Exhibition and Symposium | Portrait of a Lady?
From One Royal Crescent in Bath:
Portrait of a Lady? Ruin & Reputation in the Georgian Era
One Royal Crescent, Bath, 16 May — 14 December 2014
Curated by Hallie Rubenhold
This exhibition features a private collection of mezzotints of Georgian women from different levels of society including actresses, courtesans and duchesses. The theme of the exhibition is to look at the status of different women in the 18th century, how they viewed themselves and were viewed by society. It also looks at the social fluidity of the 18th century, where a prostitute or actress might rise through the ranks to become a celebrated courtesan and then marry into nobility, or conversely where a woman born into wealth and status might be damned as a ‘whore’ for having a relationship outside of marriage.
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From the symposium programme:
Portrait of a Lady? Symposium
Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, Queen Square, Bath, 14 November 2014
To coincide with the current exhibition at No.1 Royal Crescent this symposium brings together academics, curators and writers to consider how women were viewed, adored or condemned in the 18th century, in particular through the medium of the mezzotint. Speakers include: writer and broadcaster Dan Cruickshank, Exhibition Curator Hallie Rubenhold, and Professor Emeritus at the Courtauld Institute of Art Aileen Ribeiro. The symposium will be followed by an open invitation to delegates to visit the exhibition at No. 1 Royal Crescent for a drinks reception.
P R O G R A M M E
9.15 Registration
9.30 Welcome by Adrian Tinniswood, writer and historian and Edward Bayntun-Coward, chairman of Bath Preservation Trust
9.40 Portrait of a Lady? by Hallie Rubenhold, curator, writer and broadcaster
10.25 ‘Miss Macaroni and Her Gallant at a Print Shop’: A New Market for Mezzotints by Sheila O’Connell, Assistant
Keeper, British Prints before 1800, British Museum
11.10 Coffee
11.25 The Secret History of Georgian London by Dan Cruickshank, writer and broadcaster
11.55 Queen of the Courtesans: Fanny Murray by Barbara White, former Dean and Director of Advanced Studies in England
12.40 Lunch (provided)
2.00 Behind the Mask: Women and Cosmetics in the Georgian Era by Aileen Ribeiro, Professor Emeritus at the Courtauld Institute of Art
2.30 The First Actresses by Gill Perry, Open University
3.00 Portrait of a Parricide in the Eighteenth Century: Unveiling Miss Blandy’s Image by Garthine Walker, University of Cardiff
3.45 Tea
4.00 Elections and Entertainments: Elite Women and Politics in the Eighteenth Century by Elaine Chalus, Bath Spa University
4.30 The First Sexual Revolution and the Birth of Sexual Celebrity by Faramerz Dabhoiwala, Exeter College, Oxford
5.30 Summing up by Adrian Tinniswood
6.00 Drinks reception and exhibition at No.1 Royal Crescent
Exhibition | Gold
Gold tiger’s head ornament from Tipu Sultan’s throne, 1785–93; made from gold sheet over a wooden core with finely chased and punched decoration, set with rock crystal eyes, rock crystal teeth, and a hinged gold tongue, the mouth open as if roaring. Presented to William IV by the East India Company in 1831 (Royal Collection, inventory 67212)
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Press release (8 August 2014) from The Royal Collection:
Gold
The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, 7 November 2014 — 22 February 2015
The beauty and symbolism of gold, from the Early Bronze Age to the 20th century, is celebrated in an exhibition opening at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace in November. Through 50 items drawn from across the entire breadth of the Royal Collection, Gold explores the distinctive qualities that make this rare and precious metal an enduring expression of the highest status, both earthly and divine.
Over millennia and across diverse cultures, gold has been used to represent and reflect royal wealth and power. Among the most striking examples in the exhibition are the Rillaton gold cup, from a Bronze Age burial around 1700–1500 BC, a gold crown from Ecuador that pre-dates the Inca invasion, and a tiger’s head in gold and rock crystal from the throne of Tipu Sultan (1785–93), ruler of Mysore in India.
Many of the sacred and ceremonial items associated with the coronations of British monarchs incorporate gold. The exhibition includes a design from 1760 by Sir William Chambers and Giovanni Battista Cipriani for the Gold State Coach, the most expensive coach ever made, which has been used at every coronation since that of George IV. John Whittaker’s illustrated account of the Ceremonial of the Coronation of King George IV in the Abbey of St. Peter’s Westminster, 1823, is printed entirely in gold. Only six copies of the book were ever produced, and the project bankrupted the author. The painting Queen Victoria Receiving the Sacrament at her Coronation, 28 June 1838 by Charles Robert Leslie shows the Queen dressed in the shimmering Dalmatic Robe standing in a pool of golden sunlight.
Highly malleable and versatile, gold has been used to decorate every possible surface, from paper and silk to wood and silver. The exhibition shows gold incorporated into lacquer on a pair of 18th-century Japanese bowls and applied over carved gesso on a table by James Moore, who created furniture for Queen Anne and George I. A cigarette case by Carl Fabergé, presented to King Edward VII by the Dowager Tsarina of Russia in 1903, is made from three colours of gold that have been produced by mixing gold with other metals for a spectacular decorative effect.
The Padshahnama (Chronicle of the King of the World), 1656–57, is the finest Islamic manuscript in the Royal Collection. Written on paper flecked with gold, it forms an official record of the first ten years of the reign of Shah-Jahan, fifth Mughal emperor and builder of the Taj Mahal. Every year an amount equal to the Emperor’s weight in gold, silver and other precious items was distributed as alms, to prevent him suffering any corporeal or spiritual catastrophes. In a page from the manuscript in the exhibition, Shah-Jahan sits cross-legged in the pan of a set of golden scales.
Among other highlights of the exhibition are an early 16th-century Book of Hours illustrated with gilded miniatures by Jean Pichore, Simon van de Passe’s engraved gold portrait medallion of Elizabeth I, and two landscapes by the 17th-century artist Pier Francesco Cittadini which are drawn in pen and ink on paper covered in gold leaf. William Nicholson’s still life Gold Jug, 1937, is from the artist’s small series of works looking at the play of light on metallic surfaces.
Sir William Chambers, Pen and ink and watercolour design for the King’s State Coach, 1760; made for George III, bought from Colnaghi by the Prince Regent (later George IV), 12 June 1811 (Royal Collection, Inventory 917942)
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From the Royal Collection Trust and distributed by The University of Chicago Press:
Kathryn Jones, Lauren Porter, and Jennifer Scott, Gold (London: Royal Collection Trust, 2014), 120 pages, ISBN 978-1909741102, £25 / $40.
Gold is the most coveted of metals, its rarity and radiant natural beauty making imbuing it with rich meaning throughout human history. For artists, gold has long been associated with the divine. For monarchs, it has been a means of symbolizing status and wealth. With Gold, Kathryn Jones, Lauren Porter, and Jennifer Scott have written a lively and highly informative cultural history of gold in the Royal Collection, one that explores its many manifestations throughout history and its use in promoting messages of power and wealth.
Drawing on the Royal Collection’s unparalleled collection of paintings, miniatures, jewelry, gold boxes, and drawings in and on gold, the book takes readers through the possibilities of this noble metal. Organized thematically, chapters include ‘Divinity’, which covers gold in devotional art; ‘Power’, which explores the role of gold as a symbol of status and wealth; and ‘Art’, which presents the craftsmanship and indestructible quality of gold objects. From Fabergé’s astonishing gold-mounted boxes to the nearly-four-thousand-year-old Rillaton Gold Cup and drawings in gold paint by Edward Burne-Jones, this lavish book—in its own gold binding—presents this most precious substance throughout history in one hundred full-color illustrations.
Saving Mr. Turner’s Country Retreat
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With the UK release of Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner, the Turner House Trust hopes to raise the profile of the painter’s house in Twickenham, which badly needs restoration. From the press release (14 October 2014) . . .
There cannot be many people who are unaware of the imminent general release of Mike Leigh’s award-winning Mr Turner, the biographical film of one of the supreme masters of landscape, England’s JMW Turner. What is less widely known is that Turner might have pursued a different career as an architect and that he designed and built a country villa for use by himself and his father. Completed in 1813, Sandycombe Lodge near the Thames between Richmond and Twickenham, was Turner’s retreat to escape the hectic London art world and the hurly-burly of his own household.
Mike Leigh together with actors Timothy Spall, highly praised for his portrayal of Turner, Paul Jesson as Turner’s father and Nick Jones as Sir John Soane, visited this three-dimensional Turner creation in the early stages of their work on the film.
Although the film is set later in Turner’s life, the director and actors wanted to learn as much as possible about the man behind the pictures. From here he would sketch along the Thames on foot, fish on the river and occasionally entertain his friends including Sir John Soane, architect and fellow-fisherman, whose influence is apparent throughout Sandycombe.
Grade 2* listed Turner’s House is largely unspoilt apart from some later additions, but seriously threatened by damp and long neglect it is now on English Heritage’s Heritage at Risk Register and badly in need of restoration.
Turner’s House Trust is appealing to the nation for help to save it from dereliction. “With additional damage caused by extreme weather conditions in recent years, this is now urgent. We have generous promises of grants and funding, which we must match in order to proceed,” said Catherine Parry-Wingfield, chairman of Turner’s House Trust. “With every pound we are closer to saving this Turner ‘treasure’ for future generations, but we still have a long way to go. We hope that, as this new film will no doubt inspire people to visit the artist’s wonderful masterpieces in our galleries, they will also support a lasting legacy for his country home to be enjoyed by future generations.”
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Note (added 7 January 2016) — An update on the project is available here: Farah Nayerijan, “An Effort to Save J.M.W. Turner’s Country House,” The New York Times (4 January 2016).
Exhibition | Rubens and His Legacy
François Boucher, Pan and Syrinx, 1759
(London: National Gallery)
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Press packet from BOZAR:
Sensation and Sensuality: Rubens and His Legacy
BOZAR (Centre for Fine Arts), Brussels, 25 September 2014 — 4 January 2015
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 24 January — 10 April 2015
Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most innovative painters in the history of art. His impact on subsequent generations has been immense. For the first time, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and BOZAR in Brussels have joined forces to look at Rubens as a role model. The exhibition Sensation and Sensuality: Rubens and his Legacy brings together some 160 works, including some iconic paintings by Rubens himself and, more particularly, works by his artistic heirs.
It is a paradox that Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) is both inimitable and has served, for four centuries now, as the great model for painters such as Rembrandt, Murillo, Watteau, Fragonard, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Delacroix, Cézanne, Renoir, Kokoschka, and many others, often far beyond the frontiers of Europe. Even in the work of Picasso, we encounter his visual language. The international exhibition Sensation and Sensuality: Rubens and His Legacy looks at this phenomenon and brings works by these celebrated artists to the world-renowned Flemish master’s homeland.
Sensational and Sensual
Thomas Gainsborough, after Rubens, The Descent from the Cross, 1766–69 (Sudbury: Gainsborough’s House)
Many Rubens works are sensational: loud, forceful, and sometimes violent, created in the service of Catholic propaganda and of absolutist rulers. With his almost cinematographic depiction of aggression, fighting, and barbaric scenes, Rubens could be called the Quentin Tarantino of his time. But he is also a sensual painter in his informal family portraits, landscapes and pastoral scenes, peasant dances and gardens of love, in which he was a precursor of Rococo, Romanticism, and Impressionism. Rubens was so many-sided that he appealed to artists of every nationality. Their interest was often selective. Spaniards preferred his religious works. The English were inspired by his portraits and landscapes. French painters were attracted, above all, by the eroticism and poetry in his work. German and Austrian artists admired his vitality and vigour. A great many talented artists were captivated by his use of composition, colour, and technique and developed flourishing careers by following his example. After meeting Rubens, Velázquez began to paint in a different way;
following his counsel, he used a lighter undercoat.
160 Works of Art, 6 Themes
The Sensation and Sensuality exhibition presents more than 160 works of art and takes the visitor through six fascinating themes that explore different aspects of life and of the painter’s art: violence, power, lust, compassion, elegance, and poetry. Each of these chapters demonstrates the links between masterpieces by Rubens and the work of artists who came after him. The Tiger Hunt from the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes hangs alongside the Delacroix Lion Hunt from Stockholm and the voluptuous Pan and Syrinx from the Gemäldegalerie in Kassel alongside Boucher’s work of the same name from the National Gallery in London; the portrait of Marchese Maria Grimaldi and Her Dwarf from Kingston Lacy is juxtaposed with A Genoese Noblewoman and Her Son from Washington, by Rubens’s famous pupil van Dyck; and Manet’s Rubens pastiche Fishing from the Metropolitan Museum in New York can be seen alongside The Bacchanalia on Andros by Rubens, from the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
The 20 paintings, 6 oil sketches, 8 drawings, and 10 prints by Rubens himself are presented in a dialogue with works by his artistic heirs, including Böcklin, Carpeaux, Constable, Corinth, Coypel, Daumier, Delacroix, Fragonard, Gainsborough, Géricault, Jordaens, Klimt, Kokoschka, Le Brun, Makart, Murillo, Picasso, Rembrandt, Renoir, Reynolds, Sandrart, Turner, Watteau, and others.
Prestigious Loans
Exceptionally, one of the jewels of the Prado collection in Madrid, Rubens’s Garden of Love, will travel to Brussels, where it will be brought together with preparatory sketches from the Amsterdam Museum and two drawings that Rubens made of his painting for a superb print (Metropolitan Museum, New York). Bringing these pieces together allows us to see how this famous composition took shape, from idea to reproduction. As well as those already mentioned, major foreign lending institutions contributing include Tate Britain (London), the Neue Pinakothek (Munich), the Nasjonalgalleriet (Oslo), Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and a number of private collections.
International Cooperation
Sensation and Sensuality is an exhibition organised by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA), the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and BOZAR (Centre for Fine Arts), Brussels. After the show at the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels the exhibition will travel to the Royal Academy of Arts in London (24.01 – 10.04.2015)
Multidisciplinary Programme
This autumn, BOZAR pays homage to Rubens and shows how the Antwerp master has also inspired artists in other artistic disciplines.
BOZAR MUSIC is presenting a concert series, The Musicall Humors of Rubens, with music of the painter’s time; the highlight will be the concert on 6 December 2014, The Ear of Rubens, performed by the Huelgas Ensemble. Besides, BOZAR MUSIC and Ricercar (Outhere) present a CD with examples of the major musical genres that Rubens would have heard during his travels in Europe.
BOZAR LITERATURE has invited six writers—David Bosch, Annemarie Estor, Lydia Flem, Peter Holvoet-Hanssen, Pjeroo Roobjee, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint—to draw inspiration from a work by Rubens: you can read the results in the visitor’s guide or listen to them on a videoguide.
BOZAR CINEMA, moreover, is screening the art film that Henri Storck made about Rubens in 1948. There will also be two multimedia installations on show during the BOZAR NIGHT and the BEAF: Ingrid Van Wantoch Rekowski will present her video installation Rubens-Metamorfoses during the BOZAR NIGHT (10 November 2014); during the BEAF (25–27 September 2014), the video artist Quayola will show his installation Strata #4, a—literally—penetrating look at the great altarpieces of Rubens and van Dyck via high-resolution images.
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From
Tim Barringer, Arturo Galansino, Gerlinde Gruber, and Nico van Hout, David Howarth, and Alexis Merle du Bourg, Rubens and His Legacy (London: Royal Academy Publications, 2014), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-1907533778, $75.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) is undoubtedly the most influential of all Flemish painters. Himself indebted to Titian, Rubens became a role model to Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Velázquez, and influenced artists well beyond his time, including figures such as Cézanne, Picasso, Bacon, and Freud. This sumptuous new volume explores Rubens’s legacy thematically, through a series of sections devoted to violence, power, lust, compassion, elegance, and poetry. Each section will link artists across the centuries in their references to Rubens, from Van Dyck and Watteau to Manet, Daumier, Renoir, and Van Gogh, as well as Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner.
Tim Barringer is Paul Mellon Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. Arturo Galansino is curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Gerlinde Gruber is curator for Flemish Baroque paintings at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Nico van Hout is a member of the collections research team at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. David Howarth is professor of history of art at the University of Edinburgh. Alexis Merle du Bourg is an art historian and a Rubens specialist.
Film | National Gallery
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Frederick Wiseman’s new documentary from Zipporah Films has its US premier in New York this month at Film Forum (November 5–18), with the director himself appearing at several of the early screenings (November 5, 7, and 8). The DVD release is scheduled for early 2015.
Frederick Wiseman, National Gallery (Zipporah Films, 2014), 181 minutes.
London’s National Gallery, one of the world’s foremost art institutions, is itself portrayed as a brilliant work of art in this, Frederick Wiseman’s 39th documentary and counting. Wiseman listens raptly as a panoply of docents decode the great canvases of Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Turner; he visits with the museum’s restorers as they use magnifying glasses, tiny eye-droppers, scalpels, and Q-tips to repair an infinitesimal chip; he attends administrative meetings in which senior executives do (polite) battle with younger ones who want the museum to become less stodgy and more welcoming to a larger cross-section of the public. But most of all, we experience the joy of spending time with the aforementioned masters as well as Vermeer and Caravaggio, Titian and Velázquez, Pissarro, and Rubens and listen to the connoisseurs who discourse upon the aesthetic, historical, religious, and psychological underpinnings of these masterpieces.
More information is available from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Exhibition | The Diligent Needle
Needlework picture, 1750–1800
(Winterthur: Gift of Henry Francis du Pont 1961.1697)
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Now on view at Winterthur:
The Diligent Needle: Instrument of Profit, Pleasure, and Ornament
Winterthur, Wilmington, Delaware, 23 August 2014 — 5 July 2015
For centuries, instruction in needlework was an important part of women’s education. Both plain sewing and fancy embroidery are skills that take considerable time and effort to acquire, and as a result, many women took great pride in their work. Women might use their skill to earn a living through teaching or sewing, to create objects of beauty for themselves and for others, or to embellish clothing and household furnishings. This exhibition showcases the evolution of needlework and the prominent role it played in women’s lives during the 17th through 19th centuries. It opens with the diligence and skill required to learn and excel at needlework and delves into the various applications of the skill with sections on diligence, profit, pleasure, and ornament, featuring stunning visual examples:
Diligence
Samplers diligently worked on in day and boarding schools are the best documented examples of a girl’s education, but needlework skills were also learned at home, where women of all ages too part in the needlework activities of the household.
Profit
Women could use their skill with a needle to generate extra income or support themselves and their families. Some women, known as mantua makers, milliners or tailoresses, created fine dresses and other clothing, others taught embroidery or offered their skill in decorating clothing and furnishings, while others used the skill for plain sewing, mending and hemming.
Pleasure
Not everyone loved embroidery, but those who did would continue to develop their skill and artistry throughout their life.
Ornament
Those skillful with a needle often used their talent to embellish their own clothing, accessories, and textile furnishings.
Call for Papers | Entre l’œil et le monde, 1740–1840
From H-ArtHist:
Entre l’œil et le monde: dispositifs et expédients d’une nouvelle
épistémologie visuelle dans les sciences de la nature entre 1740 et 1840
Université de Neuchâtel, 4–7 November 2015
Proposals due by 5 January 2014
I. Contexte de l’événement
Du 6 au 7 novembre 2014 aura lieu à Neuchâtel un colloque intitulé “‘La bêtise des yeux’. Illusions des sens et épistémologie visuelle au XVIIIe siècle” (“‘Der Augen Blödigkeit’. Trugwahrnehmungen und visuelle Epistemologie im 18. Jahrhundert”). Il s’agit de se pencher sur les dimensions physiologique, individuelle et sociale du processus de perception visuelle, tel que le mettent en scène la littérature, les beaux-arts et la philosophie du XVIIIe siècle. Nous avons placé au centre de cette rencontre les expériences visuelles problématiques, qu’elles relèvent de l’illusion ou soulignent la faiblesse des sens, voire le caractère trompeur des informations prodiguées par ceux-ci, relativisant ainsi la valeur d’une connaissance essentiellement fondée sur une ‘idéologie de la lumière et de l’œil’. En novembre 2015, un second volet de cette réflexion sera organisé autour de questions plus spécifiquement liées aux sciences naturelles et expérimentales des années 1740 à 1840. (more…)
Two More Waddesdon Manor Treasures Now Online
Le Ballet Royal de La Nuit and Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables choisies, two treasures of Waddesdon Manor’s library collected by Ferdinand de Rothschild (1848–1898) are now accessible via the online collection catalogue.
Jean de La Fontaine, Fables choisies, (Paris, 1755–59); Waddesdon, The Rothschild Collection (The National Trust) Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957; acc. 3681.1-4. Photo by Mike Fear © The National Trust, Waddesdon Manor.
Le Ballet Royal de La Nuit at Waddesdon was probably produced as a gift for Louis Hesselin (1602–1662) as a reward for the successful staging of the ballet, first performed at the French court on 23 February 1653. It contains material from three distinct sources: the booklet of the ballet printed by Robert Ballard in 1653, a poem called Le Docteur Muët, and 129 original designs depicting costumes and scenes from the ballet now attributed to Henry Gissey (c. 1621–1673). Reproductions of the bindings; inscriptions by a previous owner, Baron Jérome Pichon (1812–1896); as well as the designs are available online, accompanied by commentaries based on the publication: Michael Burden and Jennifer Thorp (eds), Ballet de la Nuit: Rothschild B1/16/6 (Hillsdale; Pendragon Press; 2009).
Also now online are entries for four volumes of Jean de La Fontaine’s (1621–1695) Fables choisies, published in Paris between 1755 and 1759 by Desaint and Saillant. This edition is considered to be the most magnificent illustrated book made before the advent of modern printing. The binding of the Waddesdon example, by Louis Douceur (d. 1769), is decorated with specially-cut tools also illustrating the fables. The dolphin which occurs on the spine panels of the Waddesdon volumes may indicate that these were bound especially for the Dauphin Louis (1729–1765), son of Louis XV. Details of the location and sizes of the illustrations in all four volumes, along with a transcription of the title and names of the designer and engraver of each print, are included in the online entries.
Both books can also be explored further in the newly published catalogue by the late Giles Barber, The James A. de Rothschild Bequest: Printed Books and Bookbindings (The Rothschild Foundation, 2013). The Waddesdon collection is one of the finest of its kind in the world, and the published catalogue along with the online entries allows for many of these treasures to be revealed to the public for the first time. For more information about the printed catalogue, please visit the website.
Exhibition | Out of the Ordinary: Living with Chinese Export Porcelain
From Jorge Welsh:
Out of the Ordinary: Living with Chinese Export Porcelain
Jorge Welsh, London, 1–8 November 2014
Jorge Welsh, Lisbon, 14 November — 6 December 2014
The exhibition Out of the Ordinary: Living with Chinese Export Porcelain will take place at the newly refurbished London gallery from the 1st of November, coinciding with the late night opening of Asian Art in London. The exhibition then travels to our Lisbon gallery, where it will be on view from the 14th of November until the 6th of December.
The exhibition and catalogue will focus on the most unusual forms of Chinese export porcelain produced in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Truly out of the ordinary, most of these items were copied from Western prototypes made in metal, wood, ceramics or glass. Jorge Welsh will present more than 100 objects including egg cups, strainers, cutlery handles, pudding moulds, custard pots, ladles, funnels, bulb pots, snuff boxes, cane handles, barber’s bowls and chamber pots, amongst others. Commissioned according to the latest fashions, they provide an insight into the scope of the European orders and the sophistication of contemporary consumer society in Europe at this time.
Out of the Ordinary: Living with Chinese Export Porcelain (London: Jorge Welsh Books, 2014), 344 pages, ISBN 978-0957354715, £100.
New Book | Bertrand’s Toyshop in Bath: Luxury Retailing, 1685–1765
From the flyer (via Oblong Creative) . . .
Vanessa Brett, Bertrand’s Toyshop in Bath: Luxury Retailing, 1685–1765 (Wetherby: Oblong Creative, 2014), 364 pages, ISBN: 978-0957599246, £48 / $89 / €69.
Toys were expensive luxuries such as gold snuffboxes, buckles, watches, canes, and porcelain. Toyshops also sold children’s playthings, theatre tickets, elixirs and scientific instruments—and much more. Paul Bertrand was born in America of Huguenot parents. He worked in London as a goldsmith until his second marriage linked him to the family of England’s most successful toyshop owners, and took him to Bath.
With over 230 illustrations and 364 pages, this hardback book takes a fresh approach to the history of retailing and of Bath. Through the topography and society of Bath and London in the early eighteenth century, and through Bertrand’s newly-discovered bank account, it reveals how shopkeepers, craftsmen and merchants rubbed shoulders with actors and lawyers, courtiers and soldiers. Bertrand’s customers included royalty, the ‘middling sort’, country dwellers and townsfolk. The book is about commerce, about people, about the objects that were part of their daily lives, and the development of a fashionable resort.
Whereas many books on retailing, and books on Bath, focus on the last decades of the eighteenth century due to the availability of material, this book is about the first half of the century. The newly discovered bank account of this luxury shopkeeper is an important addition to the handful of known business archives relating to retailers of the period. It reveals the names of nearly 900 people of all social levels and over 100 trades and occupations. Paul Bertrand was at the centre of Bath life, not only because of his toyshop but also through the assembly rooms and carrier’s business of his partners. Illustrations include portraits, landscapes, maps, the paperwork on which banking and businesses depended, and the stock of a toyshop. The book will appeal to all those with an interest in the eighteenth century and the central role of trade and luxury goods.
Vanessa Brett was brought up in the City of London and now lives near Bath. She is a former editor of The Journal of the Silver Society.
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