Exhibition | The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens
Press release (15 August 2012) for the upcoming exhibition at The Met:
Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 30 October 2012 — 27 January 2013
Curated by Wolfram Koeppe
David Roentgen, Berlin Secretary Cabinet, ca. 1778–79. 11 ft. 9 in. (Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens will be the first comprehensive survey of the Roentgen family’s cabinetmaking firm from 1742 to its closing in the early 1800s. Some 60 pieces of furniture, many of which have never before been lent outside Europe, and several clocks will be complemented by paintings, including portraits of the Roentgen family, and prints that depict the masterpieces of furniture in contemporary interiors. The exhibition and catalogue are made possible by the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.
The meteoric rise of the workshop of Abraham Roentgen (1711-93) and his son David (1743-1807) is the most spectacular chapter in the history of innovative 18th–century Continental furniture-making. Their original designs, combined with their use of intriguing mechanical devices, revolutionized traditional French and English furniture types. From its base in Germany, the workshop served an international clientele. The Roentgens utilized a sophisticated business model, combined with intensive research on potential patrons’ personal taste and forward-looking marketing and production techniques.
In 1742 Abraham Roentgen opened a cabinetmaker’s workshop in the tiny village of Herrnhaag, in the Wetterau region near Frankfurt am Main. With only one journeyman on staff, the shop was concerned principally with the production of furniture for daily use. Abraham distinguished himself by adhering to the highest standards of quality, and soon he was producing veneered show-off pieces in the English Queen Anne style, which he had learned during his years as a journeyman in the Netherlands and England. The local nobility recognized the furnishings’ unusual appearance and quality. Abraham’s progressive designs and types, such as his fashionable tea chest and multi-functional table, were novelties in Germany and were an immediate success. Following his move to Neuwied-at-the-Rhine in 1750, Abraham took his innovative designs even further by adapting elegant French-inspired outlines that, combined with superb marquetry, fine carving, intricate gilded bronze mounts, and multiple mechanical devices, came to be recognized by contemporaries as hallmarks of the Roentgen brand. Roentgen’s playful and perfectly executed inventions became a favored status symbol in princely interiors throughout Europe.
Abraham’s son, David Roentgen, graduated quickly from his apprenticeship in his father’s workshop and eventually took over the enterprise between 1765 and 1768. He perfected the sophisticated structure and intricate marquetry designs of the furniture, and was appointed Ebéniste-Méchanicien du Roi et de la Reine at the court of Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI at Versailles in 1779. Having conquered the Western market, David revised his designs and reinvented his product line’s appearance as he looked eastward. Focusing on his new target, the Imperial residences of Catherine the Great in St. Petersburg, David Roentgen developed specific models catering to Russian taste. He caught the fancy of the Empress herself with his Apollo Desk (1783-84), which depicted her favorite dog as a gilded mount, and which David produced on pure speculation. After Catherine the Great paid a huge sum for the piece, Russian nobility hurried to catch up with its sovereign, ordering examples of ‘Neuwied Furniture’ by the dozens.
Abraham and David Roentgen’s story is a tale of international success, fame, luxury, and high honor but, in the case of David, it is also the tragedy of a deeply pious man who struggled to balance his ambitions and his glorious achievements with the regulations of his religious community, the Moravian brotherhood. At the pinnacle of David’s career, the workshop employed more than 130 specialists and the annual production amounted to that of the famous Meissen porcelain factory. His fortune shifted dramatically with the progress of the French Revolution, as Europe’s nobility struggled to stay afloat, and the market for luxurious furnishings collapsed.
Many of the works in Extravagant Inventions will be lent from distinguished international museums and royal collections. Six pieces from the Metropolitan Museum’s own collection of Roentgen furniture will be featured, in addition to two that are on long-term loan to the Museum. The exhibition will showcase many outstanding pieces, including a Writing Desk (ca. 1758-62) designed by Abraham Roentgen and considered to be one of the finest creations of his workshop; a spectacular Automaton of Queen Marie Antoinette (1784), a likeness of the queen at a clavichord that still functions and will be played at select times during the exhibition; and six intriguing objects from the Berlin Kunstgewerbe Museum that have never before traveled, most notably a mechanical Secretary Cabinet (1779) made for King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia that is one of the most complex pieces of royal furniture ever produced.
The most complicated mechanical devices in the exhibition will be illustrated through virtual video animations. Additionally, working drawings and portraits of the cabinetmakers, their family, and important patrons—as well as a series of documents owned by the Metropolitan Museum that originated from the Roentgen estate—will underline the long-overlooked significance and legacy of the Roentgens as Europe’s principal cabinetmakers of the ancien régime.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From Yale UP:
Wolfram Koeppe, ed., Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 304 pages, ISBN: 9780300185027, $75.
During the second half of the 18th century, the German workshop of Abraham and David Roentgen was among Europe’s most successful cabinetmaking enterprises. The Roentgens’ pieces combined innovative designs with intriguing mechanical devices that revolutionized traditional types of European furniture. An important key to their success was the pairing of the skilled craftsman Abraham with his brashly entrepreneurial son David, whose clients included Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France as well as Catherine the Great of Russia. This landmark publication is the first comprehensive survey, in nearly four decades, of the firm from its founding in about 1742 to its closing in the late 1790s.
The Roentgen workshop perfected the practice of adapting prefabricated elements according to the specifications of the customers. Detailed discussions of these extraordinary pieces are complemented by illustrations showing them in their contemporary interiors, design drawings, portraits, and previously unpublished historical documents from the Roentgen estate. This fascinating book provides an essential contribution to the study of European furniture.
Wolfram Koeppe is the Marina Kellen French Curator in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Lecture | The Legacy of David Roentgen
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 15 November 2012
David Linley (Chairman, Christie’s, UK), and Charles Cator (Deputy Chairman, Christie’s International)
David Roentgen (1743–1807) was known throughout Europe for his inventive and ingenious mechanical furniture, which found favor in the courts of France and Russia through the patronage of Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great respectively. He was also famed for pioneering a new method of marquetry, created to give the impression of pietra dura. To mark the occasion of an extensive exhibition of Roentgen’s work, David Linley will share personal insights into Roentgen’s influence on his own furniture designs and his enduring influence on furniture makers today. Charles Cator will examine the collectors’ market for Roentgen from his rediscovery in the nineteenth century to today.
Lecture | Dining in 18th-Century France
This fall at The Getty:
Charissa Bremer-David — Of Cauliflower and Crayfish:
The High Art of Dining in 18th-Century France
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 25 October 2012
Lidded Tureen (detail), Thomas Germain, 1744–50 (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum)
In mid-18th-century France, decorative sculptural elements on many luxurious serving vessels and tablewares actually portrayed, quite naturalistically, ingredients of the food contained within. Identifiable representations of vegetables, fish, and game can be compared to the recipes from period cookbooks.
Charissa Bremer-David, curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Getty Museum, discusses the naturalism of these miniature sculptures and how they reflected the broader interests of the Enlightenment as well as the latest culinary developments. Discover how these visualizations were meant to awaken and enhance the palate. This talk, part of the Tracey Albainy Lecture Series, commemorates the life and career of Tracey Albainy, a specialist of European silver and ceramics.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Tracey Albainy, a senior curator at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, died in 2007 at the age of 45. More information is available here»
Bard Graduate Center’s 2012-2013 Seminar Series
The following list offers a sample of events at the Bard Graduate Center during the 2012-13 academic year that might be of interest to Enfilade readers. A flyer listing all events is available as a PDF file here.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Bard Graduate Center’s Seminar Series
Bard Graduate Center, New York City, 2012-2013
All events take place in the Lecture Hall at 38 West 86th Street, between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West, in New York City. Seminars begin at 6pm. RSVP is required. For general information or to reserve your place, please visit the BGC website.
September 27-29
Symposium — Beyond Representation: an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Nature of Things
October 15
Symposium — Circus and the City: New York, 1793–2010
November 14
Steven Pincus (History, Yale University) — Spanish American Trade, Patriot Politics and the Shaping of the British Empire
November 27
Laura Auricchio (Art History/Humanities, The New School) — Hero and Villain: Lafayette’s Legacies
February 12
Tobias Locker (Art History, Saint Louis University-Madrid) — Paris / Potsdam / Paris: Gilt Bronzes ‘à la française’ in Prussia and the Circulation of Knowledge
February 13
Christopher Brown (Director, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford) — The New Ashmolean
February 20
Béla Kapossy (History, University of Lausanne, Switzerland) — Rousseau’s, and Other Relics: Material Memories in Later Eighteenth-Century Switzerland
Roundtable Discussion for New Book on Court Funerals
As noted at L’ApAhAu, in Paris on Thursday, 20 September 2012, at 6pm, the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, in conjunction with the Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles, will host a roundtable discussion with the authors of this new book on the role of court funerals in early modern Europe. The invitation (as a PDF) is available here»
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Juliusz A. Chrościcki, Mark Hengerer, Gérard Sabatier, Les funérailles princières en Europe, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle — Volume I : Le grand théâtre de la mort (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2012), ISBN: 9782735114269, 47€. [Publication issue du colloque international des 14-16 octobre 2007 à Cracovie]
Depuis une trentaine d’années, les historiens ont exploré la problématique de la « genèse de l’État moderne » en Europe entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe siècle, et son corollaire, la place centrale tenue par les cours princières dans le processus. L’objectif de ce livre est de s’interroger sur la part qu’ont pu y prendre les stratégies funéraires des familles souveraines. Ce livre propose une approche différente des travaux consacrés jusqu’à présent aux rituels funéraires princiers où l’histoire de l’art y est prépondérante. Les funérailles princières sont étudiées en terme de stratégies de la part des monarchies, comme rituel interne de transmission du pouvoir, mais aussi dans le cadre de leurs relations entre dynasties, et de leurs rapports tant avec leurs opinions publiques propres qu’avec une opinion européenne en formation.
Premier des trois volumes consacrés aux funérailles princières, l’ouvrage s’intéresse au déroulement des cérémonies en relation avec les institutions propres, la conjoncture, les traditions particulières, les rapports de force internes, l’insertion dans le jeu politique européen.
Art Fair | Masterpiece London 2012
From the fair’s website:
Masterpiece London 2012
Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, 28 June — 4 July 2012
Now in its third year Masterpiece London confirms its position as the capital’s leading art and antiques fair. This is no ordinary event, but a forum for distinctive design and aesthetic excellence where every exhibit offered is scrutinized by a team of experts to ensure every confidence in each purchase. The variety on offer at the fair is second to none: cars, wine, contemporary design and exquisite jewellery sit alongside the best of the fine and decorative arts. Presenting a snapshot of the history of art and design from antiquity to the present day, visitors will relish the chance to acquire rare collectors’ items or simply enjoy temptation on a grand scale. There is nowhere better than Masterpiece London 2012 to discover a rich and varied treasure trove. . .
If your interest is piqued by what you see, Masterpiece London offers you the chance to develop your knowledge and appreciation. During each day of the fair, select exhibitors will present insights into their given area of expertise so if your interest is portraits or pocket watches, mirrors or miniatures, Degas or diamonds, Masterpiece London gives you the opportunity to get up close and personal with some of the finest examples shown at the fair and to learn from the world’s leading luminaries.
Building on the success of 2010 and 2011 Masterpiece London promises you an impressive choice of art and design enlivened with its own special twist to ensure you have a memorable and enjoyable visit. All is displayed in a fresh and lavish setting, so that whether you are a seasoned collector, or a new buyer or just an admirer of exquisite beauty, you will experience countless opportunities to buy, enjoy and learn from.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Of all the events associated with the fair, Saturday’s Wallace Collection Symposium might be most interesting to Enfilade readers:
Wallace Collection Symposium at Masterpiece London
Royal Hospital Chelsea, London, 30 June 2012
The Wallace Collection will be hosting a symposium on Saturday 30 June, led by Director, Dr Christoph Vogtherr. There will be four talks by Collection curators, from 11.30 – 16.00 on great collectors and their collections to include the French court of Louis XVI and British collecting in the nineteenth century.
11.30 A Golden Age: Collecting Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture and Decorative Arts in the Nineteenth Century
Jeremy Warren, Collections and Academic Director
12.00 Nineteenth-Century British Collectors of Contemporary French Paintings
Stephen Duffy, Curator of Pictures
13.00 Lunch
14.30 Royal Collectors at the Court of Louis XVI
Helen Jacobsen, Curator French Eighteenth-Century Decorative Arts
15.15 How Paintings Were Displayed in the Eighteenth Century
Christoph Vogtherr, Director
The day and each talk is free to Masterpiece London ticket holders. To reserve a place at the symposium, please email contact@masterpiecefair.com with your full name and address, with the subject: The Wallace Collection Symposium, indicating how many spaces you wish to reserve and a confirmation letter will be sent to you. Places are subject to availability.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Note (added 9 July 2012) — A press release highlighting the successes of Masterpiece London 2012 is available at Art Daily.
Exhibition Programming | The ‘Westmorland’
A posting here at Enfilade noted the exhibition last November. Here we include details on the programming at The Ashmolean.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The English Prize: The Capture of the Westmorland, an Episode of the Grand Tour
The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 17 May — 27 August 2012
The Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 20 September 2012 — 6 January 2013
Curated by Scott Wilcox, Elisabeth Fairman, and María Dolores Sánchez-Jáuregui Alpañés
The story of the Westmorland, an armed merchant ship sailing from Livorno to London in January 1779, is one of colourful 18th-century personalities and modern detective work. Consigned to the ship, by a cast of characters that included artists, aristocrats and dealers, was a precious cargo of art and antiquities, books, and luxury goods such as 32 wheels of Parmesan cheese. Captured by two French warships on 7 January 1779 and declared a ‘prize of war’, the Westmorland and the goods on board were acquired by King Carlos III of Spain who presented many of the works of art to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. Other items were eventually scattered across Spanish museums; one painting ended up as far away as St Petersburg. Reconstructed with archival discoveries and research in Spanish collections, The English Prize presents 120 objects including paintings, drawings, sculptures, books and maps from the fateful voyage, in a vivid recreation of the Grand Tour and the high seas.
The exhibition is the result of an extraordinary research project begun in the late 1990s, with gaps in the story filled by discoveries made in recent years. It was found, for instance, that the mysterious marking ‘P. Y’ on books and drawings in the Academia indicated ‘Presa Ynglesa’ (‘The English Prize’). The original inventories of the ship’s crates which survive in the archives in Madrid are remarkably thorough and have allowed the identification of many items which were on the Westmorland when it was captured. Using these records and studying the notes and marginalia scribbled on books and maps by their owners, it is now possible to link the objects and works of art to the individuals who were sending them home to Britain.
Amongst the highlights of the exhibition are portraits of Grand Tourists Francis Bassett and George Legge (Viscount Lewisham), by Pompeo Batoni; a group of amazingly fresh watercolours by John Robert Cozens made on his first trip to Italy; and portrait busts by Irish sculptor Christopher Hewetson who was working in Rome. Of the tourists, collectors and dealers who had consigned works of art and souvenirs to the Westmorland, we find the Scottish painter Allan Ramsay; the diplomat and dealer John Udny; a Scottish landowner and lawyer, Sir John Henderson of Fordell; and such a high ranking aristocrat as the Duke of Gloucester, brother of George III.
The exhibition website is available here»
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From The Ashmolean:
P U B L I C S T U D Y D A Y
The Experience of Italy: Travel, Collecting and the Grand Tour
Headly Lecture Theatre, Friday, 8 June 2012, 10am–5pm
This special one-day event looks at the cultural context of the Westmorland and its story. As a rare time-capsule, the ship can help us uncover the concerns and interests of British tourists, collectors and artists, from their musical education to their fascination with volcanoes and excavations. Over the day, six distinguished speakers deliver lectures with the opportunity to ask questions and discuss the varied topics.
The Westmorland and the Mechanics of the Grand Tour in the 1770s
Jonathan Yarker, University of Cambridge
Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and Collecting for Posterity
Kim Sloan, British Museum
Enjoying the Souvenirs of Travel: Art and Antiquities at Home
Clare Hornsby, author of Digging and Dealing in 18th-Century Rome
Music and the Musical Outcomes of the Grand Tour
Roderick Swanston, former Professor, Royal College of Music
Women at Grips with the Grand Tour: Adventure, Authority and Anomaly
Chloe Chard, independent scholar
British Artists in Rome
Martin Postle, Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art
Free, spaces limited, to book contact: education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278 015
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
L E C T U R E S
Uncovering the Westmorland, Step by Step
José María Luzón Nogué, Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Madrid
Thursday, 31 May, 2–3pm
We can reconstruct the extraordinary story of the Westmorland and its cargo thanks to fascinating detective work that began in the 1990s. In this lecture, Prof Luzón, who led the original research project, will take you on the journey which led to the rediscovery of the ship. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
Marble Mania: Why Was Antique Sculpture So Desirable?
Ruth Guilding, art historian and curator
Wednesday, 20 June, 2–3pm
The Westmorland’s cargo included 23 crates of marble statues, and the ship was one of many which brought the souvenirs of British travellers back to London in the 1770s. Dr Guilding explores the way that antique sculpture was imagined, understood and used by collectors in England at the time. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
The First English Prize: The Story of the Arundel Marbles
Susan Walker, Keeper of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum
Wednesday, 27th June, 2–3pm
Dr Susan Walker, Keeper of Antiquities, explores the history of the earliest collection of classical sculptures and inscriptions in Britain, a treasure of the Ashmolean Museum. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
‘Magick Land’: British Landscape Painters in Italy in the 1770s
Scott Wilcox, Chief Curator of Art Collections and Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale Center for British Art
Wednesday, 4th July, 2–3pm
Oil paintings and watercolors on the Westmorland by John Robert Cozens, Jacob More, and Solomon Delane point to a community of British landscape painters active in Italy. This lecture examines that community and the impact of Italy, particularly the Roman Campagna, on the development of British landscape art. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
Carrying off the Colosseum: The Westmorland and Architecture
Frank Salmon, Head of the Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge
Wednesday, 18 July, 2–3pm
The personal treasures that were being shipped by Grand Tourists on the Westmorland included both real and fictitious drawings of Roman antiquities, as well as design drawings intended for building work back in Britain. This lecture will examine those drawings in the light of the wider culture of Neoclassical architecture and interior design in the second half of the eighteenth century. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
In Conversation — New Discoveries: The Secret Cargo of Relics
Catherine Whistler, curator of the exhibition, and Barry Williamson
Thursday, 19 July, 11.30am –12.30pm
Just before the exhibition catalogue went to press, the Ashmolean was contacted by Barry Williamson who is an authority on the Arundell family of Wardour Castle. The Westmorland had a secret cargo, a box of saint’s relics carefully concealed in a plinth of coloured marbles. This was a gift from the Pope to Henry Arundell, eighth Baron Arundell of Wardour. The international research project had tracked these relics in Madrid in early 1789, but the trail had gone cold. Barry Williamson will talk about his discoveries in the family archives and his quest to find the relics. Free, spaces limited, to book contact E education.service@ashmus.ox.ac.uk T 01865 278015
Things: Material Culture at Cambridge, Easter Term 2012
Programming from CRASSH at the University of Cambridge:
Things: Material Cultures of the Long Eighteen Century
Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), Cambridge, ongoing series
Please note the change to the time and location of the seminar:
We meet alternate Tuesdays 12.30-2.30pm in the CRASSH Seminar Room at 7 West Road on the Sidgwick Site. A light lunch will be provided.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The eighteenth century was the century of ‘stuff.’ Public production, collection, display and consumption of objects grew in influence, popularity, and scale. The form, function, and use of objects, ranging from scientific and musical instruments to weaponry and furnishings were influenced by distinct features of the time. Eighteenth-century knowledge was not divided into strict disciplines, in fact practice across what we now see as academic boundaries was essential to material creation. This seminar series will use an approach based on objects to encourage us to consider the unity of ideas of the long-eighteenth century, to emphasise the lived human experience of technology and art, and the global dimension of material culture. We will re-discover the interdisciplinary thinking through which eighteenth-century material culture was conceived, gaining new perspectives on the period through its artefacts.
Each seminar features two talks considering the same type of object from
different perspectives.
1 May 2012 – Food
Dr Melissa Calaresu and Dr Emma Spary (University of Cambridge)
15 May 2012 – Decorative Textiles
Dr Mary Brooks (York Museums Trust) and Dr Tara Hamling (University of Birmingham)
29 May 2012 – The Ship
Dr James Davey, Dr John McAleer and Dr Quintin Colville (National Maritime Museum)
12 Jun 2012 – The Body
Dr Faramerz Dabhoiwala (University of Oxford) and Dr Simon Chaplin (Wellcome Library), Guest Respondent: Jane Munro (Fitzwilliam Museum)
We will be rounding off the year with a one-day colloquium on Friday, 28 September 2012, We Need to Talk about ‘Things’: Concluding Colloquium. Details can be found at http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1980/
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
You’re invited to visit the external blog and welcome to subscribe to the group mailing list at https://lists.cam.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/crassh-things
Catherine Molineux on Visual Ethnography
Catherine Molineux | Visual Ethnography: The Travelogue Illustration as a Site of Encounter
The Newberry Library, Chicago, 28 April 2012
Please join us Saturday, April 28, 2012, 2-4 pm for our Newberry Library Eighteenth-Century Seminar works-in-progress session with Catherine Molineux of Vanderbilt University.
Between the 1730s and 1780s, a French traveler’s tale about the coronation of a West African king circulated through France, England, and the Netherlands. Embedded in this description of Hueda rituals surrounding kingship was a story about European rivalry for the favor of a key African player in the Atlantic slave trade. As this commercial drama played out in Europe through multiple retellings of the story, engravers transformed the single image that accompanied it, reworking the original sketch into a full-color engraving. The illustration’s evolution tells a modern story about the role of the visual in securing imperial hierarchies threatened by the encounter with African sovereignty.
The Newberry Library Eighteenth-Century seminar is designed to foster research and inquiry across the scholarly disciplines in eighteenth-century studies. It aims to provide a methodologically diverse forum for work that engages our ongoing discussions and debates along this historical and critical terrain.
Attendance at all events is free and open to the public but in order to receive the precirculated paper, participants are asked to register in advance by contacting the Center for Renaissance Studies at: renaissance@newberry.org. A reception follows each presentation. It is also the custom of the seminar to gather at a restaurant in the Newberry neighborhood to continue our conversation. If you would like to join us for dinner after any session, please email Lisa Freeman at lfreeman@uic.edu. For more information about the seminar, please visit our website. We welcome your attendance and participation at the seminar and look forward to continuing our lively discussions.
Yours,
Timothy Campbell, University of Chicago
Lisa A. Freeman, University of Illinois at Chicago
John Shanahan, DePaul University
Helen Thompson, Northwestern University
Lecture | Chrisman-Campbell, When Fashion Set Sail
From the BGC:
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell | When Fashion Set Sail:
Maritime Modes in Pre-Revolutionary France
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 3 April 2012
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell will deliver a Françoise and Georges Selz Lecture on 18th- and 19th-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture on Tuesday, April 3, 2012. Her talk is entitled When Fashion Set Sail: Maritime Modes in Pre-Revolutionary France. Dr. Chrisman-Campbell is an independent scholar and a consultant for The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. She received her B.A. from Stanford University, her M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and her Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen. Chrisman-Campbell has published numerous journal and magazine articles on 18th– and early 19th-century French fashion. She has also contributed to several books and museum catalogues, including Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 (Los Angeles: Prestel and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010); Paris: Life & Luxury in the Eighteenth Century (Los Angeles: Getty Publishing, 2011); The Saint-Aubin ‘Livre de Caricature’ (Oxford: Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, forthcoming); and Seeing Satire (Oxford: Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, forthcoming).
One of the most iconic and enduring images of 18th-century extravagance is a French fashion plate depicting a woman wearing a miniature ship in her powdered and pomaded hair. This hairstyle—the coiffure à la Belle Poule—was not just an eye-catching novelty. It was one of many ship-shaped headdresses that celebrated specific French naval victories and, more importantly, advertised their wearers’ patriotism and political acumen. In addition to hairstyles, French women of the era wore hats à la maritime and garments adorned with nautical motifs, and the looms of Lyon produced textiles woven with scenes from naval battles. Sailing ships were also rendered in Sèvres porcelain, depicted on snuffboxes, and included in portraits of ladies of fashion. The vogue for nautical fashions and textiles during the reign of Louis XVI was a powerful testimony to the practical and symbolic role the sea played in the everyday lives of women at the most elite levels of French society, whether as a battlefield or a frontier. It also reflected the increasingly tempestuous nature of fashion itself in the pre-Revolutionary period.
Light refreshments will be served at 5:45 pm. The presentation will begin at 6:00 pm.
RSVP is required. Please click on the registration link at the bottom of this page or contact academicevents@bgc.bard.edu.
Please note that our Lecture Hall can only accommodate a limited number of people, so please come early if you would like to have a seat in the main room. We also have overflow seating available; all registrants who arrive late will be seated in the overflow area.
Elena Boeck at The Newberry, Cartography & Peter the Great
From The Newberry:
Elena Boeck, An Icon for Peter the Great: Linking Imperial Cartography and Sacred Topography
The Newberry Library, Chicago, 9 March 2012
Seminar in Art History, Early Modern European Maps as Art
This paper investigates intersections between piety, imperial expansion, and military cartography in an icon presented to Peter I in 1698. It explores a rare convergence of Christian and imperial narratives. The icon was produced in Ukraine, which long served as a bridge between the west and the world of the Russian court, and offered to Peter I by a Ukrainian monastery as a diplomatic gift to commemorate his first triumph, the capture of the Ottoman town of Azov. The iconography of this nearly two-meter-tall image includes an unusual birds-eye view of the siege of Azov.
This innovative image actively participated in the invention of a new, Europeanized, imperial visual tradition in Russia. Furthermore, its seamless and insistent interweaving of imperial symbols, territorial expansion, and religious legitimization came from a contested territory that was in the process of being integrated into empire. Exploring a Ukrainian donor’s motivations for creating such an object, and taking seriously his aspirations for imperial patronage, enables us to understand aspects of empire often obscured in modern national narratives.
Elena N. Boeck is Assistant Professor at DePaul University.
Friday, 9 March 2012, 2:00 pm. A reception will follow the seminar.
Cosponsored by the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography.
This program is free and open to the public, but registration in advance is required. Register online here. The paper will be electronically precirculated to registrants.
Enfilade 
leave a comment