Enfilade

Press release (23 January 2017) from the CMA:

The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) has announced the appointment of Emily J. Peters as Curator of Prints and Drawings. The museum’s renowned collection of prints and drawings, ranging from the Renaissance to the early 21st century, is distinguished by the quality and rarity of its holdings. Peters’s appointment follows an international search. She will assume her responsibilities at the CMA in April.

“Emily is an exceptional curator with a remarkable eye and creative approach. Her range of expertise and scholarly interests—which span five centuries and a panoply of graphic mediums—are admirable. We very much look forward to having Emily as a colleague in Cleveland,” said Director William M. Griswold.

As Curator of Prints and Drawings, Peters will oversee the care and development of the collection, working closely with the Director and Chief Curator on the identification and acquisition of works of art to augment the collection. Together with an Assistant or Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings—who will be appointed later this year—Peters will be responsible for exhibitions in the James and Hanna Bartlett Prints and Drawings Galleries; she will also curate special exhibitions in the Smith Foundation Hall and Gallery that highlight all aspects of European and American graphic art. Peters will also develop interpretive and didactic materials designed to appeal to broad audiences, helping to deepen visitors’ appreciation and understanding of graphic art.

The collections for which Peters will be responsible span more than 500 years of artistic production throughout Europe and the United States. Consisting of approximately 22,000 prints and 4,000 drawings, the collection is internationally known for its rarity and high quality. Areas of particular strength include Italian Renaissance drawings by Michelangelo and Raphael as well as a strong group of engravings and woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer. Highlights of the 17th century include drawings and a range of etched subjects by Rembrandt van Rijn, while an impressive group of early lithographs and celebrated drawings by Ingres and Degas stand out among the 19th-century holdings. The drawings collection is admired for watercolors by Blake, Turner and Palmer, and for luminous pastels by Cassatt and Redon. Among the highlights of modernism is a group of more than 50 German Expressionist prints and drawings by Miró, Picasso, and Winslow Homer.

“I am honored to be joining the Cleveland Museum of Art at this exciting time,” said Peters. “Cleveland’s collection of prints and drawings is one of the finest in the United States, and I have long admired its many treasures as well as the important exhibitions and acquisitions presented by my predecessors at the museum. I look forward to thinking about new ways to present the collection and to working with my colleagues to augment its holdings in keeping with the CMA’s rich history of collecting. I am particularly looking forward to getting to know the vibrant community of prints and drawings supporters in Cleveland via the Print Club and the Painting and Drawing Society.”

Peters brings more than a decade of curatorial work and museum experience to the CMA. In 2005, she joined the curatorial team at the RISD Museum as Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs; in 2008, she was promoted to Associate Curator. A specialist of 15th- and 16th-century Netherlandish prints and drawings, Peters has mounted at RISD such diverse exhibitions as Design and Description: Renaissance and Baroque Drawings (2006); Urban America, 1930–1970 (2007); The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver 1480–1650 (2009); and The Festive City (2014); and Landscape and Leisure: 19th-Century American Drawings from the Collection (2015). Along with organizing exhibitions, Peters has collaborated closely with her curatorial colleagues at RISD in planning the reinstallation of the museum’s European galleries, set to open in the fall of 2017.

In addition to her curatorial work, Peters has extensive experience teaching. While at the RISD Museum, she has worked closely with professors and students at Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, collaborating with professors on exhibitions and publications and supervising undergraduate and graduate students who research the museum’s collection and curate exhibitions. Peters has also taught art history at Rhode Island College and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Peters’s scholarship has been widely praised. Her exhibition catalogue The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver 1480–1650 (2009) received a first-place award from the New England Museum Association, and her catalogue essay, “Systems and Swells: The Collective Lineage of Engraved Lines” was deemed runner-up for essay of the year by the Association of Art Museum Curators. Research for The Brilliant Line was funded by grants from the Samuel Kress Foundation, the International Fine Prints Dealers Association, and the Foundation for the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Peters has authored numerous scholarly articles including “Processional Print Series in Antwerp during the Dutch Revolt,” Print Quarterly 32 (September 2015): 259–70; “Treasures from the Vault: Leaf e from the Biblia Pauperum, ca. 1460s,” in Art in Print 3 (November/December 2013): 28–31; and “Printing Ritual: The Performance of Community in Christopher Plantin’s La Joyeuse & Magnifique Entrée de Monseigneur Francoys . . . d’Anjou (Antwerp, 1592)” Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2008): 61–2.

Holding a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Peters has been the recipient of several fellowships from institutions including the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB, the Belgian American Educational Foundation, and the American Association of Netherlandic Studies. In 2002–03, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for dissertation research in Antwerp. Emily J. Peters will be moving to Cleveland with her family.

Pierre Henri de Valenciennes, View of the Roman Campagna near Subiaco, ca.1782
(Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 7359)

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Press release (January 2017) from Sweden’s Nationalmuseum:

Sweden’s Nationalmuseum has acquired three landscape studies from Italy in oil by Pierre Henri de Valenciennes and Simon Denis. Views of Rome and the surrounding countryside have a distinguished pedigree. For a long time, they remained true to the 17th-century landscape ideal and were painted in the studio. Valenciennes and Denis broke new ground by making sketches in oil, often on paper, on location. The light and weather conditions were as important as the subject, so the works were produced quickly. Despite being preparatory studies, these oil sketches laid the foundations for much of the 19th-century’s plein air painting.

Simon Denis, Study of the Roman Campagna, ca. 1800 (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 7336).

Pierre Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819) is considered a pioneer who had a major influence on French art as both a theorist and a teacher. He was elected to the academy of fine arts in Paris in 1787, and served as professor of perspective theory from 1812 onward. Élémens de perspective pratique à l’usage des artistes (1800), his treatise on practical landscape painting with a focus on perspective, was particularly significant. Eventually his efforts led the academy to establish a dedicated prize for historical landscape painting. The recently acquired View of the Roman Campagna near Subiaco shows Valenciennes’s skill in capturing the lighting conditions and cloud shadows through brushwork that is both sensitive and vivid. The painting depicts the movement of the wind and its effects rather more than the landscape itself. Oil sketches of this kind, painted on location, differ radically from the works Valenciennes created in his studio. The latter portray an idealised version of nature, with scenes from classical mythology, but thanks to the introduction of oil sketches to the process, the lighting and colouring are markedly different from those seen in 17th-century landscape painting.

Simon Denis, The Waterfall in Neptune’s Grotto at Tivoli, ca. 1790 (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 7358).

Simon Denis (1755–1813), a native of Antwerp, travelled via Paris to Italy, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Long overlooked, Denis was rediscovered in 1992 when a large number of his oil sketches were put up for sale. These had been passed down through generations of the artist’s descendants, so had stayed out of the public eye. His technique is reminiscent of Valenciennes, with similarly economical brushwork and a focus on the lighting and weather conditions. Unlike the idealised landscapes, the oil sketches portray nature as changeable, which the recently acquired pieces exemplify superbly. The view of the Roman Campagna, in particular, shows Denis’s skill in capturing atmospheric phenomena with great simplicity. The results are magnificent and the effect almost illusory. The smaller oil sketch depicts Neptune’s Grotto at Tivoli. With masterful simplicity, Denis captures the play of light in the waterfall and the foliage in the foreground contrasted with the dark cliff. The work appears to have been painted in haste, with thinly applied colours that dried rapidly, allowing the artist to move on to the next layer. A crouching figure at lower right serves to illustrate the scale of the subject.

When Nationalmuseum reopens after renovations, these three new acquisitions will enable the museum to better chart the beginnings of plein air painting. This would not have been possible without the generous support of the Wiros Fund, the Sophia Giesecke Fund, and the Hedda and N D Qvist Memorial Fund. Nationalmuseum has no budget of its own for new acquisitions, but relies on gifting and financial support from private funds and foundations to enhance its collections of fine art and craft.