Exhibition | Genius and Grace
From the exhibition press release:
Genius and Grace: Franҫois Boucher and the Generation of 1700
Cincinnati Art Museum, 14 February — 11 May 2014
Curated by Esther Bell
François Boucher, Venus Presenting Aeneas to Jupiter and Juno, 1747, black chalk, pen with brown ink, and brush with brown wash and touches of white gouache on tan antique laid paper (Boston: The Horvitz Collection)
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This spring, the verve, grace, and exuberance of 18th-century French drawings will be on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum. The Cincinnati Art Museum will show drawings by the talented group of artists responsible for an unprecedented level of artistic and cultural production in the France of Louis XV in an exhibition titled Genius and Grace: Franҫois Boucher and the Generation of 1700, on view from February 14 to May 11, 2014. Franҫois Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Carle Vanloo, and their contemporaries, born in or around 1700, executed virtuoso compositions whose refined elegance epitomizes the French grand manner. Along with Boucher, Natoire, and Vanloo, the exhibition will also celebrate lesser known but equally talented figures such as Louis-Gabriel Blanchet and Joseph Franҫois Parrocel, as well as several pastels, including a rare example by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. More than seventy master drawings, many of which have never before exhibited or published, will be on view.
This exhibition is organized by the Horvitz Collection in Boston—the preeminent private collection of early French art in the United States. Twenty-nine of the most distinguished artists of this period will be featured, along with a fully illustrated catalogue edited by Alvin L. Clark, Curator of the Horvitz Collection and the J.E.Horvitz Research Curator, Department of Drawings, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum. The Cincinnati Art Museum venue for Genius and Grace: François Boucher and the Generation of 1700 is organized by Dr. Esther Bell, Curator of European Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture; it is the first old master drawings exhibition to take place at the Cincinnati Art Museum in more than thirty years. “These are some of the most beautiful and sexiest images the Old Masters ever produced,” commented Cincinnati Art Museum Director Aaron Betsky. “They are stunning in their display of talent and the sensuality they convey.”
François Boucher, Recumbent Female Nude, ca. 1742–43, red chalk, heightened with white chalk (Boston: The Horvitz Collection)
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Sixteen of the works on view were created by Franҫois Boucher, who an eighteenth-century critic called “the painter of voluptuousness and grace.” One of the artist’s drawings, Recumbent Nude, depicts a luscious female figure. This may, at first, seem to be a provocative and erotically charged image, but it may have simply developed from a figure study intended to be used when painting a sea nymph or other historical subject. Also part of the exhibition is Carle Vanloo’s Saint Augustine Disputing with the Donatists, which has never before been exhibited. This masterpiece is remarkable for its heavy contours and energetic forms encased within a scene of monumental Italian architecture.
According to Cincinnati Art Museum Curator Dr. Esther Bell, “A selection of master drawings was selected that best tell the story of the unfolding eighteenth century. Not only will visitors be able to enjoy the sumptuous forms of the high Rococo, but also the virtuoso drawings that resulted from rigorous academic training and the cool and classicizing manifestations of these artists’ Italian journeys.”
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From Artbooks.com:
Alvin Clark, ed., Genius and Grace: Franҫois Boucher and the Generation of 1700 (Boston: The Horvitz Collection, 2014), 151 pages, ISBN: 978-0991262502, $34.
Genius and Grace: Franҫois Boucher and the Generation of 1700 features over seventy master drawings from the Horvitz Collection, Boston—widely considered the preeminent collection of French art in the United States. The exhibition features works by a group of artists known as the Generation of 1700. This talented group of artists born in or around the year 1700, such as François Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Carle Vanloo, and their contemporaries, will be celebrated for their virtuoso compositions whose curvilinear elegance epitomizes the French grand manner. From Boucher’s sumptuous reclining female nude, to a rare, early pastel by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, to Director of the French Academy Charles Coypel’s mature self portrait—the works on view celebrate Dezallier d’Argenville’s comment of 1745: “A painter’s way of drawing is as distinctive as handwriting and more so than a writer’s style.” Includes: A. Clark, “The Generation of 1700: Draftsmen, Drawings, and Questions”; F. Joulie, “Reflections on the Early Drawings of Boucher and His Contemporaries”; and E. Bell, “Charles Coypel and the Age of Eclecticism.”
Exhibition | Anglo-American Portraiture in an Era of Revolution
From the Louvre:
Anglo-American Portraiture in an Age of Revolution
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1 February — 28 April 2014
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 17 May — 15 September 2014
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 28 September 2014 — 18 January 2015
Curated by Guillaume Faroult
Attributed to Charles Wilson Peale, George Washington after the Battle of Princeton, 3 January 1777, ca. 1779 (National Museum of the Palace of Versailles and the Trianons)
The Louvre continues its exploration of the history of painting in America with a third special exhibition that compares and contrasts five Anglo-American portraits from 1780 to 1800 and slightly later, produced in the midst of a revolution that would lead to the independence and creation of the United States of America. The selected artworks revolve around the guardian and emblematic figure of General George Washington (1732–1799), elected first president of the United States in 1789.
The exhibition features three portraits of the Father of the Country, including one attributed to Charles Wilson Peale (1741–1827) depicting him as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, on special loan from the Musée du Château de Versailles. Portraits of the opposing belligerents, notably a stunning, newly restored portrait of Captain Robert Hay of Spot by Scottish painter Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823), are presented in response to the magnificent portrait of Washington as president of the young nation painted in 1797 by Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828)—one of the most talented American portrait artists—on loan from the Crystal Bridges Museum.
This special exhibition is part of a long-term partnership with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Terra Foundation for American Art, and was made possible through their generous support.
Exhibition | The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714–1760
Press release (29 January 2014) from The Royal Collection:
The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714–1760
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 11 April — 12 October 2014
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In 1714 Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover in Germany, acceded to the British throne as George I, the country’s first constitutional monarch. Despite many stronger genealogical claims to the crown than his, the 1701 Act of Settlement had declared that the choice of sovereign was the gift of Parliament alone and that only a Protestant could sit on the British throne. With this unprecedented decision, the Georgian era began, ushering in an unbroken line of succession to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Marking the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian succession, The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714–1760 explores the reigns of George 1 (r.1714–27) and his son George II (r.1727–60), shedding light on the role of this new dynasty in the transformation of political, intellectual and cultural life. Through over 300 works from the Royal Collection, it tells the story of Britain’s emergence as the world’s most liberal, commercial and cosmopolitan society, embracing freedom of expression and the unfettered exchange of ideas.
The Hanoverians’ right to rule was fiercely disputed by the Jacobites, supporters of the Stuart claim to the throne. The ‘Old Pretender’, Prince James Francis Edward Stuart, set up a rival court in Paris and Rome, and his son, Prince Charles Edward—Bonnie Prince Charlie—led an uprising in 1745–46 on behalf of his father’s cause. The continuous threat to Hanoverian rule, both at home and overseas, is reflected in the exhibition’s military maps and battle plans. They include a draft order of battle at Culloden, thought to have been produced by George II’s son, the Duke of Cumberland, who led the King’s troops to victory in 1746.
Vanderbank, Equestrian Portrait of George I, 1726
(Royal Collection 404412)
Although St James’s Palace remained the principal royal residence, the newly installed George I focused his artistic attention on Kensington Palace–its location outside London provided some shelter from the scrutiny of his more sceptical subjects. Here he appointed William Kent to decorate a new suite of State Rooms. The King filled Kensington with the best British furniture of the day, including pieces by James Moore and Old Master paintings, such as Don Roderigo Calderón on Horseback, 1612–15, and The Holy Family with St Francis, 1620–30, by Peter Paul Rubens.
The reigns of both Georges were fraught with familial strife. In 1717 George I expelled the Prince of Wales, the future George II, from St James’s Palace. Far from enduring a humiliating exile, the Prince established an alternative court, hosting ‘drawing rooms’, evening parties and balls, and regularly dining in public. Some 20 years later, George II’s son, Frederick, Prince of Wales (whose son George William Frederick became George III) was similarly banished and set up rival headquarters. Furnishing his private residences, the Prince could indulge his enthusiasm for the Old Masters. Among his acquisitions were Guido Reni’s Cleopatra with the Asp, c.1628, Anthony van Dyck’s Thomas Killigrew with an unidentified Man, c.1630, and ‘The Jealous Husband’, c.1660, by David Teniers.
Frederick presented himself as a fashionable man about town, entertaining freelyand informally—a typical supper party offered a menu of larks, pigeons, partridges, truffles, veal, turkey, lamb, turbot, salmon, teal, blackbird, asparagus, broccoli, sweetbreads, coffee cream and jelly. To dress his table, he commissioned dining plate in the new Rococo style, including the spectacular marine service by Paul Crespin and Nicholas Sprimont. Frederick’s mother, Queen Caroline, despised her son’s relaxed manner: “popularity always makes me sick,” she is reported to have said, “but Fretz’s popularity makes me vomit.”
After John Michael Rysbrack and Joseph Highmore, Posthumous Portrait of Queen Caroline, Consort of George II, 1739
(Royal Collection, 31317)
Queen Caroline, consort of George II, was the most intellectual member of the Hanoverian dynasty. Her interests combined art, genealogy and a passion for gardening. She undertook major landscape projects at Kensington Palace and at her private retreat in Richmond, where she commissioned Charles Bridgeman to lay out the new gardens, complemented by follies created by William Kent. The most remarkable of these was the Hermitage, a picturesque temple devoted to British scientists and theologians, encapsulating Caroline’s belief in the interdependence of science and religion.
During the course of the 18th century, the focus of British cultural life began to shift away from court. Artists achieved success and fame through their own efforts, without the traditional support of a royal patron. William Hogarth’s portrait of David Garrick and his Viennese dancer wife, Eva-Marie Veigel, captures one of the most high-profile couples of the age. When the portrait was painted, in c.1757–64, Garrick had already combined great financial success as an actor-manager with international celebrity. Hogarth himself was not only a prominent artist, but
also a writer on art and a noted philanthropist.
The favourite genre of the early Georgian period was satire, both pictorial and literary. In 1724, its greatest practitioner, William Hogarth, published The Bad Taste of the Town, ridiculing British taste for foreign forms of art, such as Italian opera. London’s leading exponent of Italian opera was the German composer George Frideric Handel, who was employed in many royal roles. He was music teacher to George II’s daughter, Princess Anne, who is seen playing the cello with her two sisters and brother, Frederick, Prince of Wales, in Philippe Mercier’s The Music Party, 1733.
Meissen, Tea and coffee service with chinoiserie figures, 1720s
(Royal Collection, 5000106)
The desire for fashionable luxury goods drove Britain’s commercial enterprise and turned London into the most important trading city in the world. The Chelsea porcelain works, one of several new ventures set up to compete with the newly established Meissen factory in Germany, typified the entrepreneurialism of the time. With the emergence of a new leisure class came an explosion of coffee houses, gaming haunts, assembly rooms, theatrical entertainments and pleasure gardens. In the painting St James’s Park and the Mall, c.1745, all elements of cosmopolitan Georgian society mix together, with Frederick, Prince of Wales at the centre, rubbing shoulders with his future subjects.
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The catalogue is published by the Royal Collection and distributed by the University of Chicago Press:
Desmond Shawe-Taylor, ed., The First Georgians: Art & Monarchy 1714–1760 (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2014), 496 pages, ISBN 978-1905686797, £45 / $90.
2014 marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the succession of the House of Hanover to the British throne. In celebration of this historic milestone, The First Georgians explores the rich artistic culture of the early Hanoverian period.
This publication showcases more than three hundred of the finest works of this period, many of which have never been on public display before. Created in Germany, France, and Britain during one of the most dramatic periods of change across all aspects of political, intellectual, and cultural life, they reflect changing views of science, politics, and art throughout the early to mid-eighteenth century—the period when modern Britain was coming into being.
Exhibition | Shells: Magic and Science
From the MIA:
Shells: Magic and Science
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 23 November 2013 — 8 June 2014
George Wolfgang Knorr, Plate B. II., from Deliciae Naturae Selectae, 1750–72, etching, hand-colored.
Shells are common yet precious, abundant yet desirable—among the first things a child instinctively collects. From prehistoric shacks to the courts of Baroque Europe, their translucent texture and fantastical forms have been integrated into everyday objects, decoration, and an incredible variety of art. They are also as central to modern studies of the natural world as the discovery of new lands, their perfection embodying—and ultimately resolving—the dilemma of creation and evolution. This importance is reflecting in the mania for shell collecting, particularly during the late 16th and early 17th centuries when nautilus and conches were mounted in precious metals, adorned with gems, and displayed in magnificent Wunderkammern—the “wonder rooms” or “cabinets of curiosities.”
This exhibition encompasses our passion for shells throughout the ages, gathering treasures from such Twin Cities institutions as the Wangensteen Historical Library, the James Ford Bell Library, the Bell Museum of Natural History, and the MIA itself. Together, they comprise an intriguing patrimony
of prints and precious antique books on natural history, while testifying to
the still-burning fever of shell-collecting.
Exhibition | Imperial Nature: Flora, Fauna, and Colonialism in India
Press release (23 January 2014) from the MIA:
Imperial Nature: Flora, Fauna, and Colonialism in India
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 18 January — 20 April 2014
Curated by Risha Lee
European and Indian histories have long been interlaced. During the 17th and 18th centuries, as English colonial rule intensified, the two cultures melded and converged, producing bold depictions of nature. Imperial Nature: Flora, Fauna, and Colonialism in India at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) showcases these representations, commissioned by Indian princes and increasingly powerful European colonial patrons, to reveal an artistic and scientific confluence that reshaped the way we view the natural world. The exhibition features twenty-nine works on paper, two textiles, a film, and multimedia elements.
One of the MIA’s newest curators, Dr. Risha Lee, Jane Emison Assistant Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art, organized the exhibition. “Imperial Nature will be the first exhibition of historical Indian art in nineteen years at the museum,” she stated. “Beautiful works of art grew out of this complex period in Indian history, and we are thrilled to present such rare depictions of nature to Minnesota audiences.”
At the heart of the exhibition are eleven ‘Lady Impey’ paintings on loan from the private collection of Elizabeth and Willard Clark, major collectors of Asian art from whom the MIA received a large gift of Japanese works in 2013. A British colonialist in Calcutta, Lady Mary Impey commissioned Indian painters to illustrate birds from her private menagerie, resulting in several hundred images that owe as much to European natural science as India’s rich painterly tradition. Before Lady Impey’s time, botany had a colonial enterprise in India, owing to the commercial and medicinal value of Indic plants. In the time of Lady Impey’s bird paintings, botany became an elevated science, lifted above the realm of mere commodity. In Imperial Nature at the MIA, the paintings will be exhibited for the first time. The exhibition will also feature artworks on loan from the Nancy Wiener Gallery and Arader Gallery.
Imperial Nature is composed of five distinct sections:
• India’s global trade networks in the 17th and 18th centuries
• Princely Indian paintings of nature
• Lady Impey’s Menagerie
• Natural History in India, including selections from the Hortus Indicus Malabaricus, a 17th-century Dutch multivolume work on the identification and function of Indian plants
• Charulata, a film by Satyajit Ray depicting the Indo-European encounter in colonial Calcutta
In addition, the exhibition features an ambient soundtrack of birdsong consisting of birds portrayed in Lady Impey’s paintings. As the exhibition is located in the Cargill Gallery in the MIA’s lobby, the subtle sounds will immediately welcome visitors into the alluring elements of Indian depictions of nature.
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Risha Lee and Catherine Asher ǀ Imperial Nature: Flora, Fauna, and Colonialism in India
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Thursday, 3 April 2014, 7:00pm
Risha Lee and Catherine Asher will speak on topics related to Imperial Nature: Flora, Fauna, and Colonialism in India, on view through April 20. This exhibition showcases representations of nature, commissioned by Indian princes and increasingly powerful European colonial patrons, resulting in an artistic and scientific confluence that reshaped ideas about the natural world. Admission: $10; $5 MIA members; free for members of the Asian Art Affinity Group. To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online.
Risha Lee is the Jane Emison Assistant Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art at the MIA. Catherine Asher is a professor of art history at the University of Minnesota.
Exhibition | Caravaggio to Canaletto
My apologies for (once again) being so late with this exhibition, which recently closed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. The catalogue, however, is still available from Artbooks.com. -CH
Caravaggio to Canaletto: The Glory of Italian Baroque and Rococo Painting
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, 26 October 2013 — 16 February 2014
Curated by Zsuzsanna Dobos
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The Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition titled Caravaggio to Canaletto will present the leading styles, outstanding artist figures as well as the extraordinary wealth of genres, techniques, and themes of 17th- and 18th-century Italian painting through more than 140 works by 100 masters, including nine paintings—the highest number by a single artist included in the displayed material—by the period’s prominent painter genius, Caravaggio.
The backbone of the selection is formed by the 34 principal works from the internationally highly acclaimed Italian Baroque and Rococo collection of the museum’s Old Masters Gallery, which will be complemented by 106 masterpieces arriving in Budapest from sixty-two collections of eleven countries, such as the National Galleries in Washington and London, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Museo del Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The material commands international attention since such a large-scale, comprehensive exhibition surveying the entirety of Italian painting as the one in Budapest has not been put on for decades anywhere in the world.
Some years ago the Museum of Fine Arts set itself the ambitious goal of presenting 15th- to 18th-century Italian painting in two consecutive exhibitions, unprecedented in its scope in Hungary. The first one, titled Botticelli to Titian, held in 2009–2010, attracted 230 thousand visitors, and thus became one of the most successful shows in the history of the museum.
The next, representative exhibition devoted to 17th- and 18th-century Italian painting will be the closing event of the Italian-Hungarian Cultural Season 2013 in Hungary. The two centuries of Italian art surveyed by the exhibition were determined by the Baroque style, which prevailed during the period all over Europe. The early Baroque, which had started at the end of the previous century saw the rise of the naturalism of Caravaggio and his followers, as well as the Bolognese School of Classicism linked to the Carracci. High Baroque, which lasted more than fifty years, was characterised equally by the dynamic style of the so-called master decorators, Baroque Classicism, and early Romanticism. We can talk about the Late Baroque period from the last decades of the seicento, when the tradition of the great masters was carried on in a somewhat empty, routine-like way. The Baroque Era ended in the 18th century with the luxurious Venetian Rococo, while in the middle of the century, also referred to as settecento, the beginnings of Neoclassicism started to appear. The artists of the various painting schools and styles of the 17th and 18th centuries were driven by the same desire: to imitate reality, strive for realistic depiction and create the illusion of tangibility, for which they had the whole range of artistic means at their disposal.
The exhibition will survey the period in eight chapters, starting with Caravaggio, whose activity in Rome brought radical change to painting, going on to the Baroque replacing Mannerism, and ending with the development of Rococo and Classicism, and the introduction of their masters. The opening section will display two early works by Caravaggio—one of them Boy with a Basket of Fruit—which will be followed by some religious compositions of Caravaggist painting, including two versions of Caravaggio’s Salome. The third section will showcase classicising Baroque linked to the names of Lodovico, Agostino and Annibale Carracci, while the fourth unit will present the spreading and flourishing of Baroque art. The fifth section will give an overview of the bourgeois genres of the still-life, the landscape, the portrait and the genre portrait, followed by the part devoted to the main stylistic trends of the 18th century. The last two sections will provide a glimpse into 18th-century painting in Venice and introduce the veduta (townscape), which became a popular genre at that time, through four Venetian townscapes by Canaletto.
The exhibition is implemented at the highest standard, thanks to the collaboration of nearly fifty Hungarian and foreign curators specialising in the period, and is accompanied by a Hungarianand English catalogue. The exhibition is curated by Zsuzsanna Dobos, art historian at the Old Masters Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts.
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From Artbooks.com:
Dobos, Zuzsanna, ed., Caravaggio to Canaletto: The Glory of Italian Baroque and Rococo Painting (Budapest: Museum of Fine Arts, 2013), 458 pages, ISBN: 978-6155304187, $130.
Contents include
• J. Jernyei-Kiss, Italian Painting in the 17th and 18th Centuries
• J. Spike, Caravaggio and the Caravaggesque Movement
• D. Benati, The Carracci Academy: From Nature to History
• C. De Seta, The Grand Tour: The European Rediscovery of Italy in the 17th and 18th Centuries
• A. Vecsey, The Reception of 17th- and 18th-Century Italian Painting in Hungary: Taste and Collecting
Catalogue | Art and Music in Venice
This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Venice: The Golden Age of Art and Music, which opened last weekend at the Portland Museum of Art. From Yale UP:
Hilliard T. Goldfarb, ed., Art and Music in Venice: From the Renaissance to Baroque (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-0300197921, $65.
Artistic and musical creativity thrived in the Venetian Republic between the early 16th century and the close of the 18th century. The city-state was known for its superb operas and splendid balls, and the acoustics of the architecture led to complex polyphony in musical composition. Accordingly, notable composers, including Antonio Vivaldi and Adrian Willaert, developed styles that were distinct from those of other Italian cultures. The Venetian music scene, in turn, influenced visual artists, inspiring paintings by artists such as Jacopo Bassano, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Pietro Longhi, Bernardo Strozzi, Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, Tintoretto, and Titian. Together, art and music served larger aims, whether social, ceremonial, or even political. Lavishly illustrated, Art and Music in Venice brings Venice’s golden age to life through stunning images of paintings, drawings, prints, manuscripts, textbooks, illuminated choir books, musical scores and instruments, and period costumes. New scholarship into these objects by a team of distinguished experts gives a fresh perspective on the cultural life and creative output of the era.
Hilliard T. Goldfarb is associate chief curator and curator of Old Masters at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Exhibition | The Material World of the Early South
From the press release (10 February 2014). . .
A Rich and Varied Culture: The Material World of the Early South
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, opens 14 February 2014
Curated by Ronald Hurst and Margaret Beck Pritchard
Powder Horn, attributed to Jonathan Sarrazin, Charleston, South Carolina, cow horn, 1762–64 (Winston-Salem, NC: The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts)
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A groundbreaking exhibition examining the material culture of the early South from the 17th century through 1840—the first of its kind to include a wide variety of media—will open at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, one of the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, on February 14. A Rich and Varied Culture: The Material World of the Early South will feature a dozen categories of media and represent three geographic regions of the South.
Some 350 objects will be drawn from the Colonial Williamsburg collections, those of 10 other institutions and 14 private collections. Many of the items in the exhibition will be on public view for the first time in a museum setting. Like the culture they represent, the objects are diverse, chronologically telling the story of the region’s population as it expanded westward and southward toward the frontier.
“The early American South has long been depicted as a society that produced almost none of the objects used by its substantial populace,” said Ronald L. Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg vice president for collections, conservation, and museums and its Carlisle H. Humelsine Chief Curator. “However, the opposite is true. Southern artists and artisans generated a vast body of material in virtually every medium. The abundance and diverse cultural resonance of these goods will be powerfully conveyed by the objects assembled for this exhibition.”
Featured in A Rich and Varied Culture will be furniture, paintings, prints, metals (silver and pewter), ceramics, mechanical arts and arms, architectural elements, archaeological objects, rare books, maps, costumes and accessories and musical instruments. These objects are each receiving detailed, exhaustive research that sometimes challenges previous research. In one example, a remarkable painting of Frances Parke Custis, on loan from Washington and Lee University, has recently been identified as the work of the Broadnax Limner, a little-known artist who worked in Virginia during the 1720s. Similarly, an elaborately decorated 1770s ‘dresser’ or hutch was long thought to be a Pennsylvania product, but has proven instead to be the work of a Quaker cabinetmaker working in Alamance County, N.C.
While the majority of the objects and paintings in the exhibition come from the various collections of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, several sister institutions are also lending to this important undertaking in an example of unprecedented partnership. Chief among them is The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) at Old Salem Museums and Gardens in Winston-Salem, N.C., with which the Art Museums recently announced a five-year partnership. It is the largest lender with 39 objects. Other lenders include Drayton Hall, a Historic Site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Charleston, S.C..; The Charleston Museum; Washington and Lee University in Lexington; The Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library in Winterthur, Del.; Historic Charleston Foundation; Tennessee State Museum; the University of Tennessee’s Department of Anthropology and McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture; Marble Springs State Historic Site in Knoxville, Tenn.; and The President’s House Collection at The College of Williams & Mary in Williamsburg. Fourteen private collectors are also generously lending to the exhibition. (more…)
Valentine’s Day at the Museum of London
As reported by Nick Clark for The Independent (30 January 2014). . .
Detail of one of eight eighteenth-century plaster tiles discovered in 1962. Click on the image for the full view of another tile (with usual warnings about sexually explicit images).
For one night only. . . amorous visitors to the Museum of London will have the chance to see the steamy side of the 18th century. A series of erotic tiles, detailing various sexual positions and even spanking, will go on display for the first time at a late-night Valentine’s Day event at the site in the heart of the City. The eight tiles were discovered in 1962 after a fire in an upper room of one of London’s most memorable old pubs and remain shrouded in mystery.
Jackie Keily, curator at the museum, said: “We can’t normally display them because they are so graphic. It is a fascinating glimpse into the sexual history of London; so few of these artefacts survive.”
They will be part of an evening event called Late London: City of Seduction which is open to over 18-year-olds only. The tiles were discovered in 1962 following a fire at Ye Old Cheshire Cheese pub on Fleet Street and were handed to the museum shortly after.
The full article, with additional photos, is available here»
Details of Late London: City of Seduction are available here»
Exhibition | Capturing the Castle: Watercolours of Windsor
From the exhibition press release (18 December 2013). . .
Capturing the Castle: Watercolours of Windsor by Paul and Thomas Sandby
The Drawings Gallery, Windsor Castle, 7 February — 5 May 2014
Curated by Rosie Razzall
Paul Sandby, The Lower Ward Seen from the Base of the Round Tower,
ca. 1760 (The Royal Collection)
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Twenty views of Windsor Castle by the great 18th-century watercolourists Paul and Thomas Sandby go on display at the Castle from 7 February. Created from the 1760s to the 1790s, they provide a fascinating insight into life at Windsor during the reign of George III (1760–1820), who used the Castle as an occasional country retreat for his growing family. The drawings will be displayed alongside a number of early guidebooks, showing what visitors to Windsor would have experienced some 250 years ago. 21st-century visitors can use a free app to explore the 18th-century views and compare them with the appearance of the Castle today.
‘The father of English watercolour’, Paul Sandby (1730–1809) and his older brother Thomas (1721–98) were among the founding members of the Royal Academy under the patronage of George III in 1768. They sometimes worked together, with Paul Sandby adding figures to his older brother’s landscapes.
Thomas Sandby was Draughtsman to William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and came to Windsor in 1746 following the Duke’s appointment as Ranger of Windsor Great Park. After Paul’s arrival in Windsor a few years later, the brothers set about producing views of the Castle from numerous angles and viewpoints, creating an unrivalled visual record of the building and surrounding area.
During this period the Castle became a popular tourist destination—the Precincts were open to the public, and access to the State Apartments was granted upon application to the Housekeeper. The Sandby watercolours show the informality of daily life around the Castle in the mid-18th century. They record soldiers chatting idly with the townsfolk, street traders hawking their wares, and elegantly dressed visitors strolling on the North Terrace, from where they could admire the views across the Thames Valley. The watercolours also document the appearance of the Castle before the major remodelling of the building by George III’s son, George IV, in the 1820s. In Paul Sandby’s View of the Quadrangle, from around 1765, the Round Tower appears significantly lower than it is today. Sixty-five years later it was heightened by some nine metres (30ft), and given Gothic-style battlements and a flag turret, creating Windsor’s now world-famous skyline.
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The Royal Collection Acquires Rare Portrait of Paul Sandby
Paul Sandby, The Quadrangle Looking West, ca. 1765
(The Royal Collection)
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Press release (4 February 2014) . . .
He is known for his beautiful views of Windsor, providing a fascinating insight into life at the Castle during the reign of George III (1760–1820). Now, 250 years later, a portrait miniature of Paul Sandby (1731–1809), ‘the father of English watercolour’, will go on display in a new exhibition at Windsor Castle and return the artist to the royal residence where he made his name. One of only a few known images of the artist, the miniature has been acquired by The Royal Collection Trust for the Royal Collection, which holds one of the world’s largest groups of work by Paul Sandby and his older brother Thomas. The miniature will be shown alongside some of Paul Sandby’s most famous views. The exhibition, Capturing the Castle: Watercolours of Windsor by Paul and Thomas Sandby, includes 20 works produced from the 1760s to the 1790s by the two brothers. They reveal the informality of daily life at Windsor during the reign of George III, who used the Castle as an occasional country retreat for his growing family.
Despite his successful career as one of the founding members of the Royal Academy, Paul Sandby was rarely painted himself. A half-length portrait, the miniature shows Sandby at the age of 56 against a landscape with Windsor Castle in the background. He wears a blue coat, white waistcoat and cravat, and holds a porte-crayon, used for drawing with pieces of chalk, and an open sketchbook. The miniature was painted in 1787 by the Jersey-born artist Philip Jean (1705–1802), who also produced portraits of the British royal family, including George III and his consort Queen Charlotte.
Born in Nottingham, Paul Sandby arrived at Windsor in the early 1750s, following Thomas’s employment as Draughtsman to William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland (uncle to George III), who had been appointed the Ranger of Windsor Great Park in 1746. The brothers set about producing views of the Castle from numerous angles and viewpoints, creating an unrivalled visual record of the building and surrounding area.
The watercolours record soldiers chatting with the townsfolk, street traders hawking their wares, and elegantly dressed visitors strolling along the North Terrace and admiring the views across the Thames Valley. One particularly noticeable difference between the 18th-century Castle and that today is documented in the Sandbys’ watercolours: in The Quadrangle, Windsor Castle, looking west, c.1765, the iconic Round Tower appears significantly lower. It was heightened by some nine metres (30ft) 65 years later, as part of the George IV’s remodelling of the Castle. Gothic-style battlements and a flag turret were added, creating Windsor Castle’s now world-famous skyline. (more…)
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