The Burlington Magazine, April 2023
View of Fort Christiansborg [Christiansborg Castle, Osu] from the Shore, March 1764, ink and coloured wash on paper
(Danish National Archives)
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The eighteenth century in the April issue of The Burlington . . .
The Burlington Magazine 165 (April 2023)
A R T I C L E S
• Gauvin Alexander Bailey, “The Design of Cape Coast Castle and Dixcove Fort, Ghana,” pp. 378–93.
The first analysis of the design of two of the principal eighteenth-century British slave castles and forts of the Gold Coast reveals the Western engravings used as prototypes but also acknowledges these buildings’ engagement with African cultures and forms. Identifying the people who built them and assessing the forts’ association with the coastal African community challenges the popular misconception that they were no more than European transplants.
R E V I E W S
• Morlin Ellis, Review of the exhibition Spain and the Hispanic World: Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum and Library (Royal Academy of Arts, 2023), pp. 442–45.
• Simon Jervis, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Reinier Baarsen, Process: Design Drawings from the Rijksmuseum 1500–1900 (Rotterdam: 2022), pp. 456–58.
• Philip Ward-Jackson, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Yvette Deseyve, ed., Johann Gottfried Schadow: Embracing Forms (Hirmer Verlag, 2023), pp. 463–66.
• Thomas P. Campbell, Review of Helen Wyld, The Art of Tapestry (Philip Wilson Publishers, 2022), pp. 472–75.
• Charles Saumarez Smith, Review of András Szántó, Imagining the Future Museum: 21 Dialogues with Architects (Hatje Cantz, 2022), pp. 482–83.
• John Martin Robinson, Review of Dudley Dodd, Stourhead: Henry Hoare’s Paradise Revisited (Head of Zeus, 2021), pp. 484–85.
O B I T U A R I E S
• Christopher Wood, Obituary for Hans Belting (1935–2023), pp. 486–88.
The Burlington Magazine, August 2022
The August issue of The Burlington is rich for the eighteenth century, including Karin Wolfe’s obituary for Christopher Johns (details for his memorial service, on 17 September, are emerging here).
The Burlington Magazine 164 (August 2022)
A R T I C L E S
• Gauvin Alexander Bailey, “A Borromini-Inspired Church Plan in Eighteenth-Century Lima,” pp. 740–51.
Built in 1758–66, the Church of Los Huérfanos, Lima, is unique in Spanish South America for its oval plan. Its designer is her identified as a master builder, Cristóbal de Vergas, who was inspired by prints of Francesco Borromini’s S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, exemplifying the revival of interest during the Rococo perios in Roman Baroque precedents.
• Adam Bowett, “The Floral Marquetry Floor at Burghley House,” pp. 752–59.
The possibility that five pieces of eighteenth-century furniture at Burghley House, Stamford, incorporate maquetry made for a floor in the house c.1685 is here confirmed by references in inventories. The marquetry can be linked to furniture in the Royal Collection, raising the possibility that the floor was mdade by Gerrit Jensen incorporating marquetry supplied by Jasper Braems.
• François Marandet, “A Modello by Louis Laguerre and the Programme of the Painted Hall at Chatsworth,” pp. 760–67.
With the help of a recently discovered modello, the subject of Louis Laguerre’s monumental painting on the east wall of the Painted Hall, Chatsworth, is here identified as Augustus Ordering the Closing of the Doors of the Temple of Janus. This allows the political allegory of the room’s decoration, completed in 1694, to be fully understood for the first time.
R E V I E W S
• Neil Jeffares, “Pastels in the Pandemic,” pp. 780–87.
The notoriously fragile medium of pastel has not been out of the public eye during the difficult circumstances of the past two years. Exhibition in San Francisco and Munich and a biography of Rosalba Carriera invite comparisons between the major pastellists of the eighteenth century: Joseph Vivien, Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, and Jean-Étienne Liotard, as well as Carriera.
• Reinier Baarsen, Review of Calin Demetrescu, Les ébénistes de la Couronne sous le règne de Louis XIV (La Bibliothèque des Arts, 2021), pp. 818–19.
• Daniel Fulco, Review of Andreas Schumacher, ed., Venezianische Malerei: Staatsgalerie in der Residenz Würzburg (Schnell & Steiner, 2021), pp. 819–21.
• Howard Coutts, Review of Patricia Ferguson, ed., Pots, Prints, and Politics: Ceramics with an Agenda, from the 14th to the 20th Century (British Museum Press, 2021), pp. 821–22.
• Sophie Rhodes, Review of Tessa Murdoch, Europe Divided: Huguenot Refugee Art and Culture (V&A Museum, 2021), pp. 827–28.
• Patrick Bade, Review of Charles Dellheim, Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews Made the Art World Modern (Brandeis University Press, 2021), p. 828.
O B I T U A R I E S
• Karin Wolfe, Obituary for Christopher M.S. Johns (1955–2022), pp. 829–31.
Professor of History of Art at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, since 2003, Christopher M.S. Johns published widely on Italian art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His determination to demonstrate the falsity of the belief that the settecento was a period of cultural decline had a substantial influence on both scholarship and academic curricula.
Memorial Service for Christopher Johns
From Vanderbilt University . . . (the event may be live-streamed or at least recorded; I’ll update this posting as details emerge, and please feel free to add comments if you have more information. –CH)
Memorial Service for Christopher M. S. Johns
Cohen Memorial Hall, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Saturday, 17 September 2022
A memorial service and reception for Christopher M. S. Johns, the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of Fine Arts and professor of history of art and architecture, will be held on Saturday, 17 September, from 2 to 4pm in the atrium of Cohen Memorial Hall on the Peabody College campus. The memorial program will begin at 2:30pm, with the reception to follow. Johns died May 8 following an extended illness. He was 67.
The event is hosted by the College of Arts and Science and the Department of History of Art and Architecture.
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Note (added 12 September 2022) — Event organizers plan to live-stream the event via Zoom with the following link:
https://vanderbilt.zoom.us/j/8816519966
As ASECS president, Wendy Wassying Roworth has contributed the following statement, which will be read alongside other tributes: “Christopher was a longtime active member of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. A generous scholar, editor, mentor, and friend, he was always willing to share his vast knowledge of Italian art and culture with colleagues and students. He will be missed, but his significant contributions to eighteenth-century studies will continue to inform and inspire.”
In Memoriam | Mark Girouard (1931–2022)
Yesterday’s posting noted the Colvin Prize Shortlist (as announced this week by The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain), which includes Mark Girouard’s A Biographical Dictionary of English Architecture, 1540–1640. I should have included notice of Girouard’s very recent passing. The following paragraphs come from the opening of Girouard’s obituary in The Guardian.
Otto Saumarez Smith, “Mark Girouard Obituary,” The Guardian (26 August 2022).
Architectural historian who wrote extensively on stately homes and campaigned to save the Georgian houses of Spitalfields
Mark Girouard, who has died aged 90, was Britain’s most readable architectural historian, a great authority on Elizabethan and Victorian architecture whose extensive writings used the study of buildings to illuminate the social life of the past. The publication of Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History in 1978 captured the zeitgeist in a period when stately homes were being repurposed as sites of mass leisure. It sold more than 140,000 copies in hardback.
When Girouard started his career the study of architectural history in Britain was dominated by the German-trained Nikolaus Pevsner, for whom the discipline was essentially about tracking artistic styles through intense formal and spatial analysis. In contrast, Girouard’s books placed buildings within their cultural, social and intellectual milieu. The results were scholarly, but also immensely fun, gossipy and stylish.
Although he wrote a great deal about country houses, he found much of the fogeyish snobbery and nostalgia that often goes with the territory distasteful. Free of pomposity, puckish, self-effacing and urbane, he was much loved by all sorts of people for his kindness and sense of fun. Girouard took on a terrific range of subjects beyond country houses, writing with verve about Victorian Pubs (1975) and urban history in Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History (1985) and The English Town: A History of Urban Life (1990). . . .
The full obituary is available here»
In Memoriam | Christopher M. S. Johns (1955–2022)
It is difficult to overstate Christopher’s generous and kind contributions to the HECAA community, collectively and individually, for so many members. And, of course, many readers were also just very fortunate to count him as a dear friend. From Vanderbilt:
Christopher M.S. Johns, the Norman L. and Roselea J. Goldberg Professor of Fine Arts and professor of history of art and architecture, died at his home on May 8 after a long illness. He was 67.
Johns graduated summa cum laude from Florida State University with a bachelor of arts. He went on to earn both a master of arts and a doctor of arts from the University of Delaware, where his doctoral thesis was titled “The Art Patronage of Pope Clement XI Albani and the Early Christian Revival in Eighteenth-Century Rome.”
“Christopher was a groundbreaking scholar who made significant contributions in areas that included early-modern Italian art and culture, Asian art history, and relationships between art, politics and religion,” said John Geer, Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science and professor of political science. “However, he also was a friend and colleague who will be remembered for his dedication to mentoring students. Christopher’s legacy will live on in all those students with whom he worked. He will be deeply missed in our college.”
Keep reading here»
The Burlington Magazine, April 2022
The eighteenth century in the April issue of The Burlington . . .
The Burlington Magazine 164 (April 2022)
A R T I C L E S
• Lucy Davis and Natalia Muñoz-Rojas, “The Provenance of Het Steen and The Rainbow Landscape by Rubens,” pp. 333–41. New documentary evidence elucidates the hitherto uncertain history of these two celebrated landscapes painted by Peter Paul Rubens ca. 1636. Having remained with this family after his death, they were purchased by the Marquess of Caracena, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, and taken to Madrid. By 1706 they were in Genoa, in the collections of successively Bartolomeo Saluzzo (1652–1705) and Costantino Balbi (d. 1740). This article assimilates a number of archival discoveries that shed light not only on the provenance of these two paintings but also on two important Genoese collections.
• Lucia Bonazzi, “Richard Vickris Pryor in the Art Market of Napoleonic Europe,” pp. 342–49. The son of a Quaker family of brewers and wine merchants, Richard Vickris Pryor (1780–1807) spent his brief adult life in pursuit of paintings. A characteristic example of the sort of entrepreneur who sought to exploit the release of works of art onto the market in the wake of Napoleon’s campaigns, he scored his greatest success with the purchase of the Lechi collection in Brescia in 1802.
• Margaret Oppenheimer, “From Paris to New York: French Paintings from the Collection of Eliza Jumel,” pp. 350–61. Eliza Jumel (1775–1865), born in poverty, was one of New York’s richest women at her death in 1865. While in Paris in 1815–17 she formed the largest collection of European paintings yet assembled by an American, the largest part of them French. Sold in 1821, the collection has been all but forgotten, but it has proved possible to trace a number of the works she owned.
R E V I E W S
• Noémi Duperron, Review of the exhibition Le Théâtre de Troie: Antoine Coypel, d’Homère à Virgile (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, 2022), pp. 394–96.
• Eric Zafran, Review of the exhibition Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred, 1530–1800 (Saint Louis Art Museum, 2022), pp. 396–99.
• Peter Y. K. Lam, Review of the exhibition catalogue Sarah Wong and Stacey Pierson, eds., Collectors, Curators, Connoisseurs: A Century of the Oriental Ceramic Society, 1921–2021 (Oriental Ceramic Society, 2021), pp. 402–03.
• Rowan Watson, Review of Richard Rouse and Mary Rouse, Renaissance Illuminators in Paris: Artists and Artisans, 1500–1715 (Harvey Miller, 2019), pp. 418–19.
• Richard Wrigley, Review of Iris Moon and Richard Taws, eds., Time, Media, and Visuality in Post-Revolutionary France (Bloomsbury, 2021), pp. 423–24.
• Philip Ward-Jackson Review of Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen / Neue Pinakothek: Katalog der Skulpturen; Volume I: Die Sammlung Ludwigs I, Volume II: Adolf von Hildebrand (Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2021), pp. 424–25. “This is a vital link in the chain between Enlightenment celebrations of worthies and grand hommes and such later nineteenth-century sculptural pantheons as those on the Musée du Louvre, Paris, and the Albert Memorial, London . . .” (424).
O B I T U A R I E S
• Peter Cherry, Obituary for Jonathan Brown (1939–2022), pp. 427–28. As well as bringing many fresh insights to the study of the major Spanish artists from El Greco to Picasso, with a particular focus on Velázquez, Jonathan Brown made important contributions to the study of patronage and collecting and of the diffusion of the images and ideas in the wider Hispanic world. Much honoured in Spain as well as in his native America, he will also be remembered as a dedicated and assiduous teacher.
The Burlington Magazine, February 2022
The eighteenth century in February’s issue of The Burlington . . .
The Burlington Magazine 164 (February 2022) — Northern European Art
Nathaniel Dance Holland, Portrait of Christian VII, King of Denmark, 1768, oil on canvas, 77 × 63 cm (Royal Collection Trust).
A R T I C L E S
• Sara Ayres, “Christian VII of Denmark’s Lost British Portraits,” pp. 155–63. In 1768–69 the young Christian VII of Denmark visited London and Paris, where several portraits of him were painted. Three were by artists born or working in Britain—Angelica Kauffmann, Edward Cunningham, known as Calze, and Matthew Peters. All are now lost, but evidence about the comissions survives in copies and prints, contemporary descriptions and documents in the Danish State Archives.
• Lars Hendrikman, “The Finding of the Infant Bacchus,” pp. 180–83.
R E V I E W S
• Camilla Pietrabissa, Review of the exhibition Venetia 1600: Births and Rebirths (Venice: Palazza Ducale, 2021–22), pp. 190–92.
• Ivan Gaskell, Review of the new galleries of Dutch and Flemish art at the MFA Boston (open from November 2021), pp. 195–98.
• Richard Stemp, Review of the exhibition Hogarth and Europe (London: Tate Britain, 2021–22), pp. 198–200.
• Maryl Gensheimer, Review of Fabio Barry, Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Yale UP, 2020), pp. 216–17.
• Clare Hornsby, Review of Ortwin Dally, Maria Gazzetti, and Arnold Nesselrath, eds., Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768): Ein Europ isches Rezeptionsph nomen / Fenomeno Europeo della Ricezione (Michael Imhof Verlag, 2021), pp. 217–18.
• Robert Skwirblies, Review of Lea Kuhn, Gemalte Kunstgeschichte: Bildgenealogien in der Malerei um 1800 (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2020), pp. 218–19.
• Thomas Stammers, Review of Stacey Boldrick, Iconoclasm and the Museum (Routledge, 2020), p. 222.
O B I T U A R I E S
• Marjorie Trusted, “Christian Theuerkauff (1936–2021),” pp. 223–24. For many years Deputy Director of the sculpture collection at the Bode Museum, Berlin, and honorary professor at the city’s Free University, Christian Theuerkauff was a leading scholar of Baroque ivories, whose expert connosseurship and archival research definitively shaped our understanding of many of the outstanding sculptors in the medium.
In Memoriam | Jonathan Brown (1939–2022)
NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts mourns the loss of Jonathan Brown, who passed away at his home in Princeton, New Jersey on January 17, 2022, at the age of 82. Jonathan first joined the Institute in 1973 as its Director, a position he held for five years. He remained at the Institute as the Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts until his retirement in 2017. A distinguished colleague and world-renowned scholar of Spanish and Viceregal Mexican art, his contributions to the field will live on for generations to come through his students and his noteworthy publications. Edward Sullivan, Robert Lubar-Messeri, and Richard Kagan have written a remembrance available here. A celebration of Jonathan’s life and work is planned for later in the spring.
Exhibition | Julie Green: The Last Supper
Installation view of Julie Green’s Last Supper exhibition, Bellevue Arts Museum.
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As noted by many news outlets—including The Art Newspaper, The Washington Post, the Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, and NPR (with an editorial by Scott Simon)—the artist Julie Green (1961–2021) died on October 12 at age 60, after battling ovarian cancer. An exhibition of 800 plates by Green is currently installed in Bellevue, Washington. While the ‘content’ of the project (the catalogue of inmates’ last meals) understandably receives the bulk of the attention, I imagine it’s impossible for most dixhuitièmistes not to see the long tradition of blue-and-white ware adaptation; and once a viewer goes there, the plates provide an indicting reminder of the historical origins of the inequities of the American criminal justice system, inequities in many cases derived from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century institutions. –CH
Julie Green: The Last Supper
Bellevue Arts Museum, 4 September 2020 — 23 January 2022
800 Plates Illustrating Final Meals of US Death Row Inmates
Growing up, I admired quilts and ceramics in our Iowa home, as well as the larger-than-life historical figures and 20’ American flag made with ears of colored corn in a neighbor’s yard. Appreciation for homemade and handmade led me to paint blue food. I once shared my family’s support of Nixon and capital punishment. Now I don’t.
Oklahoma has higher per capita executions than Texas. I taught there, and that is how I came to read final meal requests in the morning paper. The Last Supper illustrates the meal requests of U.S. death row inmates. Cobalt blue mineral paint is applied to second-hand ceramic plates, then kiln-fired to 1,400 degrees by technical advisors Toni Acock and Sandy Houtman.
Of the 1,521 US executions to date, 570 occurred in Texas, the only state that doesn’t allow a final meal selection. In Texas, inmates are served the standard prison meal of the day. In states that allow a choice, traditions and restrictions vary. There is no alcohol allowed anywhere. Cigarettes are officially banned but sometimes granted. Most selections are modest. This is not surprising, as many are limited to what is in the prison kitchen. Others provide meals from local venues. Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, and Long John Silver’s are frequently selected in Oklahoma, where their fifteen-dollar allowance is down from twenty in the late 1990s. California allows restaurant take-out up to fifty dollars. Historical menus from Folsom prison, shared by April Moore, point to the 733 inmates on death row today in California. State and date of execution are listed for each plate.
While looking for a permanent home for the project, unless capital punishment ends soon, I will continue until there are 1,000 plates. For me, a final meal request humanizes death row. Menus provide clues on region, race, and economic background. A family history becomes apparent when Indiana Department of Corrections adds, “He told us he never had a birthday cake so we ordered a birthday cake for him.”
Art can be a meditation. Why do we have this tradition of final meals, I wondered, after seeing a 1999 request for six tacos, six glazed donuts, and a cherry Coke. Twenty-one years later, I still wonder.
Julie Green
8 August 2020
The Burlington Magazine, September 2021
The eighteenth century in this month’s issue of The Burlington . . .
The Burlington Magazine 163 (September 2021)
E D I T O R I A L
• “Nicholas Goodison and The Burlington,” p. 779.
A R T I C L E S
• David Pullins, Dorothy Mahon, Silvia A. Centeno, “The Lavoisiers by David: Technical Findings on Portraiture at the Brink of Revolution,” pp. 780–91.
Recent technical examination of Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne Lavoisier in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, painted between 1787 and 1788, has revealed significant and previously unknown alterations that transform our understanding of this celebrated portrait, its author, and its sitters.
R E V I E W S
• Susan Babaie, Review of the exhibition Epic Iran (V&A, 2021), pp. 837–39.
• Jonathan Conlin, Review of the exhibition Creating a National Collection: The Partnership between Southampton City Art Gallery and the National Gallery (Southampton City Art Gallery, 2021), pp. 845–48.
• Tanya Harrod, Review of the newly renovated Museum of the Home (previously the Geffrye Museum), pp. 858–61.
• John Bold, Review of John Martin Robinson, Wilton House: The Art, Architecture, and Interiors of One of Britain’s Great Stately Homes (Rizzoli Electa, 2021), pp. 872–74.
• Simon Lee, Review of Janis Tomlinson, Goya: A Portrait of the Artist (Princeton UP, 2020), pp. 874–75.
• Peter Fuhring, Review of Elena Cooper, Art and Modern Copyright: The Contested Image (Cambridge UP, 2018), pp. 875–76.
O B I T U A R Y
• Simon Jervis, “Ronald Lightbown (1932–2021),” pp. 879–80.
Spending most of his career at the Victoria and Albert Museum and National Art Library, Ronald Lightbown was a scholar of exceptional breadth, whose publications ranged from goldsmiths’ work of the late Middle Ages to Renaissance art and from the history of jewellery to Baroque wax sculpture.
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