New Book | The Ingenious Mr Flitcroft
Coming this fall from Lund Humphries:
Gill Hedley, with an introduction by Charles Saumarez Smith, The Ingenious Mr Flitcroft: Palladian Architect, 1697–1769 (London: Lund Humphries, 2023), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1848226500, £50.
Henry Flitcroft was first employed by the leading aristocratic architect of the time, Richard Boyle, Lord Burlington, who helped him to establish his long career. Flitcroft had about 50 clients over 40 years, working for many dynasties, including the royal family, the Bedfords, the Yorke/Hardwickes, and the Malton/Rockinghams. Remarkably, he was employed regularly by the Duke of Montagu and his family from 1725 to 1765, and the Hoare family from 1728 to his death in 1769, and was responsible for some of the great country houses of the period including Wimpole, Woburn Abbey, and Wentworth Woodhouse. This is the first book which details his life and examines his complete body of work. It sets Flitcroft within his social context, providing insights into those for whom he worked as well as his fellow architects. Flitcroft waged fierce battles to maintain his professional positions at Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s, and the documents are revealed here for the first time. The book dissects the dramatic story of Flitcroft’s insane son and the legal cases that ensued that link Flitcroft and G.E. Street, who inherited Flitcroft’s own house in Hampstead. In addition, Flitcroft’s furniture designs are assessed along with his notable churches and London buildings including Chatham House, Benjamin Franklin House, and Pushkin House. Finally, his last great project at Stourhead is re-examined.
Gill Hedley started her career as a curator in museums, organising exhibitions for the British Council and later, as Director of the Contemporary Art Society. She has recently worked as a freelance exhibition curator, museum consultant, and advisor to individual artists. She now writes full time.
c o n t e n t s
Introduction by Sir Charles Saumarez-Smith
1. Hampton Court, Apprencticeship, and Lord Burlington
2 Twickenham, Marriage, and Bower House
3 Amesbury, Montagu House, and St Giles-in-the-Fields
4 St Giles-in-the-Fields
5 Wentworth Woodhouse and Ditchley
6 St Olave’s, Savannah, Stoke Edith, Wimborne, and Frognal
7 Wimpole and Hampstead
8 Shobdon, Windsor, and Woburn
9 Stourhead
10 Stourhead, Redlynch, and Kingston House
11 Henry Flitcroft, Junior
12 Reputation
Online Book Launch | Pevsner’s Oxfordshire
From The Mellon Centre:
Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner, and Jennifer Sherwood, Oxfordshire: Oxford and the South-East, Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), 800 pages, ISBN: 978-0300209297, $85.
Book Launch with Simon Bradley, Geoffrey Tyack, and James Davies
Online, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 2 November 2023, 6pm
Simon Bradley, series editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides, will discuss the latest volume in the series with Geoffrey Tyack of Kellogg College, Oxford. The book addresses half a century of change and development since the original edition of 1974 by Nikolaus Pevsner and Jennifer Sherwood, completing the revision of Oxfordshire initiated with Alan Brooks’s North and West volume of 2017. Fresh accounts are provided of the many ambitious new buildings for the university and its colleges, familiar landmarks such as the Bodleian Library and the Radcliffe Camera are reinterpreted and the many renovations and extensions are described and assessed. Oxford’s commercial buildings, suburbs, and houses are explored in depth, including much that is published here for the first time. The accompanying county area extends from the outskirts of Oxford to Henley-on-Thames, following the historic Thames-side boundary of Oxfordshire and taking in the hills of the southern Chilterns. Here the volume includes enhanced accounts of major country houses such as Nuneham Courtenay and Thame Park, new assessments of church restorations, furnishings and stained glass, more inclusive coverage of post-war buildings, and a fuller selection of vernacular and rural architecture across the whole of this attractive and rewarding quarter of rural England. The evening will also include a contribution from James O. Davies, who will talk about the challenges and rewards of taking photographs of the region’s best buildings for the new volume.
Yale University Press is delighted to offer attendees of the virtual launch a special discount price for the new Pevsner guide to Oxfordshire. Attendees will receive a discount code with their Eventbrite confirmation email.
Book online tickets here»
Simon Bradley is series editor of the Pevsner Architectural Guides and co-author of four other Buildings of England volumes: London 1: The City, London 6: Westminster, Cambridgeshire, and Berkshire.
Geoffrey Tyack is Fellow Emeritus of Kellogg College, Oxford, where he has taught urban and architectural history for many years. He is co-author of the Pevsner Architectural Guides’ Berkshire volume and has also published widely on 19th- and 20th-century architectural subjects. His recent books include The Historic Heart of Oxford University (2022).
James Davies has worked as an architectural photographer for thirty years. He has published widely, with books on English prisons, tin mining, post-war buildings, Stonehenge, and many Pevsner volumes, as well as in magazines including Wallpaper, The World of Interiors, Country Life, and Blueprint.
New Book | Dr Andrew Coltée Ducarel
Available for pre-order from Bernard Quaritch Ltd:
Robin Myers, with Andrew Burnett and Renae Satterley, ‘I do not eat the bread of idleness’: Dr Andrew Coltée Ducarel (1713–1785), Huguenot, Advocate, Librarian, Architectural Historian, Numismatist, and Antiquary (Leicester: The Garendon Press, 2023), 264 pages, £45.
This volume brings together revised versions of four of Robin Myers’s papers on aspects of Andrew Ducarel’s life and work published between 1994 and 2002, and “The Life and Times of the Ducarel Brothers,” her recent introductory essay to Two Huguenot Brothers: Letters of Andrew and James Coltée Ducarel, 1732–1773 (The Garendon Press, 2019), which has been updated with a section by Adam Pollock on the life of the Ducarel children among other Huguenot families in Greenwich. It also contains new essays by Robin Myers on the collaboration and developing friendship between Ducarel and Philip Morant (1700–1770), historian of Essex, and on Doctors’ Commons, an institution whose name most know but few understand. To complement these, Renae Satterley, Librarian of the Middle Temple, contributes an essay on Doctors’ Commons Library, and Andrew Burnett, former Keeper of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, on Ducarel as numismatist. The appendix comprises a family tree from Ducarel to the present day, an annotated list of works of Andrew Ducarel, a timeline of Ducarel’s life, and bibliography. Penelope Bulloch, Christine Ferdinand, and Lorren Boniface helped to edit the work.
Dr Andrew Coltée Ducarel (1713–1785) and his two younger brothers were brought to England in 1722 as infants by their widowed mother fleeing persecution for her faith. Ducarel became a civilian or advocate of Doctors’ Commons, the Inn of Court specialising in Roman and Canon law which dealt with ecclesiastical law, marriage, divorce, and probate, and maritime law in the High Court of Admiralty. Ducarel made a good living as an advocate, which fully occupied him in term time, while his vacations were given to his work as Librarian of Lambeth Palace from 1754. He was an active member of the Society of Antiquaries, pioneered the study of Norman architecture, and was a keen book and coin collector.
‘I do not eat the bread of idleness’ has been designed by Robert Dalrymple. Consisting of 264 pages, measuring 285 x 170 mm, it is profusely illustrated with portraits, coins from Ducarel’s collection, plates from works by Andrew Ducarel, and other contemporary prints sourced by Penelope Bulloch; it has attractive endpapers, sewn binding, rounded and backed and an eye-catching jacket. It is designed as a companion piece to Two Huguenot Brothers and will appeal to those who appreciate excellence in book production.
The Burlington Magazine, September 2023
The eighteenth century in the September issue of The Burlington:
The Burlington Magazine 165 (September 2023)
Bed, by Ince and Mayhew, 1768, mahogany and other woods, with original blue silk ‘flowered tabby’ in the ‘Large Antique Headboard’, tester and cornice, height 356 cm (Stamford: The Burghley House Collection).
a r t i c l e r e v i e w
• Lucy Wood, “The Industry and Ingenuity of William Ince and John Mayhew,” pp. 996–1001.
Fifty years ago, the question was asked what had become of the furniture made by Ince and Mayhew, one of the most successful and long-lasting firms of cabinetmakers in eighteenth-century London? A monograph by Hugh Roberts and Charles Cator, decades in the making, provides the answer in a revelatory picture of the achievements of these rivals of Thomas Chippendale.
r e v i e w s
• Christoph Martin Vogtherr, Review of the exhibition Rosalba Carriera – Perfection in Pastel (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Zwinger, Dresden, 2023), pp. 1007–10.
• Christopher Baker, Review of the Redevelopment of the National Portrait Gallery, London (reopened in June 2023), pp. 1013–17.
• Raha Shahidi, Review of the exhibition catalogue L’Amour en scène! François Boucher, du théâtre à l’opéra, ed. by Hélène Jagot, Jessica Degain, and Guillaume Kzerouni (Éditions Snoeck, 2022), pp. 1029–31.
• Christopher Rowell, Review of Tessa Murdoch, ed., Great Irish Households: Inventories from the Long Eighteenth Century (John Adamson, 2022) and Conor Lucey, ed., House and Home in Georgian Ireland: Spaces and Cultures of Domestic Life (Four Courts Press, 2022), pp. 1038–40.
• Armin Kunz, Review of Mareike Hennig and Neela Struck, eds., Zeichnen im Zeitalter Goethes: Zeichnungen und Aquarelle aus dem Freien Deutschen Hochstift (Hirmer, 2022), pp. 1040–42.
Sewell Bequest, 2008,3008.1). Room 18 of the National Portrait Gallery, London, showing the newly acquired Portrait of Mai (Omai) by Joshua Reynolds (c. 1776) as the centrepiece of a group of eighteenth-century portraits (Photography by Dave Parry).
Print Quarterly, September 2023
The long eighteenth century in the latest issue of Print Quarterly:
Print Quarterly 40.3 (September 2023)
a r t i c l e s
• Vitalii Tkachuk, “Averkiy Kozachkovskyi and Western Sources of Kyiv Prints, 1720s–40s,” pp. 265–86.
This article features the oeuvre of the Ukrainian engraver Averkiy Kozachkovskyi (active 1721–46), whose illustrated output by the press of the Orthodox monastery Kyiv of the Caves (Kyiv Pechersk Lavra) numbers about forty engravings. He primarily produced book illustrations, but also illustrated printed oaths taken by new members of the local student confraternity. His sources derived largely from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Catholic imagery from German, Flemish, and French schools, several of which are discussed in detail throughout the article, especially the compositions of Peter Paul Rubens. Such borrowings testify to the willingness of Orthodox recipients to accept imagery—unaltered in iconography or style—stemming from other denominations and cultures. The paper contributes to our knowledge of Ukrainian engraving and to the study of the global transfer of images during the early modern period.
• Nicholas J.S. Knowles, “Thomas Rowlandson’s The Women of Muscovy and Other Russeries after Jean-Baptiste Le Prince,” pp. 287–301.
This article discusses a previously unidentified series of prints by Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827), after Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1734–1781), mentioned only as a single lot in the sale of his art collection and studio contents. No definitive set of these “Various Dresses of the Women in Muscovy” has been found, but the author has identified several substantial groups in public and private collections; the largest of these, with twenty-two prints, is in the British Museum. Most of these Rowlandson impressions reside among Le Prince originals and have previously been catalogued as by or after Le Prince. As a series overall, five hundred and forty impressions are claimed to have been produced in the lot description. The article continues with an in-depth discussion of the series and its context. An appendix lists all known impressions of Rowlandson’s Women of Muscovy prints and their location.
n o t e s a n d r e v i e w s
• Mark McDonald, Review of Susan Stewart, The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture (The University of Chicago Press, 2020), pp. 322–25. This book explores the significance of ruins in Western art and literature, paying close attention to the evidentiary role of prints and how the printmaking process parallels the ruinous lifecycle of its subject matter. In the review, Piranesi is cited as a fascinating example of creating trompe l’oeil in his prints, while later discussions focus on the discovery and metaphorical associations of Rome’s antique ruins in the eighteenth century.
• David Bindman, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Edina Adam and Julian Brooks, William Blake: Visionary (Getty Publications, 2020), pp. 330–31. This brief review pertains to a previously rescheduled, now forthcoming, exhibition on William Blake at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The author examines the collecting of Blake in America and some of the curatorial choices for this anticipated show.
• Patricia Mainardi, Review of Pascal Dupuy and Rolf Reichardt, La caricature sous le signe des révolutions. Mutations et permanences, XVIIIe–XIXe siècles (Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2021), pp. 331–34. This book and review introduce the origins and rapid development of caricature during the French Revolutionary period, focusing on how topical imagery and signs manifested into an accessible visual language capable of being understood by ordinary citizens at the time. More importantly, many of these signifying tropes, such as severed heads and raids on government buildings have become universally recognisable up to the present day.
• Mark Bills, Review of Tim Clayton, James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022), pp. 353–57. This extensive review of the latest monograph on James Gillray highlights the British artist’s unique achievements in the world of graphic satire. The book bravely tackles some of his previously neglected areas, such as very early and pornographic prints, or previously unpublished ones that can now be contextualised. The same is true of Gillray’s interplay of word and image (his titles, conversations and commentary of the images), which the author believes is Clayton’s most original piece of scholarship in this book.
• Jeannie Kenmotsu, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Hans Bjarne Thomsen, ed., Japanische Holzschnitte: Aus der Sammlung Ernst Grosse / Japanese Woodblock Prints: From the Ernst Grosse Collection (Michael Imhof Verlag, 2018), pp. 357–60. This review recognises the value of this catalogue in bringing Ernst Grosse and his collecting practices to a larger audience, especially since the Museum Natur und Mensch’s collection of Japanese woodblock prints was a historically important case of intersection between European japonisme and ethnological approaches to non-Western cultures. Most of Grosse’s acquisitions were made through the art dealer Hayashi Tadamasa.
Online Talks from The Library Company of Philadelphia
Two upcoming online events from the Visual Culture Program of The Library Company of Philadelphia:
Prints of a New Kind: Political Caricature in the United States, 1789–1828
A book talk by Dr. Allison Stagg
Friday, 20 October 2023, 1.30pm ET
Prints of a New Kind details the political strategies and scandals that inspired the first generation of American caricaturists. It examines the caricatures that mocked events reported in newspapers and politicians, the reactions captured in personal papers of the politicians being satirized, and the lives of the artists who satirized them.
Allison M. Stagg is a specialist in 18th- and 19th-century American and British visual culture and has published widely on the subject of American historical caricature. She was the Library Company 2017–18 William H. Helfand Fellow in American Visual Culture.
More information and registration details are available here»
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The Complexities of Phillis Wheatley’s Portrait
A guest lecture by Dr. Jennifer Chuong
Wednesday, 25 October 2023, 1.00pm ET
In the fall of 1773, Phillis Wheatley became the first Black woman to publish a book in the transatlantic world. Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral features an engraved frontispiece portrait of the author. This portrait aimed to portray an enslaved person who, by virtue of her intelligence, erudition, and imagination, exploded slavery’s foundational claim that enslaved persons were objects to be bought and sold. This talk explores how the portrait both supports and undercuts this aim.
Jennifer Y. Chuong is an art historian whose research centers on the art, architecture, and material culture of the transatlantic world in the 18th and 19th centuries as they relate to histories of environment and race.
More information and registration details are available here»
Exhibition | Fantastic Animals
Now on view at Lens:
Fantastic Animals / Animaux Fantastiques
Musée du Louvre-Lens, 27 September 2023 — 15 January 2024
Curated by Hélène Bouillon, with Jeanne-Thérèse Bontinck, Caroline Tureck, and Yaël Pignol
Johann Heinrich Füssli (Fuseli), Thor Fighting the Midgard Serpent, 1790, oil on canvas (London: Royal Academy of Arts).
Dragons, griffins, sphinxes, unicorns, phoenixes: present as early as Antiquity, fantastic animals inhabit the tiniest recesses of our contemporary world, from films and cartoons to everyday objects. By turns images of terror or admiration, expressions of our hidden unconscious and our anxieties, these often hybrid creatures contain within them a fundamental ambiguity. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they mean?
They share with real fauna the power to fascinate people. We confer on them a closeness to nature, a wildness mingled with wisdom. Yet these are no ordinary animals. They differ in their appearance. Gigantic, excessive and deformed, their bodies adopt the characteristics of several animals, such as a horse’s body with the wings of a bird or an eagle with a lion’s head. This extraordinary physiognomy is a reflection of their supernatural powers. Fantastic animals embody the elementary forces of nature: stormy waters and choleric gusts of wind, as well as tranquil streams and the nourishing earth. They represent their immensity, their violence, their beauty, and above all their excesses. Some of them have a face and hands and legs, which link them to the world of humans while evoking distance and danger.
Featuring more than 250 works—sculptures, paintings, and objets d’art, as well as films and music—from Antiquity to the present day, the exhibition offers a journey through time and space, retracing the history of the most famous of these animals through their legends, their powers, and their habitats. It explores our passionate relationships with these creatures whose unreal presence seems more than ever necessary.
Hélène Bouillon, ed., Animaux fantastiques: Du merveilleux dans l’art (Ghent: Snoeck Publishers, 2023), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-9461617873, €39.
Conference | Decorative Arts of the Middle East and North Africa
From ArtHist.net:
Interiors Reconfigured: Changing Materiality and Craftsmanship in the Decorative Arts of the Middle East and North Africa, 18th–20th Centuries
Vitrocentre Romont, Switzerland, 3–4 November 2023
Organized by Francine Giese, Sarah Keller and Mercedes Volait
This international conference is dedicated to the decorative arts of the Middle East and North Africa with a special focus on material aspects and local practices. In the course of profound changes since the 18th century, local tastes and craftmanship began to mutate under Ottoman and Western influence. The conference will address these changes and emphasise the growing importance of material-based analysis in the field of Middle Eastern and Maghrebi décors. Participation is free of charge; registration is required by 30 October 2023 at claudine.demierre@vitrocentre.ch.
f r i d a y , 3 n o v e m b e r 2 0 2 3
9.30 Opening Remarks
• Francine Giese (Vitrocentre Romont) and Mercedes Volait (CNRS/InVisu)
9.45 Keynote Lecture
• The Manifold Dynamics of Domestic Space and Architectural Fashion: Glimpses from Beirut, Sidon, and Cairo between the 18th and 20th Centuries — Ralph Bodenstein (German Archaeological Institute Cairo)
10.45 Coffee
11.15 Transformations
Chair: Francine Giese (Vitrocentre Romont)
• Cairene Interiors as Dynamic Spaces: The Successive Refurbishments of Manzil al-Sadat in the 19th Century — Mercedes Volait (CNRS/InVisu)
• Réorientaliser l’architecture « mauresque »: Intérieurs algériens recomposés aux XIXe et XXe siècles — Claudine Piaton (CNRS/InVisu)
• Ramsès Wissa Wassef et la rénovation de la kamariya — Leïla el-Wakil (University of Geneva)
13.00 Lunch
14.15 Materiality
Chair: Doris Behrens-Abouseif (SOAS University of London)
• A Changing Preference for Textile in Ottoman Interiors, 1705–1755 — Nazlı Songülen (Kadir Has University)
• Furnishing Fabrics: The Qalamkar Textiles in the Domestic Interiors of the Qajar, Iran — Fahimeh Ghorbani (University of Toronto)
• The Materiality of Stucco-Glass Windows in 19th-Century Egypt — Francine Giese, Sarah Keller, and Sophie Wolf (Vitrocentre Romont)
• Technical Heritage of Making Stucco and Glass Lattice Works in Iran — Amir-Hossein Karimy and Afsaneh Sobhani (Art University of Isfahan)
16.15 Coffee
16.45 Reconstructions
Chair: Sarah Keller (Vitrocentre Romont)
• František Schmoranz in Budapest: Reconstructing the Interior of the Oriental Pavilion at the 1885 National Exhibition in Budapest — Péter Nagy (Qatar Museums, Doha) and Ajla Bajramović (University of Vienna)
• The Railway Station of Bosanski Brod: A Historical and Visual Reconstruction of a Major Work of Orientalist Design in the Balkans — Maximilian Hartmuth (University of Vienna) and Malka Dizdarević (Vienna University of Technology)
• 3D Restitution of Saint-Maurice Residence in Cairo: 3D as a Tool to Monitor and Study Architectural Reuses — Vincent Baillet (Archeosciences Bordeaux)
s a t u r d a y , 4 n o v e m b e r 2 0 2 3
9.00 Nationalism, Part I
Chair: Nadia Radwan (University of Bern)
• The Reception of Glass Stucco Windows as Vernacular Element of «Turkish» Interior Decoration — Franziska Niemand (Vitrocentre Romont/University of Fribourg)
• The Bait Al-Naboodah in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates: A 19th-Century Pearl Merchant’s House between Tradition and Globalisation — Martin Nixon (Zayed University, Dubai)
10.00 Coffee
10.30 Nationalism, Part II
Chair: Ralph Bodenstein (German Archaeological Institute Cairo)
• Variations sur céramiques bleues: Concevoir l’intérieur oriental — Nadia Radwan (University of Bern)
• A Tale of Three Perspectives: Local Authenticity, Colonial Interference, and Hybridity within the Construction Methods of at-Tastīr – Moroccan Geometric Arts — El Fasiki (Craft Draft)
• Back to the Future? The 1927 ‹Arab Style› Interior of Hoda Shaarawy’s ‹House of the Egyptian Woman› as a Display of the Nation — Philipp Zobel (University of Regensburg)
12.15 Lunch
13.00 Presentation of Original Documents at Vitromusée Romont
• La Maison Tarazi: A Family-Run Furnishing Company from Beirut — Camille Tarazi (Maison Tarazi)
Exhibition | Liotard and The Lavergne Family Breakfast
The exhibition opens this fall at The National Gallery (with the press release available here) . . .
Discover Liotard and The Lavergne Family Breakfast
The National Gallery, London, 16 November 2023 — 3 March 2024
In the second of our ‘Discover’ exhibitions, which explore well-known paintings through a contemporary lens, we reunite for the first time in 250 years Swiss painter Jean-Étienne Liotard’s pastel and oil versions of The Lavergne Family Breakfast. With the pastel and oil works side by side, the exhibition presents a rare opportunity to compare the difference in technique and effect between the two.
Jean-Etienne Liotard, The Lavergne Family Breakfast, 1754, pastel on paper stuck down on canvas, 80 × 106 cm (London: National Gallery, accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by HM Government from the estate of George Pinto, 2019, NG6685).
Long regarded as Liotard’s masterpiece, The Lavergne Family Breakfast (executed in Lyon in 1754) is the artist’s largest and most ambitious work in pastel. Despite the medium’s notorious delicacy, Liotard skilfully reproduced complex textures: the sheen on the metal coffee pot, the shiny ceramic jug, the silky fabrics and reflections, in the black lacquer tray. Liotard was extremely versatile, producing works in pastel, oil, enamel, chalk, and even on glass. Highly unusually, he returned to The Lavergne Family Breakfast 20 years later to make an exact replica in oil.
Liotard (1702–1789) worked across the length and breadth of 18th-century Europe. Following four years in Constantinople, he grew a long beard, adopted Turkish dress, and nicknamed himself ‘the Turkish painter’. The exhibition showcases the raw materials used to make pastels as well as drawings, paintings, and miniatures that seek to bring this idiosyncratic artist to life.
Francesca Whitlum-Cooper, with contributions by Iris Moon, Discover Liotard & The Lavergne Family Breakfast (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), 120 pages, ISBN: 978-1857097023, $20.
Rosenberg Lecture | Aaron Wile on Inventing Genius
From the DMA:
Aaron Wile | Enlightened Inspiration: Inventing Genius in the First Age of Celebrity
Annual Rosenberg Lecture
Dallas Museum of Art, 2 November 2023, 7.00pm
François-André Vincent, Portrait of Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Choudard (called Desforges), 1789, oil on canvas (DMA, 32.2019.2).
In connection with the DMA’s annual Rosenberg Fête celebrating French painting and sculpture, Dr. Aaron Wile will present a lecture on Enlightened Inspiration: Inventing Genius in the First Age of Celebrity. Focusing on François André Vincent’s Portrait of Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Choudard (called Desforges), among other works in the Michael L. Rosenberg Collection, the talk will explore how the question “What does genius look like?” took on new urgency in the 18th century. It was during this period that our modern understanding of genius, as an individual endowed with exceptional powers of creativity and insight, emerged. Not coincidentally, it was also during this period that modern celebrity culture took shape. For the first time, thinkers, writers, and scientists became public figures, as new forms of mass media and consumerism fueled fascination with their lives and an unquenchable demand for their images. Artists responded by creating new kinds of portraits that helped define the attitudes and attributes of genius. Remarkably intimate images made for public consumption and scrutiny, these portraits raised new questions about the nature of authenticity, autonomy, and selfhood.
Aaron Wile is Associate Curator of French Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. A specialist in 17th- and 18th-century French art, he earned his MA and PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University and has held fellowships from the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art, the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities. His publications have appeared in several major journals and have received awards from the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Association of Art Museum Curators. He is currently working on an exhibition on the celebrity portrait in 18th-century London and Paris.
a d d i t i o n a l p r o g r a m m i n g
Art Activity in the Galleries
6.00–6.45pm, European Art Galleries, Level 2
Pick up a pencil and sketch pad and re-create your favorite work from the Rosenberg Collection of French painting and sculpture.
Opera in the Galleries
6.00–6.45pm, European Art Galleries, Level 2
As you browse the European Art galleries enjoy an opera performance of French arias and art songs by opera singer Amy Canchola and pianist Diane Camp.
Enfilade 
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