Enfilade

Good news for anyone planning to make use of the YCBA in 2014, but for the summer and fall of 2013, a bit of extra planning is in order. -CH

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Summer and Fall 2013

The first phase of a refurbishment project at the Yale Center for British Art has been scheduled for summer and fall 2013, and there will be limited availability of some services and partial closures on the second and third floors, as noted below. The permanent collection on the fourth floor will remain on view throughout this period. It is expected that the project will be completed by early January 2014.

The Departments of Prints & Drawings and Rare Books & Manuscripts will be temporarily relocating their offices within the building, and the Study Room will be closed from June through December 2013. The collections will be transferred to other parts of the building over the summer of 2013.

As soon as these transfers are completed, staff will make every effort to accommodate the needs of faculty, students, and scholars. However, access to the collections will be limited during the fall term and by appointment only. Requests for materials will require at least two weeks advance notice (ycba.prints@yale.edu). The Center will continue to accommodate classes using works from the Prints & Drawings and Rare Books & Manuscripts collections by special arrangement with the staff; to discuss your requirements, please contact Gillian Forrester, Curator of Prints & Drawings, and Elisabeth Fairman, Senior Curator of Rare Books & Manuscripts.

The Center will be unable to host Visiting Scholars during the refurbishment project. Please note that during this period, the second- and third-floor galleries will be closed, as will the Library Court. The second-floor classroom will remain accessible for teaching; please contact Jane Nowosadko, Senior Manager of Programs, to check availablity. The Reference Library will keep normal hours, although there may be some disruptions over the summer. Details will be circulated as they become known. Tours of the collection will be offered as normal, although requests need to be made two weeks in advance (ycba.education@yale.edu).

There will be a regular roster of programs in the Center’s Lecture Hall throughout the refurbishment project. It is expected that normal services in the Study Room will resume by early January 2014.

Contact Details

• Requests for materials from Prints and Drawings and Rare Books and Manuscripts should be made at least two weeks in advance by e-mailing ycba.prints@yale.edu.
• To discuss requirements for classes contact the curators: Gillian Forrester, Curator of Prints & Drawings, gillian.forrester@yale.edu, Elisabeth Fairman, Senior Curator of Rare Books & Manuscripts, elisabeth.fairman@yale.edu
• Inquiries about the availability of the second-floor classroom and the Docent Room should be e-mailed to Jane Nowosadko, Senior Manager of Programs, jane.nowosadko@yale.edu
• Inquiries about the Reference Library can be addressed to Kraig Binkowski, Chief Librarian, kraig.binkowski@yale.edu
• For information about the Visiting Scholar program for 2013–14, please visit britishart.yale.edu/research/visiting-scholars, or contact Lisa Ford, Associate Head of Research, lisa.ford@yale.edu.

In 2013 the Attingham Trust for the Study of Historic Houses and Collections will offer three courses: the three-week Summer School (5-22 July), the nine-day Royal Collection Studies (1-10 September), and the nine-day Study Programme (12-20 September). Whereas the first two courses follow similar itineraries each year, the Study Week is set in a different location each year, and its timing varies as well. 2013 will offer an in-depth study of the Norfolk Country House, corresponding with the upcoming William Kent exhibition (at the Bard Graduate Center in the fall of 2013 before appearing at the V&A in 2014) and taking advantage of the summer exhibition Houghton Revisited: The Walpole Masterpieces from Catherine the Great’s Hermitage, which will reassemble the collection of Sir Robert Walpole in its eighteenth-century home of Houghton Hall (it’s a safe bet that the course will include special, private viewing opportunities for a show that’s sure to be crowded much of the summer). The Study Week will be directed by Andrew Moore, the former Keeper of Art at Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, and the co-editor of A Capital Collection: Houghton Hall and the Hermitage (Yale UP, 2002). -CH

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From the Attingham Trust:

Attingham Trust Course Offerings for 2013
Application due dates vary according to the programme, starting 31 January 2013

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Attingham Study Programme — The Norfolk Country House: Collections and Networks

THE ATTINGHAM STUDY PROGRAMME is a strenuous and stimulating nine-day course studying historic houses and their collections. Based in specific regions of Britain and often abroad, a wide range of houses, many of them private, are visited in the company of tutors. The architecture, gardens and interiors, including collections of paintings, furniture and other decorative arts, are studied within a context of social and cultural history. It is intended for museum curators, lecturers, architects, conservationists and others with a keen interest in the fine and decorative arts. Accommodation is in modest hotels where lectures are also given. Some full and partial scholarships are available.

The eastern wetlands and broad skies of Norfolk boast a landscape which was the inspiration behind the first regional School of painting in Britain, together with an array of classic country houses that few other English regions can equal. The county’s close proximity to London placed it in the pole position of England’s second city from the medieval period, until the coming of the railways reduced the centrality of its agrarian economy. The 15th-century origins of the moated manor house of OXBURGH HALL and the privately owned Tudor pile of EAST BARSHAM survive today as testimony of the earlier period.

The focus of the 2013 programme will be two great Palladian houses still in private hands, both with magnificent interiors and furnishings by William Kent. The quintessential Grand Tour house, HOLKHAM HALL will feature seminars on the library, archive, silver, textiles and sculpture. We also visit HOUGHTON HALL, the country palace that Sir Robert Walpole controversially built to house his great collection of European master paintings and classical sculpture while based at 10 Downing Street as first minister successively to both George I and George II. This visit will also include seminars on paintings and textiles, visits to the private Picture Gallery and the contemporary sculpture within the park, together with the newly established gardens in memory of Sybil Cholmondeley.

The programme, based in the heart of the medieval market town and seaport of KING’S LYNN in West Norfolk, will also visit the city of NORWICH, and will include tours of the historic built environment of both centres, with their merchant houses and guildhalls. Seminars in NORWICH CASTLE will focus on Norwich Silver and the redisplayed Colman galleries featuring the paintings of Norwich School of Artists. The course plans to feature significant private houses, including RAYNHAM HALL, seat of the Townshend family, which also features the work of William Kent, and NARFORD HALL, home to successive generations of the Fountaine family.

Additional information about all three courses is available here»

Many of you will have seen this announcement (2 July 2012) regarding Eighteenth-Century Studies (I’ve inserted the links). -CH

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It is a pleasure to inform you that the Executive Board of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies has appointed Steven Pincus, Yale University, as Editor of Eighteenth-Century Studies for a five-year term effective 1 July 2012. We want to thank the Yale University community for their willingness to assume this important responsibility and to provide support for this flag-ship journal.

Finally, the officers and Executive Board of ASECS wish to thank Julia Simon for her outstanding service as editor of ECS, and wish her the best of luck on her retirement from the journal.

Byron R. Wells
Executive Director, ASECS

A cooperative project involving the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA), and the Centre d’Anthropologie et d’Histoire des Mondes Anciens (Centre ANHIMA), this online resource provides a wealth of information on Caylus (biographical and bibliographical) as well as digital access to the seven volumes of the Recueil d’Antiquités. There is also a searchable catalogue of the collection of objects. Thanks to Hélène Bremer for noting such an important resource.

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From the website:

Le comte de Caylus (1692-1765) a été un personnage clé du XVIII^e siècle, à la fois homme de lettres aux talents multiples, dramaturge, romancier fin observateur des mœurs de son temps, conteur, traducteur, mais aussi antiquaire érudit, collectionneur, mécène, graveur, membre de l’Académie de peinture et de sculpture en 1731, de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres en 1742, de l’Académie de France à Rome, ardent défenseur de la grande peinture et du goût à l’antique.

Ce site explore une de ces multiples facettes, son rôle de pionnier de l’archéologie, par l’édition numérique commentée et enrichie de son œuvre majeure, le Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, romaines et gauloises, publiée en sept volumes entre 1752 et 1767.

Dans ce recueil, Caylus a étudié et fait dessiner près de 2900 objets, provenant majoritairement de ses collections, offertes au roi au fur et à mesure de l’avancement de ses travaux. En effet, sa collection n’était pas un but en soi, mais un laboratoire d’étude et d’expérimentation, ainsi qu’il l’écrit : « Je ne fais point un cabinet, je fais un cours d’antiquité, et je cherche les usages, ce qui les prouve, les pratique, ce qui les démontre. » (lettre à Paciaudi, 1758). L’objet, si modeste soit-il, devient un moyen de connaissance du passé et la base d’une réflexion sur l’histoire des arts

L’exégèse et le dépouillement systématique du recueil ont pour but de mettre en lumière la démarche de Caylus, qui apparaît comme un précurseur de la méthode typologique, de proposer un panorama du savoir antiquaire au XVIII^e siècle et du réseau intellectuel européen.

Le site s’articule autour de trois axes :

• La personnalité du comte de Caylus, sa biographie, sa bibliographie ainsi qu’une bibliographie de ses œuvres relatives à l’art et à l’archéologie.

• Le Recueil d’Antiquités avec accès à la version numérisée – tout d’abord en mode image, puis, dans un futur proche, en mode texte ; une analyse du Recueil et de la méthode de Caylus ; le recensement des sources utilisées dans le Recueil, qui forment en quelque sorte la « bibliothèque » de Caylus.

• Le catalogue des objets(« base Caylus »), qui présente en vis-à-vis l’analyse de Caylus et celle que nous pouvons faire aujourd’hui. Cette confrontation de deux fiches , la fiche « ancienne » qui reprend en les synthétisant les notices de Caylus – qui peuvent s’étendre de quelques lignes à plusieurs pages – et classe le riche matériel fourni, et la fiche moderne qui propose datation, attribution et bibliographie, est complétée par la mise en regard de la gravure faite pour le Recueil et de la photographie de l’objet dans son état actuel. Les photographies, encore peu nombreuses, seront insérées peu à peu . 60% environ des œuvres ont été retrouvées, nous espérons que cette publication permettra de faire ressurgir de l’oubli celles qui ont été dispersées

Des enrichissements sont prévus :

• une base de données biographiques et bibliographiques sur les érudits mentionnés dans le Recueil, qui permettra de mieux appréhender le réseau intellectuel de Caylus

• l’accès direct à la numérisation des ouvrages utilisés par Caylus, de ses sources manuscrites et iconographiques

Le site est le fruit d’une coopération entre la Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), l’Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA) et le centre d’Anthropologie et d’Histoire des Mondes Anciens (ANHIMA).