Enfilade

Installation view of Ornament (Yale University Art Gallery, 2023), with a harpsichord by Andreas Ruckers (1640) from the Yale School of Music’s Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments.

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Press release for the exhibition:

Ornament
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 26 September 2023 — 18  February 2024

Organized by Freyda Spira and Laurence Kanter

Ornament marks the Yale University Art Gallery’s latest collaboration with the Yale School of Music, occasioned by the res­toration of its historic building housing the Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments. During the closure necessitated by the renovation project, three important and elaborately ornamented early keyboard instruments are on loan to the Gallery.

Gilles-Marie Oppenord (formerly attributed to Jean Bérain), Ornamental Panel with Father Time , ca. 1700, pen and brown ink and gray wash, sheet: 41 × 29 cm (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery).

A 1640 harpsichord by the Antwerp-based crafts­man Andreas Ruckers, with its intricately decorated soundboard and lid, exemplifies the Flemish school of harpsichord making at its height. Also featured in the installation is a smaller instrument called a spinetta, made by Francesco Poggio of Florence in 1620, with a lid painted by an accomplished atelier in the Tuscan city. On view alongside these two harpsichords is an early 19th-century Austrian pyramid piano, a stylish Neoclassical ancestor to the upright pianos that would become popular in 19th- and 20th-century homes. These three objects are accompanied by a selection of around 40 European drawings and prints from the 16th through the 18th century that demonstrate how orna­ment offers an arena for artistic license. The display of musical instruments and works on paper emphasizes how patterns and forms have been imitated, adapted, and translated across media by artists and craftspeople alike.

This installation is a continuation of the Gallery’s collaborations with other Yale collections, following most recently on the exhibition Crafting Worldviews: Art and Science in Europe, 1500–1800, which assembled objects and artworks from the Yale Peabody Museum, the Yale University Library, and the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), as well as the current exhibition In a New Light, showcas­ing painted masterpieces from the YCBA.

Exhibition made possible by the Wolfe Family Exhibition and Publication Fund. Organized by Freyda Spira, the Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Laurence Kanter, Chief Curator and the Lionel Goldfrank III Curator of European Art.

From the press release for the exhibition:

Good Impressions: Portraits across Three Centuries from Reynolda and Wake Forest
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, 20 October 2023 — 27 October 2024

John Singleton Copley, Portrait of Elizabeth Gorham Rogers (wife of Daniel Rogers), 1762, oil on linen, 50 × 40 inches (Winston-Salem: Wake Forest University, Hanes Collection, Gift of Philip and Charlotte Hanes, HC1991.1.1). More information is available here.

Portraits are often taken at face value—as accurate representations of a person’s appearance, sometimes removed by decades or centuries. But portraits are often the products of delicate negotiations between artist and subject. Sometimes they flatter, exaggerating the sitter’s beauty or rich attire. Sometimes they capture the subject engaged in his or her occupation, whether pausing during study or painting in his or her studio. Sometimes they celebrate an auspicious occasion, such as a recent engagement or the imminent birth of a child. This exhibition features three centuries of portraits of men and women, Black and White, solitary and companionate, classic and modern.

“The museum and university are both strengthened by collaborations like this small yet glorious presentation of portraits,” said Allison Perkins, executive director, Reynolda House and Wake Forest University associate provost for Reynolda House & Reynolda Gardens. “More importantly, Wake Forest’s students and Winston-Salem’s community have the privilege of seeing extraordinary works in conversation on our walls.”

Good Impressions was mounted to mark the recent conservation treatment of John Singleton Copley’s 1762 Portrait of Elizabeth Gorham Rogers (Mrs. Daniel Rogers) in the collection of Wake Forest University and Reynolda House’s recent acquisition of the 1973 photograph Changing Times by Kwame Brathwaite (1938–2023).

Kwame Brathwaite, Changing Times, 1973, archival pigment print, 30 × 30 inches (Winston-Salem: Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Museum purchase, 2022.3.2).

Reynolda is set on 170 acres in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and comprises Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village Shops and Restaurants. The Museum presents a renowned art collection in a historic and incomparable setting: the original 1917 interiors of Katharine and R. J. Reynolds’s 34,000-square-foot home. Its collection is a chronology of American art and featured exhibitions are offered in the Museum’s Babcock Wing Gallery and historic house bedrooms. The Gardens serve as a 134-acre outdoor horticultural oasis open to the public year-round, complete with colorful formal gardens, nature trails and a greenhouse. In the Village, the estate’s historic buildings are now home to a vibrant mix of boutiques, restaurants, shops and services.

Joseph Farington, Dumbarton Rock from the South, 1788, pen and gray ink and watercolor; sheet: 38 × 68 cm
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Raymond Lifchez Living Trust Gift, 2014.148)

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Now on view at The Met:

British Vision, 1700–1900: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 7 December 2023 — 5 March 2024

This rotation from the Department of Drawings and Prints celebrates recent additions to the collection by British artists who worked across two centuries, from 1700 to 1900. Landscape is a focus, with the genre becoming closely allied to the growing popularity of watercolor during this period. Around 1760, artists like Paul and Thomas Sandby, Francis Towne, and Thomas Jones began to explore the medium’s expressive potential. In the nineteenth century, dedicated watercolor societies were established and held regular exhibitions to promote their members’ work. Increasingly developed and poetically resonant compositions sought to challenge the preeminence of oil painting.

In this display, watercolors made rapidly out of doors by John Constable and Peter De Wint may be compared to finished compositions by John Brett, Samuel Palmer, and Alfred William Hunt. Travel’s ability to spur creativity is demonstrated by works that respond to sites in Britain, France, Italy, Caucasia, and North Africa. Nature studies, conversely, affirm how foreign flora became increasingly available at home. Finally, the sustained importance of the figure is represented by early chalk and pastel renderings by Joseph Wright of Derby and Allan Ramsay, vibrantly colored later portraits by David Wilkie and John Frederick Lewis, and representations of Black models by Lewis, William Henry Hunt, and Simeon Solomon.

Images of the works are available here»

From the press release (6 March 2023), from the Château de Versailles:

The Palace of Versailles and the Forbidden City: French-Chinese Relations in the 18th Century
Palace Museum, Forbidden City, Beijing, 1 April — 30 June 2024
Hong Kong Palace Museum, 18 December 2024 — 4 May 2025

Fontaine à parfum, porcelaine à glaçure céladon craquelé et céramique brune, Jingdezhen, début de l’époque Qianlong (1736–1795), monture en bronze doré, Paris, vers 1743 (Château de Versailles).

Initially scheduled for 2020 and postponed due to the pandemic, the exhibition entitled The Palace of Versailles and the Forbidden City: French-Chinese Relations in the 18th Century will run from 1 April 2024 at the Forbidden City’s Palace Museum. On 6 April 2023, Palace of Versailles Chair Catherine Pégard and Xudong Wang, Chair of the Forbidden City’s Palace Museum, met at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing to reiterate their enthusiasm in seeing this joint project through to completion before Presidents Xi and Macron.

The Palace of Versailles is honoured to be working with the Forbidden City’s Palace Museum in Beijing in organising this exhibition surrounding the relationship between France and China in the 18th century and due to run from 1 April to 30 June 2024. The exhibition is a more in-depth version of the one that was rolled out at the Palace of Versailles in 2014 to mark fifty years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, initially sparked by General de Gaulle on 27 January 1964.

Louis XIV put in place in the context of his relations with Emperor Kangxi, which took the form of initiatives such as French Jesuits dispatched to China in 1685 to serve at the Chinese court as mathematicians to the King. This process paved the way for the two nations to begin forging a relationship built on mutual trust and admiration, one that remains unfamiliar to many, and lasted until the 18th century. This special diplomatic relationship and mutual respect helped usher in French appreciation for modern China and Chinese artistry.

In France, the court’s love affair with China and Chinese art shines through in a variety of different ways, and four key phenomena: importing Chinese artworks and pieces; altering certain imported artworks, notably by adding gilt-bronze frames to porcelain pieces and using lacquered panels on French furniture; imitating Chinese products, such as the frenzied quest to track down the secret to making kaolin porcelain; and Chinese art’s marked influence on French art, particularly in the field of decorative arts. The exhibition will illustrate how Chinese art served as a bottomless source of inspiration for French artists and intellectuals, in everything from painting, art objects, and interior design to architecture, landscape design, literature, music and the sciences.

Meanwhile, in the Chinese court, many French Jesuits also followed after the arrival of the ‘Mathematicians of the king’ sent by Louis XIV in China, some of whom served the court for a long time. With them as the intermediary, French culture had an important influence on many fields such as science, art, architecture, medicine, mapping and so on in the Qing court. Therefore, juxtaposed with French Exhibits in the Exhibition are also clocks, scientific instruments, prints, porcelain, bronzes, books, and other objects from the Palace Museum collection, directly reflecting the achievements of exchanges and cultural exchanges between the two sides.

The exhibition in Beijing will bring together a selection of pieces taken from the Palace of Versailles and Palace Museum collections, designed to serve as broader examples of the veritable fascination for Chinese art that took root at the court of Versailles and among French enthusiasts. It showcases the efforts and achievements made by China and France to achieve mutual understanding and cultural exchanges in the 18th century, and vividly restores the splendid cultural and artistic exchanges between the two countries for more than a century.

Exhibition commissioned by Marie-Laure de Rochebrune, Curator at the Palace of Versailles, and Guo Fuxiang, Curator at the Palace Museum.

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Note (added 18 December 2024) — The posting was updated to include the Hong Kong venue.

Eighteenth-century women’s shoes (Hampshire Cultural Trust’s Collection).

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Now on view at The Arc:

Shoes: Inside Out
Willis Museum and Sainsbury Gallery, Basingstoke, Spring 2023
The Arc, Winchester, 24 November 2023 — 6 March 2024

From the functional and practical to the fashionable and extravagant, shoes have played an intriguing role in our social history and modern lives. They can tell us about a person’s work, leisure choices, status, and aspirations—but the story is not always straightforward. Conformity to gender stereotypes is blurred, power statements conceal repression, and the utilitarian merges with the frippery. Shoes: Inside Out is an exhibition featuring footwear from our past, as far back as 11 AD, to the present. Through the themes of work, protect, play, empower, transform, identify, and aspire, 70 pairs of shoes from Hampshire Cultural Trust’s Collection explore how shoes have shaped—and have been shaped by—society. From Georgian high society shoes to 1970s platforms and current high-end designer heels to everyday boots there is a shoe to fit all interests. Alongside the footwear, a display of high-definition x-rays of some of the shoes allow us to glimpse the story within, uncovering developments in the shoes’ construction and revealing an ethereal reminiscence of a life lived.