Call for Submissions | British Art Studies, Issue 2
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
British Art Studies, Issue 2 (April 2016)
Papers are due by 1 September 2015
We are currently soliciting submissions of articles for our second issue, which is due for publication in April 2016.
British Art Studies is an online journal published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven. Launching in the autumn of 2015, the journal will provide an innovative space for new research and scholarship of the highest quality on all aspects of British art. The digital format of the journal offers new opportunities for displaying images alongside text and multimedia content. The editors are open to proposals and ideas from authors to develop innovative and visually stimulating ways to publish art-historical scholarship online.
British Art Studies, which is peer reviewed, encourages submissions on British art, architecture, and visual culture from all periods in their most diverse and international contexts. The journal will reflect the dynamic and broad ranging research cultures of the Paul Mellon Centre and the Yale Center for British Art, as well as the wider field of studies in British art and architecture today.
How to submit an article: Texts of between 5000 and 8000 words in length (although the editors are willing to discuss shorter and longer formats) should be submitted via email in a Word document, together with a document containing low resolution accompanying images (where possible), and a list of proposed images and sources, as outlined in our style guide, available online. The final number of figures and the process of sourcing and commissioning media for articles accepted for publication will be discussed with authors on an individual basis, but we recommend between 5 and 10. British Art Studies will endeavour to meet all reasonable costs and deal with copyright issues for illustrative materials essential to the argument of published text.
How to submit proposals for other formats: proposals are also welcomed for content which presents art-historical scholarship in innovative and dynamic ways using the online format of British Art Studies. Proposals outlining your ideas, use of images and/or multi-media content are encouraged by the Editorial Group.
Deadline for the submission of articles and proposal to be considered for the second issue: 1st September 2015. Contact Hana Leaper (journal@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk) with any questions or to discuss a potential submission to the journal.
Hermione Voyage 2015
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the Hermione Voyage 2015 website:
Twenty years ago, a small group dreamed of reconstructing an exact replica of General Lafayette’s 18th-century ship called the Hermione. Today, the majestic vessel is the largest and most authentically built Tall Ship in the last 150 years. The Hermione has set sail in France, launching an adventure that comes to the USA in the summer of 2015 for an unprecedented voyage.
In April 2015, after a period of sea trials and training in 2014, the Hermione set sail for the USA. The journey started from the mouth of the River Charente, in Port des Barques, where Lafayette boarded on March 10th, 1780. The transatlantic crossing was expected to take 27 days in total, before making landfall at Yorktown, Virginia.
As the Hermione moves up the Eastern seaboard, it will be accompanied by a range of pier side activities. These include in some ports a traveling exhibition and a heritage village that will be accessible to the public. The Hermione Voyage 2015 is part of an expansive outreach program with cultural events, exhibitions, and educational programs that celebrate the trip and mark its progress. A robust digital activation for the voyage expands the reach of the project to millions of people.
Objects from the Slave Ship São José To Be Displayed in D.C.
Thomas Luny, Table Bay Cape Town, 1790s, oil on panel (Iziko Social History Collections). Depiction of the port of Cape Town, South Africa where the São José slave ship planned to stop before continuing to Brazil. The ship wrecked near the Cape of Good Hope before arriving in Table Bay. Photo by Pam Warne.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Press release (1 June 2015) from The Smithonian:
National Museum of African American History and Culture To Display Objects from Slave Shipwreck Found Near Cape Town, South Africa
Museum Joins Iziko Museums of South Africa and George Washington University in Slave Wrecks Research Project
Objects from a slave ship that sank off the coast of Cape Town in 1794 will be on long-term loan to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The announcement, scheduled for Tuesday, June 2, will take place at a historic ceremony at Iziko Museums of South Africa. The discovery of the ship marks a milestone in the study of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and showcases the results of the Slave Wrecks Project, a unique global partnership among museums and research institutions, including NMAAHC and six partners in the U.S. and Africa.
Objects from the shipwreck—iron ballast to weigh down the ship and its human cargo and a wooden pulley block—were retrieved this year from the wreck site of the São José-Paquete de Africa, a Portuguese slave ship that sank off the coast of Cape Town on its way to Brazil while carrying more than 400 enslaved Africans from Mozambique.
Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of NMAAHC, and Rooksana Omar, CEO of Iziko Museums, will join in the announcement of the shipwreck’s discovery and the artifact loan agreement.
“Perhaps the single greatest symbol of the trans-Atlantic slave trade is the ships that carried millions of captive Africans across the Atlantic never to return,” said Bunch. “This discovery is significant because there has never been archaeological documentation of a vessel that foundered and was lost while carrying a cargo of enslaved persons. The São José is all the more significant because it represents one of the earliest attempts to bring East Africans into the trans-Atlantic slave trade—a shift that played a major role in prolonging that tragic trade for decades.”
São José Wreck
The São José’s voyage was one of the earliest in the trans-Atlantic slave trade from East Africa to the Americas, which continued well into the 19th century. More than 400,000 East Africans are estimated to have made the Mozambique-to-Brazil journey between 1800 and 1865. The ship’s crew and some of the more than 400 enslaved on board were rescued after the ship ran into submerged rocks about 100 meters (328 feet) from shore. Tragically, more than half of the enslaved people perished in the violent waves. The remainder were resold into slavery in the Western Cape.
The São José wreck site is located between two reefs, a location that creates a difficult environment to work in because it is prone to strong swells creating challenging conditions for the archaeologists. To date, only a small percentage of the site has been excavated; fully exploring the site will take time.
Even the smallest artifact gives a clue into the shipwreck’s story:
1980s: Local amateur treasure hunters discovered a wreck near Cape Town and mistakenly identified it as the wreck of an earlier Dutch vessel. They applied for a permit under the legislation of the time and had to report their findings.
2008–2009: The Slave Wrecks Project (SWP) staff identified the São José as a target for location in its pilot project.
2010–2011: Jaco Boshoff, the co-originator of SWP, served as lead archaeologist for Iziko and primary investigator for the São José project. He discovered the captain’s account of the wrecking of the São José in the Cape archives. New interest was developed on the site. Copper fastenings and copper sheathing indicated a wreck of a later period, and iron ballast—often found on slave ships and other ships as a means of stabilizing the vessel—was found on the wreck.
2012–2013: SWP uncovered an archival document in Portugal stating that the São José had loaded iron ballast before she departed for Mozambique, further confirming the site as the São José wreck. Archaeological documentation of the wreck site began in 2013.
2014–2015: Some of the first artifacts are brought above water through a targeted retrieval process according to the best archaeological and preservation practices. Using CT scan technology because of the fragility of the site, the SWP identified the remains of shackles on the wreck site, a difficult undertaking because of extreme iron corrosion. Archival research locates a document in which a slave is noted as sold by a local sheikh to the São José’s captain before its departure, definitively identifying Mozambique Island as the port of departure for the slaving voyage. Archival and archaeological prospecting work was launched in Mozambique and Brazil in order to identify sites related to the São José story for future research.
2015–ongoing: Full archaeological documentation and retrieval of select items to help to tell of the São José wreck site continue; the search for descendant communities of Mozambicans from the wreck also continues.
A selection of artifacts retrieved from the São José wreck will be loaned by Iziko Museums and the South African government for display in an inaugural exhibition titled Slavery and Freedom at NMAAHC, opening fall 2016. Iziko Museums also plans an exhibition.
Memorial Service
On Tuesday, June 2, soil brought from Mozambique Island, the site of the São José’s embarkation, will be deposited on the wreck site by a team represented by divers from Mozambique, South Africa and the United States. A solemn memorial service will also be held close by and on shore honoring the 500 enslaved Mozambicans who lost their lives or were sold into slavery. SWP researchers, Cape Town dignitaries and delegations from the U.S. Consulate and South African government will attend the private ceremony.
Symposium
A daylong public symposium, Bringing the São José into Memory, will be held June 3 featuring a series of panel discussions focusing on the wreck, the slave trade, slavery, history and memory. The panels will take place at the Iziko Museums’ TH Barry Lecture Theatre and feature discussions and performances by scholars, curators, heritage activists, artists, hip-hop musicians and slave descendants from various academic, heritage and religious institutions, including Iziko, St. George’s Cathedral, NMAAHC, George Washington University, Syracuse University, Brown University, University of Western Cape, Cape Family Research Forum among others.
Maritime Archaeology and Conservation Workshop
The week’s activities will also include a conservation workshop for archaeologists, researchers and museum professionals from Mozambique, Senegal and South Africa to learn techniques in conservation and care for marine materials. This workshop, co-taught by Boshoff and George Schwarz of the U.S. Naval Heritage Command, is an opportunity to advance professional training and capacity for individuals and institutions, a core component of SWP’s mission. Representatives from Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique, and Cheik Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, will join with Smithsonian and Iziko professionals in a dialogue about current and future research and searches in their respective regions.
Slave Wrecks Project History
Founded in 2008, SWP brings together partners who have been investigating the impact of the slave trade on world history. It spearheaded the recent discovery of the São José wreck and the ongoing documentation and retrieval of select artifacts. In addition, extensive archival research was conducted on four continents in six countries that ultimately uncovered the ship captain’s account of the wrecking in the Cape archives as well as the ship’s manifest in Portuguese archives. Core SWP partners include George Washington University, Iziko Museums of South Africa, the South African Heritage Resource Agency, the U.S. National Park Service, Diving With a Purpose, a project of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers, and the African Center for Heritage Activities.
SWP, established with funding from the Ford Foundation, set a new model for international collaboration among museums and research institutions. It has been combining groundbreaking slave shipwreck investigation, maritime and historical archeological training, capacity building, heritage tourism and protection, and education to build new scholarship and knowledge about the study of the global slave trade.
Conference | Artistic Correspondences: Rome and Europe, 1700–1900
From the conference programme:
Artistic Correspondences: Rome and Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Corrispondenze d’artista: Roma e l’Europa (XVIII-XIX secolo)
Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut Rome / Svenska Institutet i Rom, 15–16 June 201
Registration due by 11 June
Epistolary correspondence among artists is a privileged source to unravel the dynamics of intellectual exchange across regional and national boundaries, as it requires a research agenda necessarily focused on ‘mobility’, and a transnational approach and methodology avoiding the rhetorical pitfalls of past European historiography. By focusing on the cosmopolitan context of 18th- and 19th-century Rome as a paradigmatic field of enquiry, the research network Artistic Correspondences: Rome and Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries convenes investigators and research groups working on the same topic throughout Europe in order to explore new opportunities for collaboration. The conference is free of charge, though registration is required (see the Svenska Institutet i Rom website for details).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
M O N D A Y , 1 5 J U N E 2 01 5
9.30 Saluti, Martin Olin, (Assistant Director, Svenska Institutet i Rom) & Mario De Nonno, (Direttore del Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università degli Studi Roma TRE)
10.00 Plenary Session
Session Chair: Harald Hendrix (KNIR)
• Serenella Rolfi (Università degli Studi Roma TRE), Linee di una ricerca
• Elisabeth Oy-Marra (Gutenberg Universität Mainz), Lettere d’artista e le vite d’artisti: da Giovan Pietro Bellori a Giovanni Gaetano Bottari
• Cinzia Sicca (Università statale di Pisa), Rome as Competitive arena: The evolving nature of a friendship through the early eighteenth-century correspondence of John Talman and William Kent
• Martin Dönike (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), Rome in Weimar: The artistic correspondence between Goethe and German artists living in Rome around 1800
• Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana, Mendrisio), Da Grimm a Goethe: l’impatto di Parigi e Weimar sulle corrispondenze artistiche romane del ‘700
12:45 Pause
14:00 Session A1: Esperienza di Roma
Session Chair: Liliana Barroero (Università degli Studi Roma TRE)
• Raquel Gallego (Universitat de Barcelona), Il carteggio di Julien de Parme e la formazione degli artisti indipendenti a Roma
• Tomas Macsotay (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Northcote, Theed, Tatham, Deare, Flaxman: Five British artists overcome Rome
• Sebastian Dohe – Malve Falk, Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte), Oldenburg To princes, poets and painters: The ‘Tischbein bequest’ at Oldenburg
15.25 Session A2: Prospettive storiografiche
Session Chair: Susanne Adina Meyer (Università di Macerata)
• Raffaella Morselli (Università degli Studi di Teramo), Nostalgia di Roma: Riflessioni di Francesco Albani sulla pittura classicista nell’urbe
• Susanna Pasquali (Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’), Algarotti, Temanza e le lettere degli architetti nella prima edizione della ‘Raccolta’ di Bottari
• Stefano Ferrari (Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati di Scienze, Lettere e Arti), Il carteggio di Winckelmann con gli artisti
• Robert Skwirblies (Technische Universität Berlin), Lettere d’artista e ‘Künstlersozialgeschichte’: La dimensione storica e sociale nelle lettere giovanili di Johann David Passavant da Parigi e Roma a Francoforte
14:00 Session B1: Rapporti con le istituzioni
Session Chair: Maria Pia Donato, IHMC (CNRS-ENS-Paris 1)
• Emilie Roffidal (CNRS-Toulouse), Correspondances romaines d’une académie de province: l’Académie de peinture et de sculpture de Marseille, 1760–1790
• Adrian Fernandez Almoguera (Paris – Sorbonne Université), After the Antique: Correspondence between Rome’s Spanish artistic community and Madrid’s Academy, 1750–1820
• Michela Degortes e Maria Joao Quintas Lopes Baptista Neto, Universidade de Lisboa), La Real Accademia Portoghese di Belle Arti a Roma (1785–1798) nella corrispondenza dei diplomatici, degli artisti e del direttore Giovanni Gherardo De Rossi
15.25 Session B2: Contesti collezionistici e agenti
Session Chair: Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana)
• Matteo Borchia (Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’), Bartolomeo Cavaceppi e la corte di Berlino: stralci di una corrispondenza
• Johanna Selch (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), An attentive glance at Rome: Ludwig I of Bavaria and his Roman correspondents
• Mathias Hofter (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Concetti del collezionismo nella corrispondenza di Ludovico I e Martin Wagner
• Ljerka Dulibi e Iva Tržec Pasini (Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, Zagreb), Artists in nineteenth-century Rome as mediators of cultural transfer of ideas and objects
18.30 Lecture
• Martin Olin (Svenska Institutet i Rom), Italian food and wine in letters and memoirs of Scandinavian artists
T U E S D A Y , 1 6 J U N E 2 0 1 5
9:30 Session A3: Corrispondenze cosmopolite
Session Chair: Ilaria Miarelli Mariani (Università di Chieti)
• Miguel Figueira de Faira (Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa), Rome, Paris, Lisbon: Political and Aesthetic Ideas in Portuguese artistic correspondence at the end of Ancient Regime
• Anna Frasca-Rath (Universität Wien), Antonio Canova nelle lettere di John Gibson
• Arnika Schmidt (Technische Universität Dresden), Nino Costa (1826–1903), A Roman painter and his cosmopolitan correspondence
9:30 Session B3: Pratiche artistiche e modelli
Session Chair: Carla Mazzarelli (Università della Svizzera italiana, Mendrisio)
• Valeria Rotili (Accademia di San Luca, Roma), Lo scultore al lavoro. Il carteggio Albacini per una geografia della prassi artistica
• Angela Windholz (Università della Svizzera italiana, Mendrisio), Lettere da Olevano Romano: La descrizione di un motivo ideale
• Rosalba Dinoia (Roma), Traduzione e migrazione del Rinascimento nella corrispondenza di Luigi Calamatta
11.00 Plenary Session
• Georg Schelbert (Humboldt Universität Berlin), Personal Networks and Biographical Data between Edition of Text Documents and Modeling of Historic Events
11:30 Roundtable
Chairs: Christoph Frank (Università della Svizzera italiana), Giovanna Capitelli (Università della Calabria)
• E. Jonas Bencard (Thorvaldsens Museum Copenaghen), The Thorvaldsens Museum Archives: An internet platform for primary written sources on Thorvaldsen & Co.
• Giulia Ericani, (Museo-Biblioteca-Archivio Bassano del Grappa), Il Fondo Canova
• Hannelore Putz (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Projekt Edition des Briefwechsels zwischen König Ludwig I. und Johann Martin von Wagner
• Amaya Alzaga Ruiz, Juan Antonio Yeves (Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid), La Literatura y las Artes en Epistolarios Españoles del siglo XIX
• Babette van Alphen (RKD Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), RKD Explore: Dutch artists and their societies in the databases of the RKD
American Art in Translation Book Prize
From Yale UP:
The Terra Foundation-Yale University Press American Art in Translation Book Prize
Applications due by 3 August 2015
The Terra Foundation for American Art, in partnership with Yale University Press, is offering a new prize for an unpublished manuscript or previously published manuscript in a language other than English written by a non-U.S. author. The manuscript should make a significant contribution to scholarship on the historical visual arts of what is now the geographic United States.
In helping to overcome the language barrier that often divides scholars and deters international research and collaboration, the prize aims to advance and internationalize scholarship on American art and seeks to recognize original and thorough research, sound methodology, and significance in the field. The award is especially intended to encourage authors who take the field of American art history into new historical and interpretive terrain, or who establish connections among the work of scholars within and outside the United States, providing a model of international exchange important to sustaining relevance and academic rigor for the future of the field.
The winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize; the Terra Foundation will fund production of the book, which will be published (in print and electronic form) in English by Yale University Press. In addition, Yale University Press will invite the winner to present a lecture on the book, upon publication, at Yale University. Scholars who have received PhDs within the past five years are strongly encouraged to apply.
Applicants must submit a letter of inquiry by August 3, 2015. The deadline for the receipt of completed applications is October 15, 2015. For more information about application guidelines and the application process, schedule, and checklist, please visit the Yale University Press website.
Exhibition | Canaletto: The Triumph of Light
Canaletto, Capriccio, A Palladian Design for the Rialto Bridge, with Buildings, 1744, 90 x 130 cm (London: The Royal Collection, RCIN 404029) © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the Centre d’Art de l’Hôtel de Caumont:
Canaletto, Rome—Londres—Venise: Le Triomphe de la Lumière
Centre d’Art de l’Hôtel de Caumont, Aix-en-Provence, 6 May — 13 September 2015
Curated by Bozena Anna Kowalczyk
Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto (1697–1768), is recognised as the emblematic figure of the veduta genre, the most admired Venetian artistic creation of the 18th century in Europe. This inaugural exhibition at the art centre of the Hôtel de Caumont aims to provide new insights into the complete works of Canaletto, with a particular interest in the treatment of light in the Venetian master’s paintings. Fifty paintings and drawings from international public and private collections will present Canaletto the man and the different phases of his artistic career, in Rome, London and Venice.
We initially discover Canaletto’s first activity, as a painter of theatre scenery, carried out in collaboration with his father Bernardo Canal and his brother Cristoforo. Opera librettos on which Canaletto’s name appears will be exhibited alongside his first capricci, full of musical influences, painted in 1720–1722, and the first views of Venice, composed according to the criteria for staging.
The exhibition continues with a presentation of the major undertakings of Canaletto’s youth: the views of Venice commissioned by Joseph Smith (1722–1723), Joseph Wenzel of Liechtenstein (1723) and Stefano Conti (1725–1726), are large scale canvases that bear witness to the skill of the young painter.
Canaletto’s visit to England, his contact with new landscapes and the light of the Thames, led to changes in his palette and his touch. A series of paintings and drawings show the new solutions he adopted to capture the atmosphere and spirit of England. Canaletto painted London and lingered over Westminster Bridge, the second bridge over the Thames, then under construction. He also painted the English countryside, travelling as far as outskirts of Scotland to depict Alnwick Castle, home of the Duke of Northumberland.
A special section is devoted to technical experiments conducted by the artist throughout his career. Canaletto conceived a systematic and scientific way to rework drawings that had been made outdoors by means of a camera obscura (dark chamber). An example of the camera obscura used by the painter is presented next to a facsimile that allows the visitor to visualise for himself what the painter would see when using this device. A reproduction of pages from his sketchbook, as well as a film, illustrate the technical work of the artist during his portrayal of views of Venice.
This exhibition is also the occasion to conduct for the first time a comprehensive study of the last years of Canaletto in Venice. The works accomplished after his return from London at the end of 1755 illustrate Canaletto’s new interests and his response to the new artistic climate in Venice, where Francesco Guardi (1712–1793) was making a name for himself. Particular attention is devoted to the artist’s tireless passion for the study of new effects of light and atmosphere. The greatest international museums have granted their support. Among them: the Royal Collection and the National Gallery of London, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Uffizi Gallery of Florence as well as the Ca’Rezzonico of Venice.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From artbooks.com:
Bozena Anna Kowalczyk, ed., Canaletto, Rome—Londres—Venise: Le Triomphe de la Lumière (Antwerp: Mercatorfonds, 2015), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-9462300835, 45€ / $85.
For the inaugural exhibition at the Centre d’Art de l’Hôtel de Caumont in Aix-en-Provence, Mercatorfonds presents the first French monograph on Canaletto, and the first worldwide following the Metropolitan Museum’s publication in 1989. Numerous recent shows, focusing on specific aspects of Canaletto’s work or simply on his depictions of Venice, are a clear indication of the public’s interest in the painter’s oeuvre. This volume introduces the reader to Canaletto and, by tracing the various phases of his artistic path, provides a complete overview of his work. To highlight the development of Canaletto’s tastes, his reactions to Venice’s artistic and cultural trends and the atmosphere of England—where he worked for nine years—the paintings and drawings shown here have been selected from among the artist’s most remarkable pieces.
The Art Bulletin, June 2015
The eighteenth century in The Art Bulletin:
The Art Bulletin 97 (June 2015)
A R T I C L E S
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Young Girl in Bed Making Her Dog Dance, ca. 1768 (Munich: Alte Pinakothek)
• Jennifer Milam, “Rococo Representations of Interspecies Sensuality and the Pursuit of Volupté,” pp. 192–209.
Enlightenment writers proposed the existence of an animal soul, refuting the Cartesian beast-machine. Arguments credit the caresses of a dog to its master as direct visual evidence of the capacity of an animal to feel and show emotion. A focus on paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard sets the Rococo representation of lapdogs within the context of changing ideas about the relationship between animal and human. Eroticized images of lapdogs are related to radical materialist theories that assert the role of physical pleasure in human motivation.
Free access to the article is available here for the first fifty clicks (please don’t click if you already have access to the journal).
R E V I E W S
• Vittoria Di Palma, Review of Hanneke Grootenboer, Treasuring the Gaze: Intimate Vision in Late Eighteenth-Century Eye Miniatures (The University of Chicago Press,
2013), pp. 229–30.
The Art Bulletin, March 2015
The eighteenth century in The Art Bulletin:
The Art Bulletin 97 (March 2015)
Joshua Reynolds, Studio Experiments in Colour and Media, ca. 1770–1790? (London: Royal Academy of Arts)
A R T I C L E S
• Matthew C. Hunter, “Joshua Reynolds’s ‘Nice Chymistry’: Action and Accident in the 1770s,” pp. 58–76.
The first president of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts, Joshua Reynolds was described by contemporaries as a dangerously misguided chemist. Using a secretive laboratory of fugitive materials, he crafted visually striking images that came together quickly and stopped audiences dead in their tracks. But, just as rapidly, those paintings began to deteriorate as objects—flaking, discoloring, visibly altering in time. When framed around the “nice chymistry” he prescribed for aspiring artists in his famous Discourses, Reynolds’s risky pictorial enterprise can be situated within a broader problematic of making and thinking with temporally evolving chemical images in the later eighteenth century.
Marie-Denise Villers, Une étude de femme d’après nature, 1802 (Paris: Louvre)
• Susan L. Siegfried, “The Visual Culture of Fashion and the Classical Ideal in Post-Revolutionary France,” pp. 77–99.
In her little-known painting A Study of a Woman after Nature (1802), Marie-Denise Villers exploited a conjuncture between masculine-inflected ideals of Neoclassical art and feminine-inflected ideas of fashionability in the post-Revolutionary period in France by making a feature of female dress while emulating the standards of history painting. The artist’s confident synthesis of idioms is examined in the context of Albertine Clément-Hémery’s memoir of a women’s art studio. Walter Benjamin’s notion of gestus is enlisted as a means of understanding how the quite different image cultures invoked in this work communicated social ideas.
Exhibition | Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia
José Manuel de la Cerda, Desk-on-stand (detail), Pátzcuaro, Mexico, 18th century. Lacquered and polychromed wood with gilt decoration. On loan from The Hispanic Society of America, New York.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the MFA:
Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 18 August 2015 — 15 February 2016
Winterthur, Wilmington, Delaware, 26 March 2016 — 8 January 2017
Exquisite objects tell the story of the influence of Asia on the arts of colonial America.
Within decades of the ‘discovery’ of America by Spain in 1492, goods from Asia traversed the globe via Spanish and Portuguese traders. The Americas became a major destination for Asian objects and Mexico became an international hub of commerce. The impact of the importation of these goods was immediate and widespread, both among the European colonizers and the indigenous populations, who readily adapted their own artistic traditions to the new fashion for Asian imports.
Made in the Americas is the first large-scale, Pan-American exhibition to examine the profound influence of Asia on the arts of the colonial Americas. Featuring nearly 100 of the most extraordinary objects produced in the colonies, this exhibition explores the rich, complex story of how craftsmen throughout the hemisphere adapted Asian styles in a range of materials—from furniture to silverwork, textiles, ceramics, and painting. Exquisite objects from Mexico City, Lima, Quito, Quebec City, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, dating from the 17th to the early 19th centuries, include folding screens made in Mexico in imitation of imported Japanese and Chinese screens, blue-and-white talavera ceramics copied from imported Chinese porcelains, and luxuriously woven textiles made to replicate fine silks and cottons imported from China and India.
The timing of the exhibition marks the 450th anniversary of the beginning of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade between the Philippines and Mexico, which was inaugurated in 1565 and ended in 1815, two and a half centuries later.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
From the MFA:
Dennis Carr, with contributions by Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Timothy Brook, Mitchell Codding, Karina H. Corrigan, and Donna Pierce, Made in the Americas: The New World Discovers Asia (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2015), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0878468126, $50.
Made in the Americas reveals the largely overlooked history of the profound influence of Asia on the arts of the colonial Americas. Beginning in the sixteenth century, European outposts in the New World, especially those in New Spain, became a major nexus of the Asia export trade. Craftsmen from Canada to Peru, inspired by the sophisticated designs and advanced techniques of these imported goods, combined Asian styles with local traditions to produce unparalleled furniture, silverwork, textiles, ceramics, lacquer, painting, and architectural ornaments.
Among the exquisite objects featured in this book, from across the hemisphere and spanning the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, are folding screens made in Mexico, in imitation of imported Japanese and Chinese screens; blue-and-white talavera ceramics copied from Chinese porcelains; luxuriously woven textiles, made to replicate fine silks and cottons from China and India; devotional statues that adapt Buddhist gods into Christian saints; and japanned furniture produced in colonial Boston that simulates Asian lacquer finishes. The stories these objects tell, compellingly related by leading scholars, bring to life the rich cultural interchange and the spectacular arts of the first global age.
Dennis Carr is Carolyn and Peter Lynch Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Gauvin Alexander Bailey is Professor and Alfred and Isabel Bader Chair in Southern Baroque, Department of Art History and Art Conservation, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario.
Timothy Brook holds the Republic of China Chair in the Department of History and Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Mitchell Codding is Executive Director, The Hispanic Society of America, New York.
Karina H. Corrigan is H. A. Crosby Forbes Curator of Asian Export Art, Peabody Essex Museum.
Donna Pierce is Frederick & Jan Mayer Curator of Spanish Colonial Art, Denver Art Museum.
Conference | The Enlightenment—Continuity, Challenge or Change?
From the forum flyer:
Benedictus Academic Research Forum 2015 | Continuity, Challenge or Change?
European Cultural and Intellectual Identity before and after the Enlightenment
Linnean Society, London, 19–20 June 2015
This year the Benedictus Academic Research Forum focuses on the Enlightenment, a pivotal moment in European culture and thought. Speakers from a wide range of disciplines including philosophy, music, art, theology and politics will introduce ideas and discuss contexts that enrich our understanding of the period and its continuing relevance. Tickets: £30 (both days), £15 (one day only) , includes entrance, drinks reception and Saturday lunch. Reservation essential; please email info@benedictus.org.uk or visit our website.
Sessions chaired by Thomas Pink (King’s College London), Anthony O’Hear (University of Buckingham), and Edward Chaney (Southampton Solent)
• Keynote presentation by Roger Scruton,
The Idea of a Secular Culture
• Adriano Aymonino (University of Buckingham),
The Classical Ideal from the Renaissance to the Nineteenth Century
• George Corbett (Trinity College Cambridge), Reframing the Seven Deadly Sins in the Christian Moral Life: Continuity and Change in Aquinas
• John Cottingham (Reading University
and Heythrop College London),
Descartes, God and Secularism
• Fernando Cervantes (University of Bristol),
The Ethics of Elfland: The Notion of Virtue in
Cervantes, Shakespeare and Montaigne
• Michael Lang (Heythrop College London),
Re-approaching Ritual and the Sacred in Late Modernity
• Peter Leech (Swansea University),
The Cultural Patronage of Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart (1725–1807) in Rome
• Sebastian Morello (Centre for Catholic Formation),
Democracy and Royal Power: Nature and the Ideal of European Government
• Giuseppe Pezzini (Magdalen College, Oxford),
Receptions of Classical Texts from Late Medieval
to Early Modern Europe
• Clare Hornsby (Benedictus
) and Rafal Szepietowski (Manchester University),
Paintings of Astronomy in Early Eighteenth-Century Bologna
Young Scholars’ Competition
This year we launched the Benedictus Scholar’s Competition to give 6th form students the chance to present their ideas in front of an audience of international academics. Our two winners Shakil Karim (Harrow School) and Imogen Wade (Perse School) will be presenting their papers on Saturday morning.
Enfilade 
leave a comment