Sino-French Relations in the Eighteenth & Ninteenth Centuries
From the museum’s website:
La Soie & le Canon, France-Chine (1700-1860)
Musée d’Histoire de Nantes, 26 June — 7 November 2010
Catalogue ed. by Bertrand Guillet, ISBN: 9782070129492, $72.50
En octobre 1700, L’Amphitrite, premier navire français à commercer avec la Chine, revient en France et c’est à Nantes, grand port de commerce colonial, qu’il vend sa cargaison : thé, soie, porcelaine, nacre, ivoire, panneaux laqués… Cette première arrivée massive d’objets et produits nourrit une véritable fascination pour la culture chinoise. C’est ainsi que se développe en France « un goût pour la Chine » dont on a oublié l’ampleur. Il est alimenté par les Jésuites présents à la cour de Chine. L’Europe devient sinophile. Artistes et artisans produisent dans le goût chinois. Jusqu’à la fin du 18e siècle, ce commerce au volume marginal mais dont l’influence se révèle marquante, est dominé par les Chinois qui dictent leurs conditions aux Occidentaux. Ces derniers n’arrivent cependant pas à introduire en retour leurs produits commerciaux. La Chine attire de plus en plus les convoitises et peu à peu, « le mythe » s’écorne. Les guerres de l’Opium au 19e siècle, avec en point d’orgue le sac du Palais d’été à Pékin en 1860, achèvent la bascule du rapport économique au profit des Européens et participent au déclin de l’Empire du Milieu.
L’exposition La Soie & le Canon met en lumière les relations franco-chinoises entre ces deux dates – 1700/1860 – et montre l’évolution du regard porté sur cet Extrême-Orient lointain qui suscita tour à tour fascination et rejet, en s’appuyant sur la présentation d’objets et documents prestigieux prêtés par de grands musées dont le musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet, partenaire associé au projet. Avec cette exposition d’histoire, le musée d’histoire de Nantes propose une démarche inédite en montrant les différentes phases qui ont caractérisé dès l’origine les relations entre la France et la Chine. Plus largement, l’exposition contribue à faire mieux comprendre notre rapport à la Chine d’aujourd’hui, toujours fascinante, souvent critiquée, alors que s’amorce un nouvel équilibre mondial dans lequel ce géant qui rassemble un cinquième de l’humanité joue un rôle de premier plan.
Exhibition: Gainsborough and the Modern Woman
From Art Daily (19 July 2010) . . .
Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman
Cincinnati Art Museum, 18 September 2010 — 2 January 2011
San Diego Museum of Art, 29 January — 1 May 2011
Curated by Benedict Leca
Thomas Gainsborough, "Portrait of Ann Ford" (later Mrs. Philip Thicknesse), 1760 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
The portraits of Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) made him perhaps the most famous British artist of the late eighteenth century. Nobles, statesmen, musicians and the range of men and women of the period’s merchant class all sat for him. But it is his portraits of notorious society women—widely considered among the greatest of the Western tradition—which attracted the most attention.
Eighteenth-century viewers appreciated these paintings differently than we do today. In his own time, Gainsborough’s portraits of actresses, performers and courtesans were seen as unconventional, if not radical, not only because of the type of woman they portrayed but also because of the unconventional way they were painted. “These stunning portraits not only give us a perspective on the history of portrait painting and celebrity, but also on the history of women’s progressive self-fashioning, which equally deserves art historical recognition. These are provocative women provocatively painted,” explains exhibition curator Benedict Leca.
Organized by the Cincinnati Art Museum in association with the San Diego Museum of Art, Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman is the first exhibition devoted to Thomas Gainsborough’s feminine portraiture, and the first to focus specifically on modernity and femininity in Georgian England from the perspective of Gainsborough’s groundbreaking portraits of women. Coinciding with the comprehensive cleaning and restoration of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s iconic Ann Ford (Mrs. Thicknesse), this exhibition unites a choice selection of thirteen paintings from renowned museum collections in the United States and Britain to illuminate the role that Gainsborough ’s extraordinary portraiture played in defining new, progressive feminine identities. Among others on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum, September 18, 2010 – January 2, 2011 will be Mrs. Siddons (National Gallery, London), Mrs Richard Brinsley Sheridan (National Gallery, Washington), Giovanna Baccelli (Tate Britain), Grace Dalrymple (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Viscountess Ligonier (Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens). The exhibition will also feature a small selection of period dresses from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s rich fashion arts and textile collection, thereby further contextualizing Gainsborough’s portraits while affording visitors a view of the material accessories of the “modern woman.” . . .
The Art Daily article is available here»
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Exhibition catalogue: Benedict Leca, Aileen Ribeiro, and Amber Ludwig, Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman (London: Giles, 2010), ISBN: 9781904832850, $49.95.
This beautifully illustrated volume focuses specifically on Thomas Gainsborough’s portraits of well-known, “liberated,” society women, and the way in which the artist executed these special commissions. Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman draws us away from his predominant reputation as a landscape painter, and shows how such portraits were both an affirmation by Gainsborough of his own position in the artistic world of Georgian England, and of the desire of his sitters (including leading artists, musicians, actresses and intellectuals) to be seen as self-assured progressive women.
Author Benedict Leca takes as his starting point the Cincinnati Art Museum’s famous and newly restored portrait of Ann Ford (1760), widely considered the finest of the masterpiece portraits created by Gainsborough at Bath in the early 1760s. He addresses this early portrait as typifying Gainsborough’s comparatively permissive attitude with regard to how notorious women should be presented, and offers a compelling view of Gainsborough’s peculiar manner of painting, one that established the artist as the foremost portraitist of modern life. Featuring portraits from international collections, including Tate Britain, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J Paul Getty Museum and the National Gallery, London, this ground-breaking new volume also includes an essay by Aileen Ribeiro examining the portrait of Ann Ford in detail, and by Amber Ludwig discussing the role of feminine identity in 18th-century London.
Exhibition: Italian Prints in Adelaide
Press release from the Art Gallery of South Australia:
A Beautiful Line: Italian Prints from Mantegna to Piranesi
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 20 August — 31 October 2010
Curated by Maria Zagala, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs
Tiepolo, "Punchinello Talking to Two Magicians" from the series "Scherzi di Fantasia," ca.1743–57, published 1775, Venice, etching on paper 23.3 x 18.3 cm (plate & sheet) A.R. Ragless Bequest Fund 1975, Art Gallery of South Australia
Some of the masterpieces of Italian printmaking go on rare display in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s new exhibition, A Beautiful Line, which includes 135 prints dating from the mid-fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries by masters such as Andrea Mantegna, Titian, Tiepolo, Canaletto, and Piranesi. There are around 2000 Italian prints in the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection but due to their fragility and sensitivity to light, they can be displayed only rarely. A Beautiful Line presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to see the most outstanding works from this collection including many new acquisitions, showcased together for the first time, to tell the story of Italian printmaking from the Renaissance to the Rococo.
The exhibition offers an insight into the rich visual culture of Italy during this time by showcasing etchings, engravings and woodcut prints which emerged from the major printmaking centres of Venice and Rome, as well as Florence, Verona and Bologna. Among the highlights, at almost three metres long, is Stefano Della Bella’s commanding sixpart work, The Entrance of the Polish Ambassador into Rome, 1633. This important new acquisition is revealed publicly for the first time in this exhibition and is believed to be the only one of its kind in Australia. Other attractions include Andrea Mantegna’s Renaissance masterpiece The Entombment, woodcuts by Titian and his contemporaries, and G.B. Piranesi’s dark and evocative prints of imaginary prisons from the eighteenth century. Subjects range from scenes of the commedia dell’arte, Biblical stories, Roman Emperors, gods and goddesses, to views of cities and architectural landmarks, such as Rome’s Colosseum. (more…)
Exhibition: ‘Beyond Oberlin’
This collaborative installation at the Cleveland Museum of Art points to possibilities for cooperation between museums, technological opportunities for presenting works of art (not only is the website quite smart looking but the podcasts are wonderful), and — maybe most of all — remarkable pedagogical strategies. . .
Louis Jean François Lagrenée, "Sunset" (detail), 1772, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio
Beyond Oberlin: AMAM Paintings, Sculptures, and Miniatures at the Cleveland Museum of Art
January 2010–February 2011
Until early 2011, 14 works of art from the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College will be integrated into the permanent collection galleries of the Cleveland Museum of Art on the upper level of the 1916 building. Surrounded by related works from the museum, the objects from Oberlin—European works of art from the late Renaissance to the early 1800s—are reinterpreted in a new context. The combinations sometimes build on strengths of the Cleveland collections and in other cases exemplify works not represented here, therefore broadening the story told in the museum’s galleries.
The interpretation stemmed from a spring 2010 course at Oberlin College taught by the installation’s co-organizers: Andria Derstine, the Allen Museum’s Curator of Collections and Curator of European & American Art; and Jon L. Seydl, the museum’s Paul J. and Edith Ingalls Vignos Jr. Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, 1500–1800.
The Oberlin students visited the museum to study the history and display of European art and to learn about the behind-the-scenes aspects of museum work, such as storage, conservation, art handling, installation, exhibition design, and publication. The students wrote the gallery labels, and they created podcasts and longer texts for the web sites of both museums.
Works included in the show, together with the student-generated texts and podcasts are available here»
German Drawings in Washington
Press release from the National Gallery:
German Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, 1580-1900
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 16 May — 28 November 2010
Curated by Andrew Robison, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, will present for the first time worldwide 120 stunning German watercolors and drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection—one of the finest private European holdings of old master drawings. On view in the Gallery’s West Building from May 16 to November 28, 2010, German Master Drawings from the Wolfgang Ratjen Collection, 1580–1900 will include rare and influential examples of German works on paper encompassing 16th-century mannerism, the 17th-century baroque, the 18th-century rococo, early 19th-century romanticism, and late 19th-century realism.
In 2007, the National Gallery of Art acquired 185 German and Italian works from the Ratjen Collection with the help of a dozen generous private donors as well as the Paul Mellon Fund and the Patrons’ Permanent Fund. Works included in the exhibition are by artists from Germany and German-speaking areas of Europe, German-born artists practicing abroad, and artists born in other areas who spent time working in Germany and adapting to German culture.
Organized chronologically throughout five rooms, the exhibition begins with outstanding early works by three of the most notable German mannerists: Friedrich Sustris (c. 1540–1599), living primarily in Munich; Hans von Aachen (1552–1615), working at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague; and Hans Rottenhammer (1564/1565–1625), living in Venice and Augsburg. Sustris’ sophisticated drawing An Elaborate Altar with the Resurrection of Christ and the Martyrdom of Saint Andrew (1570/1580) is one of the earliest Bavarian responses to Italian mannerist altars. Von Aachen’s The Madonna Enthroned with Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist (1589), a sacra conversazione (devotional scene) produced soon after his return from Venice, was a favored Venetian motif at the time. Rottenhammer’s colorful watercolor Minerva and the Muses (c. 1610) is directly inspired by Tintoretto, whose work he studied in Venice.
From the baroque period, Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610), a favorite artist of both Rubens and Rembrandt, is represented by an extremely rare atmospheric gouache—Ceres Changes Stellio into a Lizard (1605/1608)—perhaps his finest work in the United States.
Ratjen especially pursued watercolors from the 18th century by the great painters—including Cosmas Damian Asam (1686–1739), Matthäus Günther (1705–1788), and Johann Baptist Enderle (1725–1798)—who filled Bavarian churches and palaces with elaborate rococo altarpieces and stunning ceiling frescoes. A remarkable series of Augsburg rococo drawings includes Johann Elias Ridinger’s (1698–1767) charming portrait of the first rhinoceros to come to northern Europe, endearingly nicknamed “Miss Clara” (1748).
Around the turn of the 18th century, German artists developed a particular fondness for nature, as represented here by an extensive series of luminous drawings and watercolors. Highlights include five evocative landscape watercolors by Johann Georg von Dillis (1759–1841) as well as Caspar David Friedrich’s (1774–1840) romantic masterpiece New Moon above the Riesengebirge Mountains (1810 or 1828/1835). (more…)
Anatomy and Art Theory in Washington
The Body Inside and Out: Anatomical Literature and Art Theory
Selections from the National Gallery of Art Library
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., July 24, 2010 — January 23, 2011
A PDF file of the exhibition brochure is available for download (click on the link at the left)
The humanist movement of the Renaissance introduced new realms of possibility in the arts and the sciences, including the study of anatomy. Many artists witnessed or participated in dissections to gain a better understanding of the proportions and systems of the body. Artists and physicians also worked together and formed partnerships—Leonardo and Marcantonio della Torre, Michelangelo and Realdo Columbo, and perhaps most famously, Titian and Andreas Vesalius—where the artist’s renderings of the anatomist’s findings were reproduced and dispersed to a scattered audience through the relatively recent innovation of print.
This exhibition, featuring outstanding examples of anatomy-related material from the collection of rare books in the National Gallery of Art Library, offers a glimpse into the ways anatomical studies were made available to and used by artists from the 16th to the early 19th century. On view are detailed treatises on human proportion and beauty by artists and scholars including Albrecht Dürer and Juan de Arfe y Villafane; drawing and painting manuals by Leonardo, Jean Cousin, and others, which include chapters on proportion and anatomy; and adaptations of anatomical treatises tailored to the needs of working artists by Roger de Piles and Johann Daniel Preissler, among others.
The exhibition brochure is available here»
Print Collecting in the Eighteenth Century: Richard Fitzwilliam
The founder of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Richard Fitzwilliam, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion (1745-1816) is the subject, or at least part of the subject, of this small exhibition of prints after Elsheimer:
Prized Possession: Lord Fitzwilliam’s Album of Prints after Adam Elsheimer
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England, 25 May — 26 September 2010
The second in the Hidden Depths exhibition series, this display will focus on one of Lord Fitzwilliam’s print albums, devoted entirely to prints made after paintings by Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610). The album, one of 198 bequeathed by Lord Fitzwilliam to Cambridge University in 1816, reveals the varied response by printmakers captivated by Elsheimer’s deployment of light and atmospheric rendering of nature. This exhibition will reconstruct the arrangement of the album, which was taken apart some time during the last century, and explore the allure of Elsheimer not only for printmakers, but for print collectors, in particular Lord Fitzwilliam himself.
German Enlightenment Portraiture: Art and Culture
Information on the following exhibition comes from the Gleimhaus Museum. For a scholarly point of entry into Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim’s “Temple of Friendship,” see Leah Hochman, “The Ugly Made Beautiful: Mendelssohn as Icon,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5 (July 2006): 137–161. The museum itself is described here in a brochure describing the use of “EU Structural Funds for the City of Halberstadt”:
With the Enlightenment in the 18th century, Halberstadt experienced years of great intellectual activity. In 1747 the poet Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim was appointed as cathedral secretary in Halberstadt, after years in the service of the Prussian King. Gleim knew all the important German-speaking authors of his time, and his house, his “temple of friendship” near the cathedral, was a meeting place for literary greats such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Heinrich Voß, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Jean Paul. Today, Gleim’s house is Germany’s second-oldest museum of literature, and the poet’s extensive estate comprising letters, books and portraits makes it a cultural site of remembrance of national significance. . . .
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Von Mensch zu Mensch: Porträtkunst und Porträtkultur der Aufklärung
Gleimhaus Museum, Halberstadt, Germany, 29 August — 20 November 2010
Jahrhunderte lang war das Porträt innerhalb der Kunst gering geschätzt worden, denn es strebte nicht nach Schönheit, sondern nur nach Ähnlichkeit. Diese Geringschätzung wandelte sich im Zeitalter der Aufklärung in ihr Gegenteil. Das Bildnis erlebte nun eine hohe Blüte, die gekennzeichnet war nicht etwa durch Prachtentfaltung, sondern durch die Konzentration auf das Gesicht. Der Mensch wurde als der nobelste Bildgegenstand bestimmt, das Gesicht konsequenter als je zuvor als Membran aufgefasst. Damit galt das Porträt nunmehr als Darstellung der Seele. Der Mensch zeigte sich nicht mehr nach seiner sozialen Geltung, sondern als Verstandes- und Gefühlsmensch. Das Bildnis war nicht mehr auf Autorität, sondern auf Sympathie angelegt. Bezeichnend hierfür ist, dass den meisten Porträts ein Lächeln ins Gesicht geschrieben steht.
Die Ausstellung Von Mensch zu Mensch. Porträtkunst und Porträtkultur der Aufklärung verzichtet auf das repräsentative und effektvolle Bildnis und beschränkt sich stattdessen weitgehend auf das Brustbild – wie bereits der Dichter und Sammler Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, der erklärte, nur Ritter lassen sich mit Sporen malen, bei Denkern genüge der Kopf. Gleim hat in seinem so genannten ‘Freundschaftstempel’ Bildnisse seiner Freunde und verdienter Zeitgenossen versammelt. Diese Sammlung – die größte Porträtsammlung der deutschen Geisteswelt des 18. Jahrhunderts – bietet ein Panorama der Porträtkunst der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Zugleich steht mit der Person ein Exponat des innigen Umgangs des 18. Jahrhunderts mit dem Bildnis vor Augen – der Zwiesprache mit dem Porträt, des Küssens, Bekränzens und Sammelns des Bildnisses. Beides will die Ausstellung zeigen: Porträtkunst und Poträtkultur im Zeitalter der Aufklärung.
Der ‘Freundschaftstempel’ Gleims, dessen Wände mit Bildnissen dicht behängt sind, stellt selbst das zentrale Exponat der Ausstellung dar, die daher an keinem anderen Ort möglich wäre. Dieser Bestand wird ergänzt durch Meisterwerke der Porträtkunst aus bedeutenden Museen und Privatsammlungen.
Die Ausstellung lässt das Bildnis als allgegenwärtiges Medium der empfindsamen Kommunikation erkennbar werden, an das sich das ausgeprägte “sittlich-gesellige Interesse” dieser Epoche am Menschen (Goethe) knüpfte. Die Porträtkunst der Aufklärung weist mit ihren Qualitäten von Menschlichkeit und Zwischenmenschlichkeit allgemeingültige Werte auf, mit denen ihr heute noch – und gerade heute – besondere Geltung zukommt.
Zur Ausstellung erscheint ein Katalog mit Beiträgen von Helmut Börsch-Supan, Reimar F. Lacher und Doris Schumacher im Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen. Die Ausstellung ist einer der zentralen Beiträge zu dem Themenjahr Menschenbilder des Museumsnetzwerkes Sachsen-Anhalt und das 18. Jahrhundert. Sie wird unterstützt vom Land Sachsen-Anhalt, von Lotto-Toto Sachsen-Anhalt und den ÖSA Versicherungen. Die Schau ist bis zum 20. November zu sehen.
At the Louvre this Winter: ‘Antiquity Rediscovered’
From the Louvre:
L’Antiquité rêvée – Innovations et résistances au XVIIIe siècle /
Antiquity Rediscovered: European Art between the Antique and Reinvention, 1720-1790
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 3 December 2010 — 14 February 2011
Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 20 March — 30 May 2011
Curated by Marc Fumaroli (Paris) and Edgar Peters Bowron (Houston)
Pierre Julien, "Dying Gladiator," 1779 © 2007 Musée du Louvre / Pierre Philibert
The “neoclassical” trend emerged in the 18th century not only as a result of the processes of innovation and emulation, but also in response to Europe’s rediscovery of its ancient heritage. The exhibition will shed light on the origins of the movement and illustrate the diverse manifestations of the new aesthetic. Sculptures, paintings, decorative objects and graphic arts bear witness to the work of artists during this period. All neoclassicism’s protagonists will thus be represented, the exhibition showing both their individual styles and their reactions against their contemporaries’experiments. Two hundred works in all will be on view, curated by Marc Fumaroli of the French Academy.
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For anyone struck by the difference between the French and English titles of the exhibition, the contrast between the full descriptions is even more striking (the French summary is certainly more informative and generally characteristic of the scholarship of Fumaroli, whose contributions are here praised as “exceptionnelle”) . . .
Le courant « néoclassique » est né au XVIIIe siècle dans les processus d’innovation, d’émulation, mais aussi de résistance liés à la redécouverte du patrimoine antique. L’exposition fait découvrir les origines du mouvement et illustre les diverses manifestations d’une nouvelle esthétique. Sculptures, peintures, objets d’art et arts graphiques témoignent du travail des artistes de cette période. Tous les grands créateurs de l’époque sont ainsi représentés à la fois dans leur propre démarche et en réaction aux expérimentations de leurs contemporains : de Bouchardon à Houdon, de Piranèse à Boullée, de Batoni à Mengs, de Sergel à Flaxman, de Füssli à Blake et de David à Canova… (et aussi Pajou, Nollekens, Banks, Greuze, Goya, Cades, Adams, Soufflot, Ledoux, Wright of Derby, les vases de Wegdwood …). L’exposition est constituée d’une sélection de deux cents oeuvres, et bénéficie de la contribution exceptionnelle de Marc Fumaroli de l’Académie française.
Piermarini Exhibition
Most famous for his Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Giuseppe Piermarini (1734-1808) is the subject of this exhibition that comes on the heels of the the bicentenary of his death. Also, see the website of the Piermarini Foundation (all pages are available only in Italian). The following description comes from the site of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN) . . .
Giuseppe Piermarini tra Barocco e Neoclassicismo — Rome, Naples, Caserta, Foligno
Palazzo Trinci di Foligno, 5 June — 2 October 2010
Curated by Marcello Fagiolo and Marisa Tabarrini
Giuseppe Piermarini, one of the most famous neoclassical figures in Italy, is best known as the architect of the Theatre alla Scala in Milan and refounder of good taste in Lombardy during the second half of eighteenth century. The exhibition is divided into chronological and thematic sections, beginning with a panorama of eighteenth-century Rome, the place of Piermarini’s apprenticeship, between the end of the pontificate of Benedict XIV (1740-1758) and the reign of Clement XIII (1758-1769). It then follows the architect to Naples in the studio of Vanvitelli, his time in Milan from 1769 and, finally, his return to his native Foligno in the early nineteenth century.
Note (added 5 August 2010) — The exhibition catalogue, Giuseppe Piermarini tra barocco e neoclassico. Roma, Napoli, Caserta, Foligno, edited by Marcello Fagiolo and Marisa Tabarrini (Perugia, 2010), ISBN: 9788896591277, is available through artbooks.com.
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