Emma’s Songbooks: Rediscovered Music for Nelson
Songbook once owned by Lady Hamilton, which has a cantata composed by G.G. Ferrari and dedicated to Lord Nelson
(Museum of London, 31.17/2)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the Museum of London:
Emma’s Songbooks: Rediscovered Music for Nelson
Online, Museum of London Docklands, recording available 21 December 2021 — 11 January 2022
In partnership with the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the Museum of London Docklands brings to life songs dedicated to Horatio Nelson’s naval victories, recently rediscovered in Emma Hamilton’s songbooks by Museum of London librarian Lluis Tembleque Terés. Terés kicks off the event with a presentation on his finds and their historical context, after which Christopher Suckling, Head of Historical Performance at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, will give an insight onto the music world at the beginning of the 19th century. Following the talks, performers from the School will play the four rediscovered pieces, along with a number of other relevant scores. Finally, Terés will show items from the Museum collections connected to Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson—all in the immersive surroundings of the Museum of London Docklands.
Please note that this will be a recording of the live event, which took place on December 11. You will have seven days to access the recording from the date you select as part of the ticket purchase process.
Songbook once owned by Emma Hamilton, here shown by Museum of London librarian Lluis Tembleque Terés
(Museum of London, 31.17/2; photo by John Chase)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the press release (via Art Daily) . . .
A recording of an old sea song, one of four recently rediscovered pieces of music paying tribute to Nelson, has been released today by the Museum of London. Brought to life by musicians from Guildhall School of Music & Drama, it marks the first performance of the piece in over 200 years. The extraordinary discovery was made last year by Museum of London librarian Lluis Tembleque Teres who discovered it amongst songbooks belonging to Nelson’s lover, the actress and model Emma Hamilton.
It is thought the song was sung after the battle of Cape St Vincent (1797) and transcribed by Nelson after hearing it chanted by his crew. The lyrics have been known about since a letter from Nelson to William Douglas, 4th Duke of Queensberry, was sold at auction in 2013—the only other known reference to the song. The new discovery points to the addition of new music and a chorus by the Duke, a notorious society figure, whose reputation for gambling and horse racing has long overshadowed his musical ability. A personal friend of Emma Hamilton, his authorship of the piece is recorded in Emma’s own hand.
Lluis Tembleque Teres, librarian, Museum of London, said, “The song was written by Nelson’s crew in one of his early victories. It is fascinating how, some four years later and already a national hero, he recovers the lyrics and sends them to the Duke of Queensberry, almost as if showing off his early successes. The Duke then adds music and a chorus, and gifts the manuscript to Emma Hamilton, thus allowing us exactly 220 years later to relive Nelson’s fame while performing it.”
Dr Christopher Suckling, Head of Historical Performance at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, said, “Equally as extraordinary is that a man of the Duke of Queensberry’s position should take the time and take the effort to compose at least two pieces of music in Nelson’s honour. That he should choose to express himself through this least gentlemanly of arts speaks to both his strength of feeling for Nelson and his sensibility towards the Admiral’s relationship with Emma Hamilton.”
The original manuscripts reflect the different manner in which music was experienced at the turn of the nineteenth century, its empty staves typical of a time when music could be played by any combination of available musicians. Amongst the upper classes, the function of domestic music was largely seen as a way to kill time and despite some contemporaries considering social music making to be the embodiment of morality, playing and composing was not held in high regard.
The release follows a special one-off live performance of all four songs at the Museum of London Docklands on 11th December, which will be available to watch in full as an online event starting Tuesday, 21 December 2021.
A free copy of the sea song is available for download here»
Online Roundtable | The Animation of Decorative Arts in 18th-C France
From The Met:
The Animation of Decorative Arts in Eighteenth-Century France
Online, 14 December 2021, 6.00pm (Eastern Time)
Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 10 December 2021 until 6 March 2022, this live event takes place online. Watch on YouTube or Facebook (no login required).
Discover how furniture and decorative arts came to life in the literature, dance, and theater of eighteenth-century France, a theme later explored and elaborated by Disney in the classic animated film Beauty and the Beast.
• Wolf Burchard, Associate Curator, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Met
• Alicia Caticha, Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University
• Sarah Lawrence, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Curator in Charge, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Met
• Meredith Martin, Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Art History, and Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
• David Pullins, Associate Curator, European Paintings, The Met
Online Talk | Mia Jackson on Boulle and Prints
Left: André-Charles Boulle, detail of a table, veneered in turtleshell and brass, with gilt-bronze mounts, ca. 1705 (London: The Wallace Collection, F56). Right: Abraham Bosse, ‘Cette figure vous montre comme on Imprime les planches de taille douce…’, 1642, etching (London: British Museum, R,8.15).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
This Sunday from The Furniture History Society:
Mia Jackson | André Charles Boulle as a Maker, Designer, and Publisher of Prints
The Furniture History Society Online Lecture, 5 December 2021,7pm (GMT) / 2pm (EST)
André-Charles Boulle, table, veneered in turtleshell and brass, with gilt-bronze mounts, ca. 1705 (London: The Wallace Collection, F56).
André-Charles Boulle’s interest in print-making was not limited only to his vast collection of works on paper. The cabinet-maker also designed, made, and sold prints and used print-making techniques in the workshop. Drawing on her doctoral research, Mia Jackson will explore Boulle’s role in print-making, print-publishing, and print-selling. She will discuss Boulle’s series of prints of furniture designs, which her research into publishing history allows her to date more precisely. She will also discuss Boulle’s print design for the Confraternity of St Anne at Carmes-Billettes, and the numerous copperplates that he owned and from which he sold impressions. Dr Jackson’s talk is free to members and £5 for non-members (via this link with code AVUJEN).
Mia Jackson (@theboullelady) has been Curator of Decorative Arts at Waddesdon Manor since 2017. She studied French and Philosophy at Oxford University and then earned an MA in eighteenth-century French decorative arts at the Courtauld Insitute of Art. Her doctoral thesis entitled “André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732) and Paper: Prints and Drawings in the Workshop of an Ébéniste du Roi” was completed at Queen Mary University of London in 2016. She previously worked in the Prints and Drawings Department at The British Museum, at The Wallace Collection, and at English Heritage. She worked on the Riesener Project with The Wallace Collection and the Royal Collection, and is currently preparing a series of exhibitions on Alice de Rothschild with her colleagues at Waddesdon Manor.
Exhibition | Thomas Gray
The exhibition closes soon, but I note it here particularly to draw your attention to the online component, mounted by Daniel McKay: it’s the most compelling virtual book exhibition I’ve ever seen.
Thomas Gray: An Anniversary Exhibition
Ward Library, Peterhouse, Cambridge, 8 November — 13 December 2021
Curated by Scott Mandelbrote
To mark the 250th anniversary of Thomas Gray’s death, the 270th anniversary of the publication of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” and the 305th anniversary of his birth.
Thomas Gray was born on 26 December 1716 and died on 30 July 1771. On 15 February 1751, one of the leading contemporary publishers of literary works, Robert Dodsley, hurried into print an edition of an Elegy wrote in a Country Church Yard, which subsequently became one of the most reprinted, anthologised, translated, and imitated poems in any language. It was one of barely more than a dozen poems that Gray allowed to be printed in his lifetime.
This exhibition considers Gray’s life and work from the perspective of the holdings of the two Cambridge Colleges with which he was associated from 1734, when he entered Peterhouse, until his death, which occurred shortly after he was taken ill at dinner in Pembroke. The exhibition focusses on three defining themes in Gray’s life and reputation: his relationship with Cambridge and the effect on him and on his work of the friends and enemies he made at the University; his activity as a reader, in particular as a user of the libraries of his two Colleges; and the publishing phenomenon of the “Elegy,” his most significant poem and one steeped in his appreciation and emulation of classical tradition, as well as his sense of place and of English history and the history of English poetry.
Basile Baudez on Textiles, Policy, and Lived Spaces in 18th-C Venice
https://vimeo.com/646998977?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=125550939
Basile Baudez contributed to this fall’s Princeton Talks series, a new initiative of the Princeton Public Lectures Committee:
Basile Baudez, “Regulation & Transgression: Textiles, Policy, and Lived Spaces in 18th-Century Venice,” Princeton Talks (Fall 2021), 14 minutes.
Online Talk | Gerstenblith on Reparations and the ‘Universal’ Museum
From Penn Museum:
Patty Gerstenblith | Imperialism, Colonialism, Reparations, and the ‘Universal’ Museum
Penn Cultural Heritage Center Lecture
Thursday, 2 December 2021, 12.30–2.00pm (ET)
In this virtual lecture hosted by the Penn Cultural Heritage Center, Patty Gerstenblith will discuss the concept of the ‘universal’ museum and its historical underpinnings. Dr. Gerstenblith will explore its origins across the arc of the 19th century, the inequities of the international legal system and its shortcomings, and the continuing justifications for the retention of looted cultural objects by European and North American museums and collectors.
The notion of the ‘universal’ museum developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the context of the founding of the British Museum, the Napoleonic Wars, European imperialism and colonialism, and the mantra of the rescue narrative, which justified the removal of cultural artifacts first from the Mediterranean region and later sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. Evaluating the right to cultural heritage through a human rights perspective, this lecture will analyze the process and elements of reparations and will propose a paradigm for the restitution of cultural objects that fall outside of the legal and ethical frameworks.
Patty Gerstenblith, Ph.D., J.D., is distinguished research professor at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago and faculty director of its Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law. She was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee in the Department of State and later by President Obama as its chair. She publishes and lectures widely on the protection of cultural heritage during armed conflict and the interdiction of trafficking in archaeological materials. Her casebook Art, Cultural Heritage, and the Law is now in its fourth edition.
Online Colloquium | Celebrating the Illustrious in Europe, 1580–1750
From the programme for the conference:
La célébration des Illustres en Europe (1580-1750) : vers un nouveau paradigme?
Celebrating the Illustrious in Europe, (1580–1750): Towards a New Paradigm?
Online, 25–26 November 2021
Organized by Antoine Gallay, Carla Julie, and Matthieu Lett
Colloque organisé conjointement par l’UNIL (Section d’Histoire de l’art) et par l’Université de Bourgogne (LIR3S CNRS UMR 7366) avec le concours de la Conférence universitaire de Suisse occidentale (CUSO)
Le colloque se propose d’explorer une partie des productions biographiques d’une période usqu’alors peu étudiée sous cet angle. Les deux journées ont pour objectif de mieux comprendre comment se transformèrent, entre 1580 et 1750, les modes de célébration de la gloire des illustres, tant par l’écrit que par l’image, en tenant compte de l’ensemble des médiums que constituent le livre, l’estampe, la peinture, la sculpture ou encore la médaille.
Organisation
• Antoine Gallay (Université de Tel Aviv – The Cohn Institute), antgallay@hotmail.com
• Carla Julie (Université de Lausanne – Université de Bourgogne), carla.julie@unil.ch
• Matthieu Lett (Université de Bourgogne – LIR3S), matthieu.lett@u-bourgogne.fr
Comité scientifique
• Jan Blanc, professeur d’histoire de l’art de la période moderne (Université de Genève)
• Estelle Doudet, professeure de littérature française (Université de Lausanne)
• Laurence Giavarini, maîtresse de conférences HDR en littérature des XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Université de Bourgogne – LIR3S)
• Christian Michel, professeur d’histoire de l’art de la période moderne (Université de Lausanne)
• Frédéric Tinguely, professeur de littérature française (Université de Genève)
Lien du colloque:
https://unil.zoom.us/j/92708025500
ID de réunion : 927 0802 5500
J E U D I , 2 5 N O V E M B R E 2 0 2 1
9.15 Accueil
9.30 Introduction
• Antoine Gallay, Carla Julie, Matthieu Lett
10.00 Session 1: Nouveaux Illustres
Président de séance : Matthieu Lett
• Rémi Jimenes (Université de Tours) et Estelle Leutrat (Université Rennes 2) — Gabriel-Michel de La Rochemaillet, Jean Le Clerc et Les pourtraicts de plusieurs hommes illustres qui ont flory en France depuis l’an 1500
• Paula Almeida Mendes (CITCEM – Université de Porto) — Les ‘femmes illustres’: représentations littéraires et culturelles au Portugal, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles
• Malcolm Baker (University of California, Riverside) — How did images make modern authors illustrious?
12.30 Pause déjeuner
14.00 Session 2: Nouveaux Régimes de Célébration
Président de séance : Frédéric Tinguely
• Marion Deschamp (Université de Lorraine) — En être, ou pas. Conversions, redéfinitions et exclusions de l’économie des grandeurs dans les recueils protestants d’hommes illustres, XVIe– XVIIe siècles
• Pascale Cugy (Université Rennes 2) — Le monde du spectacle dans les portraits en mode parisiens (1690–1710) : à propos de la célébration gravée de quelques noms de la Comédie-Française et de l’Opéra
• Sophie-Luise Mävers (Universität zu Köln) — A faceless gallery of illustrious scientists and artists? Sébastien Leclerc’s orchestration of an institutional utopia
• François Lavie (Université Paris 8) — Recueillir les bons mots des « personnes illustres » dans la France moderne : pratiques de compilation et célébration de l’esprit des grands hommes, 1680–1750
V E N D R E D I , 2 6 N O V E M B R E 2 0 2 1
9.30 Session 3: Desseins Politiques
Président de séance : Laurence Giavarini
• Stanis Perez (Maison des sciences de l’homme Paris-Nord) — La Gallerie des femmes fortes : de la collection historiographique au miroir politique
• Margaux Prugnier (Université Paris Nanterre) — De la célébration des Grands à celle des Lorrains : les œuvres de Dom Calmet (1672–1757) au gré des évolutions de la France de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle
• Craig Hanson (Calvin University, Grand Rapids) — Thomas Birch’s Heads of Illustrious Persons (1743–1751). Collecting Art, Collecting National Histories
12.00 Pause déjeuner
13.30 Session 4: De la Collection à la Célébration
Président de séance : Antoine Gallay
• Clarisse Evrard (Université de Lille) — Regard d’un illustre sur ses pairs : l’Armamentarium Heroicum, de la collection d’armures au théâtre de papier
• Carla Julie (Université de Lausanne – Université de Bourgogne) — Curieux d’estampes et Illustres dans la France du XVIIe siècle : autour de Michel de Marolles
• Maxime Martignon (Université Paris Nanterre) — Choisir les Illustres : Michel Bégon et le projet biographique
16.00 Conclusion
• Christian Michel (Université de Lausanne)
Online Book Launch | Enlightened Eclecticism
This Friday at 6.30pm (GMT) via Zoom:
Adriano Aymonino, Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland
Online Book Launch, Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, 19 November 2021
Hosted by Sir John Soane’s Museum in their beautiful library, and presented in collaboration with the Society for the History of Collecting, this virtual event will celebrate the publication of Adriano Aymonino’s new book, Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland.
The central decades of the eighteenth century in Britain were crucial to the history of European taste and design. One of the period’s most important campaigns of patronage and collecting was that of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland: Sir Hugh Smithson (1712–86) and Lady Elizabeth Seymour Percy (1716–76). This book examines four houses they refurbished in eclectic architectural styles—Stanwick Hall, Northumberland House, Syon House, and Alnwick Castle—alongside the innumerable objects they collected, their funerary monuments, and their persistent engagement in Georgian London’s public sphere. Over the years, their commissions embraced or pioneered styles as varied as Palladianism, rococo, neoclassicism, and Gothic revival. Patrons of many artists and architects, they are revealed, particularly, as the greatest supporters of Robert Adam. In every instance, minute details contributed to large-scale projects expressing the Northumberlands’ various aesthetic and cultural allegiances. Their development sheds light on the eclectic taste of Georgian Britain, the emergence of neoclassicism and historicism, and the cultures of the Grand Tour and the Enlightenment.
S C H E D U L E
18.30 Introduction by Frances Sands (Curator of Drawings and Books, Sir John Soane’s Museum)
18.40 Talk by Kate Retford (Professor of Art History, Birkbeck, University of London)
19.10 Talk by Adriano Aymonino (Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Programs, Department of History and History of Art, University of Buckingham)
19.30 Conversation and questions moderated by Adriana Turpin (Director of Institut Des Etudes Superieurs Des Arts UK)
Lecture | Frédéric Ogée, Pleasures of the Senses and the Imagination
From the conference series Sociabilité et libertinage au siècle des Lumières, organized at the Cognacq-Jay Museum in conjunction with this year’s summer exhibition Realm of the Senses, from Boucher to Greuze / L’ Empire des sens, de Boucher à Greuze (19 May — 18 July 2021), curated by Annick Lemoine . . .
Frédéric Ogée | Plaisirs des sens, plaisirs de l’imagination dans l’art et la littérature anglaise du 18ème siècle
Online and In-Person, Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, 26 November 2021, 17.00
Dans le sillage de sa « Glorieuse Révolution » de 1688, l’Angleterre inaugura le siècle des Lumières en découvrant le plaisir d’un certain nombre de libertés : « régler le pouvoir des rois en leur résistant » (Voltaire), publier sans entrave, ré-évaluer l’héritage des Anciens, regarder la Nature à travers le prisme de Newton plutôt que celui des prêtres, entreprendre à crédit, célébrer la sensibilité et l’imagination. Les Anglais ont ainsi cherché de nouveaux équilibres entre la liberté de l’individu—son goût, sa subjectivité, sa perception du monde, son « progrès » —et les nécessités de la sphère collective, qu’elle soit publique ou privée. Ecrivains et artistes se sont vite employés à représenter cette nouvelle sociabilité, pour la modéliser et la polir autant que pour la promouvoir, au travers de remarquables expériences littéraires et picturales où les personnages se meuvent et s’émeuvent sous l’œil complice du spectateur-lecteur. Influencés par la philosophie empiriste ils font l’expérience du plaisir des sens pour accéder à la connaissance, d’eux-mêmes et du monde. La présente conférence permettra d’évoquer cette remarquable période de créativité qui, de Daniel Defoe et William Hogarth à Jane Austen et Thomas Lawrence, contribua au triomphe de la Grande-Bretagne sur la scène du monde.
Discutante: Sophie Mesplède (Université Rennes 2)
Frederic Ogee est professeur de littérature et d’histoire de l’art britanniques à l’Université de Paris. Ses principaux domaines de recherche sont l’esthétique, la littérature et l’art au cours du long 18ème siècle (1660–1815), sur lesquels il a souvent donné des conférences dans des universités européennes, nord-américaines et asiatiques. Commissaire de l’exposition sur le peintre anglais William Hogarth au Musée du Louvre en 2006, il est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages, notamment Diderot and European Culture, un recueil d’essais (Oxford: 2006, réédité 2009), J.M.W. Turner : Les paysages absolus (Hazan, 2010), et Jardins et Civilisations (Valenciennes, 2019), suite à une conférence organisée à l’Institut Européen des Jardins et Paysages de Caen. Il écrit actuellement une série de quatre monographies sur quelques grands artistes anglais (Thomas Lawrence, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Gainsborough et William Hogarth) pour les éditions Cohen & Cohen (Paris), à paraître entre 2022 et 2025. De 2014 à 2017, il a été membre du conseil scientifique du musée Tate Britain à Londres et, depuis 2014, est membre du Conseil Scientifique de la Ville de Paris.
Conférence en présentiel dans la limite des places disponibles, entrée libre avec pass sanitaire ET en distanciel via Zoom. Participation libre sur inscription obligatoire: reservation.cognacqjay@paris.fr et alain.kerherve@univ-brest.fr. La conférence sera précédée à 16h30 d’une visite flash des collections en lien avec la thématique du jour.
Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Marine Carcanague, Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey, Guillaume Faroult, Yuriko Jackall, F. Joulie, É. Kerner, A. Laing, C. Le Bitouzé, A. Le Brun, A. Lemoine, N. Lesur, H. Meyer, L-A. Prat, S. de Saint-Léger, M. Szanto, L’ Empire des sens, de Boucher à Greuze (Paris Musées / Musée Cognac-Jay, 2020), 152 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605002, €30.
Online Talks | HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase
This afternoon!
HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase
Online, Saturday, 13 November 2021, 2:00–3:30pm (EST)
A reminder to join us for our HECAA Emerging Scholars Showcase on Saturday, 13 November, 2:00–3:30pm, EST. Please register via the zoom link below to hear our first seven emerging scholars present their research. Each participant will present for 3–5 minutes, and after all of the presentations we will host a question and answer session. Zoom Registration Link. Also, please also mark your calendars for our next Emerging Scholars Showcase to be held on Saturday, 23 April 2022.
Best wishes,
HECAA Board
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
1 Deborah A. Fisher (Independent Scholar / PhD, Penn State University, 2021), The Metamorphoses of John Singleton Copley: Mythological Characters in American Colonial Portraiture
2 Samantha Happe (University of Melbourne), Between Isfahan and Versailles: Royal Diplomatic Gift Exchange in the Eighteenth Century
3 Philippe Halbert (Yale University), Letters of a Canadian Woman: Identity and the Self-Fashioning in the Atlantic World of Madame Bégon, 1696–1755
4 Cynthia Volk (Bard Graduate Center), Dehua Porcelain Figures of Budai: Models of Adaptivity in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century China and Europe
5 Zoë Dostal (Columbia University), Rope, Linen, Thread: Gender, Labor, and the Textile Industry in Eighteenth-Century British Art
6 Alyse Muller (Columbia University), Between Land and Sea: French Maritime Imagery in the Long Eighteenth Century
7 Andrea Morgan (Independent Scholar / PhD, Queen’s University, 2021), Frances Reynolds and Mary Nugent-Temple-Grenville, Marchioness of Buckingham: Female Artists in the Orbit of Sir Joshua Reynolds
Enfilade 
leave a comment