem humanistisch-intellektuell geprägten Elternhaus bis hin zu regelmäßig aufgesuchten Reiseorten in Frankreich, Italien, den Niederlanden und im Deutschen Reich.
Anton Ulrichs Kavalierstour, die fester Bestandteil der Erziehung zukünftiger Monarchen war, führte ihn 1655 nach Paris und gab den Anstoß für seine intensive Sammeltätigkeit. Hier kaufte er erstmalig einige Kunstobjekte wie Gemälde, Kupferstiche und Münzen. Bis an sein Lebensende sollten Anton Ulrichs Reiseunternehmungen von zahlreichen Ankäufen erlesener Kunstwerke geprägt sein.
Die Sonderausstellung zeigt eine Auswahl von rund 40 Kunstwerken aus den Bereichen der Malerei, Skulptur, Grafik und Angewandten Kunst, die entweder von Anton Ulrich selbst angekauft oder durch seine Agenten ausgesucht wurden.
Adriaen van der Werff, Adam and Eve, ca. 1711
(Braunschweig: Anton Ulrich Museum)
Der Welfenherzog, der sich zeitlebens auch als Dichter und Mäzen von Theater- und Opernhäusern einen Namen machte, begeisterte sich im Besonderen für Kunstwerke mit erzählerischen Elementen. Als Beispiel für diesen Umstand gilt das Gemälde Die Auffindung des Moses (1650), ein Spätwerk des neapolitanischen Künstlers Bernardo Cavallino (1616–1656), das Anton Ulrichs Interesse vermutlich vor allem durch seine raffinierte Erzählweise geweckt hat. Der Erwerb der französischen Bronze Diana mit Hirsch (Ende d. 17 Jh.) sowie der römischen Antiken Herakles und Dionysos, die mit neuzeitlichen Ergänzungen bestückt wurden, zeugen vom herzoglichen Interesse für mythologische Geschichten.
Die Präsentation einer virtuellen Rekonstruktion des ehemaligen Lustschlosses Salzdahlum, das Herzog Anton Ulrich nach dem Vorbild niederländischer und italienischer Schloss- und Villenarchitektur erbauen ließ, führt in dreidimensionaler Hinsicht den seit dem 19. Jahrhundert nicht mehr existenten Ausstellungsort für seine Kunstsammlungen vor Augen.
Im Rittersaal der Burg Dankwarderode können im Rahmen der Meisterwerke-Ausstellung Epochal weitere 50 herausragende Kunstobjekte betrachtet werden, die durch Anton Ulrichs Kaufinitiative in seine Sammlung gelangten. Darunter befinden sich neben Ostasiatika auch Objekte aus dem einzigartigen Bestand italienischer Majolika sowie Gemälde von Rubens, Rembrandt und Vermeer, die den exquisiten Geschmack des herzoglichen Sammlers nachdrücklich belegen. Besucherinnen und Besucher können zu ausgewählten Objekten interessante Hintergrundinformationen mit dem eigenen Smartphone abrufen.
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From Michael Imhoff Verlag:
Jochen Luckhardt, „… einer der größten Monarchen Europas“?! Neue Forschungen zu Herzog Anton Ulrich (Petersberg: Michael Imhoff Verlag, 2014), 208 pages, ISBN 978-3731900559, 30€.
Die Jubiläumspublikation zum 300. Todesjahr des bedeutenden Sammlers und Dichters Herzog Anton Ulrich präsentiert Forschungsergebnisse europäischer Wissenschaftler aus Wien, Paris, Venedig und Amsterdam. Der Welfenherzog aus der Linie Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel wird hier erstmals aus der Sicht von Außen betrachtet – seine Reisen in europäische Länder stehen dabei ebenso im Fokus wie seine Kunstankäufe und Beziehungen zu tonangebenden Fürstenhäusern. Der Anspruch Anton Ulrichs, sich als Monarch innerhalb der Führungsriege zu positionieren, wird mit den Beiträgen, auch zu Zeremoniell und Geschenkewesen der Barockzeit, verständlich—wenn man diese Ambitionen auch mit dem etwas ironisch klingenden Ausspruch Liselottes von der Pfalz sehen muss: „Wenn Verdienste und Wünsche gelten sollten, so würde der Herzog einer der größten Monarchen seyn.“
Exhibition | Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude
Willem van de Velde, the Younger, Two English Ships
Wrecked in a Storm on a Rocky Coast, ca. 1700
(London: National Maritime Museum)
Press release (21 March 2014) for the current exhibition:
Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 11 July 2014 — 4 January 2015
Mystic Seaport, Mystic, Connecticut, 19 September 2015 — 28 March 2016
Curated by Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgitt
To mark the tercentenary of the Longitude Act of 1714, Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude, a major new exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, tells the extraordinary story of the race to determine longitude at sea and how one of the greatest technical challenges of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was eventually solved. The exhibition draws on the latest research to shed new light on the history of longitude—one of the great achievements of the Georgian age—and how it changed our understanding of the world.
John Harrison, H1 Marine Timekeeper, 1730–35
(London: National Maritime Museum)
In recent years, John Harrison has been cast as the hero of the story, not least in Dava Sobel’s seminal work Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Ships, Clocks, and Stars provides a new perspective on this famous tale. While John Harrison makes a good story and his marine sea-watch was vital to finally solving the problem of longitude, this was against a backdrop of almost unprecedented collaboration and investment. Famous names such as Galileo, Isaac Newton, James Cook, and William Bligh all feature in this fascinating and complex history. Crucially, it was Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne’s observations at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, his work on the Nautical Almanac and the Board of Longitude that demonstrated the complementary nature of astronomical and timekeeper methods, ultimately leading to the successful determination of longitude at sea.
Highlights from the exhibition include all five of John Harrison’s famous timekeepers. H1, H2, H3 and H4 will move from the Royal Observatory Greenwich to be displayed in the National Maritime Museum for the first time in nearly 30 years. H5 is being loaned from the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers. Also featured is the original Longitude Act of 1714, which has never been on public display before; an intricate 1747 model of the Centurion, the ship which carried out the first proper sea trial of Harrison’s H1, and the elegant, padded silk ‘observing suit’ worn by Nevil Maskelyne at the Royal Observatory during the 1760s.
John Harrison, H4 Marine Timekeeper, 1755–59
(London: National Maritime Museum)
Passed by the British government in July 1714, the Longitude Act aimed to solve the problem of determining a ship’s longitude (east-west position) at sea. For a maritime nation such as Britain, investment in long distance trade, outposts and settlements overseas made the ability to determine a ship’s longitude accurately increasingly important. As different nations, including Spain, the Netherlands and France, sought to dominate the world’s oceans, each offered financial rewards for solving the longitude problem. But it was in Britain that the approach paid off. With life-changing sums of money on offer, the challenge became the talk of London’s eighteenth-century coffee-houses and captured the imaginations and talents of astronomers, skilled artisans, politicians, seamen and satirists; many of whom came up with ingenious methods and instruments designed to scoop the Board of Longitude’s tantalising rewards and transform seafaring navigation forever.
The Royal Observatory in Greenwich was founded in 1675 specifically to carry out observations ‘to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation’. Under the 1714 Longitude Act, successive Astronomers Royal became leading voices on the Board of Longitude, judging proposals and encouraging promising developments.
As solutions were developed, the Royal Observatory also became a testing site for marine timekeepers and the place at which the astronomical observations needed for navigational tables were made. The significance of this work eventually lead to Greenwich becoming the home of the world’s Prime Meridian in 1884.
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The catalogue is published by Harper Collins:
Richard Dunn and Rebekah Higgitt, Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude (London: Collins, 2014), 256 pages, softcover ISBN: 978-0007940523, £15 / hardcover, ISBN: 978-0062353566, $75.
A tale of eighteenth-century invention and competition, commerce and conflict, this is a lively, illustrated, and accurate chronicle of the search to solve ‘the longitude problem’, the question of how to determine a ship’s position at sea—and one that changed the history of mankind.
Ships, Clocks, and Stars brings into focus one of our greatest scientific stories: the search to accurately measure a ship’s position at sea. The incredible, illustrated volume reveals why longitude mattered to seafaring nations, illuminates the various solutions that were proposed and tested, and explores the invention that revolutionized human history and the man behind it, John Harrison. Here, too, are the voyages of Captain Cook that put these revolutionary navigational methods to the test.
Filled with astronomers, inventors, politicians, seamen, and satirists, Ships, Clocks, and Stars explores the scientific, political, and commercial battles of the age, as well as the sailors, ships, and voyages that made it legend—from Matthew Flinders and George Vancouver to the voyages of The Bounty and The Beagle. Featuring more than 150 photographs specially commissioned from Britain’s National Maritime Museum, this evocative, detailed, and thoroughly fascinating history brings this age of exploration and enlightenment vividly to life.
Richard Dunn is Senior Curator and Head of Science and Technology at Royal Museums Greenwich. Rebekah Higgitt is Lecturer in History of Science at the University of Kent.
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Note (added a few hours after the original posting appeared) — I should have noted that Jeremy Wear plans to chair a session on the theme of longitude at the 2015 ASECS conference in Los Angeles. –CH
(more…)
Exhibition | Longitude Punk’d
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In connection with the exhibition Ships, Clocks, and Stars: The Quest for Longitude; from the Royal Museums Greenwich:
Longitude Punk’d
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 10 April 2014 — 4 January 2015
Steampunk artists have taken over the Royal Observatory! Let madcap inventors, stargazing scientists, and extremely elegant explorers take you on an adventure into a world where scientific convention and the laws of nature have been re-written. Their fabulous narrative lavishly reinterprets the science and drama of the 18th-century quest to find longitude at sea, inspired by the 300th anniversary of the Longitude Act
Explore this exclusive exhibition of eccentric inventions specially created by steampunk luminaries including award-winning novelist Robert Rankin—exuberantly blurring the boundaries between art and science, fact and fiction. Don’t miss this chance to see something completely unique, never tried before and in the last place you would expect to see it. Meet time-travelling Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne, observe Martian goings-on through our Victorian telescope, or come to a themed Steampunk film screening in our Punk’d events season (including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen).
Longitude Punk’d is part of Royal Museums Greenwich’s Longitude Season, celebrating the tercentenary of the Longitude Act with exhibitions, special events, and planetarium shows.
Exhibition | The Art and Science of Exploration, 1768–80
William Hodges, A View of the Monuments of Easter Island (Rapanui), ca.1776
(London: National Maritime Museum, BHC1795)
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Press release (17 June 2014) from the Royal Museums Greenwich:
The Art and Science of Exploration, 1768–80
Queen’s House, Greenwich, from 7 August 2014
This August The Art and Science of Exploration, 1768–80 opens in the newly refurbished rooms at the centre of the Queen’s House. Exploring the crucial role of artists on Captain Cook’s three voyages of discovery, the exhibition will be the first time that Stubbs’s Portrait of a Large Dog (Dingo) and The Kongouro from New Holland (Kangaroo) will be on display since they were acquired by the National Maritime Museum in November 2013.
When Cook’s first expedition to the South Pacific returned to Britain in 1771, he brought back accounts and images of extraordinary lands, people, flora and fauna. Returning twice more over the following decade, Cook established a pattern for voyages of discovery that combined scientific investigation with artistic response. The newly-acquired Stubbs paintings will be joined by portraits, landscapes and scenes of encounters with Pacific islanders by William Hodges and John Webber as well as botanical prints and original drawings by Sydney Parkinson.
John Webber, Poedua, the Daughter of Orio, ca.1784 (London: National Maritime Museum, BHC2957)
Artists played an essential role on Captain Cook’s three voyages, producing both scientific records and imaginative responses to the unfamiliar lands that they encountered, forever influencing how the British public saw the Pacific. William Hodges was to become the first professional English painter to meet people previously unaffected by European contact, whilst John Webber’s painting of Poedua, the Daughter of Orio is one of the earliest portraits of a Polynesian woman by a European painter. The artists’ works were crucial to how places and discoveries were brought back and interpreted by those in Britain. Hodges’s paintings, particularly Tahiti Revisited, show how artists adapted the techniques and styles learnt in Europe to depict these exotic scenes for a British audience.
The middle section of The Art and Science of Exploration, 1768–80 looks at the work of Hodges, the artist who experimented and developed the most during his explorations with Cook and shared an interest in climate with the scientific men on board. He produced bright, vibrant studies that were on-the-spot responses to his environment with none of the classical allusion added to his later finished paintings. On display is Hodges’s A View of the Cape of Good Hope, Taken on the Spot, From On Board the Resolution, exhibited at the Free Society of Artists before he returned, along with eight of his small sketches, including the last oil study made on the second voyage, View of Resolution Bay in the Marquesas.
The third aspect of the exhibition focuses on the 30,000 dried plants and 955 botanical drawings by Sydney Parkinson that were brought back from Cook’s first voyage. The sheer quantity of new plants recorded was a defining feature of this expedition. Parkinson died during the return journey but his patron, the naturalist Joseph Banks planned to produce a book, employing a large group of artists to complete watercolours and engravings based on Parkinson’s sketches. However, it was not until the 1980s that all 743 prints were made. On display will be Parkinson’s original drawing, the watercolour, copper plate, engraving proof (all on loan from the Natural History Museum), and final print of two specimens collected at Endeavour River, Northern Queensland in 1770.
This exhibition shows the important role that artists had on the Cook voyages and on the European understanding of these faraway lands. They produced extraordinary images which worked both as scientific records of carefully planned exploration, as well as sensitive representations of an unfolding new world.
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Note (added 19 August 2014) — In April 2015 George Stubbs’s The Kongouro from New Holland will start a 12-month tour to four UK museums: The Horniman Museum and Gardens in London, The Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby, The Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL, and the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow.
Exhibition | The Art of Golf: The Story of Scotland’s National Sport
Press release (11 July 2014) for the current exhibition:
The Art of Golf: The Story of Scotland’s National Sport
The Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, 12 July — 26 October 2014
David Allan, William Inglis (ca. 1712–1792), Surgeon and Captain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (Scottish National Gallery)
The Scottish National Gallery is delighted to take part in the sporting celebrations taking place this summer in Scotland with The Art of Golf: The Story of Scotland’s National Sport. The exhibition will overlap with two important events: the Commonwealth Games, Glasgow (23 July–3 August) and the Ryder Cup, Gleneagles (23–28 September), the biennial competition played between teams of professional golfers representing the United States and Europe. The Art of Golf explores golf as a subject of fascination for artists from the seventeenth century to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the emergence of the sport in Scotland.
The Art of Golf will bring together around 60 paintings and photographs—as well as a selection of historic golfing equipment—with works by artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823), Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634) and Paul Sandby (1731–1809) illustrating the origins of the game. Other highlights will include Sir John Lavery’s (1846–1951) beautiful 1920s paintings of the golf course at North Berwick, a coastal resort 25 miles east of Edinburgh, and colourful railway posters for popular destinations such as Gleneagles, which illustrate the boom in golfing tourism in the inter-war years. Stunning images of golf courses from Brora to the Isle of Harris by contemporary photographer Glyn Satterly and spectacular aerial shots by artist and aviator Patricia Macdonald will bring the exhibition up to present day. Generous loans from a number of famous Scottish golf clubs, the British Golf Museum in St Andrews and private collectors have been secured for this exhibition.
The centrepiece of the show will be the greatest golfing painting in the world, Charles Lees’s 1847 masterpiece The Golfers. This commemorates a match played on the Old Course at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St Andrews, by Sir David Baird and Sir Ralph Anstruther, against Major Hugh Lyon Playfair and John Campbell of Saddell. It represents a veritable ‘who’s who’ of Scottish golf at that time and was famously reproduced in a fine engraving which sold in great quantities. Lees (1800–80) made use of photography, at a time when it was in its infancy, to help him design the painting’s overall composition. The image in question, taken by photography pioneers D O Hill & Robert Adamson, will be included in the show and Lees’s preparatory drawings and oil sketches will also be displayed alongside the finished painting to offer visitors further insight into the creation of this great work. Impressions of The Golfers are now in many of the greatest golf clubhouses around the world. The painting is jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
David Allan, The Prize of the Silver Golf: Officer Carrying a Decorated Golf Club, Two Soldiers with Drums behind Him, ca. 1785 (Scottish National Gallery)
Golf has been played in Scotland since at least the fifteenth century. Whilst its origins are obscure, it is undoubtedly close to the Netherlandish game of ‘colf’, which was played over rough ground or on frozen waterways, and involved hitting a ball to a target stick fixed in the ground or the ice. ‘Colvers’ playing on the frozen canals are seen in Dutch seventeenth-century paintings which form the earliest part of the show. In Scotland the game is often played over ‘links’ courses, originally rough common ground where the land meets the sea. The majority of Scotland’s famous old courses, such as St Andrews or North Berwick, are links courses. In Edinburgh, the early links courses of Bruntsfield, Leith and Musselburgh are shown in works by Sandby and Raeburn.
Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery, said: “This show is designed to be fun and to bring together two publics, lovers of art and lovers of golf. Where better to do this than in this world-class gallery, with its great Old master and Scottish paintings, which is situated in Scotland’s beautiful capital city of Edinburgh, and through which so many golfers pass on their way to our internationally renowned courses.”
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From ACC Distribution:
Michael Clarke and Kenneth McConkey, The Art of Golf (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 2014), 72 pages, ISBN: 978-1906270674, £13.
The Art of Golf illustrates how the noble game has been depicted in European art from the seventeenth century to the present day. This fascinating story is told by images in a variety of media, from paintings and prints to photographs and posters. The centrepiece is Charles Lees’s The Golfers, 1847, which depicts a match played on the Old Course at St Andrews in 1847, and is one greatest golfing painting in the world. In his essay Michael Clarke, director of the Scottish National Gallery, outlines the story behind the development of the game, while art historian Kenneth McConkey discusses the series of paintings of golf at North Berwick made by Sir John Lavery in the years following the Great War.
Michael Clarke is Director of the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. He has published widely, including books on English watercolours, the landscape painter Camille Corot, and his second, revised edition of The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Art Terms was published in 2010. Most recently he co-curated the international exhibition Impressionist Gardens (2010–11) and wrote the exhibition catalogue of French Drawings in the Scottish National Gallery (2011). Kenneth McConkey is Professor of Art History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Design, the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. He has written extensively about late Victorian and Edwardian painting.
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The politics of gender, golf, and Scottish identity will soon go to the polls. On September 18 (the same day, Scots vote to stay or secede from Britain), members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club (roughly 2500 men) will vote on the question of whether women may be admitted. As reported by The New York Times, for Louise Richardson, the principal of the University of St. Andrews, the discriminatory policy is also a “workplace hurdle.” Karen Crouse’s article, “In St. Andrews, a Heavy Knock on a Neighbor’s Door: First Female President of University of St. Andrews Fights for Admittance at Royal and Ancient Golf Club,” appeared in the paper on 11 July 2014.
Update (added 22 September 2014) — As Crouse reports in The New York Times (18 September 2014). . .
The Royal and Ancient Golf Club voted overwhelmingly to admit its first female members. . . . Peter Dawson, the secretary of the club, announced the results of a postal balloting of the club’s 2,400 male members, many of whom were on site in matching blue jackets and patterned blue ties. About three-quarters of the members participated in the voting, he said, with 85 percent of them opting to accept women. . .
Call for Papers | Ad Vivum?
As noted at The Early Modern Intelligencer (from the Birkbeck Early Modern Society) . . .
Ad Vivum?
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 21–22 November 2014
Proposals due by 15 August 2014
Organised by Joanna Woodall and Thomas Balfe
The term ad vivum and its cognates al vivo, au vif, nach dem Leben and naer het leven have been applied since the thirteenth century to depictions designated as from, to or after (the) life. This one and a half day event will explore the issues raised by this vocabulary in relation to visual materials produced and used in Europe before 1800, including portraiture, botanical, zoological, medical and topographical images, images of novel and newly discovered phenomena, and likenesses created through direct contact with the object being depicted, such as metal casts of animals.
It is has long been recognised that the designation ad vivum was not restricted to depictions made directly after the living model, and that its function was often to advertise the claim of an image to be a faithful likeness or a bearer of reliable information. Viewed as an assertion of accuracy or truth, ad vivum raises a number of fundamental questions about early modern epistemology—questions about the value and prestige of visual and/or physical contiguity between image and original, about the kinds of information which were thought important and dependably transmissible in material form, and about the roles of the artist in this transmission. The recent interest of historians of early modern art in how value and meaning are produced and reproduced by visual materials which do not conform to the definition of art as unique invention, and of historians of science and of art in the visualisation of knowledge, has placed the questions surrounding ad vivum at the centre of their common concerns.
This event will encourage conversation and interchange between different perspectives involving a wide range of participants working in different disciplines, from postgraduate students to established academics. It seeks to encourage dialogue and debate by devoting a portion of its time to sessions comprising short, 10-minute papers, which will allow a variety of ideas and areas of expertise to be drawn into the discussion.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• The role of images, including book illustrations, described as ad vivum in early modern natural history, geography, cosmography, medicine and other investigative disciplines
• The meanings of ad vivum in relation to sacred images, portraiture, landscape depiction, animal imagery, and other types of subject matter involving a claim to life-likeness
• The connections between ad vivum and indexical images: death masks; life casts; the moulage; auto-prints made from natural phenomena
• The connections between concepts of ad vivum and graphic media: the print matrix; imitation and reproduction in print; drawings, diagrams which claim to be ad vivum
• The concept of ad vivum in cabinets of curiosities, sets and series, other groupings and collections
• The application of the phrase ad vivum and its cognates to specific images, and usages and discussions of the terminology in early modern texts
• The use of ad vivum in relation to images of the marvellous and the incredible, including monsters and other prodigies of nature
We invite proposals for:
1) 20-minute papers
2) Short, 10-minute (maximum 1,000-word) papers which will address one example or theme, or make one argument persuasively.
Please send proposals of no more than 250 words by 15 August 2014 to joanna.woodall@courtauld.ac.uk and thomas.balfe@courtauld.ac.uk.
The Call for Papers as a PDF file is available here» (from the blog Origins of Science as a Visual Pursuit)
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Note (added 29 July 2014) — The original version of this posting included the original, published dates of November 20–21; those dates, however, have shifted slightly and are reflected above and in the new PDF file with the Call for Papers. The conference is now scheduled for 21–22 November 2014.
Display | Fancy Pants
The Great Master of the Fashionable Hair Style, mid-18th century, hand-colored etching by an unidentified artist. The Minnich Collection, The Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund, 1966 P.17,468
From the MIA:
Fancy Pants: Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 19 July — 14 December 2014
Let’s face it: men’s fashion is pretty boring. But, it wasn’t always so. There was an age when men used their clothing to stand out rather than to fit in. Often that meant ruffles, embroidery, wigs, slashed sleeves, stuffed shirts, jerkins, leggings, jewels, and cod pieces. This exhibition may inspire you to clear your closet of muted garb to make room for a little self-expression.
Exhibition | Spirit and Splendour of the Dresden Picture Gallery
Bernardo Bellotto, called Canaletto, The Ruins of the Old Kreuzkirche in Dresden, 1765, 80 x 110 cm (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; photo by Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut)
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From the museum:
Rembrandt—Titian—Bellotto: Spirit and Splendour of the Dresden Picture Gallery
Rembrandt—Tizian—Bellotto: Geist und Glanz der Dresdner Gemäldegalerie
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, 22 August — 23 November 2014
Groninger Museum, Groningen, 13 December 2014 — 25 May 2015
Belvedere Winterpalais, Vienna, 11 June — 26 October 2015
The Kunsthalle München is showing some one hundred masterpieces by famous painters including works by Caracci, Velázquez, van Dyck, Lorrain, Watteau and Canaletto. They illustrate the roots of the legendary rich Dresden Picture Gallery and its flourishing throughout the Baroque era and the Age of Enlightenment.
The exhibition focuses on the reign of Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1670–1733), also known as the Strong, and his son Augustus III (1696–1763). During the ‘Augustan Age’, an era of economic and cultural efflorescence, the manifold building projects, vibrant cultural life and the enhancement of the royal collections all embodied the electoral court’s new claim to power. The construction of the Cathedral and the Frauenkirche during this era gave Dresden its world famous silhouette. Moreover, prestigious painters like the Italian Bernardo Bellotto (1721–1780) or Louis de Silvestre (1675–1760) were drawn to Dresden, where they were engaged as court artists. This vibrant, innovative era forms the backdrop behind the painted masterpieces and their stories.
The development of the Dresden Picture Gallery, its presentation, focus and appeal throughout the 18th century is expounded in seven chapters. The exhibition examines the inception of the painting collection under Augustus the Strong, which may be interpreted as the expression of his heightened need to demonstrate his status on being crowned king of Poland in 1697. Significant works from various genres like history painting, landscape, still life and portraiture highlight the profile of the royal collection, which continued to grow throughout the 18th century. A frequent visitor to the Dresden Picture Gallery was the famous art historian and archeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), who wrote an account of his experiences, thereby contributing to immortalise the collection’s legendary reputation. The exhibition presents numerous works that he encountered while roaming the royal gallery and which found his appreciation. Thus, over the course of the 18th century, the collection evolved into a place of learning and exchange of ideas, luring numerous artists to draw inspiration from the Old Masters. The exhibition concludes with the reopening of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts under the direction of Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn (1712–1780); he succeeded in engaging prestigious painters as teachers, who gave the development of art in Dresden fresh momentum, thereby foreshadowing the modern trends of the 19th century.
Roger Diederen, Bernhard Maaz, and Ute Christina Koch, eds., Rembrandt—Tizian—Bellotto: Geist und Glanz der Dresdner Gemaldegalerie (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2014), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-3777422022, €40.
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Note (added 15 December 2014) — The original posting omitted information on the catalogue as well as the Groningen and Vienna venues. At the Groninger Museum the exhibition is entitled The Secret of Dresden: From Rembrandt to Canaletto (in Dutch Het geheim van Dresden – Van Rembrandt tot Canaletto).
Exhibition | Chinoiserie Prints
Antoine Watteau, gravé par Michel Aubert, Idole de la Déesse Ki Mâo Sao
dans le royaume de Mang au pays des Laos, Paris, 1731.
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As noted by Hélène Bremer, from Les Arts Décoratifs:
La Chine des Ornemanistes: Gravures de Chinoiseries
Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 5 May — 31 July 2014
En écho aux expositions du musée, Les secrets de la laque française : le vernis Martin et De la Chine aux Arts Décoratifs : l’art chinois dans les collections du musée des Arts décoratifs, la Bibliothèque vous invite à découvrir la Chine fantaisiste et fantasmée, inventée et gravée par les ornemanistes français du XVIIIe siècle. D’Antoine Watteau à Jean Pillement, les artistes créèrent avec la chinoiserie une des formes les plus originales de l’art du siècle des Lumières.
Au début du XVIIIe siècle, en réaction aux lourdeurs du grand style du siècle précédent, les artistes s’affranchirent des modèles rigides aux significations codées, hérités des Métamorphoses d’Ovide et de l’Iconologie du chevalier Ripa, grâce à l’assimilation et la réappropriation des motifs chinois. La légèreté et la fantaisie de cette Asie recomposée étaient parfaitement adaptées à la société hédoniste qui s’établit en France à partir de la Régence et durant le règne de Louis XV. Cantonnée aux arts décoratifs, aux pièces intimes et aux pavillons ornementaux, la chinoiserie ne fut pas entravée par les règles de la convenance. Elle put rester le lieu du plaisir et du rêve.
The press release is available here»
Exhibition | Art in Focus: Wales
John Warwick Smith, Ruins of Cricceith Castle and Part of the Town on the Bay on Cardigan, East View, Carnarvonshire, 1790 (London: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)
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Now on at YCBA:
Art in Focus: Wales
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 4 April — 10 August 2014
In 1737, Thomas Herring, bishop of Bangor, made what has been described as the first tour of Snowdonia, in North Wales, and observed of its wild and mountainous scenery that “[t]he face of it is grand, and bespeaks the magnificence of nature, and enlarged my mind so much . . . that it was some time before I could be reconciled again to the level countries.” Although much of Wales had been considered remote and inaccessible to English travelers, in the 1750s a burgeoning interest in the remnants of ancient Britain led antiquarians in search of ruins. Later in the eighteenth century, particularly during periods when war with European powers restricted travel to the Continent, the mountains of North Wales offered experiences of the sublime to rival those of the Alps. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the region had become part of the standard itinerary of British landscape artists.
This Art in Focus exhibition explores the history of interest in Welsh landscape, ruins, and the bardic tradition through oil paintings, finished watercolors, and plein-air sketches in the Center’s collections by artists such as Richard Wilson, Thomas Rowlandson, James Ward, J. M. W. Turner, David Cox, Thomas Girtin, John Martin, John Linnell, William Blake, and Samuel Palmer. The display is augmented by key publications of the period that encouraged the aesthetic appreciation of Welsh landscape.
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Art in Focus is an annual initiative for members of the Center’s Student Guide program, providing curatorial experience and an introduction to all aspects of exhibition practice. The student guide curators for this exhibition are Emily Feldstein, PC ’16; Kathryn Kaelin, SY ’15; Olga Karnas, SM ’16; Rebecca Levinsky, MC ’15; Anna Meixler, ES ’16; Daniel Roza, SM ’15; Katharine Spooner, TD ’16; and Lynnli Wang, TD ’15. In researching and presenting the exhibition, the students were guided by Eleanor Hughes, Associate Director of Exhibitions and Publications, and Associate Curator; Linda Friedlaender, Curator of Education; and Jaime Ursic, Assistant Curator of Education.
The press release is available here»
The image sheet is available here»
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