Enfilade

Opening in April at the ROM:

The Cloth that Changed the World: India’s Painted and Printed Cottons
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 4 April — 27 September 2020

Made with novel cotton, vivid colours and exuberant design, the painted and printed cottons of India changed human history; they revolutionized art, fashion, and science wherever they went around the globe. Featuring pieces from the Museum’s world-renowned collection and several important international loans, this ROM original exhibition explores how over thousands of years India’s artisans have created, perfected, and innovated these printed and painted multicoloured cotton fabrics to fashion the body, honour divinities, and beautify palaces and homes.

Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849), Fuji in Clear Weather (Red Fuji), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji, early 1830s
(Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ainsworth Bequest, 1950.711)

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Press release for the exhibition (via Art Daily). . .

Ukiyo-e Prints from the Mary Ainsworth Collection
Chiba City Museum of Art, 13 April — 26 May 2019
Shizuoka City Museum of Art, 8 June — 28 July 2019
Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, 10 August to 29 September 2019
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio, 14 January — 14 June 2020

Curated by Kevin Greenwood

In 1950, the Allen Memorial Art Museum received a surprise gift of more than 1,500 Japanese woodblock prints featuring actors, courtesans, and landscapes of the ‘floating world’ of 17th- to 19th-century Japan. This bequest became a cornerstone of the Allen’s renowned Asian art collection, and 200 of the works traveled back to Japan last year for a tour of museums in Chiba (near Tokyo), Shizuoka, and Osaka. Now more than 100 of these prints are on view in Ukiyo-e Prints from the Mary Ainsworth Collection, an Oberlin exhibition that runs through June 14, 2020.

Mary Andrews Ainsworth (1867–1950) graduated from Oberlin College in 1889 and made her first sea voyage to Japan in 1906. The country had recently emerged from centuries of isolation and was beginning a period of rapid industrial development. Ainsworth, however, was attracted to an earlier Japan: that of the Edo period (1603–1868). In this more peaceful era, a world of entertainment arose—ephemeral pursuits made even more popular through the wide distribution of color woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, or ‘pictures of the floating world’.

“The Ainsworth collection represents the history and evolution of Japanese woodblock printmaking, with high-quality examples of the major subjects, styles, and artists of ukiyo-e. Together, they convey much of the richness and complexity of Japan’s print tradition,” said Kevin R. E. Greenwood, the Allen’s Joan L. Danforth Curator of Asian Art. “We were approached by one of Japan’s leading ukiyo-e scholars to do this exhibition, which confirms the importance of Ainsworth’s collection,” he said. “In the process of working together, we discovered some impressions not known in any other collections.”

Ukiyo-e Prints from the Mary Ainsworth Collection is presented in four sections that span the history of the medium. Early prints (1680–1770) were monochrome, often with hand-coloring added; the carbon-black ink was made from pine soot. Around 1745, with the invention of a way to register, or align, wooden blocks, artists such as Ishikawa Toyonobu began printing in two colors: red and green. These benizuri-e prints, or ‘crimson-printed pictures’, sometimes included a third color, yellow, brown, or indigo. In the 1760s, Suzuki Harunobu was the first major producer of prints using more than three blocks.

The second part of the show, Beauties and Actors (1770–1800), includes works by Kitagawa Utamaro, Chobunsai Eishi, and other artists who helped to popularize the many theaters, tea houses, and celebrities of the pleasure district in Edo (now Tokyo). Ukiyo-e artists not only made prints for sale to Japan’s growing merchant class, but also were hired to produce posters and advertisements for theatrical performances.

The third section, Hokusai and Kuniyoshi (1780–1850), highlights the rise of landscapes in Japanese printmaking, which was due in part to the introduction of a chemical pigment called Prussian blue. Six prints from Katsushika Hokusai’s series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji are included, along with Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s prints of bridges, ferries, and heroes from history and legend.

The final section (1830–1858) is devoted to prints by Utagawa Hiroshige I. Works by this prolific artist comprise more than half of the Ainsworth collection. The exhibition presents thirty-six works by Hiroshige I, including nine from his 1830s series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō and thirteen from his 1857 series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo—prime examples of some of the finest woodblock prints ever produced in Japan.

“This extensive exhibition and its accompanying catalogue have been years in coming to fruition,” said Andria Derstine, John G. W. Cowles Director of the Allen. “We are thrilled to present, for the first time in decades, such a large portion of our Ainsworth collection, both at the Allen and to enthusiastic audiences in Japan.”

Organized by Kevin R. E. Greenwood, Joan L. Danforth Curator of Asian Art, with Masako Tanabe and Marie Matsuoka, Chiba City Museum of Art; Saori Oishi, Shizuoka City Museum of Art; Eri Yoshida, Weikado Bunko Art Museum; Tatsuya Akita and Yasuko Kikuchi, Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts; Hiromi Sone, Mangosteen, Inc.; and Luoying Sheng ’20, AMAM curatorial assistant in Asian art education.

Opening next month at The British Museum, with a catalogue from Thames & Hudson:

Piranesi Drawings: Visions of Antiquity
The British Museum, London, 20 February — 9 August 2020

Curated by Sarah Vowles

Celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), Piranesi Drawings: Visions of Antiquity explores the artist’s celebrated skill as a draftsman. The Venetian-born artist is best known for his dramatic etchings of the architecture and antiquities of his adopted home city of Rome and for his extraordinary flights of spatial fancy, such as Le Carceri (‘Prisons’). This exhibition, however, presents the Museum’s complete collection of Piranesi’s drawings, exploring the formidable quality of his pen and chalk studies and tracking his artistic evolution.

Sarah Vowles is the Hamish Swanston Curator of Italian and French Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. Hugo Chapman is the Simon Sainsbury Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.

Sarah Vowles, with an introduction by Hugo Chapman, Piranesi Drawings: Visions of Antiquity
(London: Thames & Hudson, 2020), 144 pages, ISBN: 978-0500480618, £20 / $30.

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Press release (via Art Daily) . . .

Virtuosic and turbulent, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) was a visionary printmaker, architect, antiquarian, and dealer. These varied aspects of his career were based on his practice of drawing, which has received comparatively little attention. The British Museum will mark the 300th anniversary of Piranesi’s birth through a new exhibition focusing on his work as a draughtsman. Piranesi Drawings: Visions of Antiquity will examine his draughtsmanship through the quality and impact of his pen and chalk studies, as well as examining how the Venetian artist’s style developed throughout his career. This exhibition is the British Museum’s first to focus on Piranesi as a draughtsman and celebrates the extraordinary richness of its collections of his drawings, which is one of the largest groups in the world.

Through over 50 works, Piranesi drawings looks at his practice broadly chronologically with sections focusing on four different themes that preoccupied him throughout his career: Venice and Rome, The Carceri, The Glory of Rome, and Architect & Antiquarian. The exhibition also allows visitors to see the way in which his style and interests as a draughtsman evolved over time. The works on display will range from the scene designs and Venetian fantasies of his youth to the prison scenes and dramatic views of Rome that he produced in his artistic maturity. Additionally, the British Museum’s first Piranesi figure drawing will be on display for the first time, a new acquisition from 2019 collected especially for this exhibition.

The exhibition begins with one of the most impressive drawings by Piranesi in the British Museum’s collection, Fantastical Façade of an Antique Building with Columns, Heads, and Sphinxes, c. 1765–69. The drawing dates from later in Piranesi’s career and is not only visually appealing but captures many of the themes explored throughout this exhibition, from his antiquarian flair to his interest in archaeology and his fantastical, extravagant spirit. Piranesi’s melange of architectural elements from Roman, Egyptian, and Etruscan cultures, exemplifies his belief in combining motifs into new and visionary creations.

A notable work featured in the section on The Glory of Rome, The Meeting of the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina, Seen at the Second Milestone outside the Porta Capena, c. 1750–56, is a magnificent preparatory drawing for one of the secondary frontispieces of the Antichità Romane, published in 1756. Piranesi depicts the junction of two great antique roads, the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina, outside Rome, but forgoes archaeological exactitude in favour of an elaborate fantasy of Roman sculptures and monuments. A striking and unusual drawing is a Frontispiece Design with Two Skeletons, in Front of a Tomb, c. 1746–47. Made during a visit to his native Venice, it highlights Piranesi’s skill in using pen and wash to create airy and playful visions of light and tone.

Piranesi’s drawings are given context by a selection of related prints along with a pair of fragmentary Roman sculptures from the museum’s collection, purchased by Charles Townley from Piranesi in the 18th century. Visitors are encouraged to explore his influence beyond the gallery by visiting the British Museum’s permanent collection, where the Piranesi Vase and the Trentham Laver can be found in the centre of The Enlightenment Gallery (Room 1).

Piranesi Drawings: Visions of Antiquity offers a rare opportunity to celebrate Piranesi’s influence as a draughtsman. His drawings demonstrate how he brought together his various passions to create magnificent imaginary buildings throughout his life as the architect of a fantastical, imaginary world.

Sarah Vowles, the Smirnov Family Curator of Italian and French Prints and Drawings at The British Museum said: “Many people will be familiar with Piranesi’s evocative prints, but his brilliant and powerful drawings are less well known. He drew compulsively throughout his life, using his sketches and studies as a way to explore, innovate, and invent. The British Museum’s collection of Piranesi drawings is one of the richest in the world, including drawings from throughout his career and giving us insights into all aspects of his varied activity. By presenting the group in its entirety in this focused exhibition, we hope visitors will gain a holistic sense of Piranesi, not only for his influential views of ancient Rome, or his thrillingly gloomy ‘Carceri’ prints, but also appreciating his work as antiquarian, architect, and relentlessly creative visionary.”

Hugo Chapman, The Simon Sainsbury Keeper of Prints & Drawings at The British Museum said: “Piranesi’s etchings of Rome and of fantastical architecture are well known, but far less familiar is the scintillating brilliance of his drawings in which he rehearsed and honed his graphic talents. This exhibition is the first to concentrate on the British Museum’s remarkable collection of over fifty drawings by Piranesi that map the course of his career in Rome as he established his name internationally as one of the great graphic artists of his age. The drawings are remarkable for their dashing speed of execution as Piranesi’s pen strained to keep pace with the tumbling rush of his ideas. They register the dynamic force of his imagination as he transformed the ruins and shattered artefacts of ancient Rome into buildings and works of epic scale and magnificence. Through drawing, Piranesi shaped and perfected his vision, giving us a sense of his transformative imagination. Such is the power of his singular vision that it continues to excite and inspire architects, filmmakers, video game designers, and other creative minds to this day.”

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Note (added 20 February 2020) — The original posting did not include the press release.

Jean Honoré Fragonard, Mountain Landscape at Sunset, ca. 1765, oil on paper, 8 × 13 inches
(Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, Chester Dale Fund, 1997.22.1)

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From the press release (6 December 2019) for the exhibition:

True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2 February — 3 May 2020
Fondation Custodia, Paris, 13 June — 13 September 2020
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,  3 May — 29 August 2022

Curated by Mary Morton, Ger Luijten, and Jane Munro

An integral part of art education in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, painting en plein air (‘in the open air’) was a core practice for artists in Europe. Intrepid painters—developing their abilities to quickly capturing effects of light and atmosphere—made sometimes arduous journeys to study landscapes at breathtaking sites, ranging from the Baltic coast and Swiss Alps to the streets of Paris and ruins of Rome. True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870 presents some 100 oil sketches made outdoors across Europe by artists such as Carl Blechen, Jules Coignet, André Giroux, Anton Sminck Pitloo, Carl Frederik Sørensen, and Joseph Mallord William Turner. On view in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from February 2 through May 3, 2020, the exhibition presents dozens of recently discovered studies and explores issues of attribution, chronology, and technique.

“The Gallery is fortunate to have one of the finest public collections of landscape sketches by 18th- and 19th-century European painters, largely due to acquisitions made by the late Philip Conisbee during his time as the Gallery’s senior curator of European paintings from 1993 to 2008,” said Kaywin Feldman, director, National Gallery of Art, Washington. “True to Nature builds on recent scholarship as well as the discovery of paintings that have come to light since the 1996 exhibition organized by Conisbee, In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-Air Painting. That exhibition sparked curatorial and collector interest in this genre, and True to Nature continues to expand our understanding of this relatively unstudied, yet central, aspect of European art history. The Gallery is grateful to work with the Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, and the Fitzwilliam Museum to bring together highlights from the best collections of European landscape sketches from this period.”

True to Nature begins as European artists would have in the late 18th and early 19th century—in Rome. The study of ancient sculpture and architecture, as well as of Renaissance and baroque art, was already a key part of an artist’s education, but Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes’s influential treatise on landscape painting, published in 1800, went further to recommended that young artists develop their skills by painting oil sketches out of doors. Valenciennes advised exploring the Roman countryside, as he had in Study of Clouds over the Roman Campagna (c. 1782/1785). This section includes examples by a range of European artists who followed his advice, such as Michel Dumas, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, and Johan Thomas Lundbye. Also included is The Island and Bridge of San Bartolomeo, Rome (1825/1828) by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Corot was a key figure in 19th-century landscape painting, bringing the practice of open-air painting back to France and inspiring a younger generation of impressionist painters.

Other sections focus on both natural and man-made features that proved challenging to painters, such as waterfalls, trees, skies, coastlines, and rooftops. Examples include rare studies by well-known artists such as John Constable’s Sky Study with a Shaft of Sunlight (c. 1822, Fitzwilliam Museum), Jean Honoré Fragonard’s Mountain Landscape at Sunset (c. 1765), and Odilon Redon’s Village on the Coast of Brittany (1840–1916, Fondation Custodia) as well as sketches by lesser-known painters like Louise-Joséphine Sarazin del Belmont, one of the few known women artists active during this period. True to Nature illustrates how pervasive plein-air painting became across Europe with examples by many Belgian, Danish, Dutch, German, Swiss, and Swedish artists who studied in Italy before returning home to paint their native surroundings. Sketches by Carl Blechen include an example from his time in Italy, View of the Colosseum in Rome (1829, Fondation Custodia), as well as a study made at home in Germany, View of the Baltic Coast (1798-1840), Fondation Custodia).

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The exhibition is curated by Mary Morton, curator and head of the department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Ger Luijten, director, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris; and Jane Munro, keeper of paintings, drawings and prints, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Ger Luijten, Mary Morton, and Jane Munro, eds., with additional contributions by Michael Clarke, Ann Hoenigswald, and Anna Ottani Cavina, True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870 (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2020), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1911300786, £45 / $55.

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Note (added 29 June 2022) — The original Fitzwilliam dates (6 October — 31 January 2021) were updated.

Jan van Huysum (1682–1749), A Crab, 18th century, watercolour and pencil on laid paper, 18 × 29 cm
(Frankfurt am Main: Städel Museum)

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Opening in the fall at the Städel Museum:

Passion for Pictures: Netherlandish Drawings of the Eighteenth Century
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 1 October 2020 — 10 January 2021

Curated by Annett Sandfort

With nearly 600 works, the Städel Museum has one of the most extensive and artistically significant collections of eighteenth-century Dutch drawings outside the Netherlands. From 1 October 2020 to 10 January 2021, the Stadel is for the first time dedicating an exhibition to this valuable collection. On display will be eighty representative drawings by artists who are hardly known today, but who were often very successful in their time, as well as by art-loving amateurs who drew at a high level. The exhibition will bring together preparatory drawings for large-format wall and ceiling decorations by Jacob de Wit; book illustrations by Bernard Picart; Dutch topographies by Cornelis Pronk, Paulus Constantijn la Fargue, and Hendrik Schepper; atmospheric landscape drawings by Jacob Cats, the brothers Jacob and Abraham van Strij, and Franciscus Andreas Milatz; decorative floral and fruit still lifes by Jan van Huysum and his numerous successors; as well as depictions of exotic animals by Aert Schouman and satirical genre scenes by Cornelis Troost and Jacobus Buys. The selected works impressively illustrate the revaluation and emancipation of the drawing in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century, as well as the preference for picturesquely executed, coloured drawings and the repeatedly sought-after examination of the art of the seventeenth century, the Netherlands’ Golden Age. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue of holdings impressively illustrate the spectrum and quality of the collection of eighteenth-century Dutch drawings in the Städel Museum.

The exhibition was curated by Annett Sandfort (Collection of Prints and Drawings, Städel Museum), with support from the Stiftung Gabriele Busch-Hauck.

Note (added 7 October 2020) — The original version of this posting included the provisional titles: Dutch Drawings of the Eighteenth Century / Niederländische Zeichnungen des 18. Jahrhunderts. The exhibition press release is available here.

Cornelis Troost (1696/1697–1750), Suijpe Steijn, 1742, gouache paint on laid paper, 41 × 62 cm
(Frankfurt am Main: Städel Museum, photo by U. Edelmann)