Enfilade

Sophie Frémiet (later Rude), Portrait of a Woman, detail, 1818, oil on canvas, 64 × 46 inches
(Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 2024.25).

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Upcoming at the Getty (which acquired the painting in 2024), as we all watch the fires with ache and concern . . .

Paris Spies-Gans | Breaking Barriers: Sophie Frémiet and the Rise of Women Artists in Europe
Online and in-person, Getty Center, Los Angeles, 4 May 2025, 2pm (originally scheduled for 26 January)

Around the turn of the 18th century, over a thousand women contributed more than 7,000 works to London’s and Paris’ premier exhibitions. It was a transformative moment for women artists in Europe, who exhibited and sold their art in unprecedented numbers. In this context, Sophie Fremiet painted her luminous Portrait of a Woman (1818). Paris Spies-Gans delves into this era to upend longstanding assumptions about women’s opportunities and wrongly forgotten triumphs. Tickets are free, but required for event entrance. Your event ticket will also serve as your Center entrance reservation. To watch online, please register via Zoom.

Paris A. Spies-Gans is a historian of art with a focus on women, gender, and the politics of artistic expression. Her first book, A Revolution on Canvas: The Rise of Women Artists in Britain and France, 1760–1830 (Paul Mellon Centre in association with Yale University Press, 2022), was named one of the top art books of 2022 by The Art Newspaper and The Conversation. It also received several prizes in the fields of British history, art history, and 18th-century studies. She is currently working on her second book, A New Story of Art (US/Doubleday and UK/Viking).

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Note (added 21 January 2025) — The posting has been updated with the rescheduled date.

As noted at Events in the Field:

Vanessa Sigalas | All Walks of Life: Meissen Porcelain Figures of the 18th Century
Online, Connecticut Ceramics Circle, 9 December 2024, 2pm (EST)

Pair of Figures of Beggar Musicians, German, Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, models by Johann Joachim Kaendler (1706–1775). Original year of modelling: ca. 1736; beggar-woman reworked later. Date of porcelain paste: both ca. 1730–65; date of decoration: both 18th century. Hard-paste porcelain. Man: Blue crossed swords mark on base; woman: no marks. Heights: man 13.4 cm; woman 13 cm. Model no. man: 918; woman: 915. Shimmerman Collection nos. MPBP_16 & 17.

Dr. Vanessa Sigalas will guide the audience through a captivating exploration of 18th-century life in Saxony, Paris, London, and St. Petersburg, using Meissen porcelain sculptures from the Alan Shimmerman Collection in Toronto, Canada, as well as the Wadsworth Atheneum’s collection in Hartford, Connecticut. Renowned master modeler Johann Joachim Kaendler, in collaboration with his fellow modelers at Meissen, portrayed glimpses of daily existence, meticulously capturing even the minutest details. From the carefully arranged trinkets of a street vendor to the intimate script of a love letter and the culinary tools of a cook preparing a hare, Kaendler’s work unveils the richness of ‘All Walks of Life’.

The Alan Shimmerman Collection, with its emphasis on groups of criers (street sellers) and artisans, offers a fresh perspective on the inception, production, and dissemination of Meissen porcelain. Dr. Sigalas’s lecture is based on her recently published collection catalogue bearing the same title, providing an immersive journey into the intricate world of 18th-century European society as depicted through these masterfully crafted sculptures.

Vanessa Sigalas holds a Dr. phil. in Art History from the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany. She joined the Wadsworth Atheneum in 2011, As an art historian, Sigalas specializes in European art from the 17th to the first half of the 20th centuries, especially 18th- and 19th-century German porcelain. One of her research interests is the connection between ivory and porcelain, particularly at the Dresden Court of Augustus the Strong (1670–1733). At the Wadsworth, she works with American and European decorative arts and sculpture from the ancient to the modern worlds, but also explores the collections of non-Western art. Despite her deep love for books and archives, Sigalas has always enjoyed the hands-on work with objects. In 2013, she assisted with the Storage Renovation and Relocation Project, and in 2015 she was part of the team to reinstall the European art collections, where she assisted the curatorial team and led the installation team of decorative arts.

She has published in a variety of journals, exhibition catalogues, and books. Her latest book, All Walks of Life: A Journey with the Alan Shimmerman Collection (2022), focuses on Meissen porcelain figures from the 18th century. She has taken on the role of editor for several publications, with her most recent work being Morgan—The Collector: Essays in Honor of Linda Roth’s 40th Anniversary at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, co-edited with Jennifer Tonkovich. Additionally, she served as the managing editor of the American Ceramic Circle Journal from 2015 to 2023. Sigalas has curated exhibitions in Germany and the US. Her most recent exhibitions at the Wadsworth include, in conjunction with director Matthew Hargraves, Between Life & Death: Art and the Afterlife (Fall 2023), as well as the community-focused and staff-curated exhibition, Styling Identities: Hair’s Tangled Histories, which was on view until August 2024.

The final seminar of the series takes place on Wednesday:

Luba Kozak and Diogo Lemos | Pets, Portraiture, and Identity
Online, Material and Visual Culture Research Cluster, Edinburgh, 4 December 2024

Each week we hear from two speakers, sharing their research on, and approaches to, the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century material and visual culture. We aim to make a space in which these rich histories can be explored from varied disciplines to enhance our research practices. We meet on Wednesdays, 5–6pm GMT, online using Zoom; registration closes 1 hour before seminar start time.

Luba Kozak | Pet Animals as Connectors: Exploring the Role of Pet Animals in Shaping British Identity and Colonial Encounters in 18th-Century British Portraiture

This paper explores the role of pet animals in shaping British identity and colonial encounters as portrayed in eighteenth-century British portraiture. Through an analysis of John Eccardt’s Portrait of Lady Grace Carteret, Countess of Dysart with a Child, Black Servant, Cockatoo, and Spaniel (1740) and Johann Zoffany’s Colonel Blair and his Family with an Indian Ayah (1786) as case studies, I investigate how pet animals reveal power structures and hierarchies within the domestic sphere, exposing deeper tropes of colonisation and race (Braddock; Bocquillon). Ultimately, I propose that pet animals act as critical contact points between the British aristocracy and enslaved individuals in these artworks, bridging cultural, racial, and species divides.

Recognising the need to address the material presence of animals in art and their marginalisation in the field of art history, I analyse these paintings through more inclusive theoretical frameworks including ecocriticism and post-colonialism. Building on the scholarship of Ingrid Tague and Erin Parker, who discuss the domestication of animals within British households, I examine how these animals negotiated status and place within elite homes as depicted in visual culture. This approach repositions non-human figures as active subjects rather than pictorial accessories. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, this paper is at the intersection of art history, animal studies, philosophy, and ethics. Amidst growing concern for animal ethics and the Anthropocene, this timely research offers a broader understanding of the complexities of human-animal relations, relevant in historical and contemporary.

Luba Kozak is a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan (Canada).

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Diogo Lemos | Spreading the Icon: Visual Culture and Royal Patronage under the Reign of John V, King of Portugal

During his reign (1707–1750), John V recognized the importance of emulation and identifying the most renowned masterpieces of his time. By so, he instructed his diplomats to collect copies of certain artworks from various courts. The most iconic among them served as vital iconographic sources for artworks commissioned by the king, executed by artists trained in Europe’s leading apprenticeship circuits, who later disseminated these same iconographic references in other courts. This talk aims to highlight a set of artworks produced within European courts which played a pivotal role in shaping the image of the Portuguese court.

The primary goal is to decipher the mechanisms of ‘promotion’ of these artworks; to grasp the processes and means (ex. the press but also espionage) used to transform them into true icons. Relating this context with the Portuguese court, documentation will also reveal the mechanisms—and circles of influences—used by John V to know and acquire them. Furthermore, the project seeks to intersect these artworks (primarily portraits) with the material culture of both the Portuguese and European courts in which France plays an important role. Nevertheless, rather than solely emphasizing France as the primary influencer, the intention is to accentuate the nuances and distinctiveness of the artistic and material cultures within these courts, moreover, highlighted by Portuguese court itself. In short, focusing on the iconology of the Catholic Kings, this proposal aims to unveil and decode a curated collection of artworks commissioned by King John V, providing new insights into the cultural (and political) milieu of the era and demonstrating how certain iconic masterpieces (yet often underestimated) not only reflected cultural exchanges between nations during the reign of John V but also shaped European visual culture during this period.

Diogo Lemos is a researcher at the Centre for the History of Society and Culture of the University of Coimbra, where he is developing an art history PhD project in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities for which he was awarded a fellowship by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

From the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art:

Charles O’Brien and Simon Bradley | Celebrating Pevsner: Reflections on the Completion of the Buildings of England
Online, 14 November 2024, 6.00pm (London time)

The editors of the Pevsner Architectural Guides will be in conversation, reflecting on the revision of the Buildings of England series from 1983 to 2024, lately completed with the new Staffordshire volume. Simon Bradley and Charles O’Brien will consider the development and updating of the guides over forty years, the expansion of their content and the challenges both of research and writing and of maintaining the spirit and ambition of Pevsner’s original vision for the books. They will also reflect on their own contributions as authors of the new and revised editions, spanning their time with Penguin Books and Yale University Press. The event will be chaired by Jeremy Musson.

Book tickets here»

Jeremy Musson is an architectural historian; he studied at UCL and the Warburg Institute and was an assistant curator for the National Trust and architectural editor at Country Life, 1998–2007. He is the author of a number of books on the country house, including English Country House Interiors (2011) and The Drawing Room (2014), and was co-writer and presenter of BBC2’s The Curious House Guest. A heritage consultant since 2007, Jeremy has worked on projects including Hardwick Hall and St Paul’s Cathedral. He is editor of The Victorian and teaches on the building history masters course at the University of Cambridge; a senior research fellow of the Humanities Research Institute of the University of Buckingham; and a supervisor of students at New York University (NYU) in London. He is also a trustee of the Historic Houses Foundation. He was a contributing author to the revision of the Buildings of England: Sussex West with Elizabeth Williamson, Tim Hudson, and Ian Narin.

Charles O’Brien FSA is Listing and Architectural Research Director at Historic England. Until 2022 he was joint Series Editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides. He joined the series in 1997, where he worked full time on the research, writing, and editing of the new editions. As author and co-author he has written the revised volumes London 5: East; Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough; Hampshire: South; and Surrey. He is a former Commissioner of Historic England and former Chair of their London Advisory Committee.

Simon Bradley FSA joined the Pevsner series in 1994. His own revised volumes include London 1: The City of London; London 6: Westminster; Cambridgeshire; and Oxfordshire: Oxford and the South East. He has also published on the Gothic Revival, drawing on his PhD thesis, and on railways and railway buildings including St Pancras Station (2006), The Railways: Nation, Network, and People (2015), and Bradley’s Railway Guide: A Journey Through Two Centuries of British Railway History, 1825–2025 (2024).