Art History 48 (February 2025)
The 18th century in the latest issue of Art History:
Art History 48 (February 2025)
a r t i c l e s
• Oliver Wunsch, “The Aesthetic Redemption of the Black Body in Eighteenth-Century France,” pp. 14–44.
Audiences in eighteenth-century France felt little compunction about admiring African people in art while denigrating them in life. They reconciled this apparent contradiction through a belief in the ameliorative effects of art, yielding what is described here as a theory of aesthetic redemption. This essay argues that the theory of aesthetic redemption that developed in eighteenth-century France gave art a unique position in the construction of race. Because those who believed in the possibility of aesthetic redemption distinguished between art’s content and its manner of representation, they created the conditions for artists to depict people of colour using materials, techniques, and formal structures whose qualities would otherwise be considered at odds with the subject. The resulting art often strikes audiences today as progressive, yet it did little to challenge the biases of the original viewers, who admired aesthetic departures from stereotypes precisely because they took those stereotypes for granted.
• Diarmuid Costello, “Die Schönheit des Mittelmenschen: Stephan Balkenhol’s ‘Everyday Beauty’,” pp. 132–61.
This essay considers Stephan Balkenhol’s ‘everyman and woman’ sculptures through the optic of Kant’s ‘ideal of beauty’ (§17, Critique of Aesthetic Judgement, 1790). I take a pair of miniature figures as my test case. Despite minor variations, all these sculptures depict the same generic man and woman, a man or woman who average or middling in every way. What could make depictions of average everydayness so compelling? For a clue, I turn to Kant’s ‘ideal of beauty’. This comprises a ‘standard aesthetic idea’ and an ‘idea of reason’: the former is a (culturally specific) ‘model image’ of the human being; the latter implicates Kant’s (universal) conception of ‘humanity in the person’, where the latter manifests itself through the former. I ask whether this illuminates Balkenhol’s work, suggesting that although the relevance of the former is clear, and the latter less so, there is reason not to rule it out.
• Viccy Coltman, “Travelling Knick-Knacks and Picturesque Points of View: Reverend James Plumptre’s Narrative of a Pedestrian Journey … to the Highlands of Scotland … in the Summer of the Year 1799,” pp. 162–84.
This essay revisits later eighteenth-century picturesque aesthetics in Britain as they were articulated in theory, applied in practice, and reproduced in travel literature and art. It considers the sometimes congruent, at other times contested, relationship between the natural landscape, written descriptions of that landscape, and its pictorial representation. Focusing on unpublished extracts from Reverend James Plumptre’s manuscript travel journal, Narrative of a Pedestrian Journey […] to the Highlands of Scotland […] in the Summer of the Year 1799, it argues for an original interpretation of the pedestrian picturesque as a suite of practices which entailed travelling by foot, viewing the landscape with a range of hand-held implements or ‘knick-knacks’, and representing nature ‘as seen’ without remedial artistic correction or improvement. According to this account, ‘people, places, and things’ becomes a useful rubric for conceptualising Plumptre’s 1799 pedestrian tour of Scotland which included visits to the Edinburgh studios of artists Alexander Nasmyth, Henry Raeburn, and Hugh William Williams.
r e v i e w s
• Brigid von Preussen, “A Woman’s Work,” Review of Paris Spies-Gans, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760–1830 (Yale UP, 2022) and Rosalind Blakesley, Women Artists in the Reign of Catherine the Great (Lund Humphries, 2023), pp. 186–92.
Ten Axioms: Drimmer and Nygren on Art History and AI
I was slow finding this essay on artificial intelligence, but it strikes me as immensely helpful (it seems someone asks me about art and AI at least once a week these days). –CH
Sonja Drimmer and Christopher Nygren, “Art History and AI: Ten Axioms,” International Journal for Digital Art History 10 (2023): 5.01–10. Link»
One of a handful of digital images accompanying the article created by Dall-e-2 using the following prompt: “the history of art as understood by artificial intelligence.”
Abstract | AI has become an increasingly prevalent tool for researchers working in Digital Art History. The promise of AI is great, but so are the ethical and intellectual issues it raises. Here we propose 10 axioms related to the use of AI in art historical research that scholars should consider when embarking on such projects, and we make some proposals for how these axioms might be integrated into disciplinary conversations.
Sonja Drimmer is associate professor of medieval art in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research is chiefly concerned with the book arts of the Middle Ages, addressing in particular issues of mediation, collaborative production, and replication. She is the author of The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403–1476 (University of Pennsylvania, 2018), which received High Commendation for Exemplary Scholarship from the Historians of British Art.
Christopher J. Nygren is associate professor of early modern art in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2022, his book, Titian’s Icons: Charisma, Tradition, and Devotion in the Italian Renaissance (Penn State, 2020), won the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Prize for best book in Renaissance studies from the Renaissance Society of America. Profesoor Nygren is also developing several collaborative research projects, including in the Digital Humanities. From 2017 to 2019 he served as Principal Investigator on “The Morelli Machine,” a project funded by the National Science Foundation that sought to examine whether computational methods might be used in the attribution of Old Master paintings.
The Burlington Magazine, March 2025
The long 18th century in the March issue of The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 167 (March 2025)
Cover of The Burlington Magazine with a recent acquisition at The Met: Longcase equation regulator, clockmaker: Ferdinand Berthoud, case maker: Balthazar Lieutaud, ca. 1752 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016.28a–e).
e d i t o r i a l
• “A Frick Renaissance,” p. 203–05.
On 17th April 2025 the Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue re-opens after a long period of redevelopment. When an old friend has a face lift, the results can be disconcerting. Happily, the impact here is, however, reassuringly subtle—as the splendid Gilded-age character of one of New York’s iconic cultural institutions has been retained, while elegant new facilities have been deftly integrated.
a r t i c l e s
• Julia Seimon, “Two Boys with a Bladder in the J. Paul Getty Museum and Joseph Wright of Derby’s Early Candlelights,” pp. 242–57.
A careful re-assessment of Joseph Wright of Derby’s painting of Two Boys with a Bladder in the Getty’s collection, supported by documentary discoveries, clarifies the circumstances of the painting’s creation and first exhibition and has significant implications for dating several of the artist’s other painted and drawn works.
s h o r t e r n o t i c e s
• Oliver Fairclough, “Paul Sandby and Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn Revisited,” pp. 258–61.
• Christina Milton O’Connell, “Observations about the Abandoned Portrait beneath Gainsborough’s Blue Boy,” pp. 26–65.
r e v i e w s
Cover of Être sculpteur à Florence au temps des derniers Médicis, featuring a photograph of Giovanni Battista Foggini’s Adoration of the Shepherds, ca. 1675, marble (Saint Petersburg: Hermitage).
• Nicola Ciarlo, Review of Kira d’Alburquerque, Être sculpteur à Florence au temps des derniers Médicis (CTHS, 2023), pp. 292–94.
• Adam Bowett, Review of Stephen Jackson, Scottish Furniture 1500–1914 (NMS Publishing, 2024), pp. 296–98.
• Penelope Curtis, Review of the exhibition catalogue Souvenirs de jeunesse: Entrer aux Beaux-Arts de Paris 1780–1980, edited by Alice Thomine-Berrada (Beaux-Arts de Paris, 2024), pp. 298–99.
• Alan Powers, Review of Edward McParland, The Language of Architectural Classicism: From Looking to Seeing (Lund Humphries Publishers, 2025), pp. 299–300.
• Max Marmor, Review of Julius von Schlosser, The Literature of Art: A Manual for Source Work in the History of Early Modern European Art Theory, translated by Karl Johns (Ariadne Press, 2023), p. 303.
s u p p l e m e n t
• Sarah Lawrence, “Recent Acquisitions (2014–24) of European Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” pp. 305–24.
Journal18, Fall 2024 — Craft
The latest issue of J18 (I’m sorry to be slow with this one! –CH) . . .
Journal18, Issue #18 (Fall 2024) — Craft
Issue edited by Jennifer Chuong and Sarah Grandin
When, where, and why does craft matter? Craft, by definition, is any activity involving manual skill. But in the modern western world, the term typically implies specific kinds of activities that produce specific kinds of objects: things like baskets, lace, and lacquerware. In a culture that has historically privileged rationality and innovation, craft’s commitment to tradition, reliance on haptic knowledge, and association with marginalized subjects have rendered it the minor counterpart to more ‘serious’ forms of material production. As a subsidiary to art and industry, craft has often occupied a circumscribed role in accounts of modern art and modernity’s origins in the eighteenth century. Recently, however, craft—as a more capacious category of material production—has become a crucial term in efforts to expand and diversify the study of eighteenth-century art.
This special issue builds on recent investigations while considering how craft’s ancillary role within the Anglo-European tradition has limited its capacity to transform the field. Drawing inspiration from the absence of an art/craft divide in many cultures, we are interested in exploring craft’s potential to radically reframe, reconceptualize, and globalize the history of art.
a r t i c l e s
Elizabeth Eager — Labor, Leisure, and Lost Time in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Embroidery
Yve Chavez — Eighteenth-Century Loom and Basket Weaving at the California Missions
Hampton Smith — Insurgent Tooling and the Collective Making of Slave Revolts
Natalie E. Wright and Glenn Adamson — Encyclopædia Materia: Material Intelligence and Common Knowledge
Julie Bellemare, N. Astrid R. van Giffen, and Robert Schaut — Hot Tempered: Recreating a Lost Glass Recipe
Caroline Wigginton — Reading with Indigenous Form: Lucy Tantaquidgeon Tecomwas’s Moccasins (ca. 1767)
Ellen Siebel-Achenbach — Bookbinding in Eighteenth-Century Nuremberg: Reconstructing an Edge Plough from the Hausbücher der Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftungen
All articles are available for free here, along with recent notes & queries:
r e c e n t n o t e s a n d q u e r i e s
Lytle Shaw — A Pirate Primer? Review of Stan Douglas: The Enemy of All Mankind
Sofya Dmitrieva — The Art Collection of the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture: Notes on the Database
Jennifer Laffick — Lethière in Williamstown and Paris: A Transatlantic Exhibition Review
Kristina Kleutghen — Beijing to Dresden via St. Petersburg: An Early Qing Enameled Snuff Bottle in the Collection of Augustus II the Strong
Geoff Quilley — Lubaina Himid’s Naming the Money at the Entangled Pasts, 1768-now Exhibition, Royal Academy, London
Print Quarterly, March 2025
Thomas Daniell, The Old Court House and Writers’ Building, 1786, hand-coloured etching, 403 × 524 mm
(Philadelphia Museum of Art; image Thomas Primeau).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 42.1 (March 2025)
a r t i c l e s
• Jalen Chang, “‘Bengalee Work’ before Aquatint: Thomas Daniell’s Views of Calcutta”, pp. 20–30.
This article reevaluates eleven hand-coloured etchings by Thomas Daniell (1749–1840) held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, previously presumed to be published states of his 1786–88 print series Views of Calcutta, often cited as the earliest aquatints made outside of Europe. Devoid of the rudimentary aquatinting and hand-coloured skies which characterize other extant examples, the relatively bare objects document a distinct stage of Daniell’s artistic process and are unprecedented in their survival. The article suggests that these prints were trial proofs never intended for publication or sale, meant instead to serve as colour tests for Daniell and his team of Indian copyists. Furthermore, the article considers early imperial printmaking and its ideological functions in British India.
Charlotte Bonaparte, Self-Portrait, ca. 1824–26, oil on canvas, 885 × 730 mm (Princeton University Art Museum).
• Thomas Busciglio-Ritter, “From Brussels to Point Breeze: Charlotte Bonaparte’s Lithographic Landscapes, 1821–25”, pp. 31–43.
This article discusses a series of twelve lithographs by Charlotte Bonaparte (1802–1839), niece to Napoleon I, of North American views known as the Vues pittoresques de l’Amérique dessinées par la Comtesse Charlotte de Survillier (printed 1824), which she completed and disseminated on her return to Europe. The series, published in Brussels, became the first lithographic scenic views of the United States to circulate among western European audiences. The article situates Bonaparte’s landscape views within the context of transatlantic print culture of the early nineteenth century, touching on the role of women as producers of landscape images and the introduction of lithography as a new medium for American audiences.
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
• Bernard Aikema, Review of the exhibition catalogue Connecting Worlds: Artists and Travel, ed. by Anita Viola Sganzerla and Stephanie Buck (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2023), pp. 64–66.
• Catherine Jenkins, Review of the exhibition catalogue Trésors en noir et blanc. Estampes du Petit Palais, de Dürer à Toulouse-Lautrec, by Anne-Charlotte Cathelineau, Joëlle Raineau-Lehuédé, and Clara Roca (Paris Musées, 2023), pp. 74–76.
• Ellis Tinios, Review of Hokusai’s Fuji, ed. by Kyoko Wada (Thames and Hudson, 2023), pp. 76–77.
• Victoria Sancho Lobis, Review of Aaron Hyman, Rubens in Repeat: The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America (Getty Research Institute, 2021), pp. 99–105.
Metropolitan Museum Journal 2024
The latest issue of The Met’s journal, with a reminder that digital copies are free! This year’s due date for submissions is 15 September; guidelines are available here.
Metropolitan Museum Journal 59 (2024)
Nicolás Enríquez, The Virgin of Guadalupe with the Four Apparitions, 1773, oil on copper, 56.5 × 41.9 cm (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014.173).
a r t i c l e s
• Ally Kateusz, “Women at the Altar of Jesus’s Tomb in the Anastasis,” pp. 8–25.
• Melanie Holcomb, “The Architecture of ‘Playe’: Henry Hamlyn’s House in Tudor Exeter,” pp. 26–42.
• Ayşe AldemIr, “Ottoman Tastemaker Robert-Sadia Pardo and a Sixteenth-Century Prayer Rug in The Met,” pp. 43–57.
• Kelly Presutti, “Wood and Stone: Bernard Palissy’s Environmental Legacy,” pp. 58–72.
• Kristel Smentek and Christian Katschmanowski, “Oysters, Sauerkraut, and Pagods: Sibylla Augusta’s Chinese Banquet of 1729,” pp. 73–93.
• Ronda Kasl, “For the Devotion of Juan Bautista de Echeverría: Piety and Identity in Paintings by Nicolás Enríquez,” pp. 94–111.
• Nader Sayadi, “Imperial Threads: Kashmiri Shawls in Nineteenth-Century Iran,” pp. 113–29.
r e s e a r c h n o t e
• Rachel Lackner, Shirin Fozi, and Kisook Suh, “Julius Caesar from the Heroes Tapestries at The Met Cloisters: Dye Analysis and Molecular Insights,” 130–43.
The Burlington Magazine, February 2025
Claude-Joseph Vernet, Shipwreck on a Rocky Coast, 1775, oil on canvas, 74 × 108 cm (Private Collection). The work and its pendant, Harbour Scene at Sunset, are identified by Yuriko Jackall as paintings acquired directly from the artist by François-Marie Ménage de Pressigny, who likely commissioned The Swing by Fragonard. In contrast to the latter, which in 1794 was valued at 400 livres, the two paintings by Vernet were valued at 4,000 livres—the most valuable paintings owned by Ménage de Pressigny.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The long 18th century in the February issue of The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 167 (February 2025)
e d i t o r i a l
• “Cataloguing,” p. 79.
It is one of the basic responsibilities of major collections to research and publish the works of art in their care. Such projects can take many years to mature and are often abandoned because of a lack of funding or shifting institutional priorities. It might be imagined, therefore, that because of these threats and the formidable cost of producing specialist and richly illustrated books, that collection catalogues would have become an extinct species. However, happily, a close reading of this Magazine in recent months would suggest otherwise, across a wide range of media and in terms of a broad chronological span . . .
a r t i c l e s
• Lucy Wood and Timothy Stevens, “The Elder Sisters of The Campbell Sisters: William Gordon Cumming’s Patronage of Lorenzo Bartolini,” pp. 126–53.
s h o r t e r n o t i c e s
• Yuriko Jackall, “Ménage de Pressigny and His Art Collection,” pp. 157–61.
• Dyfri Williams, “Lusieri’s Mysterious Wooded Lake Identified,” pp. 161–63.
r e v i e w s
• Marjorie Trusted, Review of the exhibition Luisa Roldán: Escultora Real (Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid, 2024–25), pp. 164–66.
• Karin Hellwig, Review of the exhibition Hand in Hand: Sculpture and Colour in the Spanish Golden Age (Prado, 2024–25), pp. 166–69.
• William Whyte, Review of Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner and Jennifer Sherwood, Oxfordshire: Oxford and the South-East, The Buildings of England (Yale UP, 2023), pp. 188–89.
• Elizabeth Savage, Review of Esther Chadwick, The Radical Print: Art and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2024), pp. 194–96.
8th Annual Ricciardi Prize from Master Drawings
From Master Drawings:
Eighth Annual Ricciardi Prize from Master Drawings
Submissions due by 15 November 2025
George Romney, Lady Seated at a Table (recto); pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash (NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 11.66.3).
Master Drawings is now accepting submissions for the 8th Annual Ricciardi Prize of $5,000. The award is given for the best new and unpublished article on a drawing topic (of any period) by a scholar under the age of 40. Candidates are also eligible for a $1000 runner-up prize and publication. Prize winners are eligible for reimbursement of costs associated with obtaining image publication permissions. They will be invited to present their research at a symposium held during Master Drawings Week in New York (January 2026). Information about essay requirements and how to apply can be found here. Information about past winners and finalists is available here.
The average length is between 2,500 and 3,750 words, with five to twenty illustrations. Submissions should be no longer than 7,500 words and have no more than 75 footnotes. All submissions must be in article form, following the format of the journal. Please refer to our Submission Guidelines for additional information. We will not consider submissions of seminar papers, dissertation chapters, or other written material that has not been adapted into the format of a journal article. Written material that has been previously published, or is scheduled for future publication, will not be eligible. Articles may be submitted in any language. Please be sure to include a 100-word abstract outlining the scope of your article with your submission.
The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust, Winter 2024–25
The Decorative Arts Trust has shared select articles from the winter issue of their member magazine as webpages for all to enjoy. The following articles are related to the 18th century.
The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust, Winter 2024–25
• “Written in Stone” by Catherine Carlisle Link»
• “The Rivers Collection of Charleston Furniture at the Gibbes Museum of Art” by Matthew A. Thurlow Link»
• “Carved from the Sea: The Art and History of Nantucket’s Pictorial Scrimshaw” by Keely Edgington Link»
• “Diplomatic Reception Rooms Anchor D.C. Gathering” by Matthew A. Thurlow Link»
• “Figuring the Black Body in European Decorative Arts” by Adrienne L. Childs Link»
• “Colonial Architecture, Decorative Arts, and Enslavement at the Colonel John Ashley House” by Livy Scott Link»
• “Convergence at the Market: Vernacular Artisans and Literati in Late Imperial China” by Danielle Zhang Link»
The printed Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust is mailed to Trust members twice per year. Memberships start at $50, with $25 memberships for students.
Magazine cover: Detail of an early-17th-century table top from Villa La Pietraia, on display at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, Italy.
Master Drawings, Winter 2024
In the latest issue of Master Drawings:
Master Drawings 62.4 (Winter 2024)
a r t i c l e s
• Perrin Stein, “The Crown, the City, and the Public: Saint-Aubin’s Images of Paris.”
• Kim de Beaumont, “A Curious Swan Song for Gabriel de Saint-Aubin: The Comte d’Estaing’s New World Naval Exploits.”
• Margaret Morgan Grasselli, “A Drawing by Hubert Robert and Jean Robert Ango: Correcting a Technical Description.”
• Sarah Catala, “Signed ‘Roberti’: Drawings by Hubert Robert and Jean Robert Ango.”
• Kee Il Choi Jr., “Learning to Draw: The Éducation visuelle of Alois Ko and Étienne Yang.”
r e v i e w s
• Aaron Wile, Review of the exhibition catalogue Claude Gillot: Satire in the Age of Reason, by Jennifer Tonkovich.
• Eduoard Kopp, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Promenades on Paper: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, edited by Esther Bell, Sarah Grandin, Corinne Le Bitouzé, and Anne Leonard.
• Ashley E. Dunn, Review of the exhibition catalogue Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec, by Ann Dumas, Leïla Jarbouai, Christopher Lloyd, and Harriet Stratis.
o b i t u a r y
• Perrin Stein, Obituary for Alaster Laing.
Enfilade 
leave a comment