Exhibition: American Colonial Revival Style in New York
From the Museum of the City of New York:
The American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis
Museum of the City of New York, 14 June — 30 October 2011
Curated by Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins
The American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis brings together extraordinary furniture, decorative objects, and photographs to survey, in New York City and beyond, the Colonial Revival movement in the realms of architecture and design. The exhibition covers the fertile period from the 1890s to the present, focusing on the years from 1900 to the 1930s, when New York City, through department stores, museums, and more, was the center for the style’s promotion nationwide.
Exhibition Catalogue: Donald Albrecht and Thomas Mellins, The American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis (New York: Monacelli Press, 2011), 224 pages, ISBN: 9781580932851, $50. Easily the most recognizable architectural style in America, with its brick or shingled facades trimmed in white and ornamented with restrained classical detail, the Colonial Revival emerged in the late nineteenth century and is still the basis for classical
design today. The American Style surveys the evolution of the Colonial Revival from the 1890s to the present, focusing on the period from 1900 to the 1930s when New York City was a major center of architecture and decorative arts. Leading architects, including McKim Mead & White, Delano & Aldrich, and Mott B. Schmidt, used its vocabulary for private residences and clubs as well as institutional buildings—banks, schools, churches, and museums.
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As Edward Rothstein writes in his review for The New York Times (13 June 2011) . . .
National Design That’s Hidden in Plain Sight
One sign of a powerful style is its invisibility. It is so familiar it is scarcely noticed. It is so natural, how could things be otherwise? We don’t really pay attention to the style itself. Instead we notice contrasts, variations, violations.
One of the achievements of the illuminating exhibition “The American Style,” which opens on Tuesday at the Museum of the City of New York, is that it helps make the invisible visible. With photographs of grand mansions and suburban residences; with images of high schools, apartment buildings, town halls and post offices; with examples of mass-market furniture and finely made cabinetry; with pewter candlesticks and pictorial wall murals and floor plans, the exhibition gradually helps us see what is all around us. Its subtitle defines the terrain: “Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis.”. . .
The style embraces both authority and intimacy, proclaiming the hopes of ordinary citizens as well as the heritage of those well established.
There is also a historical aspect to its appeal. The revival developed after the nation’s centennial celebrations in 1876, when the scars of the Civil War and the struggles of Reconstruction were salved by these allusions to an almost pastoral colonial past. Reproductions were made of early furniture. Paintings, vases and decorative plates incorporated images of Washington.
On display here is a hand-tinted photograph from the studio of Wallace Nutting, a minister who at the turn of the 20th century became something of a revival missionary, staging domestic tableaus in colonial-era homes and photographing them. The style gained another wave of energy from the renovation of Colonial Williamsburg in the 1930s, which even influenced architects of new urban developments.
The style, as the exhibition shows, eventually evolved into a national style meant “to invoke a national experience and express national values.” When the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its American Wing in 1924, its first curator, R. T. H. Halsey, said the displays of early decorative arts would counter “the influx of foreign ideas” and present traditions “invaluable in the Americanization of many of our people.” . . .
The full review is available here»
Exhibition: A Subersive Art – Prints of the French Revolution
This exhibition, held at Waddesdon Manor, elaborates upon the the PhD research of co-curator, Claire Trevien (“Revolutionary Prints as Spectacle”). As she describes it, the thesis “undertaken at the University of Warwick, aspires to investigate the notion of spectacle and theatricality within the visual culture of the French Revolution. The aim of the thesis is to not reduce prints to simple historical witnesses or illustrations conveniently presented to suit an argument. Instead, it is a study of the metaphors used in the prints, a method that sheds new light on the links that exist between theatre, politics and visual culture during the French Revolution.” –FG
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From Waddesdon Manor:
A Subversive Art: Prints of the French Revolution
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire
Isaac Cruikshank, “The Martyrdom of Louis XVI, King of France” 1 February 1793 (Waddesdon, The Rothschild Collection)
Curated by Paul Davidson and Claire Trévien
This display features an extraordinary collection of prints about the French Revolution, acquired by Baron Ferdinand. Bound into four large volumes, they record major events (such as the storming of the Bastille and the executions of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette), but also some of the more ephemeral episodes, often with a highly satirical, political eye. The prints are being catalogued as part of a collaborative research project with the Universities of London (Queen Mary) and Warwick, and will eventually be available to study online.
In addition to the display on the second floor, visitors will be able to follow a trail around the house, highlighting objects depicting or associated with significant figures of the French Revolution. The wealth of French material at Waddesdon reflects the interest of the Rothschild family in that turbulent period of history.
Exhibition: Toile de Jouy, Printed Gardens and Fields
I’m happy to welcome one more addition to the Enfilade team! The Paris-based Ph.D. student Hélène Bremer will be weighing in with occasional contributions. She completed her M.A. in Art History at the University of Leiden in 2000 and is now working on her dissertation (also at Leiden) “Grand Tour, Grand collections: The Influence of the Grand Tour Experience on Collection Display in the Eighteenth Century.” She’ll be reporting not only on events in France but also sharing news from the Netherlands. We start things off with an exhibition sketch in response to the Musée de la Toile de Jouy. -CH
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Parties de Campagne, Jardins et champs dans la toile imprimée XVIIIe-XIXe siècle
Musée de la Toile de Jouy, Jouy-en-Josas, 29 April — 20 November 2011
Exhibition sketch by Hélène Bremer
Founded in 1977, the Musée de la Toile de Jouy moved into its current home, the nineteenth-century Château d'Eglantine in 1991. The museum's holdings include some 5000 objects.
The Musée de la Toile de Jouy at Jouy-en-Josas is an ideal destination for anyone taken with wonderful fabrics and eighteenth-century history. Just a few kilometers from the Château de Versailles (though far from its tourist throngs), the museum is located at the Château d’Eglantine. While this charming setting is alone worth a visit, the museum’s interiors offer lovely rooms full of toile-covered furniture. Not only do you find here a vast collection of Toile de Jouy, the displays explain the industrialization of toile-making, particularly the printing innovations of factory founder Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf, the German immigrant who introduced to Jouy-en-Josas, the use of engraved copper plates (1770) and then copper rollers (1797), replacing the older wood blocks.
For the spring and summer, the staff of the museum have organized a delightful exhibition, Parties de Campagne, Jardins et champs dans la toile imprimée XVIIIe-XIXe siècles. The curators have assembled over 200 examples of fabrics depicting a wide variety of subjects: the four seasons, workers in the fields, shepherds and hunting scenes, children playing, landscapes with ruins, and fête champêtre motifs. There is also a nice, small fabric-covered balloon — to my mind, just begging to be shown with the fabric, Le Ballon de Gonesse, an example of which can be found nearby in the museum’s permanent display.
The sheer quantity of fabrics on display is impressive, suggesting at times the feel of a densely packed closet. The quantity indicates how much there is to explore on this interesting topic of la vie champêtre and how rich the museum’s holdings are, given that all the material comes from the museum’s own collection.
Having seen the exhibition, I’m curious about the accompanying book, edited by Anne de Thoisy-Dallem, which unfortunately was not yet available when I visited in early May. It promises to be a useful publication with two fully-illustrated volumes, addressing not only the exhibition themes but also outlining new research on rare costumes, the gardens of Toile de Jouy, and precious botanical books that provided inspiration for the pattern designers.
For more information, including terrific images, the press release (in French) is available here»
Exhibition: East Meets West, Cross-Cultural Influences in Glass
The Corning Museum of Glass’s current exhibition examines cross-cultural currents in glassmaking during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lee Lawrence’s review for The Wall Street Journal (9 August 2011) is available here». -FG
East Meets West: Cross-Cultural Influences in Glassmaking in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York, 18 November 2010 — 30 October 2011
Francesco Vezzi, Bowl with cover, Venice, 1720-1724
East Meets West: Cross-Cultural Influences in Glassmaking in the 18th and 19th Centuries explores influences in glassmaking that resulted from cultural exchange between the East and West, and documents stylistic developments in Western Europe and East Asia during the early modern period.
In Western Europe, the influence of East and South Asian products imported by the English, Dutch, and French East India Companies in the 18th and 19th centuries had a significant impact on style and art. European artists, fascinated by Oriental designs, architecture, and decorative arts, developed a chinoiserie style (characterized by use of Chinese motifs, shapes, and materials) that gained popularity in Europe in the second half of the 17th century.
The allure of the “exotic” and the appeal of materials unknown to the West—such as hard-paste porcelain and lacquer—stimulated the production of glass objects imitating the treasured Eastern imports.
Western scientists did not know porcelain was a clay-based substance
and mistakenly assumed it must be a vitreous one. . . .
Read more here»
Speaking of Food in the Eighteenth Century . . .
From the MFAH:
English Taste: The Art of Dining in the Eighteenth Century
Rienzi, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 17 September 2011 — 29 January 2011
Installation by Ivan Day
Elizabeth Raffald, "Directions for a Grand Table," illustration from "The Experienced English Housekeeper" (Manchester: Printed by J. Harrep, 1769), p. 361
The 18th-century English dinner table was a feast for the eyes. In order to impress their guests and assure them that they were dining amid fashionable people of consequence, hosts served sumptuous dishes, adorned with towering sugar constructions and amusing trompe l’oeil (fool-the-eye) jellies of playing cards or bacon and eggs, all on exquisite silver and porcelain.
Rienzi re-creates this elaborate dining experience in English Taste: The Art of Dining in the Eighteenth Century. The first special exhibition ever held at Rienzi, the MFAH house museum for European decorative arts, English Taste treats you to a dining-room extravaganza typical of a 1760s English country house. Lifelike fish, fowl, and flummeries—complete with lavish, Georgian silver fittings and place settings—grace the table, created with guidance from the influential period cookbook The Experienced English Housekeeper by Elizabeth Raffald, the “Martha Stewart of the 18th century.”
Eminent English food historian Ivan Day uses Raffald’s recipes to create the faux foods—perhaps shockingly realistic to 21st-century eyes—which include roasted pheasant, beaked snipe, flummery jellies, and a larded hare. The meal also features macaroni and cheese (yes, this dish did exist in the 18th century!) made with imported pasta. Raffald’s illustration “Directions for a Grand Table” from 1769 serves as the design template for the installation.
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More information and terrific images from Raffald’s book are available from Kansas State University Library’s online Cookery Exhibition.
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From the MFAH:
Rienzi is situated on four acres of wooded gardens, about three miles from downtown Houston in the historic River Oaks neighborhood. Formerly the home of philanthropists Carroll Sterling Masterson and Harris Masterson III, Rienzi was designed by prominent Houston architect John Staub in 1952. Opened to the public in 1999, Rienzi now houses a substantial collection of European decorative arts, including paintings, furnishings, porcelain, and extensive holdings of miniatures. Rienzi welcomes some 8,000 visitors a year for tours, family programs, lectures, concerts, and a variety of special events.
At Fairfax House: Revolutionary Fashion and Georgian Cakes
Revolutionary Fashion 1790-1820
Fairfax House, York, 26 August — 31 December 2011
Our major new exhibition for the autumn and winter season 2011 at Fairfax House is Revolutionary Fashion 1790-1820. Following on from our acclaimed Dress to Impress exhibition of 2010, which focused on changing fashions during the period 1730-1780, this second exploration of Georgian Fashion takes the story from the revolutionary 1790s to the rakish Regency period. The exhibition opens on Friday 26 August 2011.
Uncovering the revolutionary changes in fashion in the last decade of the eighteenth century and exploring the influence of the French Revolution, Industrial Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, Revolutionary Fashion brings together a unique and lavish selection of the highly elegant clothing of Georgian and Regency polite society. Featuring period gowns, shoes and accessories from collections in Yorkshire and beyond, the exhibition will reveal the styles and showcase the ‘real’ clothes worn by Jane Austen’s heroes and heroines, and place the dazzling kaleidoscope of late Georgian fashions in its social, cultural and historical context.
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If possible, you might consider visiting the exhibition on September 17:
Georgian Cakes and Baking
Fairfax House, York, 17 September 2011
Join Peter Brears, renowned food historian, in the Fairfax kitchen as he reveals the sophistication of Georgian York’s baking tradition and demonstrates the cakes, biscuits and baked goods that could be enjoyed in the eighteenth-century City. This demonstration day includes a display of Yorkshire Country House baking, and food tastings will be available for all visitors.
A 2007 profile of Brears from the Yorkshire Post is available here, and there’s a fine review of Brears’ 2010 book, Jellies and Their Moulds, at AustenOnly.
Exhibition: Pictorial Embroideries at Boston’s MFA
From the MFA:
Embroideries of Colonial Boston: Pictorial Embroideries
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2 April — 28 August 2011
The embroideries of colonial Boston girls and women have long been treasured family possessions and are now much sought after by collectors. The charm and craftsmanship of the Adam and Eve samplers, pastoral pictures with leaping stags and galloping hunters, as well as crewelwork bed hangings and delicately embroidered baby caps bring to mind a warm domesticity; however, as a group they also reveal much about the lives of Boston women and their role within colonial society.
During the eighteenth century, many Boston families schooled their daughters in a range of female accomplishments including dancing, deportment, music, painting on glass, and, of course, needlework. In advanced needlework lessons, girls first worked samplers but then quickly passed on to the more decorative embroidered pictures, overmantels, and coats of arms. These pictorial embroideries became cherished family possessions and served as symbols of the family’s prosperity and gentility. This exhibition will explore the pictorial embroideries popular in eighteenth-century Boston and include examples of the pastoral works probably imported from London as well as examples drawn by talented Boston teachers, engravers, and upholsterers. While tent stitch pictures embroidered with wool and silk predominated, some girls embroidered in silk on silk. This form became more popular in the third quarter of the eighteenth century and is associated with the teacher and milliner Elizabeth Murray, whose portrait by Copley will be featured in the show. Her protégés, Janet Day and the Cummings sisters, continued the tradition, and exceptional work by their students survives. Loans from several museum and private collections in New England and the mid-Atlantic will be featured in the show.
Exhibition: Art and Finance in Europe
As we’re now bombarded with bleak financial news, I’m not sure if the timing of this Brussels exhibition is perfect or unfortunate (‘La fête est bientôt finie’). Press release for the exhibition:
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Art et Finance en Europe, Nouvel éclairage porté sur des chefs-d’œuvre du XVIIIe siècle
Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 29 April — 4 September 2011
Peeter Snijers (Anvers 1681 – 1752), Le mois de mai (La constellation des Gémaux)
Cette année, dans le cadre de la série des expositions d’oeuvres provenant de nos collections et se rapportant à des thèmes économiques et financiers, nous abordons le XVIIIe siècle. Cette exposition, résultant, une fois encore, d’une fructueuse collaboration avec l’EAPB (European Association of Public Banks), est particulière à plus d’un titre. Elle offre au public une occasion de refaire connaissance avec un certain nombre de fleurons de la collection longtemps placés en réserve, faute de place. Parmi eux, figurent, en nombre significatif, des dons et des legs permettant de rendre hommage aux généreux donateurs : Les Amis des Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles ; Mme Fernand Saliez-Bautier ; M Léon Mancino ; M. et Mme Émile Tournay-Solvay ; Mme Jean-Jacques Scheemaecker, née Sophie-Pauline van Stalle ; la Douairière De Grez ; M. Frédéric de Villers Masbourg d’Esclaye. Les oeuvres d’art datant du Siècle des Lumières furent, en effet, toujours très appréciées par l’amateur d’art éclairé. Elles sont maintenant présentées, dans le décor adéquat des deux salons rococo, dans le Balat, entre les salles de la donation du Dr et Mme Frans Heulens-Van der Meiren et la salle du néoclassicisme. La combinaison de peintures avec des dessins et sculptures appartenant, eux aussi, à nos collections et datant de la même époque, constitue également une première.
Au XVIIIe siècle, le centre de gravité de la finance se déplace de la Bourse d’Amsterdam vers celle de Londres. Cette évolution concorde avec la domination croissante du Royaume-Uni sur les mers du globe et avec l’avènement de la révolution industrielle. Celle-ci bénéficie du grand progrès enregistré par la science et la technique sous l’impulsion des Lumières. Les idées éclairées des philosophes eurent, cependant, pour conséquence la plus radicale, la Révolution française de 1789. Celle-ci bouleversa totalement l’ordre social. Et avec elle, s’effondrèrent les privilèges, notamment financiers, conférés par le seul droit de naissance, qui étaient si caractéristiques de l’Ancien Régime.
Beaucoup d’oeuvres d’art du XVIIIe siècle datent d’avant la révolution de 1789 et appartiennent à une époque pendant laquelle la vie de la cour de France déterminait, dans toute l’Europe, le savoir-faire et le savoir-vivre (qui ne sont pas pour rien des termes français). Ce fut aussi l’ère où la jeunesse dorée, sans soucis financiers, ne devant pas travailler pour gagner sa vie, complétait sa formation par un Grand Tour joignant les sommets de l’art européen et de la culture antique pour aboutir à Rome. À la vérité, le raffinement de cour bien connu du XVIIIe siècle trouve son écho dans les objets exposés. Mais, en sourdine, vont résonner des bruits toujours plus sinistres. La fête est bientôt finie.
Pour Louis XVI et Marie-Antoinette se dessine l’échafaud. Et lorsque, la dernière année du siècle, Hubert Robert peint ses galanteries, ce n’est plus lui, mais ceux qui ont investi dans la machine à vapeur, qui ont assuré leur avenir et le capitalisme du XIXe siècle.
-Joost Vander Auwera
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English gloss from Eventful:
The fourth Art and Finance in Europe exhibition will concentrate on the 18th century and is convened, in the frame of the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, under the patronage of László Andor, Member of the European Commission and Tamás Fellegi, Hungarian Minister of National Development. The exhibition Art and Finance in Europe-18th Century Masterworks in a New Light is composed of some 20 major works from the RMFAB collection. The exhibition comprises masterpieces by, amongst others, Franceso Guardi, Benjami Wolff, Léonard Defrance, Hubert Robert, Joseph Vernet and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Leading art experts, Michel Draguet, Joost Vander Auwera (CVs in annex) have lent their expertise in support of the exhibition. The exhibition is part of a sequence which started in 2008 as a joint initiative between EAPB and RMFB. This year the exhibition exceptionally exposes, in addition to paintings, also drawings and sculptures. Henning Schoppmann Secretary General of the European Association of Public Banks, described the exhibition as “a wonderful opportunity to discover how art and money have been intrinsically connected throughout the centuries and how finance has inspired art, one of the most compelling beauties of life.”
Life & Luxury Programming
From the MFAH:
Programming for the Life & Luxury Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Clock movement by Jean-Romilly Case attributed to Charles Cressent Bracket by Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain Clock on Bracket (Cartel sur une console) ca. 1758 (Getty Museum)
23 & 24 September 2011
Peter Björn Kerber (J. Paul Getty Museum), Sister Arts: Opera and Painting in Eighteenth-Century Europe
7 & 8 October 2011
David E. Brauer (Glassell School of Art, MFAH), From the Sun King to the Revolution: The Real vs. the Ideal in Eighteenth-Century French Painting
14 & 15 October 2011
Eric T. Haskell (Scripps College), Edens of Excess: Gardens of Eighteenth-Century Paris
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Reviewed: Life and Luxury in Paris
The exhibition Paris: Life and Luxury in the Eighteenth Century closes today at the Getty. It opens at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on September 18th and runs through December 11. With her typically lucid prose, Amanda Vickery reviews the exhibition for The Guardian (29 July 2011). . .
Opulence, bling and luxury provoke powerful responses in an age of austerity, from wistful envy to righteous disgust. Working girls flocked to see lamé gowns on the silver screen in the hungry 1930s, but Marie Antoinette is scorned for wondering why in the 1790s the poor didn’t eat brioche when the bread ran out. “Luxury” sounds so old fashioned, but the word still flourishes in marketing. The 21st-century “luxury goods market” embraces everything from jewels and luggage to private jets. In yoking a brand to luxury, advertisers draw on a vintage notion of refined taste – harking back to a world of connoisseurs, exquisite workmanship and, above all, sophistication.
François Boucher, "A Lady Fastening Her Garter (La Toilette)," 1742 (Madrid: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza)
It is this mélange of consumerism and lifestyle that the Getty exhibition Paris: Life and Luxury in the Eighteenth Century seeks to evoke. It is built round the outstanding collection of French decorative art that Jean Paul Getty, oil tycoon and once America’s richest man, left to his museum at his death. Ancien Regime Paris was the epicentre of European style. “Fashion is to France what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain,” concluded Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s minister in 1665. French manufacturing was geared to the carriage trade. Demolish the Paris luxury industry, the Baroness d’Oberkirch concluded, and French international supremacy would wither overnight.
Across the channel the British were grinding their teeth. France was Britain’s only real economic and diplomatic rival – the two countries went to war seven times between 1688 and 1815. France was everything the new Protestant parliamentary state abhorred – Catholic, authoritarian, pleasure loving and effervescent. Yet still those thrifty Anglo Saxon Protestants could not contain their desire for French silks, tapestry, porcelain, mirrors, clocks and cabinetwork. “We are the whipped cream of Europe,” sighed Voltaire in 1735. . . .
Read the full article here»
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