New Book | Building Greater Britain
Distributed by Yale UP:
G. A. Bremner, Building Greater Britain: Architecture, Imperialism, and the Edwardian Baroque Revival, 1885–1920 (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107314, £50 / $65.
This innovative study reappraises the Edwardian Baroque movement in British architecture, placing it in its wider cultural, political, and imperial contexts
The Edwardian Baroque was the closest British architecture ever came to achieving an ‘imperial’ style. With the aim of articulating British global power and prestige, it adorned civic and commercial structures both in Britain and in the wider British world, especially in the ‘white settler’ Dominions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa. Evoking the contemporary and emotive idea of ‘Greater Britain’, this new book by distinguished historian G. A. Bremner represents a major, groundbreaking study of this intriguing architectural movement in Britain and its empire. It explores the Edwardian Baroque’s significance as a response to the growing tide of anxiety over Britain’s place in the world, its widely perceived geopolitical decline, and its need to bolster confidence in the face of the Great Power rivalries of the period. Cross-disciplinary in nature, it combines architectural, political, and imperial history and theory, providing a more nuanced and intellectually wide-ranging understanding of the Edwardian Baroque movement from a material culture perspective, including its foundation in notions of race and gender.
G. A. Bremner is professor of architectural history at the University of Edinburgh, where he specializes in the history of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, with a particular focus on British imperial and colonial architecture and urbanism.
Call for Papers | Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism
Adolphe Duperly, The Destruction of the Roehampton Estate in the Parish of St. James, Jamaica, January 1832, 1833, hand colored lithograph, 29 × 41 cm. This copy of the print was sold at Christie’s on 24 April 2012; Sale 4826, Lot 282.
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From ArtHist.net and The Bartlett School of Architecture:
Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism and the Built Environment Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, 12–14 May 2023
Organized by Eva Branscome and Neal Shasore
Proposals due by 27 January 2023
Demands to ‘decolonise’ have grown louder and louder in recent years, not least in architecture, architectural history, and heritage. In Britain public monuments and spaces have loomed large in discussions about the legacies of slavery and empire and the processes of repair, from Edward Colston in Bristol and Cecil Rhodes in Oxford, to Winston Churchill, and numerous others in London—as has the ‘colonial countryside’ manifest in National Trust and English Heritage properties and their interpretation. Meanwhile, the dynamics and effects of British colonialism play out in buildings, cities, and landscapes across the world: in the reshaping of the Raj’s New Delhi by the Indian government, for example, or in the perpetuation of plantation structures in the Caribbean. In seeking to forge a decolonial architecture, architectural history, and heritage practice amid a polarised debate, it is necessary to deepen our understanding of the built environment’s complex entanglements with coloniality—not just the act of colonialism, but also the social, economic, and political relations and attitudes that spawned, sustained, and endured beyond it. Moreover, the disciplines involved in the production of knowledge about built environments and how they are formed in different temporalities and geographies must take a broader view, scrutinising not just the subjects of research, but the methods deployed and the modes used to disseminate the results. This conference focuses on the coloniality of architecture and heritage in relation to the British Empire, from the early years of expansionism and the escalation of the slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the physical and political force wielded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the development of racial capitalism, to the subsequent and ongoing struggles for independence, freedom, and justice. Contributions are welcomed that reassess the built environment in Britain and (former) British colonies in terms of its relationship to colonial systems and ideas, including but not limited to • Domestic environments • Urban environments, including streets, squares, and gardens • Factories and other sites of industrial production • Sites of assembly, leisure, and entertainment • Places of worship • Buildings for colonial administration • Infrastructure such as ports, waterways, and railways • Intercolonial networks and infrastructures • Experiences of colonial dispossession, displacement, and exclusion • Heritage sites and conservation Alongside or in the process of examining such subjects, typologies, and morphologies, we welcome reflections on the following historiographical and methodological questions: • How have the professions, disciplines, and discourses of architecture, design, and heritage been shaped by and participated in imperialism, coloniality, and racism? • What the knowledge systems and epistemologies are that construct ideas of ‘architecture’ and ‘heritage’, and what is excluded and why? • How teaching and its institutional contexts reinforce these frameworks? • How financial systems, supply chains, and concepts of tenure and relations to the land shape the production of built environments? • How does the coloniality of architecture and heritage relate to histories of extractivism and energy use? The conference organisers are Dr Eva Branscome (Bartlett School of Architecture) and Dr Neal Shasore (London School of Architecture), with advice from an International Academic Committee. We encourage participants to submit their paper to the SAHGB’s journal Architectural History for consideration. Fuller details about the conference and how to book will be publicised in due course. Abstracts of a minimum of 300 words and maximum of 500 words are invited for this major architectural history conference being held in person at the Bartlett School of Architecture in mid-May 2023. Up to three pages of images can also be supplied. However, all of the text/images in each case must be combined together into one single Acrobat PDF file for submission or else will not be accepted. We invite conventional paper proposals, but welcome other appropriate formats to our subject matter such as poster presentations, films etc. Prospective contributors should submit titles and abstracts to conference2023@sahgb.org.uk by 27 January 2023 with participation confirmed by 27 February 2023. To ensure equal treatment for all submissions, the organisers will not respond to any individual queries about the content of papers or about the thematic categories. The selection panel will assess each of the proposed papers on an anonymous basis. Applicants need to ensure that they have their own sources of funding available to take part in the conference as online presentations will not be possible. This three-day conference is hosted by The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) in collaboration with UCL and the London School of Architecture.◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Note on the image from Christie’s: “The Christmas Rebellion, also known as the Christmas Uprising and the Great Jamaican Slave Revolt of 1831–32, was a 10-day rebellion that mobilised as many as 60,000 of Jamaica’s 300,000 slave population. This lithograph illustrates the destruction of the mill yard and slave village at the Roehamton Estate owned by J.Baillie Esq., in January 1832.”Dyrham Park (NT) Acquires Painting of the Port of Bridgetown, Barbados
A View of the Port of Bridgetown, Barbados with Extensive Shipping, Anglo-Dutch or Anglo-Flemish School, 1695–1715, oil on canvas, 112 × 282 cm (National Trust, Dyrham Park, acquired in 2022). The painting hung at Dyrham Park, the home of William Blathwayt (c.1649–1717), the leading colonial administrator of his age, in a house intended to project his colonially derived status and prestige.
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Rupert Goulding’s catalogue entry for the painting, an extract of which appears here, was prepared with assistance from Phillip Emanuel, Peter van der Merwe, Louis Nelson, and Gabriella de la Rosa.
This large panorama depicts Bridgetown, the principal port city of Barbados, the most prosperous English Caribbean colony of the early eighteenth century. It was an economy based on sugar—visible through the presence of wind-powered cane mills, warehouses, wharves, and ships—and the toil of enslaved Africans, who are notably absent from the scene.
Substantial in scale, the painting is amongst very few known paintings depicting Barbados from the early eighteenth century. [1] It shows the second largest city in the English colonies, after Boston, and the town before it was partially destroyed by fire in 1766. [2]
The view is landward, showing the town and harbour beneath green hills with sugar processing windmills. Three land defences are identified with flags: James Fort to the left, Willoughby Fort in the centre, and to the right at the end of Needham’s Point lies Charles Fort jutting into Carlisle Bay. The townscape includes wharfs, stores, houses, and some substantial buildings including the Nidhe Israel Synagogue (left of centre) and St Michael’s church (right of centre). There are small rowing boats aside the shore, but no people are represented. Within the harbour are multiple armed galleons or warships, most at anchor, and flying English flags except a single Spanish ship at the centre of the composition, identifiable by the Cross of Burgundy naval, mercantile, and colonial ensign. Several ships have numerous people standing on their decks depicted in simple silhouette form, with occasional flashes of colour to indicate hats and dress. Some of the ships appear to be firing cannon in salute; they may represent a Barbados-based naval squadron or warships protecting merchant convoys. Amongst them small boats move passengers and goods in bales and barrels.
The painting is by an unknown Anglo-Dutch or Anglo-Flemish School artist of the early eighteenth century. There is a possible association with an engraving by Johannes Kip (1653–1722) A Prospect of Bridgetown in Barbados, drawn by Samuel Copen in 1695, considered the earliest view of an English Caribbean colony, which offers a similar perspective and composition. [3] Little is known about Copen, who may be part of a Flemish ‘Coppens’ family of artists active at this date. It may be coincidental that Kip also engraved Dyrham Park for inclusion in Sir Robert Atkyn’s The Ancient and Present State of Glostershire (1712), with Kip’s fee paid by William Blathwayt. [4] . . . .
The full essay is available here»
Provenance: Likely acquired by William Blathwayt as Auditor General of Plantation Revenues; potentially listed in a sale catalogue of 1765 as ‘A View of a Sea Port, Large’ (Lot 14, Day 2), or related to ‘A View of a Sea Port with Carriages, Horses, and Figures, Bridge-town, Barbados’ (Lot 21, Day 2), or to ‘A Sea View, very large, with Shipping, also Figures’ (Lot 30, Day 3); by descent to Justin Blathwayt (1913–2005), who sold Dyrham Park to the Ministry of Works in 1956; Private Collection; purchased in 2022 with support from the Art Fund, Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, a fund set up by the late Hon. Simon Sainsbury, and Mr John Maynard.
Notes
1. A picture was sold from Dyrham Park in 1765 with a similar description: A View of a Sea Port with Carriages, Horses, and Figures, Bridge-town, Barbados (Lot 21, Day 2); see the provenance above for other possible matches (it seems that not everything in the catalogue sold, and some items that did sell may have returned to the house later). A painting similar to the new acquisition—and of similar size—is in the Barbados Museum and Historical Society collection: Governor Robinson Going to Church, by an unknown early eighteenth-century artist, oil on canvas, 124 × 297 cm.
2. See Frederick Smith and Karl Watson, “Urbanity, Sociability, and Commercial Exchange in the Barbados Sugar Trade: A Comparative Colonial Archaeological Perspective on Bridgetown, Barbados in the Seventeenth Century,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 13.1 (2009): 63–79.
3. Examples found within the Library of Congress and John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
4. NT 452643.
Dr Rupert Goulding, FSA is Senior National Curator for Research, and the South West at the National Trust. He is the author of the guidebook William Blathwayt and Dyrham Park (National Trust, 2018); he co-edited (with David Taylor) the exhibition catalogue Prized Possessions: Dutch Paintings from National Trust Houses (National Trust, 2018); and he contributed a chapter to the collected volume Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties Now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery (National Trust, 2020). More recently, he co-authored, with Phillip Emanuel, “‘The Whole Story of the Cocoa’: Dyrham Park and the Painting and Planting of Chocolate in Jamaica,” Arts, Buildings, and Collections Bulletin (Autumn 2021): 5–9 (available for free download from the National Trust here); and, with Louis Nelson, the forthcoming essay “Cartography, Collecting, and the Construction of Empire at Dyrham Park,” in Global Goods and the Country House, c.1650–1800, edited by John Stobart (UCL Press, 2023). Rupert also serves on the editorial board for the National Trust’s Cultural Heritage Publishing.
New Book | St James’s Palace
From Yale UP and the Royal Collection Trust:
Simon Thurley, Rufus Bird, and Michael Turner, St James’s Palace: From Leper Hospital to Royal Court (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 308 pages, ISBN: 978-0300267464, £60 / $75.
The first modern history of St James’s Palace, shedding light on a remarkable building at the heart of the history of the British monarchy that remains by far the least known of the royal residences
In this first modern history of St James’s Palace, the authors shed new light on a remarkable building that, despite serving as the official residence of the British monarchy from 1698 to 1837, is by far the least known of the royal residences. The book explores the role of the palace as home to the heir to the throne before 1714, its impact on the development of London and the West end during the late Stuart period, and how, following the fire at the palace of Whitehall, St James’s became the principal seat of the British monarchy in 1698. The arrangement and display of the paintings and furnishings making up the Royal Collection at St James’s is chronicled as the book follows the fortunes of the palace through the Victorian and Edwardian periods up to the present day. Specially commissioned maps, phased plans, and digital reconstructions of the palace at key moments in its development accompany a rich array of historical drawings, watercolors, photographs, and plans. The book includes a foreword by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales.
Simon Thurley is a leading historian of royal palaces and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English court. Rufus Bird is a furniture specialist and former Surveyor of The Queen’s Works of Art, Royal Collection Trust. Michael Turner is an architectural historian and a former Inspector of Historic Buildings and Areas for Historic England.
C O N T E N T S
Foreword, HRH The Prince of Wales
Acknowledgments
Notes for the Readers
Simon Thurley, Introduction
1 Simon Thurley, From the Hospital of St James to the Civil War
2 Simon Thurley, The Restoration to Queen Anne
3 Rufus Bird, The Georgian Court
4 Michael Turner, George IV to the Second World War
5 Simon Thurley, The Palace Today
Notes
Abbreviations and Bibliography
Index
Illustration Credits
Plans A–D
New Book | Nicholas Barbon: Developing London, 1667–1698
From the London Topographical Society:
Frank Kelsall and Timothy Walker, Nicholas Barbon: Developing London, 1667–1698 (London: London Topographical Society, 2022), 240 pages, £35.
London grew rapidly in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and Nicholas Barbon (c.1640–1698) was central to its physical transformation. This first complete biography analyses how Barbon’s property development was closely connected to financial innovations. As a young doctor during the Plague year of 1665 Nicholas Barbon stayed in London to help victims, but thereafter his attention turned to building, to finance, and to economics. His first developments were in the City after the Great Fire. He then took advantage of the westward move of aristocratic houses to lay out streets in what had been their grounds, before building in the Temple, moving to sites in Soho and Westminster, eastwards beyond the City walls and north to Holborn. His development of Red Lion Fields (to the fury of neighbouring lawyers in Gray’s Inn) and Lamb’s Conduit Fields is discussed in detail, revealing the sophisticated—some might say ruthless—methods he used to raise funding. His speculative activity created rows of terrace houses and squares that became the norm for the city’s future development. At the same time he set up the first fire insurance company, the second bank, became an MP, and published on economic matters such as free trade and recoinage. He was in the parlance of the day a ‘projector’, and his story reveals a great deal about the way London, and Britain as a whole, was changing topographically, politically and socially in these crucial years.
2022 Berger Prize for British Art History
From The British Art Journal, with the full long list available here:
Adriano Aymonino’s Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland is the winner of the 2022 William MB Berger Prize for British Art History.
The annual prize was created in 2001 to recognize excellence in the field of British art history by the Berger Collection Educational Trust and The British Art Journal in honor of the late American collector and patron William M. B. Berger (1925–1999), who amassed a serious collection of British paintings, which was gifted to the Denver Art Museum in 2019.
S H O R T L I S T
• David Alexander, A Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Engravers, 1714–1820 (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022), 1120 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107215, £75.
• Adriano Aymonino, Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107178, £50.
• Manolo Guerci, London’s ‘Golden Mile’: The Great Houses of the Strand, 1550–1650 (London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2021), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107239, £50.
• Kenneth McConkey, Towards the Sun: The Artist-Traveller at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021), 260 pages, ISBN: 978-1913645083, £50.
• Cicely Robinson, ed, Henry Scott Tuke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300265842, £20 / £30.
1 8 t h – C E N T U R Y O F F E R I N G S O N T H E L O N G L I S T
• David Alexander, A Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Engravers, 1714–1820 (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022), 1120 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107215, £75.
• Malcolm Andrews, A Sweet View: The Making of an English Idyll (London: Reaktion Books, 2022), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-1789144987, £35.
• Adriano Aymonino, Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107178, £50.
• Rosemary Baird Andreae, Huguenots, Apothecaries, Gardeners and Squires: The Garniers of Rookesbury, Hampshire (Exeter: Short Run Press, 2021), 52 pages, ISBN: 978-0907473237, £10.
• Tristram Hunt, The Radical Potter: The Life and Times of Josiah Wedgwood (Metropolitan Books, 2021), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-1250128348, £25.
• François Marandet, with prefaces by Emmanuelle Delapierre and Robin Simon, Louis Chéron (1655–1725): L’ambition du dessin parfait (Ballan-Miré: Illustria Librairie des Musées, 2022), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-2354040956, 30€.
• Simon Martin, Drawn to Nature: Gilbert White and the Artists (Chichester: Pallant House Gallery, distributed by Yale University Press, 2022), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1869827755, £25.
• Susan Sloman, Gainsborough in London (London: Modern Art Press, 2021), 412 pages, ISBN: 978-0956800787, £35.
• Cathryn Spence, Nature’s Favourite Child: Thomas Robins and the Art of the Georgian Garden (Bradford-on-Avon: Stephen Morris, 2021), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-1838472634, £40.
• David Stacey, Art and Industry: Seven Artists in Search of an Industrial Revolution in Britain (London: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2021), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1913491291, £25.
• Allen Staley, Copley and West in England, 1775–1815 (London: Burlington Press, 2021), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1916237803, £35.
• Christina Strunck, Britain and the Continent, 1660–1727: Political Crisis and Conflict Resolution in Mural Paintings at Windsor, Chelsea, Chatsworth, Hampton Court and Greenwich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 528 pages, ISBN: 978-3110729610, £29.
• Adrian Tinniswood, Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House (New York: Vintage Publishing, 2021), 416 pages, ISBN: 978-1787331785, £30.
• Joseph Viscomi, William Blake’s Printed Paintings: Methods, Origins, Meanings (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107208, £40.
Decorative Arts Trust Announces Failey Grant Recipients for 2023
The British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO) project researches makers such as Giles Grendey, whose 1735–40 card table is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection; lacquered and gilded beech, lined with felt (New York: The Met, Gift of Louis J. Boury, 1937, 37.114).
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From the press release:
The Decorative Arts Trust announced that the 2023 Dean F. Failey Grant recipients will be British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (BIFMO) in London, England; The Center for Painted Wall Preservation (CPWP) in Hallowell, Maine; Preservation Long Island (PLI) in Cold Spring Harbor, New York; and Stenton in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Failey Grant program provides support for noteworthy research, exhibition, publication, and conservation projects through the Dean F. Failey Fund, named in honor of the Trust’s late Governor. Preference is given to projects that employ or are led by emerging professionals in the museum field. Failey Grant applications are due October 31 annually.
Anne Reckless Emlen, Shellwork grotto, 1757, Philadelphia (Stenton, The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania).
• BIFMO will hire interns to research immigrant tradespeople in New York City, Philadelphia, Annapolis, and Baltimore under the guidance of BIFMO managing editor Laurie Lindey, digital editor Jonathan Blaney, and BIFMO project manager Adriana Turpin.
• CPWP will develop a virtual museum of historic painted interiors under the direction of project coordinators Margaret Gaertner and Linda Carter Lefko.
• PLI will produce the book Promoting Long Island: The Art of Edward Lange, 1870–1889, edited by PLI curator Lauren Brincat and PLI curatorial fellow Peter Fedoryk with essays from these editors as well as from Jennifer L. Anderson, Thomas Busciglio-Ritter, Sarah Kautz, and Joshua Ruff.
• Stenton, a historic house museum administered by The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, will conserve a 1757 shellwork grotto by Anne Reckless Emlen, led by Stenton curator Laura Keim, Stenton curatorial assistant Kaila Temple, and conservator Lara Kaplan.
More information is available here»
Call for Papers | Soundscapes of Naples
From ArtHist.net:
Soundscapes of Naples: From the Medieval to the Early Modern
Naples, 8–9 June 2023
Proposals due by 31 January 2023
Musical practices are inherently woven into a city’s urban fabric: as marker of identity, expression of religious devotion, sonic manifestation of power, or form of entertainment, musicking punctuates the salient moments of a city’s culture. In Naples, for centuries a cultural and political capital and among the most densely populated cities in Europe, music making has always occupied a prominent position in the soundscape of public and private, sacred and secular spaces.
The interdisciplinary conference, Soundscapes of Naples: From the Medieval to the Early Modern, aims to map intersections between the performative dimension of music making and the city’s spaces and places. The organizing committee invites proposals that focus on physical venues (churches, monasteries, theaters, aristocratic palaces, schools, the public piazza, and so on, including their visual programs) as they interface with music performance and production. We welcome proposals on musicking as a cultural practice from musicologists as well as scholars from sister disciplines, including art and architectural history, archaeology, history, literary studies, and anthropology, on themes and approaches such as manuscript and print production, archival studies, music and gender, patronage/matronage, performance practice, history of the senses, acoustics, history of pedagogy, relationships between music and specific works of art, notions of ability/disability, and instrument making.
Proposals should include a curriculum vitae, a brief narrative biography (max. 150 words), and an abstract (max. 350 words), and may be in either Italian or English. The abstract should also indicate the topic’s relevance to the themes outlined above, and whether the proposed contribution could take the form of a presentation on-site at the monument under discussion. Final presentations (20 minutes) may be made in Italian or English. Please combine these materials in a single Word or PDF document with Lastname_Firstname as the title, and send to lacapraia@gmail.com by 31 January 2023. Selected participants will be notified in mid-February 2023.
Soundscapes of Naples: From the Medieval to the Early Modern is coorganized by the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities ‘La Capraia’ (a partnership between the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas and the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte) and the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin.
Call for Papers | Ledoux’s Lectures de L’architecture
The Call for Papers from Fabula:
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux dans le texte: Lectures de L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs et de la législation (1804)
Saline royale d’Arc-et-Senans, 1–3 June 2023
Proposals due by 31 December 2022
Colloque de clôture du projet Ledoux 2020–2023
Architecture, littérature, philosophie et société au tournant des Lumières : L’Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’Art des mœurs et de la législation de Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, une édition numérique
(Labex Les Passés dans le Présent, Université Paris-Nanterre)
L’Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’Art, des mœurs et de la législation, que l’architecte Claude-Nicolas Ledoux fait paraître en 1804, deux ans avant sa mort, est l’ouvrage le plus célèbre et le texte plus fascinant de toute l’architecture moderne européenne. Premier tome d’une oeuvre monument qui devait en compter cinq, cet ouvrage testamentaire au “style magique et poétique” (Cellerier) fait figure de véritable OVNI dans la production architecturale de l’époque. Ledoux y travaille pendant trente années pour l’élaboration de l’illustration (près de 500 planches, dont 125 publiées en 1804), et pendant près de dix ans pour établir un texte de 240 pages. Il conçoit ainsi une œuvre à la mesure de son ambition artistique totale. Or, parmi l’immense bibliographie et historiographie sur Ledoux, essentiellement consacrée à l’œuvre bâti et projeté, le livre lui-même et le texte de L’Architecture… n’ont que rarement fait l’objet d’études approfondies et a fortiori exclusives. Quant aux études littéraires, pourtant en pleine réévaluation de cette période du tournant des Lumières, elles l’ont plutôt négligé.
Dans la lignée des travaux pionniers de Béatrice Didier (qui avait tenté, la première, de situer la plume de Ledoux dans le contexte littéraire du tournant des Lumières), de Mona Ozouf (qui s’intéressa à la représentation livresque de Chaux) et des grandes analyses de Daniel Rabreau (qui a replacé l’écriture mythologique et poétique dans le projet esthétique global de Ledoux), ce colloque se propose de jeter toute la lumière possible sur le livre, la représentation de l’architecture, le texte et l’écriture de Ledoux, dans une approche et un esprit résolument interdisciplinaire, seule démarche à même, par le croisement des regards d’historiens, d’historiens de l’art, d’historiens des idées, de spécialistes de littérature ou de rhétorique…, de percer la densité et l’épaisseur des strates de sens de ce livre hiéroglyphe.
Cette rencontre plurielle, autour du texte de Ledoux, est le point d’aboutissement d’une démarche collective qui a engagé une quinzaine de chercheurs au sein du projet LEDOUX 2020–2023 du Labex Les Passés dans le Présent (université de Paris-Nanterre) dans la réalisation d’une édition scientifique et collaborative de l’Architecture, comportant un double volet, papier et numérique.
Accueilli par la Saline d’Arc-et-Senans, institution partenaire du projet LEDOUX, le colloque sera donc l’occasion de partager les acquis de ce travail collectif et de l’enrichir en l’ouvrant aux apports de chercheurs extérieurs.
Ces lectures de Ledoux, pourront, sans exclusive, explorer les dimensions suivantes :
La fabrique du texte de L’Architecture
Au-delà de la chronologie globale proposée par Gallet et Vidler, qui situe la rédaction entre son emprisonnement à la Force pendant la Terreur et le début du XIXe siècle, comment retracer une généalogie du texte de Ledoux ? Comment L’Architecture trouve-t-elle à s’inscrire dans un réseau d’autres textes connus de Ledoux (le Manuscrit Calonne, les extraits de la correspondance ou encore le Prospectus de 1803) qui pourraient en éclairer la genèse et la singularité ?
Quels éclairages peut apporter l’analyse du vaste réseau d’intertextes qui travaille L’Architecture et qui attend encore de véritables enquêtes d’archéologie textuelle et culturelle ? Entre Anciens (Homère, Ovide, Virgile, Plutarque, Lucien, Cicéron, César, Tacite…) et Modernes (La Fontaine, Fénelon, Diderot, Voltaire, mais aussi Shakespeare, Milton, Thomson, ou encore Gresset ou Gluck…), entre influences (d’une forme, d’un genre..), réécritures (d’un topos, d’un motif) voire reprises et citations (d’un extrait, d’un passage…), quelles formes prennent ces réappropriations littéraires multiples ? Comment participent-elles concrètement de la fabrique de l’imaginaire esthétique et historique ? Sous l’empreinte fièrement revendiquée que l’architecte laisse dans la pierre, quelle figure de l’écrivain ces emprunts, plutôt souterrains, dessinent-ils ? Et pour quels lecteurs ? Des “enfants chéris d’Apollon”, auxquels Ledoux s’adresse explicitement, jusqu’aux lecteurs d’aujourd’hui, comment a-t-on lu et lit-on encore Ledoux ? Avec quelle culture ? Pour quelle expérience ?
La fabrique des idées : Ledoux, penseur des Lumières ?
L’Architecture peut bel et bien être envisagée comme une formidable chambre d’échos, au crépuscule du siècle, de la pensée des Lumières. On pourra dès lors s’interroger sur les façons dont se diffusent et se cristallisent, dans le texte, ces grands courants de pensée qui traversent le demi-siècle : le sensualisme, auquel sont acquis de nombreux architectes, l’héritage encyclopédiste, la sensibilité rousseauiste, la pensée économique et physiocratique, la religion comme morale…
Dans quelle mesure Ledoux fait-il siennes ces idées partagées par le siècle ? Avec quelle singularité et quelle solidité ? Quel type de philosophe est-il ?
La fabrique des images : fiction et figurations
Les réflexions pourront aussi se réunir autour de la notion centrale d’image, au carrefour des enjeux propre à l’écriture, à l’illustration et à la théorie de la création artistique.
De quelle manière l’image travaille-t-elle en profondeur l’écriture et la langue de Ledoux ? Avec quels héritages rhétoriques ? Quels usages de l’univers mythologique ? Selon quelles modalités stylistiques (innovations lexicales, constructions syntaxiques) ? Pour quels réseaux de sens, entre unité et dissémination ?
Comment l’imagination (celle de l’architecte comme celle du lecteur) s’invite-t-elle au cœur du pacte de fiction qui commande le récit (avec le périple romanesque du voyageur) ou encore la description (avec le recours incessant à une esthétique du tableau, qu’on pourra interroger) ?
Enfin, quels types de relations les images textuelles entretiennent-elles avec les images gravées ?
L’histoire et la théorie des arts et de l’architecture
Comment situer l’entreprise éditoriale de Ledoux dans l’histoire du livre et de la théorie d’architecture, tant à l’époque moderne (une histoire qui reste d’ailleurs à écrire, malgré des travaux consacrés à l’Italie ou encore l’Angleterre) qu’au début du XIXe siècle, (période charnière pour l’édition en général et le livre d’architecture en particulier) ? Que représente L’Architecture, entre le Livre d’architecture de Boffrand (1745), les grandes monographies de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, comme la Description des écoles de chirurgie de Gondouin (1780), et les recueils de modèles du début du siècle suivant, comme l’Architecture civile de Dubut (1803) ou les recueils de Krafft, et les ouvrages pédagogiques, comme le Précis des leçons d’architecture de Durand (1802–1805) ? Quels liens le projet de Ledoux entretient-il avec d’autres écrits théoriques, aux ambitions parfois littéraires, comme les textes de Boullée et les Lettres sur l’architecture de Viel de Saint-Maux (1779), par exemple ?
Mais c’est aussi le rapport que l’architecte entretient avec l’Antiquité et les œuvres modernes, la Renaissance italienne et la création française des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, qu’il est possible d’examiner plus précisément à la lecture fine du texte de L’Architecture. Quelle est donc la culture architecturale de Ledoux ? Est-elle simplement livresque pour ce qui regarde les sites et édifices lointains ? N’a-t-il jamais vraiment fait l’expérience des sites antiques et des monuments modernes qu’il décrit à l’appui d’une démonstration ? Enfin, comment s’exprime, dans son texte, l’admiration inspiratrice qu’il porte aux peintres, aux sculpteurs, mais aussi l’intérêt qu’il montre pour l’art des jardins ?
Les propositions de communications (3000 signes maximum) sont à envoyer avant le 31 décembre 2022.
à : fabrice.moulin@parisnanterre.fr, dominiquemassounie@gmail.com
Comité d’organisation
• Fabrice Moulin, Paris-Nanterre, CSLF (litt&phi / ILHAM)
• Dominique Massounie, Paris-Nanterre, H-Mod/HAR
• Isabelle Sallé, Saline royale d’Arc-et-Senans
Comité scientifique
• Emmanuel Chateau-Dutier, professeur agrégé, université de Montréal
• Marianne Cojannot-Le Blanc, professeure, université Paris-Nanterre
• Michel Delon, professeur émérite, université Paris-Sorbonne
• Colas Duflo, professeur, Paris-Nanterre, IUF
• Hugues Marchal, professeur-assistant, université de Bâle, IUF
• Elise Pavy-Guilbert, maîtresse de conférences, université Bordeaux-Montaigne, IUF
Sweden Nationalmuseum Acquires Portrait of Marie-Gabrielle Capet
From the press release:
Unknown French artist, Portrait of Marie-Gabrielle-Capet, 1780s, oil on canvas (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 7658).
Nationalmuseum has acquired a portrait of Marie-Gabrielle Capet, a French painter of pastels and miniatures. The portrait depicts the artist in the 1780s, when she was a close associate of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, one of the most celebrated portrait painters of the day, and her future husband François-André Vincent. There is ample evidence to suggest that it was Vincent who painted this portrait of the young Capet.
Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) was born in Lyon in humble circumstances. Thanks to well-connected acquaintances, in her twenties she became a pupil of the portrait painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, who was known for taking on female pupils only. Evidence of their close relationship can be seen in Labille-Guiard’s large self-portrait from 1785, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Capet appears beside her teacher, along with another pupil, Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond. Labille-Guiard was one of the few female members of the French academy of fine arts, where she was a tireless advocate for women’s rights. In her personal life, she had a long-term relationship with her colleague François-André Vincent. In 1792 they bought a house together, where Capet also moved in.
The recently acquired portrait was likely painted a few years earlier. Labille-Guiard and Vincent both used their protégée Capet as a model, and there are several sketches of her as such, although none can be directly tied to the painting acquired by Nationalmuseum. The portrait shows her in a near-frontal pose, turning slightly to meet the onlooker with a piercing but gentle gaze, which betrays the close relationship between model and artist. The saturated colours and cohesive, symmetrical composition point to Vincent as the likely creator; these stylistic features had long made him Jacques-Louis David’s main rival in neoclassical painting.
In many respects, this portrait of Marie-Gabrielle Capet is a representation of a remarkable home, where artistic coworking and domestic roles were commingled. In an artistic sense, Capet seems to have been wholly dependent on her teacher Labille-Guiard. After the latter’s death in 1808, Capet continued looking after Vincent, whom she called ‘father’, until he died in 1816. Capet herself died only two years later, at the age of just 57, apparently from a broken heart and incapable of continuing her painting career.
“This portrait of Marie-Gabrielle Capet is notable for its unusually strong sense of presence. We really get the feeling of standing eye to eye with the model,” said Magnus Olausson, head of collections at Nationalmuseum. “With this acquisition, we can add another piece of the puzzle to the others in our collection spotlighting the great French female artists of the 18th century. So we are delighted that this significant work will shortly go on display at Nationalmuseum.”
The portrait of Marie-Gabrielle Capet will be on display in the 18th-century painting gallery from 1 February 2023.
Nationalmuseum receives no state funds with which to acquire design, applied art and artwork; instead the collections are enriched through donations and gifts from private foundations and trusts. This acquisition has been funded by a generous donation from the Sophia Giesecke bequest.
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