Paul Mellon Centre Research Seminars, Summer 2014
From The Paul Mellon Centre:
The Paul Mellon Centre, Research Seminars, Summer 2014
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, Wednesdays, 18:00–20:00
Our research seminars will feature papers given by distinguished historians of British art and architecture. Seminars typically take the form of hour-long talks, followed by questions and drinks, and are geared to scholars, curators, conservators, art-trade professionals and research students working on the history of British art. All seminars are free, but places are limited so you must book a place in advance by emailing Ella Fleming at events@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk.
30 April: Jonathan Foyle (World Monuments Fund)
Paradise Regained: The Rediscovered State Bed of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York as Royal Self-Image in 1485
14 May: Kate Retford (Birkbeck College, University of London)
‘Bonds of unity and friendship’: Kinship and the Conversation Piece in Eighteenth-Century England
28 May: Morna O’Neill (Wake Forest University)
The Decorative Art of Display: The Case of Hugh Lane
11 June: Sandy Helsop (University of East Anglia)
Symmetry, Antithesis and Empathy in the St Albans Psalter
25 June: One Object, Three Voices, Mark Catesby’s Natural History: The Art, the Science, the Publication
Charles Jarvis (Natural History Museum)
Leslie K. Overstreet (Smithsonian Institution, Washington)
Henrietta McBurney Ryan (Senior Fellow, PMC)
New Book | Framing the Ocean
From Ashgate:
Tricia Cusack, ed., Framing the Ocean, 1700 to the Present: Envisaging the Sea as Social Space (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), 302 pages, ISBN: 978-1409465683, £70 / $120.
Before the eighteenth century, the ocean was regarded as a repulsive and chaotic deep. Despite reinvention as a zone of wonder and pleasure, it continued to be viewed in the West and elsewhere as ‘uninhabited’, empty space. This collection, spanning the eighteenth century to the present, recasts the ocean as ‘social space’, with particular reference to visual representations. Part I focuses on mappings and crossings, showing how the ocean may function as a liminal space between places and cultures but also connects and imbricates them. Part II considers ships as microcosmic societies, shaped for example by the purpose of the voyage, the mores of shipboard life, and cross-cultural encounters. Part III analyses narratives accreted to wrecks and rafts, what has sunk or floats perilously, and discusses attempts to recuperate plastic flotsam. Part IV plumbs ocean depths to consider how underwater creatures have been depicted in relation to emergent disciplines of natural history and museology, how mermaids have been reimagined as a metaphor of feminist transformation, and how the symbolism of coral is deployed by contemporary artists. This engaging and erudite volume will interest a range of scholars in humanities and social sciences, including art and cultural historians, cultural geographers, and historians of empire, travel, and tourism.
Tricia Cusack’s publications include Art and Identity at the Water’s Edge (ed.) (Ashgate 2012); Riverscapes and National Identities (Syracuse University Press 2010); Art, Nation and Gender: Ethnic Landscapes, Myths and Mother-Figures (co-edited, Ashgate 2003), and numerous articles.
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction: Framing the ocean, 1700 to the present: Envisaging the sea as social space, Tricia Cusack
Part I Exploring the Ocean: Colonial Crossings
1. From Mare Tenebrorum to Atlantic Ocean: A cartographical biography (1470–1900), Carla Lois
2. The Old World anew: The Atlantic as the liminal site of expectations, Emily Burns
3. Second encounters in the South Seas: Revisiting the shores of Cook and Bougainville in the art of Gauguin, La Farge and Barnfield, Elizabeth C. Childs
Part II Ships as Microcosms of Society
4. The artist travels: Augustus Earle at sea, Sarah Thomas
5. Sailors on horseback: The representation of seamen and social space in eighteenth-century British visual culture, Geoff Quilley
6. The ‘other’ ships: Dhows and the colonial imagination in the Indian Ocean, Erik Gilbert
7. Representation, commerce, and consumption: The cruise industry and the ocean, Adam Weaver
Part III Narratives of Shipwrecks, Rafts, and Jetsam
8. Shipwrecks, mutineers and cannibals: Maritime mythology and the political unconscious in eighteenth-century Britain, Carl Thompson
9. The sea as repository: Tacita Dean’s Teignmouth Electron, 1999 and Sean Lynch’s DeLorean Progress Report, 2010, Kirstie North
10. Reconstructing the raft: Semiotics and memory in the art of the shipwreck and the raft, Yvonne Scott
11. Plastic as shadow: The toxicity of objects in the anthropocene, Pam Longobardi
Part IV Natural and Unnatural Histories: Oceanic Imaginings
12. A ‘dreadful apparatus’: John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark and the cultures of natural history, Emily Ballew Neff
13. Mermaids and metaphors: Dorothea Tanning’s surrealist ocean, Victoria Carruthers and Catriona McAra
14. ‘Something rich and strange’: Coral in contemporary art, Marion Endt-Jones
15. ‘No fancy so wild’: Slippery gender models in the coral gallery, Pandora Syperek
Index
Exhibition | Gods and Heroes
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Idols,
48 x 62 inches, 1752 (École des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
From the American Federation of Arts:
Gods and Heroes: Masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 19 June — 14 September 2014
Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, 12 October 2014 — 4 January 2015
The Baker Museum, Naples, Florida, 19 February — 17 May 2015
Portland Art Museum, 13 June — 13 September 2015
This rich overview of masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts—the original school of fine arts in Paris and a repository for work by Europe’s most renowned artists since the seventeenth century—will include approximately 140 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper dating from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. The focus will be on epic themes such as courage, sacrifice, and death, as well as the ways that changing political and philosophical systems affected the choice and execution of these subjects. Among the featured works will be paintings by Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Anne-Louis Girodet, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres; sculpture by Antoine-Louis Barye, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Jean-Antoine Houdon, and François Rude; drawings by François Boucher, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolas Poussin, Titian, and Jean-Antoine Watteau; and prints by Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt van Rijn.
The epic deeds of gods and heroes, enshrined in the Bible and the works of Homer, were the primary narratives from which both aspiring and established academicians drew their inspiration. Their ideology was rooted in the study of the idealized human form as envisioned in classical art. At the École, learning how to construct persuasive and powerful paintings from carefully delineated anatomy, expressive faces, and convincing architectural and landscape settings was understood by aspiring artists to be the route to success and recognition.
Gods and Heroes will offer unique insight into the development of an aesthetic ideology that fostered some of western art’s most magnificent achievements. Among the masterworks included will be Fragonard’s Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Idols; Joseph-Marie Vien’s David Resigns Himself to the Will of the Lord, Who Struck His Kingdom of the Plague (1743); Jacques-Louis David’s Erasistratus Discovers the Cause of Antiochus’s Disease (1774); and Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres’s Achilles Receiving the Ambassadors of Agamemnon (1801).
Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Ambassadors to Agamemnon Visiting Achilles,
45 x 58 inches, 1801 (École des Beaux-Arts, Paris)
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From Giles:
Emmanuel Schwartz, Emmanuelle Brugerolles, and Patricia Mainardi, Gods and Heroes: Masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (London: D. Giles Limited, 2014), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1907804120, £40 / $60.
Gods and Heroes: Masterpieces from the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris will be published by D Giles Limited, in association with the American Federation of Arts in June 2014. This fully illustrated volume examines the pivotal role of the École des Beaux-Arts in influencing so much of the history, content and style of late- 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century European art
Not only did the École train generations of artists, but it also served as a repository for work by the most renowned artists in Europe. In three essays, as well as in over 200 catalogue entries and colour plates, the volume tells a fascinating, multi-layered story. On one level it is a study of the role of the epic deeds of classical and biblical gods and heroes in the work of generations of artists in France and beyond. On another level, it explores the impact of the École des Beaux-Arts’ curriculum on Western visual culture, and the persistence of the classical tradition.
From the late 17th through to the mid-19th century, the École was a highly competitive, government school that rigorously trained artists to fulfill the needs of royal, state, and church patrons. In so doing, the École created a particular ‘way of seeing’ that created the established aesthetic and ideological norms in French artistic production right through to the First World War, and provided the backdrop against which the modernist ‘revolution’ from the mid-19th century emerged and developed.
Gods and Heroes features 208 extraordinary art works from the collection of the École, dating from the 17th to the 19th century, including important works by such masters as Antoine- Louis Barye, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Jacques-Louis David, Leonardo da Vinci, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres, Charles Le Brun, Charles Natoire, Nicolas Poussin, Carle Van Loo, and Jean-Antoine Watteau
Emmanuel Schwartz is Chief Curator of Heritage at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris and the author of The Legacy of Homer: Four Centuries of Art from the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (2005). Emmanuelle Brugerolles is Chief Curator of Drawings at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Her most recent publication is The Male Nude: Eighteenth-Century Drawings from the Paris Academy (2013). Patricia Mainardi is Professor Emerita, Doctoral Program in Art History, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author of Husbands, Wives and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France (2003).
Exhibition | The Gobelins in the Enlightenment
L’Histoire de Don Quichotte de Charles Coypel
Mobilier national / Isabelle Bideau
Now on view at the Galerie des Gobelins in Paris:
Les Gobelins au siècle des Lumières: Un âge d’or de la Manufacture royale
The Gobelins in the Enlightenment: A Golden Age of the Royal Manufactory
Galerie des Gobelins, Paris, 8 April — 27 July 2014
A selection of the best tapestries woven at the Gobelins during the 18th century will be presented along with painted models from the collections of the Mobilier national. The extraordinary impetus to rebuild the second manufactory of the Gobelins in 1662, under the direction of Charles Le Brun, is reflected in the works of 18th century.
Traditional religious subjects (The Old Testament by Antoine Coypel) are woven in parallel with innovative pieces inspired by the undeniable success of Cervantes’ novel. The subject of epic history (History by Marc-Antoine after Charles Natoire) is maintained, while other less edifying series appear, destined for royal apartments (for instance, The Loves of God, after various painters such as François Boucher and Joseph-Marie Vien). Alongside these innovations, replicas after pieces from the 16th century remain sought after. The late years of this century correspond with a return to the national past (History of France tapestry). Upholstered furniture (sofas and armchairs) equally characterizes this era of creative abundance.
Exhibited works: 25 tapestries, 25 original cartoons or models, 25 drawings and prints.
New Book | Studies on Anton von Maron
Published by Campisano and available from ArtBooks.com:
Antonello Cesareo, Studi su Anton von Maron, 2001–2012 (Rome: Campisano Editore, 2014), 200 pages, ISBN: 9788898229239, 30€ / $59.
Il volume racchiude gli scritti dedicati per più di un decennio da Antonello Cesareo ad Anton von Maron (1731–1808), sommo ritrattista Neoclassico, di cui l’autore ricostruisce la personalità e il catalogo delle opere. Grazie all’attenta analisi della sua produzione, rivivono le principali figure della storia politica e culturale del Settecento, dall’archeologo tedesco Johan Joachim Winckelmann agli Accademici di San Luca, dalle nobildonne e dai gentiluomini europei attori del Grand-Tour fino alla coppia imperiale austriaca. «La nobile semplicità dei suoi ritratti», come scrive lo stesso autore, è raggiunta «grazie ad una sapiente resa atmosferica che oltrepassa il modello batoniano, seppure dallo stesso Maron più volte ripreso, per giungere a definire un esempio che trascende la resa del personaggio incipriato nel massimo del suo splendore».
È l’Europa del Secolo dei Lumi a sfilare davanti a noi, ancora vivida e pregna di significato attraverso i volti dei suoi protagonisti.
Antonello Cesareo (L’Aquila 1971 – Trento 2013) si è laureato, specializzato e ha conseguito il titolo di dottore di ricerca presso l’Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza studiando artisti e collezionisti inglesi in Italia tra Seicento e Settecento, quali Gavin Hamilton e Thomas Howard secondo conte di Arundel. È stato autore di saggi e approfondimenti su artisti quali Thomas Jenkins, Marcello Bacciarelli e committenti come il cardinale Henry Stuart duca di York, il cardinale Ercole Consalvi e Angelo Maria Ricci. Nel 2012 ha dedicato un volume alla ricostruzione del fecondo rapporto di Antonio Canova con l’Accademia di San Luca, grazie al ritrovamento di numerosi documenti inediti, frutto di un triennio di studi trascorso come borsista presso la prestigiosa istituzione. Nel 2013 la commissione per l’Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale, riconoscendo l’alto valore innovativo dei suoi contributi, gli ha attribuito le funzioni di professore di II fascia.
S O M M A R I O
Hugh Honour, Prefazione
Alvar González-Palacios, Antonello
1. Nobile, fiero e di gentile aspetto: su di un Autoritratto giovanile di Anton von Maron; pubblicato in Neoclassico 20 (2001): 22–33.
2. ‘Valentissimo pittor divenuto…’: un Autoritratto di Anton von Maron; pubblicato in Bollettino del Museo Civico di Bassano 25 (2004): 251–68.
3. Anton von Maron: ‘The first portrait painter at present in Rome’; pubblicato in Antologia di Belle Arti, II (2007): 104–29.
4. ‘I cui nomi sono cogniti per ogni dove…’. A proposito di Caterina Cherubini Preciado e Theresa Mengs Maron; pubblicato in Les Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Art 6 (2008): 78–87.
5. Ancora su Anton von Maron ritrattista (pubblicato in Antologia di Belle Arti, III, 2009, pp. 62-93)
6. ‘Mein Lieber Meister…’. Appunti sulla bottega di Anton von Maron; pubblicato in Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 101 (2010): 81–88.
7. Anton von Maron e l’Accademia di San Luca; pubblicato in Studi sul Settecento Romano 26 (2010): 201–34.
8. ‘Con maestra mano usa il pennello creando opere sublimi’. Anton von Maron ritrattista al servizio della corte austriaca; conferenza tenuta all’Accademia degli Agiati di Rovereto l’8 marzo 2012.
Bibliografia di Antonello Cesareo
Exhibition | The English Manner: Mezzotint Masterpieces
From the Universalmuseum Joanneum:
The English Manner: Mezzotint Masterpieces
Die Schwarze Kunst: Meisterwerke der Schabkunst
Schloss Eggenberg, Graz, 24 April — 20 July 2014
Curated by Karin Leitner-Ruhe and Christine Rabensteiner
Richard Earlom (1743–1822), Floral Still Life, after Jan van Huysum, mezzotint, 56 x 42 cm (Graz: Alte Galerie)
Mezzotint is one of the most fascinating and elaborate printed graphic techniques in history. Invented in the 17th century by the German Ludwig von Siegen, it is—unlike etching and engraving—the first surface technology in intaglio printing. It was mainly used for the reproduction of paintings and is marked by a velvety and deep black base, in which the artist scrapes the bright lights.
In the Graphic Collection of the Alte Galerie, there are somewhat more than 350 objects to be found, both from English (including James McArdell, Valentine Green, Richard Earlom among others) and German artists circles (Johann Gottfried Haid, Rugendas, Johann Peter Pichler etc.). The Neue Galerie Graz also owns around 20 sheets from the 19th and 20th centuries. 60 works from this rich trove are presented as part of the temporary exhibition in the special exhibition rooms in Schloss Eggenberg, titled The English Manor.
Candle-lit Theater
Michael Hawcroft’s article in the current issue of French Studies should be useful for anyone thinking about candles and early modern lighting conditions, particularly in the theater. At a more immediately experiential level, The Globe’s new Wanamaker Playhouse (opened since January) serves as the ideal venue.
Les Farceurs italiens et français, ca. 1670
(Paris: Collections Comédie-Française)
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Michael Hawcroft, “New Light on Candles on the Seventeenth-Century French Stage,” French Studies 68 (2014): 180–92.
Abstract: Modern accounts of the seventeenth-century French stage have repeatedly asserted that plays were divided into short acts of some twenty to thirty minutes in performance because the candles that lit the theatres had to be snuffed at frequent intervals. This article claims that there is no evidence for this assertion and aims to evoke the technological constraints of candle usage at the time so as to suggest that candles could be managed in such a way that they did not actually dictate dramaturgical practice. The article considers seventeenth-century theoretical discussion of the division of plays into acts: such discussion never alludes to candles, but refers to historical precedent and spectator attention spans as perceived explanations for the phenomenon of act division. It aims to adduce compelling evidence against the traditional view and concludes that the snuffing of candles took advantage of the opportunity offered by act division, but was never its cause.
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The Wanamaker Playhouse as described by Andrew Dickson for The Guardian:
Andrew Dickson, “New Globe Playhouse Draws Us inside Shakespeare’s Inner Space,” The Guardian (7 January 2014).
Crafted from oak and lit by candles, the Globe’s new playhouse isn’t just a jewel box of a theatre—it’s also a time machine
The new Sam Wanamaker Playhouse—an offshoot of the modern Globe, named in memory of its founder—aims to bring the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in from the cold, creating an indoor playhouse closely modelled on the one his company began to use in 1608, across the Thames at Blackfriars. Although it’s not the first time someone has attempted the feat—US scholars constructed a rival Blackfriars in the unlikely setting of a small city in Virginia 13 years ago—this will be the most authentic version yet, accurate (or as close as is possible) down to every hollow-bored oak pillar and trompe-l’oeil fresco. The whole project has cost £7.2m: one reason it’s taken the Globe nearly two decades to get around to building it. . . .
The first shock, after descending from the attic, is how tiny the auditorium feels: while the Globe can accommodate 1,500 people, with up to 700 jostling on foot, the Playhouse seats just 340. But this only makes it more intimate, says academic Farah Karim-Cooper, who chairs the research group that has steered the project. “The proximity is unbelievable,” she says. “You can get intimacy in the Globe—and when that happens it’s beautiful. But here, it’s really something.” . . .
But the greatest indoor breakthrough was something we now take for granted: control over light, impossible in the open air until the invention of gas lighting in the late 18th century. The Playhouse will be illuminated exclusively by candles, with artificial electronic daylight filtering through internal ‘windows’. The team hopes this will be the new space’s true revelation. The Jacobeans used candles made from animal fat, but the Globe have gone for pure beeswax, costing up to £500 per show. . .
Exhibition | 100 Masterworks of the Albertina
From the Albertina:
The Origins of the Albertina: From Dürer to Napoleon
Dürer, Michelangelo, Rubens: The 100 Masterworks of the Albertina
Albertina, Vienna, 14 March — 29 June 2014
The exhibit Dürer, Michelangelo, Rubens: The 100 Masterworks of the Albertina for the first time shows around 100 top-class masterpieces from the collection of the Albertina in the context of the chequered and exciting life story of its founders, Prince Albert of Saxony, Duke of Teschen and Archduchess Marie Christine. The large-scale presentation unites the highlights of the collection, from Michelangelo through Rembrandt and Rubens to Caspar David Friedrich. The centrepiece of the Albertina, Dürer’s famous Young Hare, is now once again accessible to an interested public in the context of this exhibit after a decade-long period of grace.
Anonymous, Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen with the Map of the Battle of Maxen, oil on canvas, 1777 (Albertina, Vienna)
The time span documented by the large-scale exhibit extends from 1738 to 1822: from the age of the courtly Baroque under Maria Theresia and the Enlightenment under Joseph II, through the premodern period and the years of the revolutions in America and Europe to the Biedermeier period of the Vormärz (the years leading up to the revolutions of 1848 in Germany) following the Vienna Congress. The stations in life of the founders of the collection, Prince Albert of Saxony, Duke of Teschen and Archduchess Marie Christine, including Dresden, Rome, Paris, Brussels and Vienna, present the leading centres of art and politics, and in the process provide insight into the multi-layered networks of collectors and art dealers, the feudal life of the European aristocracy, as well as the political and intellectual reorientation under the auspices of the Enlightenment.
Loans from throughout the world supplement the holdings of the Albertina in this presentation and convey a poignant picture of the circumstances and the passion for collecting of the namesake of the Albertina. A splendid service, as well as paintings and busts of the Duke and his wife, but also other important documents of the time, such as the hat of Napoleon, worn by him at the Battle of Eylau, originate from, among other sources, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Vatican and various private collections.
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Call for Papers | Understanding British Portraits 2014 Seminar
From the Understanding British Portraits website:
Understanding British Portraits Annual Seminar 2014
National Portrait Gallery, London, 26 November 2014
Proposals due by 13 June 2014
Mrs Henchman by Daniel Gardner (?1750-1805), drawing and watercolour © Bristol Musuem & Art Gallery
The ‘Understanding British Portraits’ Annual Seminar aims to highlight current scholarly research, museum-based learning programmes, conservation discoveries and curatorial practice relating to British portraits of all media and time periods. This year’s Annual Seminar will be held at the National Portrait Gallery, London, on Wednesday 26 November.
We invite proposals for 20/25 minute-papers from professionals who would like to share case studies and ideas which relate to the aims of the seminar as given above. Please send an outline of approximately 200 words, along with a brief biographical note, to mail@britishportraits.org.uk before Friday 13 June. Those who have submitted papers for consideration in the past are very welcome to do so again this year.
Understanding British Portraits is an active network with free membership for professionals working with British portraits including curators, museum learning professionals, researchers, academics and conservators. They aim to enhance the knowledge and understanding of portraits in all
media in British collections, for the benefit of future research,
exhibitions, interpretation, display and learning programmes.
Display | The Flowering of American Tinware
Tray, made in Pontypool, Wales or Birmingham, England, 1740–60
(Winterthur: Bequest of H.F. du Pont, 1958.2282)
From Winterthur:
The Flowering of American Tinware
Winterthur Museum, Delaware, 18 May 2013 — 4 May 2014
Tinware objects with lively, bright colors and hand painted with fruit, flowers, birds, and borders were once ubiquitous in the young United States. The base material, sheet iron coated with tin, provided an appealing surface for painted or punched ornament to be applied. At first glance, it may look like amateur artwork, but this exhibition examines the professional and practical roots of a material that is still produced by artists today.
The story of antique tinware may be surprising. Useful household objects were created by tinsmiths for myriad home and work purposes, such as to keep paperwork or tobacco dry and safe, to hold dry or liquid cooking ingredients, or to support a candle for light. Tinware objects that survived were often decorated ones, although, unpainted, shiny white tinware once was even more prevalent. American painted tinware has origins in an industry that emerged in the late 1690s in Britain with artistic influences coming from lands as far away as China and Japan.
During that time of developing sea-born trade, imported lacquerwork and other goods from Asia became very desirable to Europeans consumers who could afford them. Experiments in Wales and England led to ‘japanned’ varnishes and colorants that could be baked directly on to the surface of tinware, creating opaque, dark coatings that resembled more expensive imported lacquerwork. Soon after, the colors and designs prevalent in local decorative arts were added with oil paints to ‘flower’ or enhance tinware’s appeal to new markets in Europe and America. This Western process was generically called ‘japanning’, and Americans used the term to describe all manner of painted and varnished items.
This pocket-size exhibition highlights the collection of decorated tinware that Henry Francis du Pont acquired from antiques dealers in New England and Pennsylvania, particularly from Ephrata, Lancaster, Carlisle, and York. These beautiful, hand-painted objects feature decorative techniques that have been in use from the early 1700s to today.
The exhibition website is available here»
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