Enfilade

From Yale UP:

Carmontelle, Garden at Monceau, edited by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and Joseph Disponzio, translated by Andrew Ayers, with an introductory essay by Laurence Chatel de Brancion and contributions from Joseph Disponzio, Florence Gétreau, David L. Hays, Elizabeth Hyde, Susan Taylor-Leduc, Caroline Weber, and Gabriel Wick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 196 pages, ISBN: 978-0300254686, $75.

Carmontelle’s landmark publication, Garden at Monceau, beautifully reproduced to show the Parisian garden’s artistic and cultural importance before the French Revolution.

Originally published in 1779, Garden at Monceau is a richly illustrated presentation of the garden Louis Carrogis, known as Carmontelle, designed on the eve of the French Revolution for Louis-Philippe-Joseph d’Orléans, duc de Chartres. With its array of architectural follies intended to surprise and amaze the visitor, the garden was a setting for ancien régime social life. Carmontelle’s portrayal of his work in Garden at Monceau therefore serves as an expression of a key moment in the history of European landscape design, garden architecture, and social history. This facsimile edition, with its English-language text and reproductions of the original engravings, is accompanied by essays that interpret the landscape design and examine Carmontelle’s larger career as a painter and theater producer.

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers is the president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies, New York. Joseph Disponzio is a landscape architect with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

From Bloomsbury:

Mark Ledbury and Robert Wellington, eds., The Versailles Effect: Objects, Lives, and Afterlives of the Domaine (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1501357787, $120.

The essays in this volume show that Versailles was not the static creation of one man, but a hugely complex cultural space: a centre of power, but also of life, love, anxiety, creation, and an enduring palimpsest of aspirations, desires, and ruptures. The splendour of the Château and the masterpieces of art and design that it contains mask a more complex and sometimes more sordid history of human struggle and achievement. The case studies presented by the contributors to this book cannot provide a comprehensive account of the Palace of Versailles and its domains, the life within its walls, its visitors, and the art and architecture that it has inspired from the seventeenth century to the present day. However, this innovative collection will reshape—or even radically redefine—our understanding of the palace of Versailles and its posterity.

Mark Ledbury is Power Professor of Art History & Visual Culture and Director of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney. He is the author of James Northcote, History Painting, and the Fables (2014) and Sedaine, Greuze, and the Boundaries of Genre (2000). He is also the editor of three books, including Fictions of Art History (2013).

Robert Wellington is Senior Lecturer in Art History & Art Theory at the Australian National University. He is the Book Placement Editor for Early Modern Art History Studies (1500–1800) for H-France and serves on the advisory board for Bloomsbury’s Material Culture of Art & Design book series. His monograph Antiquarianism and the Visual Histories of Louis XIV: Artifacts for a Future Past was published in 2015.

C O N T E N T S

Enduring Versailles — Robert Wellington and Mark Ledbury

Part I. Making the Palace
1  The Other Palace: Versailles and the Louvre — Hannah Williams (Queen Mary University)
2  The Grands Décors of Charles Le Brun: Between Plan and Serendipity — Bénédicte Gady (Musée des Arts Décoratifs)
3  Artisans du Roi: Collaboration at the Gobelins, Louvre and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture under the Influence of the Petite Académie — Florian Knothe (University of Hong Kong)
4  Rough Surfaces: Etching Louis XIV’s Grotto at Versailles — Louis Marchesano (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

Part II. Versailles Life
5  Porcelain and Power: The Meaning of Sèvres Porcelain in Ancien Regime France — Matthew Martin (National Gallery of Victoria)
6  Hair, Politics, and Power at the Court of Versailles — Kimberly Chrisman Campbell (Independent scholar, USA)
7  The Politics of Attachment: Visualizing Young Louis XV and His Governess — Mimi Hellman (Skidmore College)
8  Courting Favour: The Apartments of the Princesse de Lamballe at Versailles, 1767–1789 — Sarah Grant (Victoria and Albert Museum)

Part III. Outsiders
9  Enslaved Muslims at the Sun King’s Court — Meredith Martin (New York University) and Gillian Weiss (Case Western Reserve University)
10  A Turk in the Hall of Mirrors — David Maskill (University of Wellington)
11  Cornelis Hop (1685–1762), Dutch Ambassador to the Court of Louis XV — Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Part IV. Versailles Now
12  Melancholy, Nostalgia, Dreams: Adventures in the Grand Cimetière Magique — Mark Ledbury (University of Sydney)
13  American Versailles: From the Gilded Age to Generation Wealth — Robert Wellington (Australian National University)

Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index

From Bloomsbury:

Helen Jacobsen, Rufus Bird, and Mia Jackson, eds., Jean-Henri Riesener: Cabinetmaker to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2021), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1781300909, £50 / $100.

Jean-Henri Riesener (1734–1806) was one of the greatest French cabinetmakers of all time. From humble beginnings as a German immigrant in Paris, he found fame through the delivery of a magnificent roll-top desk to Louis XV in 1769 and went on to become Marie-Antoinette’s favourite cabinetmaker, supplying the queen and the court of Louis XVI with sumptuous furniture of superb quality. Renowned for his exquisite marquetry and refined designs, his pieces were ornamented with spectacular gilt-bronze mounts made by some of the greatest metalworkers in Paris. In the nineteenth century, Riesener’s name became associated with the very best of Louis XVI-period French furniture; his pieces continue to be highly sought after and are found in major museums worldwide.

This first major monograph on Riesener traces his life and career, bringing new insights into his business practice, his designs, and construction techniques. Based on the extensive collections of Riesener furniture in the Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor, and the Royal Collection, the authors examine the objects and their history and highlight the changing tastes of the nineteenth-century collectors who acquired so many former French royal pieces. The new illustrations and visual glossary add another important resource for art historians, decorative arts enthusiasts, and furniture lovers.

Helen Jacobsen is Senior Curator and Curator of French Eighteenth-Century Decorative Arts at the Wallace Collection. Rufus Bird is Surveyor of The Queen’s Works of Art. Mia Jackson is Curator of Decorative Arts at Waddesdon Manor.

C O N T E N T S

The Cabinetmaker
• Christian Baulez, Jean-Henri Riesener: A Portrait Sketch
• Laura Langelüddecke, A German in Paris
• Carolyn Sargentson, Jean-Henri Riesener and the Business of Furniture-Making
• Lindsay Macnaughton, A Question of Language: The Royal Furniture Administration’s Accounts
• Mia Jackson, ‘Executed in the Taste of Painting’: Riesener’s Marquetry Designs
• Juliet Carey, Jean-Henri Riesener: The Portraits

The Collectors
• Rufus Bird, From Versailles to Windsor Castle: George IV and Riesener
• Helen Jacobsen, Alteration and Appropriation: The 4th Marquess of Hertford and the Taste for Riesener
• Ulrich Leben, Riesener and the Rothschilds at Waddesdon Manor
• Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide, Buying from Britain: The Development of a New Market

The Furniture
• Works in the Wallace Collection, the Royal Collection, and Waddesdon Manor

The Materials and Techniques
• Jürgen Huber, Materials and Techniques
• Alexander Collins, Visual Glossary

From Bloomsbury:

Susanna Avery-Quash and Barbara Pezzini, eds., Old Masters Worldwide: Markets, Movements and Museums, 1789–1939 (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1501348143, $130.

As a result of the Napoleonic wars, vast numbers of Old Master paintings were released on to the market from public and private collections across continental Europe. The knock-on effect was the growth of the market for Old Masters from the 1790s up to the early 1930s, when the Great Depression put an end to its expansion. This book explores the global movement of Old Master paintings and investigates some of the changes in the art market that took place as a result of this new interest. Arguably, the most important phenomenon was the diminishing of the traditional figure of the art agent and the rise of more visible, increasingly professional, dealerships; firms such as Colnaghi and Agnew’s in Britain, Goupil in France, and Knoedler in the USA, came into existence. Old Masters Worldwide explores the ways in which the pioneering practices of such businesses contributed to shape a changing market.

Susanna Avery-Quash is Senior Research Curator (History of Collecting) at The National Gallery London. Barbara Pezzini is a prolific writer on European Old Masters and British art of the period 1830–1970; she has previously worked in curatorial, research, and archival projects for The National Gallery, National Trust, and The Burlington Magazine.

C O N T E N T S

List of Figures
Series Editor’s Introduction, Kathryn Brown
Foreword, Gabriele Finaldi
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Introduction, Susanna Avery-Quash and Barbara Pezzini

Part I: Developing European Networks, 1780–1894
1  The European Market for Italian Old Masters after Napoleon — Robert Skwirblies (Technische Universität Berlin)
2  Old Masters from Rome to London: Alexander Day and Pietro Camuccini — Pier Ludovico Puddu (Palacký University, Czech Republic)
3  Selling Old Masters in Britain, France, and the Netherlands: The Networking Strategies of John Smith — Julia Armstrong-Totten (Independent Scholar, USA)
4  A Web of Agents: Buying Old Masters for the National Gallery, London — Susanna Avery-Quash (National Gallery, UK)

Part II: Gaining International Visibility and Expertise, 1850–1909
5  Old Masters versus Modern Art in Parisian Auctions — Léa Saint-Raymond (Université Paris Nanterre)
6  Agnew’s from Modern Art to the Old Masters — Barbara Pezzini (Independent Scholar, UK)
7  Taste or Opportunity? Durand-Ruel and Spanish Old Masters — Véronique Gerard Powell (Independent Scholar, France)
8  Authority and Expertise in the Old Master Market: Bode and Duveen — Catherine Scallen (Case Western Reserve University)
9  Scholar, Dealer, and Museum Man: Robert Langton Douglas in the International Old Master Market — Imogen Tedbury (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Part III: Casting a Wider Web, 1900–1939
10  A Missed Opportunity? Goupil and the Old Masters — Agnès Penot (Independent Scholar, USA)
11  Knoedler and Old Masters in America — Inge Reist (The Frick Collection)
12  Trust, Friendship, and Politics in the Old Master Market: Duveen and the State Art Collection of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia — Jelena Todorovic (Faculty of Fine Arts, Serbia)
13  Negotiating Old Masters for the Melbourne National Gallery — Monique Webber (The University of Melbourne and Monash University Art Design and Architecture)
14  The Distant Old Masters of South Africa — Jillian Carman (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)

Select Bibliography
Author Biographies
Index