Enfilade

Thomas Stammers | Baron Jean-Charles Davillier: A Paragon
and Historian of Taste in Nineteenth-Century France
The Wallace Collection, London, 25 June 2016

The French Porcelain Society is delighted to announce this year’s Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue Memorial Lecture to be presented by Dr. Thomas Stammers, Durham University, entitled “Baron Jean-Charles Davillier: A Paragon and Historian of Taste in Nineteenth-Century France.”

Baron Jean-Charles Davillier (1823–83) was a pioneering figure in the Second Empire, not simply through his forays into neglected fields—such as Spanish decorative arts—but also through the self-consciousness and erudition he brought to the study of collecting. His landmark publications on the celebrated cabinets and sales of the old regime demonstrate how nineteenth-century amateurs situated themselves in a lineage stretching back, across the revolution, to the ancien régime. This paper situates Davillier within the context of French mid-century collecting, characterized by its expanding geographical reach and heightened emphasis on selection and discernment. It will consider his methods and sources as an historian, and relate his scholarship to both other nascent attempts to write the history of collecting, and to wider cultural politics, not least the violent events of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune. It will conclude by considering Davillier the patriot, and the controversy that engulfed the donation of his collections to the Louvre and to Sèvres in 1883. Davillier’s career and research are central for understanding how French porcelain was revered as both an aesthetic and technical marvel, and also as an historical document.

Tom Stammers is a cultural historian of France from the Revolution down to the end of the nineteenth century.

The free lecture will be held at The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London, W1U 3BN, on Saturday 25 June 2016 at 7:00–8:00pm. To reserve a place, please email fpsmailing@gmail.com.

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This afternoon at the Paul Mellon Centre:

James Legard, Ambitious Architecture: Rethinking the Meanings of Blenheim Palace
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 20 May 2016

This paper seeks to recover the meanings that Blenheim Palace was originally intended to embody. It will show how Blenheim’s purposes were repeatedly reconceived in lockstep with the ever-growing social, political and dynastic ambitions of its patron, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, Queen Anne’s most favoured courtier and foremost military commander. Initially conceived as a private gift from the Queen, the building was transformed first into a ‘public monument’ to a great battle; then into a palace that was, quite literally, fit for a prince; before finally becoming a dangerous liability as Marlborough’s dizzying ascent turned to disgrace. By tracing how the duke’s architects, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, reconfigured Blenheim’s formal structure and symbolic programme in response to their patron’s evolving status and aspirations, this analysis aims to bring new clarity to our understanding of Britain’s most spectacular Baroque country house.

All are welcome! However, places are limited, so if you would like to attend please book a place in advance. Friday, 20 May 2016, 12:30–2:00 pm, Seminar Room, Paul Mellon Centre.

James Legard completed a PhD in the history of architecture at the University of York in 2014, where the subject of his thesis was Vanbrugh, Blenheim Palace and the Meanings of Baroque Architecture. He is currently working for the National Gallery on a collaborative project with the Getty Research Institute to digitise early British art sales catalogues. When this project ends later this year, he will take up a recently awarded Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Paul Mellon Centre in order to prepare his thesis for publication.

Thomas Daniell, “Part of the Kanaree [Kanheri] Caves, Salsette,” handcoloured aquatint, from Oriental Scenery, 1799. 

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This week at the Paul Mellon Centre:

Douglas Fordham, Aquatint Empires
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 18 May 2016

This talk considers the importance of what used to be known as ‘English Coloured Books’ to the conceptualization and visualization of the British Empire. Particular attention will be given to aquatint as a medium, and the ways in which this tonal intaglio process encouraged certain types of visual themes, historical narratives, and viewer responses. Making particular use of the J.R. Abbey collection of ‘Travel in Aquatint and Lithography’ in the Yale Center for British Art, this project explores the production and reception of three ambitious and beautifully illustrated publications: Thomas Daniell’s Hindoo Excavations (1803), William Alexander’s Costume of China (1805), and Samuel Daniell’s African Scenery and Animals (1804–05). This talk asks what these publications might reveal about Britain’s place in the world following the Treaty of Amiens. More broadly, it considers seriality as empire: how did elaborate aquatint publications colour British visions of Africa, Asia, and beyond?

Douglas Fordham is the author of British Art and the Seven Years’ War: Allegiance and Autonomy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) and a co-editor with Tim Barringer and Geoff Quilley of Art and the British Empire (Manchester University Press, 2007). He has published articles relating to British art, visual culture, and empire in Art History, The Art Bulletin, Representations, Oxford Art Journal, and elsewhere.

All are welcome! However, places are limited; so if you would like to attend, please book a place in advance. The seminar will be followed by a drinks reception. Wednesday, 18 May 2016, 6:00–8:00pm.

From the flyer for this evening’s lecture:

Amelia Smith, Art in the Archives: Insights into the
18th-Century Art Collections at Longford Castle, Wiltshire
Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Chippenham, 12 May 2016

Longford Castle, an Elizabethan country house situated near Salisbury in Wiltshire and owned by the Earls of Radnor, has been home to an art collection of national significance since the eighteenth century. The recent donation of the family papers to the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre has enabled this important archive (reference 1946) to be studied for the first time. This talk will tell the story of the formation of the art collection, highlighting key documents from the archive, such as inventories, account books and letters, contextualising them alongside pictures from Longford itself.

Thursday, 12 May 2016, 7:00pm, at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. While the talk is free, it is essential to book a ticket in advance, from localstudies@wiltshire.gov.uk (or tel 01249 705500), to avoid disappointment. Tickets will be allocated on a first come, first served, basis.

Amelia Smith is writing a PhD on “Patronage, Acquisition and Display: Contextualising the Art Collections of Longford Castle during the Long Eighteenth Century,” a collaborative project between the National Gallery and Birkbeck, University of London. Her research draws upon the previously untapped archival material on Longford now housed at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.

Tomorrow at the BGC:

Tobias Locker, Rococo for the Spanish Court:
The Interiors of Mattia Gasparini in the European Context
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 4 May 2016

Mattia Gasparini (design), José Canops (execution): (one of two) Chest of drawers (with secret compartments), HWD 94.5 x 95.3 x 45.3 cm, 1760/65, different exotic marquetry woods (partly sculpted) and engraved brass marquetry on mahogany, gilt bronze mounts and marble top (Palacio Real Madrid).

The presentation focuses on the person and the production of Mattia Gasparini, who worked for Charles III of Spain in Madrid. Its research follows three axis. A first focus is set on Gasparini and the creation of his Spanish Rococo interiors, that is the reconstruction of workshops and working practice on the basis of written sources and selected furniture—as objects as well as documents show manifold connection to the French capital (French workforce, technical and stylistic aspects). A second is set on distinguishing the French influence of the furniture by way of comparison with Parisian examples. Finally, the presentation contextualizes the interiors through comparison of the above mentioned aspects (style, technique, knowledge and provenance of workforce, quality) with the interiors at Potsdam/Prussia and Schönbrunn/Austria.

Tobias Locker is Adjunct Lecturer of Art History, Pompeu Fabra University and Visiting Fellow, Bard Graduate Center.

Coffee and tea will be served; attendees are welcome to bring their own lunch. RSVP is required. Please click on the registration link or contact academicevents@bgc.bard.edu. The event will also be live-streamed.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016, 12:00–1:30pm
Bard Graduate Center (38 West 86th Street)

William Blake Study Day
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 6 May 2016

This study day will comprise a morning lecture by Michael Phillips, who will discuss Blake’s ground-breaking print techniques, followed by lunch (for those attending the full day) and an afternoon demonstration of the full-scale reproduction of Blake’s wooden printing press that is currently located in the exhibition gallery at Gainsborough’s House. Attendees will have the rare opportunity to use the press to make a print from a choice of copper plates.

Michael Phillips, who will lead the day, was guest curator of three major exhibitions on Blake: at Tate Britain in 2000; Petit Palais in 2009; and most recently his acclaimed exhibition and catalogue, William Blake Apprentice & Master, at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in 2014–15. Michael’s training as a printmaker and his research into Blake’s methods and materials over more than 25 years has enabled him to explore and replicate Blake’s graphic techniques used in producing the illuminated books and separate prints.

Tickets: £8 morning illustrated lecture, or £40 full day, including illustrated lecture, lunch and afternoon printmaking demonstration. To book your place please contact us at mail@gainsborough.org.

François-Joseph Bélanger, An Elevation for the Projected Mill at Méréville, ca. 1786 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2003)

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Basile Baudez (Paris-Sorbonne University), Histoire de la couleur dans le dessin d’architecture, XVIe–XIXe siècles / History of Color in Architectural Drawing, 16th–19th Centuries
Centre André Chastel, Paris, 11 May 2016

Architectural historians have focused on the history of drawing as one of project design tools.  By applying the methods of art history, this paper traces color as a key player in the long history of rivalry and exchange between European traditions in architectural drawing and practice.  While Italian Renaissance drawings were largely monochrome and developed their conventions under pressure from engravers, the seventeenth-century European situation is characterized by a contrast between a colorful German and Dutch world around architect-painters’ designs and a still largely monochrome tradition in Italy and England.  At the end of Louis XIV’s reign, French architects adopted a series of color conventions taken from the engineers, largely for informational purposes. In the middle of the eighteenth century, however, a color revolution took place, one in which a new generation of architects who were working alongside painters developed a wide chromatic range that was no longer limited to informing the worker but to persuading academic juries and gain commissions. This eighteenth-century French employment of color laid the foundation for Beaux-Arts architectural drawings in the first half of the nineteenth century, at a moment when English architectural drawings, too, adopted color in response to the English watercolor movement. Wednesday, 11 May 2016, 6:30–8:00pm, Galerie Colbert, 2 rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris, salle Ingres (2nd floor).