Exhibition | Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature
Press release from The Huntington:
Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin
The Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, 16 September 2017 — 8 January 2018
Curated by Catherine Hess and Daniela Bleichmar
A sweeping international loan exhibition at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens will explore how the depiction of Latin American nature contributed to art and science between the late 1400s and the mid-1800s. Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin, on view in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery from September 16, 2017 to January 8, 2018, will feature more than 150 paintings, rare books, illustrated manuscripts, prints, and drawings from The Huntington’s holdings as well as from dozens of other collections. Many of these works will be on view for the first time in the United States.
Visual Voyages will be complemented by a richly illustrated book, along with an array of other programs and exhibitions, including a sound installation by Mexican experimental composer Guillermo Galindo. The exhibition is a part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, an exploration of Latin American and Latino art that involves more than 70 arts institutions across Southern California.
“Despite notorious depredation of people and resources during the period, the brilliant work of a number of Latin Americans and Europeans helped to illuminate our understanding of the natural world,” said Catherine Hess, chief curator of European art at The Huntington and co-curator of Visual Voyages. “We aim to shed light on this relatively unexamined piece of the story—to show how beautiful, surprising, and deeply captivating depictions of nature in Latin America reshaped our understanding of the region and, indeed, the world—essentially linking art and the natural sciences.”
Visual Voyages looks at how indigenous peoples, Europeans, Spanish Americans, and individuals of mixed-race descent depicted natural phenomena for a range of purposes and from a variety of perspectives: artistic, cultural, religious, commercial, medical, and scientific. The exhibition examines the period that falls roughly between Christopher Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 and Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, a work based largely on Darwin’s own voyage to the region in the 1830s.
“Information and materials circulated at an unprecedented rate as people transformed their relationship to the natural world and to each other,” said Daniela Bleichmar, associate professor of art history and history at the University of Southern California (USC) and co-curator of the exhibition. “Images served not only as artistic objects of great beauty but also as a means of experiencing, understanding, and possessing the natural world. These depictions circulated widely and allowed viewers—then and now—to embark on their own ‘visual voyages’.”
Bleichmar, who was born in Argentina and raised in Mexico, is an expert on the history of science, art, and cultural contact in the early modern period. Her publications include the prize-winning book Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (The University of Chicago Press, 2012).
The Huntington’s three collection areas—library, art, and botanical—all contribute to Visual Voyages. Its Library is one of the world’s greatest research institutions in the fields of British and American history, art, and the history of science, stretching from the 11th century to the present, and includes such riches as the first European depiction of a pineapple and a rare 16th-century manuscript atlas that includes three stunning maps of the Americas. From The Huntington’s art holdings, Frederic Edwin Church’s monumental painting Chimborazo (1864) will be on display, depicting a Latin American landscape both real and imaginary. The Huntington’s 120 acres of gardens include several thousand plant species from Latin America, including pineapple, vanilla, cacao, and various orchids and succulents.
Designed by Chu+Gooding Architects of Los Angeles, Visual Voyages engages visitors through an evocative installation that includes interactive media, display cases of specimens and rare materials, and two walls almost completely covered with grids of visually arresting depictions of botanical specimens and still lifes.
The exhibition opens with a playful display of taxidermy mounts to make vivid the rare animals that captured the imagination of Europeans and were avidly collected during the period. Visual Voyages then begins with a section on “Rewriting the Book of Nature,” in which manuscripts, maps, and publications show how nature came to be reconsidered in the first century of contact. This section includes a copy of the 1493 letter Christopher Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain while on the return leg of his first voyage to the New World. He writes that the region is “so fertile that, even if I could describe it, one would have difficulty believing in its existence.” This section highlights the many contributions of indigenous Americans to the exploration of New World nature, among them two large-scale maps painted by indigenous artists in Mexico and Guatemala; a volume from the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century Mexican manuscript on loan from the Laurentian Library, Florence; and a spectacular feather cape created by the Tupinambá of Brazil.
Next, a gallery called “The Value of Nature” explores the intertwining of economic and spiritual approaches to Latin American nature. Commercial interests resulted in the investigation, depiction, and commercialization of such natural commodities as tobacco and chocolate. Indigenous religions considered the natural world to be infused with the divine, while Christian perspectives led observers to envision Latin American nature as both rich in signs of godliness as well as marked with signs of the devil—and needing eradication. Various depictions of the passion flower, a New World plant, show how the flower’s form recalled to missionaries the instruments of Christ’s Passion.
A third section, “Collecting: From Wonder to Order,” shows how the ‘wonder’ that European collectors held for the astonishing material coming from the New World became a desire to possess and, later, to “order” this material, following systems of taxonomy and classification. On view will be a spectacular set of large paintings depicting Brazilian fruits and vegetables by the Dutch painter Albert Eckhout (ca.1610–1665) as well as 30 artful, vivid, and detailed drawings of botanical specimens painted by artists from New Granada (present-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, Peru, northern Brazil, and western Guyana), never before seen in the United States.
The final section of the exhibition, called “New Landscapes,” examines scientific and artistic perspectives on Latin America created in the 19th century, a period when a new wave of voyagers explored the region and independence wars resulted in the emergence of new nations. The Romantic and imperial visions of artists and scientists from Europe and the U.S. are juxtaposed with the patriotic and modernizing visions of artists and scientists from Latin America, who envisioned nature as an integral part of national identity. This juxtaposition can be seen visually in the pairing of The Huntington’s monumental Chimborazo by Church with the equally monumental Valley of Mexico (1877) by Mexican painter José María Velasco, on loan from the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City.
Gallery text is in Spanish and English.
Daniela Bleichmar, Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 240 pages, ISBN: 978 030022 4023, $50.
Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin is accompanied by a hardcover book of the same title written by Daniela Bleichmar, co-curator of the exhibition. In a narrative addressed to general audiences as well as students and scholars, Bleichmar reveals the fascinating story of the interrelationship of art and science in Latin America and Europe during the period.
More information is available from Yale UP.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The Huntington will present an array of public programs to complement Visual Voyages, including a lecture, a curator tour, and focused exhibitions.
Guillermo Galindo Installation and Performance
16 September 2017 — 8 January 2018
Experimental composer, sonic architect, and performance artist Guillermo Galindo will create an outdoor sound installation and performance at The Huntington during the run of the exhibition. The program is part of USC Annenberg’s Musical Interventions, a series of public events organized for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA by Josh Kun, historian of popular music and recently named a MacArthur Fellow.
Nuestro Mundo
16 September 2017 — 8 January 2018
About two dozen paintings by students of Art Division make up this installation of works inspired by Visual Voyages. Art Division is a non-profit organization dedicated to training and supporting underserved Los Angeles youth who are committed to studying the visual arts. Flora-Legium Gallery, Brody Botanical Center (weekends only).
In Pursuit of Flora: Eighteenth-Century Botanical Drawings
28 October 2017 — 19 February 2018
European exploration of other lands during the so-called Age of Discovery revealed a vast new world of plant life that required description, cataloging, and recording. By the 18th century, the practice of botanical illustration had become an essential tool of natural history, and botanical illustrators had developed strategies for presenting accurate information through exquisitely rendered images. From lusciously detailed drawings of fruit and flowers by Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708–1770), a collaborator of Linnaeus, to stunning depictions of more exotic examples by the talented amateur Matilda Conyers (1753–1803), In Pursuit of Flora reveals the 18th-century appreciation for the beauty of the natural world.
Symposium: Indigenous Knowledge and the Making of Colonial Latin America
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 8-10 December 2017
This symposium will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the ways in which indigenous knowledge contributed to the making of colonial Latin America. A dozen talks will examine practices related to art, architecture, science, medicine, governance, and the study of the past, among other topics. Curator-led visits to two related exhibitions—Visual Voyages at The Huntington and Golden Kingdoms: Luxury and Legacy in the Ancient Americas at The J. Paul Getty Museum—will allow participants to view magnificent examples of work by indigenous artists and authors, including more than half a dozen rare pictorial manuscripts (codices). The symposium is organized by Daniela Bleichmar, co-curator of Visual Voyages and Kim Richter, co-curator of Golden Kingdoms and senior research specialist at the Getty Research Institute, with funding from the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, the Seaver Institute, and the Getty Research Institute
Exhibition | Project Blue Boy
Press release (3 August 2017) from The Huntington:
Project Blue Boy
The Huntington, San Marino, 22 September 2018 — 30 September 2019
Thomas Gainsborough, The Blue Boy, ca. 1770; oil on canvas, 71 × 49 inches (San Marino: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens).
One of the most famous paintings in British and American history, The Blue Boy, made around 1770 by English painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), will undergo its first major technical examination and conservation treatment. Project Blue Boy begins on August 8, 2017, when the life-size image of a young man in an iconic blue satin costume will go off public view for preliminary conservation analysis until November 1. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, home to The Blue Boy since its acquisition by founder Henry E. Huntington in 1921, will conduct the conservation project over a two-year period. The final part of the project will largely take place in public view, during a year-long exhibition, also called Project Blue Boy, presented from September 2018 to September 2019 in the Thornton Portrait Gallery, where the painting traditionally hangs.
“We are profoundly conscious of our duty of care towards this unique and remarkable treasure,” said Steve Hindle, The Huntington’s Interim President and W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research. “The Blue Boy has been the most beloved work of art at The Huntington since it opened its doors in 1928. It is with great pride that we launch this thoughtful and painstaking endeavor to study, restore, and preserve Gainsborough’s masterpiece. The fact that we are able to do so while inviting the public to watch and to learn is both gratifying and exciting—not least since the project is so perfectly suited to our mission.”
The Blue Boy requires conservation to address both structural and visual concerns. The painting is so important and popular that it has been on almost constant display since The Huntington opened to the public almost 100 years ago. “The most recent conservation treatments have mainly involved adding new layers of varnish as temporary solutions to keep The Blue Boy on view as much as possible,” said Christina O’Connell, The Huntington’s senior paintings conservator and co-curator of the exhibition. “The original colors now appear hazy and dull, and many of the details are obscured.” According to O’Connell, there are also several areas where the paint is beginning to lift and flake, making the work vulnerable to loss and permanent damage; and the adhesive that binds the canvas to its lining is failing, meaning the painting does not have adequate support for long-term display. These issues and more will be addressed by Project Blue Boy.
In addition to contributing to scholarship in the field of conservation, the undertaking will likely uncover new information of interest to art historians. O’Connell will use a Haag-Streit surgical microscope to closely examine the painting. To gather material information, she will employ imaging techniques including digital x-radiography, infrared reflectography, ultraviolet fluorescence, and x-ray fluorescence. The data from these analytical techniques will contribute to a better understanding of the materials Gainsborough procured to create The Blue Boy while at the same time revealing information about earlier conservation treatments. The Huntington will address several questions. “One area we’d like to better understand is, what technical means did Gainsborough use to achieve his spectacular visual effects?” said Melinda McCurdy, The Huntington’s associate curator for British art and co-curator of the exhibition. “He was known for his lively brushwork and brilliant, multifaceted color. Did he develop special pigments, create new materials, pioneer new techniques?” She and O’Connell will build upon clues gleaned from previous conservation projects to learn more. “We know from earlier x-rays that The Blue Boy was painted on a used canvas, on which the artist had begun the portrait of a man,” she said. “What might new technologies tell us about this earlier abandoned portrait? Where does this lost painting fit into his career? How does it compare with other portraits from the 1760s?” McCurdy also looks forward to discovering other anomalies that may become visible beneath the surface paint, and what they might indicate about Gainsborough’s painting practice.
The Huntington’s website will track the project as it unfolds.
Exhibition | Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury
Now on view at Gainsborough’s House:
Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 17 June – 8 October 2017
The market town of Sudbury in Suffolk has a surprising history. Regarded today as Great Britain’s most important centre for silk manufacture, Sudbury produces nearly 95 per cent of the nation’s woven silk textiles from its three working mills: Vanners Silk Weavers, Stephen Walters & Sons, and Gainsborough Silks. Dating back to the late 1700s, Sudbury’s nascent silk industry was facilitated by the town’s former history as a wool centre, to which many family members of the Sudbury-born artist Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (1727–1788) plied their trade.
The exhibition Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury will explore the local and national history of silk in England from the eighteenth century to the present day, focussing on the diaspora of silk manufacture from Spitalfields in London to Sudbury in Suffolk. In the first part of the exhibition, the formation of the English silk industry in Spitalfields in the early 1700s will be examined, highlighting the important Huguenot silk weavers who formed the basis of this work force. Objects displayed will illustrate the processes of design and manufacture and include everything from silk pattern books and historic costume to paintings and drawings featuring silk fashions of the era.
In the second part of the exhibition, the focus will turn to the relocation of silk manufacture from London to Suffolk over the course of the nineteenth century, exploring the history of Sudbury’s silk mills and the textiles they produced. Objects on show from the town’s three mills, in addition to the Sudbury manufacturer Humphries Weaving, will illustrate the many types of silk made in Sudbury, past and present—from furnishing textiles for historic palaces to contemporary design fabrics made for major British fashion houses.
This exhibition will draw together artworks and textiles from both national and local collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Norfolk Museums Service, and the Warner Textile Archive. As the childhood home of the artist Thomas Gainsborough situated at the very heart of the nation’s active silk industry, Gainsborough’s House is ideally placed to tell this important story of silk in England, from Spitalfields to Sudbury.
Study Day | 300 Years of Silk
One of a pair of shoes, ca 1720; leather sole, with brocaded silk uppers with silk woven in Spitalfields
(London: V&A, T.446&A-1913)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
300 Years of Silk: A Study Day at Gainsborough’s House
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 26 September 2017
Join us for 300 Years of Silk, an exclusive Silk Study Day held at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury, Suffolk. Hosted by textile specialists Mary Schoeser and Kate Wigley of the School of Textiles, Coggeshall, and Keeper of Art & Place Louisa Brouwer of Gainsborough’s House, this event will feature a series of informative lectures, interactive handling sessions and a curator-led tour of the current exhibition, Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury (17 June — 8 October 2017). The daylong programme will include opportunities to study a range of silk textiles from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries in close detail and will offer privileged access to the Sudbury silk mill Vanners Silk Weavers, with guided tours led around this vibrant working factory in the afternoon.
Organised to accompany the current exhibition Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury at Gainsborough’s House, this Study Day will explore the fascinating history of the English silk industry, focussing on the town of Sudbury, Suffolk—regarded today as Great Britain’s most important centre for silk manufacture. Sudbury now produces more woven silk textiles than anywhere else in the nation, with four working firms still in operation: Vanners Silk Weavers, The Gainsborough Silk Weaving Company, Stephen Walters & Sons, and The Humphries Weaving Company. Dating back to the early years of the nineteenth century, Sudbury’s nascent silk industry was facilitated by the town’s former history as a wool centre, to which many family members of the Sudbury-born artist Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (1727–1788) plied their trade.
Open to students, curators, and textile enthusiasts alike, this Study Day offers full access to Gainsborough’s House in the historic market town of Sudbury, located just 1 hour 20 minutes by train from London Liverpool Street. The day will run from 10am to 5pm and cost £80 per person (inc. VAT). Tickets will include tea, coffee, and biscuits upon arrival, followed by a light sandwich lunch in the afternoon. For further enquiries and to reserve your place, please contact louisa@gainsborough.org. Limited places are available so early booking is recommended.
National Museum Wales Acquires Rare Richard Wilson Portrait
Press release (7 July 2017) from the UK’s Art Fund:
With support from Art Fund, National Museum Wales has acquired the painting Portrait of a Lady (ca. 1750), which is now on display at National Museum Cardiff. Thought to be an image of Miss Mary Jenkins, whose family owned Priston Manor in Somerset, the work joins only one other female portrait by Wilson in National Museum Wales’ collection. It offers insight into Wilson’s early career, when he first trained in London as a society portrait painter, before later becoming best known for his landscapes.
The acquisition has also enabled further research, which is currently trying to establish whether this may in fact be a marriage portrait, rather than one of a pair of siblings (Wilson also painted Jenkins’ sister, Elizabeth, in the same year). The woman’s hand clasps a sprig of white blossom, which may be choisya (orange blossom), sometimes used to symbolise an eternal bond.
“This striking and intriguing Portrait of a Lady is a strong example of Wilson’s early practice, and further enriches Amgueddfa Cymru’s collection of works by the artist,” said Andrew Renton, keeper of art at National Museum Wales. “This portrait not only strengthens the female presence in our 18th-century displays but it also enables us to undertake interesting further research—the identity of the sitter is speculative and we’d love to be sure who she really is!”
“Richard Wilson is of course one of Wales’ most celebrated landscape painters, but his portraits are particularly rare,” said Stephen Deuchar, director of Art Fund. “We’re very pleased to support this acquisition for Amgueddfa Cymru—National Museum Wales, a leading centre for his work in all its range and depth.”
Newly Attributed Self-Portrait by Wright on View at LAPADA Fair
As noted at Art Daily (29 July 2017) . . .
LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair
Berkeley Square, London, 15–20 September 2017
Joseph Wright of Derby, Self-portrait, 1793.
An 18th-century painting catalogued as being by a ‘Follower of Joshua Reynolds’ at auction has been revealed as a genuine self-portrait by renowned British artist Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797). The discovery, a rarity for 18th-century works by high-profile British artists, will be unveiled at the LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, from the 15th to 20th of September.
Acquired by Archie Parker of The Parker Gallery, a leading dealer in Old Master and British works of art, the painting has been traced back to 1793, when records indicate that Wright gifted it to the Rev. Thomas Gisborne of Yoxall. Gisborne was a close friend of Wright’s and had amassed an extensive collection of paintings and drawings by the artist, including a portrait featuring Gisborne and his wife, two landscapes of the Lake District (subsequently at Kedleston Hall), and a painting of Mount Vesuvius.
In 1793, Wright presented Gisborne with a self-portrait that had, until now, disappeared from view, its existence known only from a copy belonging to the collection of Sir John Crompton-Inglefield. A Latin inscription on the copy’s reverse reads: “Joseph Wright the artist presented this painting by his own hand as a gift to his friend T. Gisborne in the year of Our Lord 1793 and 59th of his age.” The newly discovered self-portrait is almost certainly the missing original that inspired the copy and was later reproduced as the frontispiece of the 1885 monograph The Life and Works of Joseph Wright A.R.A., commonly called ‘Wright of Derby’.
Thomas Gisborne (1758–1846) was educated at Harrow. Scholarly and artistic, he was later admitted as a Fellow Commoner to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where his immense achievements pleased his old headmaster, Dr. Heath. In celebration of his achievements, Heath arranged for Gisborne’s portrait to be painted by Wright and despite their significant age difference, Gisborne struck up a friendship with the artist that was to last until the end of Wright’s life. In 1781, Gisborne was ordained a deacon and then a priest and subsequently inherited his father’s mansion at Yoxall, three miles from his church. Wright was a frequent guest at the peaceful house and produced some of his most beautiful sketches and studies while exploring the surrounding ancient oak wood. In 1793, Wright was once again staying at Yoxall when he presented Gisborne with the recently discovered self-portrait.
The annual LAPADA Art & Antiques Fair, sponsored by award-winning investment house Killik & Co, returns to Berkeley Square, London, for its 2017 edition from Friday 15th to Wednesday 20th September—this year bridging two weeks—and will showcase a fascinating array of one-of-a-kind works of art, antiques, design, jewellery and decorative art.
Exhibition | Divine Visions, Earthly Pleasures
Press release (27 June 2017) for the exhibition now on view at BAMPFA:
Divine Visions, Earthly Pleasures: Five Hundred Years of Indian Painting
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 22 June — 10 September 2017
Curated by Robert J. Del Bontà
Unknown artist, Surajamala-ji, Son of Rao Nirandasa, 1820; ink, gouache, and gold on paper, 21 × 8 inches (Berkeley: BAMPFA, gift of Jean and Francis Marshall).
This summer, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) presents a new exhibition of paintings that encompasses five hundred years of Indian art-making traditions. Divine Visions, Earthly Pleasures: Five Hundred Years of Indian Painting draws on the institution’s extensive holdings of Asian art, in particular a renowned collection of more than three hundred works donated to BAMPFA in 1998. Guest curated by the distinguished Indian art scholar Robert J. Del Bontà, the exhibition is on view from June 28 through September 10, 2017.
Divine Visions, Earthly Pleasures comprises more than sixty paintings from BAMPFA’s collection, representing a vast range of Indian art and cultural history from the early fifteenth through twentieth centuries. Reflecting the distinctive collecting interests of Jean and Francis Marshall—whose gift forms the core of BAMPFA’s Indian art holdings—the works display a diverse array of subject matter, ranging from early religious traditions and aristocratic portraiture to romantic narratives and musical performances. By presenting some early extant examples of Indian painting alongside more recent works, the exhibition illuminates common aesthetic conventions—in particular a subtle interplay between realistic and abstract forms that emerges as a persistent theme across centuries of artistic practice.
“Since Jean and Francis Marshall’s transformative gift in 1998, BAMPFA’s Asian art holdings have grown to be one of the defining strengths of our encyclopedic collection, and we’re thrilled to highlight that strength with a show that brings some of most exceptional of these works together for the first time in years,” said Lawrence Rinder, director and chief curator of BAMPFA. “We are especially grateful to our friend and colleague Robert J. Del Bontà for providing a fresh scholarly perspective on these paintings that will allow our visitors to rediscover them in a new and illuminating context.”
“For more than five hundred years, the Indian subcontinent has nurtured some of the world’s most vibrant and distinctive painting traditions, which are richly encapsulated in BAMFPA’s remarkable collection,” said Del Bonta, who previously served as research associate and guest curator at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. “The works in this exhibition present subtle interplays between representational and abstract aesthetics and between sacred and secular subject matter—often in a single painting. It’s a pleasure to partner with BAMPFA in sharing these breathtaking works with the public.”
Divine Visions, Earthly Pleasures: Five Hundred Years of Indian Painting is organized by guest curator Robert J. Del Bontà, with funding provided by the Asian Art Endowment Fund.
The 32-page exhibition brochure by Robert J. Del Bontà is available as a PDF file here»
New | Book Silent Witnesses: Trees in British Art, 1760–1870
From Sansom & Co:
Christiana Payne, Silent Witnesses: Trees in British Art, 1760–1870 (Bristol: Sansom & Company, 2017), 176 pages, ISBN: 978 1911408 123, £25.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, naturalists, poets and artists were united in their love of trees. William Gilpin began his influential Remarks on Forest Scenery (1791) with the bold statement that ‘It is no exaggerated praise to call a tree the grandest, and most beautiful of all the productions of the earth.’ Illustrated books and tree portraits celebrated the beauty, antiquity and diversity of individual, and particularly ancient specimens. A wide range of drawing manuals showed artists and amateurs how to express their ‘character’ and ‘anatomy’, as if they were human subjects.
Paintings of woodland scenes provided welcome relief from city life, and studies of exotic trees reflected the growth of tourism and empire. The arrival of new species from all over the world aroused much excitement and scientific activity. At the same time, the native trees—oak, ash, beech, elm—acquired new resonance as emblems of the rural countryside. Many of Britain’s most important landscape painters, including Paul Sandby, John Constable, Samuel Palmer, Edward Lear, and the Pre-Raphaelites, made themselves experts in the drawing and painting of trees.
Christiana Payne is Professor of History of Art at Oxford Brookes University, where she has been teaching since 1994. Her previous books include Where the Sea Meets the Land: Artists on the Coast in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Sansom and Company, 2007) and John Brett, Pre-Raphaelite Landscape Painter (Yale University Press, 2010). She has curated major exhibitions and displays at the Yale Center for British Art, Tate Britain, and the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol.
Exhibition | Nelson & Norfolk
The Battle of the Nile was fought on August 1 and 2 in 1798. Press release (via Art Daily) for the exhibition now on view at Norwich Castle Museum:
Nelson & Norfolk
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, 29 July — 1 October 2017
Pierre Nicolas Legrand, Apotheosis of Nelson, ca. 1805–18 (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum).
Admiral Lord Nelson (1758–1805) and his affection for his native county of Norfolk is the subject of a major exhibition Nelson & Norfolk, on view at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery from 29 July until 1 October 2017. The exhibition presents some of the most extraordinary and potent objects connected to Nelson, from his boyhood in Norfolk to his death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
The single bullet (or musket ball), which mortally wounded Admiral Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, is one of the important objects on display as part of the revelatory exhibition. The bullet, which is usually on display at Windsor Castle has been generously lent by Her Majesty The Queen from the Royal Collection, and this is the first time it has been shown in Norfolk, Nelson’s home county. Measuring 15mm, the lead shot bullet is mounted in a hinged silver locket together with some remnants of gold lace from Admiral Nelson’s uniform and a small handwritten note with the words “The bullet by which Nelson was killed.” Although it cost Nelson his life, The Battle of Trafalgar, which took place on the 21 October 1805, is still regarded today as one of Britain’s greatest naval victories.
Another centerpiece is the highly important, early French Tricolour—the monumental Ensign (or flag) of the French warship Le Généreux, which took part in the Battle of the Nile in 1798. A British victory, the battle sealed Nelson’s reputation as England’s greatest hero. Although Le Généreux was one of only two ships of the line from the French fleet to escape this historic battle, it was subsequently captured, on 18 February 1800 by Nelson’s flag captain Sir Edward Berry, on board the HMS Foudroyant. When the huge Ensign of Le Généreux was ‘struck’, that is removed from the flagpole at the rear of the ship, and surrendered to Sir Edward Berry, it was immediately despatched as a gift to the City of Norwich. One of the largest (it measures 16 × 8.3 meters—roughly the size of a tennis-court) and most iconic objects connected to Norfolk’s most famous son, Admiral Lord Nelson, this is the first time this historic object has been on public display for more than a century.
Ruth Battersby Tooke, Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles at Norwich Castle, said: “The exhibition is built around key objects such as the fatal bullet and the Ensign, with their remarkable histories. In explaining the story of each of the unique and significant exhibits, we are providing insights into Nelson and his times, the cult of his personality and the way he has been lionised and commemorated. The exhibition’s main themes are Nelson’s extraordinary legacy, his reputation and the ongoing nature of his ‘Immortal Memory’.”
The exhibition is divided into several sections each one examining a key part or element of Nelson’s life and career starting with his birth and early years in his beloved home county of Norfolk. The Norfolk section includes the Burnham Thorpe Parish Register, the village where Nelson was born, which is annotated in the margin by Nelson’s father, rector of the parish, with dates of significant milestones and naval victories. The register is displayed alongside the poignant “Dear, dear Burnham letter” written by Nelson in 1804. Also of interest is a Freedom Box, presented to Nelson by the Corporation of Thetford following the decision to bestow upon him the Freedom of the town in 1798. Personalia from Strangers’ Hall in Norwich include a lock of Nelson’s hair, owned originally by Captain Hardy and given to Norwich Museums in 1847, a napkin bearing the monogram of NB for Nelson Duke of Bronte, an honour conferred to him after the Battle of the Nile, as well as scraps of the British Ensign and sailcloth from HMS Victory. Collectively these diverse objects all illustrate Nelson’s early life and the affection for his home county. Other sections focus on The Battle of the Nile, which took place on 1 August 1798, Naples and Emma, Nelson’s Death, and finally his Funeral.
Extremely apt to be exhibited together with the Ensign from Le Généreux is Nelson’s famous coat, which he wore at the Battle of the Nile kindly loaned by the National Maritime Museum Greenwich. Made in wool and linen with large brass buttons and gold alloy braiding, this is a typical flag officer’s undress coat of the period. The coat also gives an indication as to how slight Nelson was. Excitingly the hat, which Nelson wore at this decisive battle, is also on display. This is the first time that the coat and hat have been reunited since 1891.
The drama of the final moments of this historic Battle of the Nile are vividly depicted in a dramatic oil painting by artist Thomas Whitcombe. Amidst the smoke from cannons and fires, the magnificent ships are shown with their sails billowing and respective ensigns flying, the foreground littered with debris of wrecked ships and lifeboats filled with sailors lucky to have escaped alive. The painting was executed in 1799 a year after the Battle of the Nile took place.
No exhibition about Nelson can avoid the subject of his time in Naples (1798–1800), where he met the extraordinary Emma Hamilton, who became the love of his life. Particularly poignant is a charming locket (in the collection of Norwich Castle) that contains two different locks of hair. The high quality of the workmanship suggests that it was probably a private commission and there is a possibility that the hair enclosed is that of Nelson and Emma Hamilton, making this a hugely romantic and enigmatic object. Also in this section is the border of a dress embellished in honour of Lord Nelson and worn by Emma Hamilton at Palermo around 1799, together with a touching picture embroidered in silk of Nelson and his beloved Emma.
Nelson’s death is illustrated by the painting The Apotheosis of Nelson on loan from the National Maritime Museum painted by Scott Pierre Nicolas Legrand, circa 1805–18. It clearly conveys the level of hero-worship that Nelson had inspired during his life-time and which was set to continue for generations to come. This highly romantic painting depicts a deified Nelson achieving immortality as he ascends up to the gods on Mount Olympus, while his sailors grieve for him on the decks of the ship below.
Nelson’s funeral resulted in a public demonstration of grief on a national scale. The dramatic black velvet drape from Nelson’s funeral car, together with the painted silk hatchment, both used at his funeral, have not been seen together since the funeral car was dismantled around 1826. There is also a uniform worn by a Greenwich Volunteer who guarded Nelson’s coffin during his two-day lying-in-state, a model of the funeral barge made by a French prisoner of war at Norman Cross internment camp, a picture on glass showing Lord Nelson Lying in State by J. Hinton and additional extensive Nelson funeral memorabilia.
Presiding over the exhibition, as a whole, is the large, compelling portrait in oils of Nelson by the artist William Beechey, commissioned by the City of Norwich and completed in 1801. The portrait features another noteworthy exhibit, namely the sword surrendered to Nelson by the Spanish Admiral Xavier Winthuysen after the Battle of Cape St Vincent on 14 February 1797. When two Spanish ships, the San Nicolas and the San Josef, became entangled Nelson was able to board one then the other. On the deck of the San Josef, Nelson received the surrendered swords of the Spanish, including this one. Nelson’s naval officer’s hat, depicted prominently in the portrait and given to the artist William Beechey by Nelson after he sat for the famous portrait, adds further human interest.
Complementing the important loans from major national museums and institutions around the country are additional fascinating and unique objects drawn from Norfolk Museums Service’s own Nelson archives, as well as other local collections in the county including those of Norwich Social History, Fine and Decorative Art, the Great Yarmouth Sailors’ Home, as well as Nelson’s schools; The Norwich School and Paston College. Numerous items have also been generously loaned by private collectors.
Nelson & Norfolk is not intended to be a chronology of the life and times of Nelson illustrated by objects. Instead this exhibition takes its starting point and narrative from the objects themselves. In bringing together so much authentic material, the exhibition reflects the ways in which Nelson has been represented in imagery and how his remarkable life story has been told through objects. Likewise a strong cohesive thread is the affection that Nelson had for the county that ‘gave him birth’ and Norfolk’s immeasurable pride in its most famous son. This is the first time that these objects have ever been presented together in one exhibition.
Margaret Dewsbury, Chair of Norfolk County Council Communities Committee said: “The people of Norfolk are understandably proud to claim Nelson as one of our own; with this exhibition we can take stock of what his influence and reputation has meant to both his home county and the country as a whole. We are very grateful to all the lenders to the exhibition whose generosity has enabled us to bring together a truly unique collection of artefacts. To be able to include items which take us from his birth in the beautiful Norfolk village of Burnham Thorpe to his heroic death at Trafalgar is remarkable and moving and will make for an unforgettable experience for visitors.”
The exhibition is timely in that coincides with the 200th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of the Nelson memorial in Great Yarmouth, the county’s most significant memorial to its local hero.
Symposium | Enlightened Princesses: Britain and Europe, 1700–1820
From the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art:
Enlightened Princesses: Britain and Europe, 1700–1820
Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, and the Tower of London, 29–31 October 2017
Caroline of Ansbach (1683–1737), Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719–1772), and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818), three Protestant German princesses, became variously Princess of Wales, Queen Consort, and Princess Dowager of Great Britain. Recent research has explored how in fulfilling these roles they made major contributions to the arts, the development of new models of philanthropy and social welfare, the promotion and support of advances in science and medicine, as well as trade and industry, and the furthering of imperial ambition. While local contexts may have conditioned the forms such initiatives took, their objectives were rooted in a European tradition of elite female empowerment.
This symposium, Enlightened Princesses: Britain and Europe, 1700–1820, will bring together eminent academicians and museum scholars to investigate the role played by royal women-electresses, princesses, queens consort, reigning queens, and empresses—in the shaping of court culture and politics in Europe of the long eighteenth century.
Papers will explore the following themes:
• Royal women as political agents
• Royal women: networks and conversations
• Royal women as patrons of art and architecture
• Royal women and the crafting of image
• Royal women: engaging with nature and technology
The symposium will take place 29–31 October 2017 at Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, and the Tower of London. The programme will include special tours of the Enlightened Princesses exhibition at Kensington Palace, followed by two full days of lectures, themed panels, and discussions at Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London.
The fee for attending the conference is £100. Reduction are available for a limited number of students on application to the symposium organiser. The symposium organiser can be contacted at emily.knight@hrp.org.uk.
Co-organised by Historic Royal Palaces, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, in association the exhibition Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World, on view at Kensington Palaces, 22 June – 12 November 2017.
S U N D A Y , 2 9 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 7
14.00 Exhibition tour 1
15.00 Exhibition tour 2
16.00 Exhibition tour 3
Tea served in Orangery from 14.00 to 17.00
M O N D A Y , 3 0 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 7
9.00 Registration and coffee
9.30 Welcome from Adrian Phillips and Amy Meyers
9.45 Keynote Lecture
• Joanna Marschner, Enlightened Princesses: Britain and Europe, 1700–1820
10.30 Break
10.45 Session 1 | Royal Women as Political Agents
Moderator: Lisa Ford
• Elise Dermineur, Queens Consort as political agents: A tentative research framework through the example Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden (1720–1782)
• Heather Carroll, ‘Charlotte has the breeches’: The shifting political perception of Queen Charlotte
• Allison Goudie, ‘A woman of great feminine beauty, but of a masculine understanding’: Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and Canova’s statue of the king ‘as Minerva’
• Martin Eberle, Luise Dorothea: Duchess of Saxony-Gotha-Altenburg
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Session 2 | Royal Women: Networks and Conversations
Moderator: Lucy Peltz
• Elizabeth Montagu, ‘Queen of the Bluestockings’: Women and literary authority in the age of Enlightenment
• Lisa Skogh de Zoete, Queen Hedwig Eleanora—A Liebhaberin of the arts: Political culture and sources of knowledge as part of Northern German Court Culture
• Merit Laine, Creative conversations: Queen Louisa Ulrika and the formulation of Swedish court culture in the Age of Liberty
• Sonja Fielitz, ‘A silent but impressive language’: The quietly worked female empowerment of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
16.00 Tea
16.30 Discussion
Moderators: Sebastian Edwards and Desmond Shawe-Taylor
17.30 Drinks and musical programme with harpsichord virtuoso Nathaniel Mander
T U E S D A Y , 3 1 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 7
9.00 Registration and coffee
9.30 Welcome by Joanna Marschner and Amy Meyers
9.45 Session 3 | Royal Women as Patrons of Art and Architecture
Moderators: Aurélie Chatenet-Calyste and Desmond Shawe-Taylor
• Tara Zanardi, Material Temptations: Isabel de Farnesio and the politics of the interior
• Veronica Biermann, ‘Let’s have a look’: G.L. Bernini’s mirror for Queen Christina and her self-image
• Christopher Johns, Two Queens and a villa: Enlightenment sociability in Turin
• Christopher Baker, Augusta, Princess of Wales and Jean Etienne Liotard
• Heidi Strobel, Queen Charlotte as patron of female artists
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Session 4 | Royal Women and the Crafting of Image
Moderator: Matthew Storey
• Heather Belnap Jensen, Dynastic dressing: The portraits of Caroline Bonaparte Murat, Queen of Naples and the art of costume
• Eva-Lena Karlsson, Sofia Albertina: A Swedish princess from Rococo to Biedermeier
15.00 Session 5 | Royal Women: Engaging with Nature and Technology
Moderator: Joanna Marschner
• Tessa Murdoch, Measuring time at the Hanoverian Court: Caroline, Augusta and Charlotte as promoters of clock and watch-making in London
• Emily Roy, Catherine the Great’s Russian mountain: The imagery of the Thunder Stone
16.25 Tea
17.00 Discussion
Moderator: Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Note (added 19 September 2017) — An updated schedule has replaced the previous, provisional programme.
Note (added 26 October 2017) — Several small changes were made to the programme and corrected in the posting above; a final copy is available here.
Enfilade 
leave a comment