Lecture | Marie-Antoinette and Josephine as Garden Patrons
From the BGC:
Susan Taylor-Leduc | Designing Legacy: Marie-Antoinette and Josephine as Garden Patrons
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 7 February 2018
During the tumultuous forty years from 1774 until 1814, when the French government was transformed from monarchy to empire, Queen Marie-Antoinette and Empress Josephine Bonaparte created picturesque gardens at the Petit Trianon, Versailles, and Malmaison respectively. The captivating life stories of both women have elicited critiques of their garden patronage, suggesting that they pursued insatiable desires unfettered by financial constraints, detached from political and social realities. This talk suggests an alternative reading: Taylor-Leduc contends that both women constituted living legacies of female empowerment that were essential to the creation and dissemination of the picturesque garden and as such contributed to the evolution of modern landscape architecture in France. This Brown Bag Lunch presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, February 7, at 12:15pm.
Susan Taylor-Leduc earned both her masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1992, she has worked as a teacher, curator, university administrator, and tour guide in Paris. A specialist in eighteenth-century French gardens, she is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Designing Legacy: Marie-Antoinette, Josephine and the French Picturesque Garden 1774–1814.
This event will be livestreamed. Please check back the day of the event for a link to the video. To watch videos of past events please visit the BGC YouTube page.
Display | New Discoveries in Philadelphia Slipware
18th-century Slipware Ceramics, excavated from the site of the new Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
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Press release, via Art Daily:
Buried Treasure: New Discoveries in Philadelphia Slipware from the Collection of the Museum of the American Revolution
New York Ceramics and Glass Fair, 18–21 January 2018
A remarkable assemblage of 18th-century slipware ceramics uncovered during an archaeological excavation in Philadelphia has been revealed to the public for the first time. Nearly a dozen pieces of slipware, a form of decorative lead-glazed pottery, are on view at the 2018 New York Ceramics and Glass Fair from Thursday, January 18 until Sunday, January 21, at Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan. Buried Treasure: New Discoveries in Philadelphia Slipware from the Collection of the Museum of the American Revolution is sponsored by Ceramics in America, which is published by the Chipstone Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Museum of the American Revolution. After the exhibit, the items will be returned to the Museum for future display.
The slipware was uncovered during excavations on the site of the new Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, during which archaeologists from Commonwealth Heritage Group recovered nearly 85,000 artifacts. Among these was a group of slipware ceramics, including large dishes and other items, distinguished by vivid abstract patterns created using a specialized skill known as ‘slip trailing’, which involves pouring liquid clay onto an object.
The pieces were discovered in a brick-lined privy shaft associated with one or more taverns. Current research suggests that these previously undocumented slipwares were made in Philadelphia by one or more French or German potters operating within the confines of the historic Old City district. Researchers believe that, although the pieces primarily had display value, they may have been used for serving as well.
“We’ve seen hints of this type of slipware before but nothing that has this degree of intactness and comprehensiveness as far as the patterns exhibited here,” said Robert Hunter, editor of the annual journal Ceramics in America, an author, and archaeologist. “Nothing else has been this complete. By virtue of that intactness, we have been able to make great bounds in what we can learn from them about who made them and how they were used.”
“The site of the Museum of the American Revolution is the gift that keeps on giving,” said Hunter. “There is no question that it has been an extremely rich deposit of 18th-century material culture. And we’ve only scratched the surface—I believe it will be many years before we fully realize the research potential from the materials from the site.”
In addition to the slipware, a newly analyzed decorated porcelain teapot is on display. The teapot was discovered to be only the second-known example of American-made hard-paste porcelain. The first example was the ‘Holy Grail’ bowl exhibited last year. Historical research by Hunter and Miller has now suggested that this porcelain was being made in the period around 1765–68, earlier than the previously known Bonnin and Morris porcelain Factory which opened in 1770. This new discovery changes the complexion of the history of porcelain making both in Philadelphia and the larger American context. The findings will be discussed in depth in an upcoming article in Ceramics in America.
“What is so exciting about this discovery is that it is a reminder of the importance of archaeology in colonial urban sites like Philadelphia,” said Dr. R. Scott Stephenson, Vice President of Collections, Exhibitions, and Programming at the Museum of the American Revolution. “The materials recovered on these sites require years of research to fully appreciate, and so these treasures from the Museum site will continue to provide new insight into Revolutionary America.”
Archaeologists from Commonwealth Heritage Group, Inc. conducted fieldwork at the site of the new Museum of the American Revolution from July through October 2014 and briefly in April 2015 and May 2016, uncovering a record of occupation from the earliest settlement of Philadelphia through the mid-20th century. Most of the artifacts were found in brick-lined privy and well shafts. The features contained an enormous quantity of of ceramics, including locally made Philadelphia objects and imported English, German, and Chinese wares, among other artifacts.
New Acquisitions at the DIA
Press release (18 December 2017) from the DIA:
Out of the Crate: New Gifts and Purchases
Detroit Institute of Arts, opened January 12
Attributed to Juan Pascual de Mena, Saint Benedict of Palermo, 1770–80, coniferous wood, pigment, gold (Detroit Institute of Art).
The Detroit Institute of Arts opened a gallery dedicated to some of the museum’s newest acquisitions while also providing the public with a look at the art acquisition process. The gallery, called Out of the Crate: New Gifts & Purchases, opened January 12.
A selection of recent purchases and gifts chosen by DIA Director Salvador Salort-Pons are on view for approximately six months, after which they will be replaced with newer acquisitions. “The DIA has one of the most significant art collections in the United States, and one way we maintain this quality is by acquiring new artworks every year,” said Salort-Pons. “Thanks to generous donors, the DIA has been able to establish funds designated for art acquisitions only, with which we are able to strengthen our collection. This gallery offers a transparent look at the DIA’s collecting process and policies while giving visitors a first look at both recent purchases and gifts.”
Before the DIA acquires a work of art, it goes through a rigorous assessment to ensure its quality and authenticity. Informational materials will provide an overview of the entire process, from initial research to approval by the board of directors, and the roles various experts play along the way.
Seven artworks are featured in the first installation:
• Attributed to Juan Pascual de Mena, Saint Benedict of Palermo, 1770–80, coniferous wood, pigment, gold. Museum purchase.
• Unknown artist, Maternity Figure (Obaahemaa), 19th century, Akan (Asante), African, wood with pigment. Museum purchase.
• James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Salute Dawn, 1879, etching with drypoint. Museum purchase.
• Lajos Mack, Vase, ca. 1900, slip-cast ceramic with eosin glazes. Gift of Dr. Theodore and Diana Golden.
• Hiroshi Sugimoto, Fox, Michigan, 1980, gelatin silver print. Museum purchase.
• Cristina Iglesias, Untitled (Room 11 [-1999], edition 1/15, 1999, ink on copper plate. Gift of Janis and William M. Wetsman.
• Cornelia Parker, There must be some kind of way outta here, 2016, mixed media. Museum purchase.
Lecture | Anne Lafont on Portraits of African Women
Next week at the Warburg Institute:
Anne Lafont | Portrait of the African Woman from Atlantic to Mississippi:
A New Topography of the Art of Enlightenment
The Warburg Institute, London, 24 January 2018
Marie-Guillemine Benoist, Portrait d’une femme noire, shown at the Salon of 1800 under the title Portrait d’une négresse (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2508, acquired in 1818).
The figures of Africans in the early modern arts trouble the traditional chronology and geography of art history and sometimes disturb the hierarchical circulation of commodities between European metropolises and colonial territories. One cannot study art of colonial times and places with the exact same categories used to define the Italian Renaissance, the British Landscape and even the mobile case of El Greco. Authorship, centre versus periphery, the picture, the unicum… all these units need to be renegotiated in the imperial context. This lecture will focus on these issues through case studies based on the painting of female black figures in France and the French Americas at the end of the eighteenth century and in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Wednesday, 24 January 2018, 17:30.
Anne Lafont, Directrice d’études, EHESS, l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris.
Book here»
New Book | Schenau (1737–1806)
From Imhof:
Anke Fröhlich-Schauseil, Schenau (1737–1806): Monografie und Werkverzeichnis der Gemälde, Handzeichnungen und Druckgrafik von Johann Eleazar Zeissig, gen. Schenau (Petersberg: Imhof, 2018), 640 pages, ISBN: 978 373190 5684, 78€ / $135.
Das Werk des Malers Johann Eleazar Zeißig, gen. Schenau (1737–1806), erhielt lange Zeit auch von der Kunstgeschichte nur wenig Aufmerksamkeit; dabei war er mit seinem in Frankreich entwickelten, empfindsamen Rokokostil zu Lebzeiten in Deutschland und darüber hinaus bekannt und berühmt. In Sachsen hatte er als Direktor der Dresdner Kunstakademie sowie als Leiter der Zeichenschule der Porzellanmanufaktur in Meißen eine einflussreiche Stellung inne. Sein OEuvre umfasst Gemälde, Radierungen sowie zahlreiche Zeichnungen und Aquarelle. Hinzu kommt eine große Zahl von französischen und deutschen Kupferstichen nach Werken von seiner Hand, die im vorliegenden Band in Wort und Bild vorgestellt werden.
Exhibition | Winckelmann and the Capitoline Museum
From the Capitoline Museum:
The Treasure of Antiquity: Winckelmann and the Capitoline Museum in Eighteenth-Century Rome
Musei Capitolini, Rome, 7 December 2017 — 22 April 2018
Curated by Eloisa Dodero and Claudio Parisi Presicce
Una mostra per celebrare gli anniversari della nascita e della morte del fondatore dell’archeologia moderna, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768)
La mostra Il Tesoro di Antichità. Winckelmann e il Museo Capitolino nella Roma del Settecento intende celebrare gli importanti anniversari winckelmanniani del 2017 (300 anni dalla nascita) e del 2018 (250 anni dalla morte) e si inserisce nel contesto delle manifestazioni europee coordinate dalla Winckelmann Gesellschaft di Stendal, dall’Istituto Archeologico Germanico di Roma e dai Musei Vaticani. L’esposizione ha una duplice finalità: la prima, offrire ai visitatori il racconto degli anni cruciali che hanno portato, nel dicembre del 1733, all’istituzione del Museo Capitolino, il primo museo pubblico d’Europa, destinato non solo alla conservazione ma anche alla promozione della “magnificenza e splendor di Roma”; la seconda, presentare le sculture capitoline sotto una luce diversa, ovvero attraverso le intuizioni, spesso geniali, del grande Winckelmann.
Arricchita da una selezione di 124 opere e da apparati multimediali realizzati appositamente, il Tesoro di Antichità si sviluppa in tre sedi diverse nell’ottica di una “mostra diffusa”: le Sale Espositive di Palazzo Caffarelli, le Stanze Terrene di Sinistra del Palazzo Nuovo e le Sale museali del Palazzo Nuovo.
Negli anni in cui Winckelmann rivoluziona il modo di studiare le testimonianze del mondo antico dando inizio alla moderna archeologia, il modello di museo pubblico rappresentato dal Museo Capitolino si diffonde rapidamente in tutta Europa, segnando la nascita di modalità del tutto nuove di fruizione dei beni artistici: un Tesoro di Antichità non più concepito come proprietà esclusiva di pochi, ma come luogo destinato all’avanzamento culturale della società.
Eloisa Dodero and Claudio Parisi Presicce, Il Tesoro di Antichità: Winckelmann e il Museo Capitolino nella Roma del Settecento (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2017), 384 pages, ISBN: 978 884923 5371, 35€.
«Vivo come un artista e come tale sono accolto nei luoghi dove ai nella Roma del Settecento giovani è permesso di studiare, come nel Campidoglio. Qui è il Tesoro delle Antichità di Roma e qui ci si può trattenere in tutta libertà dalla mattina alla sera». È il 7 dicembre del 1755 ed è con queste parole che Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) descrive a un amico la sua prima visita al Museo Capitolino. Negli anni in cui Winckelmann rivoluziona il modo di studiare le testimonianze del mondo antico, il modello di museo pubblico rappresentato dal Museo Capitolino si diffonde in tutta Europa, segnando la nascita di nuove modalità di fruizione dei beni culturali: un «Tesoro di Antichità» non più concepito come proprietà esclusiva di pochi, ma come luogo destinato all’avanzamento culturale della società.
Call for Papers | The Roman Art World and the Academy in Britain
From the Call for Papers:
The Roman Art World in the 18th Century and the Birth of the Art Academy in Britain
The Accademia di San Luca and the British School at Rome, Rome, 10–11 December 2018
Proposals due by 12 March 2018
The Accademia di San Luca and the British School at Rome (BSR) invite submissions for papers for the conference The Roman Art World in the 18th Century and the Birth of the Art Academy in Britain, to be held in Rome between 10 and 11 December 2018. The conference will focus on the role of the Roman pedagogical model in the formation of the British academic art world in the long 18th century.
Joseph Wright of Derby, Academy by Lamplight, 1769, oil on canvas (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection).
Even as Paris progressively dominated the modern art world during the 18th century, Rome retained its status as the ‘academy’ of Europe, attracting a vibrant international community of artists and architects. Their exposure to the Antique and the Renaissance masters was supported by a complex pedagogical system. The Accademia di San Luca, the Capitoline Accademia del Nudo, the Concorsi Clementini, and numerous studios and offices, provided a network of institutions and a whole theoretical and educational model for the relatively young British art world, which was still striving to create its own modern system for the arts. Reverberations of the Roman academy system were felt back in Britain through initiatives in London such as the Great Queen Street Academy, the Duke of Richmond’s Academy, the Saint Martin’s Lane Academy, and the Royal Society of Arts. But it was a broader national phenomenon too, inspiring the likes of the Foulis Academy in Glasgow and the Liverpool Society of Artists. The foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768 officially sanctioned the affirmation of the Roman model.
If past scholarship has concentrated mainly on the activities of British artists while in Rome, this conference wishes to address the process of intellectual migration, adaptation and reinterpretation of academic, theoretical and pedagogical principles from Rome back into 18th-century Britain. It responds to the rise of intellectual history, building on prevalent trends in the genealogy of knowledge and the history of disciplines, as well as the mobility and exchange of ideas and cultural translation across borders.
The conference welcomes diverse approaches to investigating the dissemination of the academic ideal from Rome to Britain. These might address, but are by no means limited to, the following topics:
• The impact of the Roman academic structure, theory and pedagogy on British art academies, artists’ studios and architects’ offices.
• The impact of art and architectural theory in Rome on the formation of a public discourse on art and architecture in Britain.
• The process of adaptation and reinterpretation of Roman theoretical and pedagogical principles to the British artistic and architectural context, and the extent to which British art academies developed new principles, absorbed the Roman model, or derived them from elsewhere.
• The role played by Roman and Italian artists and architects in the formation and structuring of the 18th-century British art academies and, in particular, of the Royal Academy of Arts.
• The presence and activities of British artists and architects in Roman studios, offices and academies and the presence of Italian artists in British academies.
• The role played by other relevant academies—such as those at Parma and Florence—on the formation of British artists and architects in relationship/opposition to the Roman model.
This conference will conclude a series of events celebrating the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. It will also be part of a series of conferences and exhibitions focusing on the role of the Accademia di San Luca in the spread of the academic ideal in Europe and beyond, inaugurated in 2016 with an exhibition and conference on the relationship between Rome and the French academy, held at the Accademia di San Luca and at the Académie de France à Rome.
Please provide a concise title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper. Send your proposal, with a current CV of no more than two pages, to humanities@bsrome.it. Proposals must be received by midnight, Monday 12 March 2018. Speakers will be notified of the committee’s decision in mid-April 2018. Travel grants will be available.
Adriano Aymonino
Carolina Brook
Gian Paolo Consoli
Thomas-Leo True
PhD Research Placements at the British Library
From the BL:
William Blake at the British Library: PhD Research Placement
3 months during the period from June until December 2018
Applications due by 19 February 2018
PhD students are invited to apply to undertake one of our forthcoming research placements. These are specially-selected projects that have been developed by the Library to support current doctoral researchers to develop and apply transferrable skills and expertise. Amongst the opportunities being offered in the current Call is a placement on William Blake, focused on the Library’s large collection of prints by Blake. Further details and profiles for each of the other placements are available here.
A PhD research placement at the British Library provides the chance to experience research in a different environment to that of a university, to engage with a range of research users and audiences, to gain insights into different potential postdoctoral career paths, and to make a tangible contribution to the purposes and programmes of a national library and major cultural organisation. A broad range of research placement opportunities have been identified by the Library for 2018–19.
To Apply
Application Guidelines and the application form are available here. Please refer to the guidelines and email the completed application form and a CV to Research.Development@bl.uk. Please note that all applications must be approved by the applicant’s PhD supervisor and Graduate Tutor (or equivalent senior academic manager). The application deadline is 4pm on 19 February 2018.
Eligibility
This scheme is open to all PhD students, as long as they have the support of their PhD supervisor and their Graduate Tutor (or equivalent). International students are eligible if they have the right to study in the UK.
Funding
The research placements offered through the scheme are opportunities for current PhD students to apply and enhance research skills and expertise outside of Higher Education as part of their wider research training and professional development. They are training and development opportunities to be undertaken within this specific context—and are therefore different to the paid internships or other fixed-term posts that the Library may occasionally make available. See the Application Guidelines for further details and background. Please note that—unlike for an internship or a fixed-term post—the British Library is unable to provide stipends or payment to PhD placement students. It is therefore essential that applicants to the placement scheme obtain the support of their PhD supervisor and Graduate Tutor (or someone in an equivalent senior academic management role) in advance and that, as part of their process, they consult their HEI to ascertain what funding is available to support them. To support self-funded and part-time students, most placements can be done on a part-time basis, with some remote working also sometimes possible—see the individual projects for details.
Jonny Yarker Joins Lowell Libson
Press release (January 2017) from Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd:
Lowell Libson Ltd is delighted to announce that from January 2018 it will be trading as Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd. Lowell Libson is one of the great names in the world of London dealing: for the last seventeen years his gallery has been synonymous with British paintings, drawings, and sculpture of the highest quality. It is unusual for a gallery owner, with over forty years’ experience and his name above the door to embrace such a radical transformation, and it signals an important change for the future.
“Jonny joined the business five years ago and during that time we have worked very happily and successfully together. Jonny has made a huge impact on the gallery, and he has played an extremely significant role in developing the business with me; now is the right time to recognize this working partnership in a tangible way,” Lowell Libson commented. “I am very excited about the future, Jonny is a talented dealer, a leading scholar and a good friend and I look forward to our new venture together.”
Jonny Yarker had recently finished his PhD when Lowell approached him to come and work at the gallery. “I admired Lowell long before I met him. He had this amazing reputation for supporting scholarship and exhibitions of British art; I remember when I was a student seeing his name everywhere,” says Yarker, “Little did I think I would end up working with him.” Libson has a reputation for supporting innovative scholarship in British art and the gallery has sponsored major exhibitions at the Royal Academy, British Museum, Courtauld, Ashmolean, and Morgan Library and Museum in New York.
With Jonny on board, the company’s outlook became more routed in research and their projects were able to become more ambitious. For example, in 2014 they mounted the largest selling exhibition of drawings by Gainsborough for a century. Lowell and Jonny have also recently made a number of notable discoveries including newly identified works by Samuel Palmer, John Constable, Johan Zoffany as well uncovering a previously unknown cache of drawings by Sir Peter Lely.
Each brings complimentary talents to the business (as Libson says, “It’s not particularly constructive working with a clone of oneself”). They see their great strength as a willingness to embrace change and think laterally. “We operate in an apparently narrow field, but Lowell has an amazing ability to reinvent what we do, at the same time preserving a continuity of taste,” Yarker observes.
In March, the gallery will be exhibiting at the Salon du dessin in Paris for the first time and in July they will mount a major exhibition of drawings made in Britain before 1730. Libson has been collecting for the exhibition for over a decade but observes: “Jonny has really made the project his own, he has brought an academic rigour and flair to my initial idea; it is going to be a truly groundbreaking exhibition, I can’t wait!”
This is the essence of what Libson and Yarker do: bring high levels of scholarship and their own personal taste to British art. It is a formula that has won them an international group of clients, both institutional and private.
Exhibition | Thomas Gainsborough: Modern Landscape
Thomas Gainsborough, Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, ca. 1750
(London: National Gallery)
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On view this spring at the Hamburger Kunsthalle:
Thomas Gainsborough: The Modern Landscape / Die moderne Landschaft
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 2 March — 27 May 2018
Curated by Katharina Hoins and Christoph Martin Vogtherr
Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) was a pioneering artist in the development towards ›modern‹ landscape painting of around 1800. He was mainly perceived as a painter of brilliant society portraits by his contemporaries, although he personally far preferred his landscapes. They reflect the dramatic technological and artistic developments of his time and the growing contradictions in British society. Landscape painting served Gainsborough as a laboratory to transform impressions into innovation. He experimented with colours and techniques, painted on glass and combined natural materials into landscape models. Establishing England as a centre of European landscape painting, he created images of timeless power. Iconic works like Mr and Mrs Andrews will feature in the exhibition. Gainsborough: Modern Landscape is the first exhibition by a German museum devoted to Gainsborough. For a German and an international public it promises the (re-)discovery of an exceptional painter.
M. Bills, B. Gockel, M. Hallett, K. Hoins, R. Jones, J. Karg, S. Pisot, and C. Vogtherr, Thomas Gainsborough: The Modern Landscape (Munich: Hirmer, 2018), 224 pages, ISBN: 978 37774 29977, $65.
Gainsborough himself favoured landscape painting, a field to which he made important contributions, over his well-known portraits. His works are fascinating for their painterly subtlety and technical variation. This volume brings together German and British traditions of viewing, interpreting, and studying Gainsborough. It looks at the connections to the Dutch landscapes, explains Gainsborough’s unusual and experimental techniques from an art technological point of view, and situates his landscapes in the context of the social tensions of early industrialisation.
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