Enfilade

From the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History:

Souvenir Nation: Relics, Keepsakes, and Curios
Smithsonian Castle, Washington, D.C., 9 August 2013 — 17 August 2014

Panel from George Washington’s Coach, 17 x 15 inches. President Washington’s state coach featured four side panels representing the seasons; this panel, encased in an oak frame, depicts ‘Spring’ (Smithsonian)

Souvenir Nation: Relics, Keepsakes and Curios features a selection of diminutive and personal objects that Americans have taken, made and saved as historical mementos from the Early Republic up to the present day. Many of the postcards, structural fragments such as a brick from George Washington’s childhood home, consumer goods, locks of hair and other keepsakes on display are part of the earliest Smithsonian collections now in the museum’s Division of Political History. Highlights include a fragment of Plymouth Rock, presidential hair, wood from George Washington’s coffin and pieces from Joan of Arc’s dungeon, the Bastille, and the Berlin Wall.

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From Princeton Architectural Press:

William Bird, Souvenir Nation: Relics, Keepsakes, and Curios from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1616891350, $25.

Buried within the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History exists an astonishing group of historical relics from the pre-Revolutionary War era to the present day, many of which have never been on display. Donated to the museum by generations of souvenir collectors, these ordinary objects of extraordinary circumstance all have amazing tales to tell about their roles in American history. Souvenir Nation presents fifty of the museum’s most eccentric items. Objects include a chunk broken off Plymouth Rock; a lock of Andrew Jackson’s hair; a dish towel used as the flag of truce to end the Civil War; the microphones used by FDR for his Fireside Chats; and the chairs that seated Nixon and Kennedy in their 1960 television debate. This fascinating collection of Americana includes an introductory essay on this nation’s passion for souvenir collecting, as well as a brief history and a glimpse behind the scenes of the Smithsonian.

Press release (3 June 2013) from The Met:

Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1 October 2013 — 5 January 2014

Curated by Perrin Stein

During the eighteenth century in France, a great number of artists—painters, sculptors, draftsmen, and amateurs—experimented with etching, a highly accessible printmaking technique akin to drawing. Featuring 130 works by such artists as Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Hubert Robert, and many others, Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France will be the first exhibition to focus on the original etchings created by painters and amateurs in eighteenth-century France.  It will present a fresh exploration of how etching flourished in ancien régime France, shedding new light on artistic practice and patronage at that time. In a period when artists strained to navigate the highly regulated Académie Royale and the increasingly discordant public spheres of the marketplace and the Salon, etching afforded them stylistic freedom and allowed them to produce exquisite works of art in a spirit of collaboration and experimentation. The exhibition will present etchings, plus a few drawings and preparatory sketches, from the Metropolitan Museum’s rich holdings, as well as loans from North American museums and private collections. The selection of prints includes a number of rare or unique examples.

While printmaking was dominated by professionals for much of its early history, the technique of soft-ground etching—where a plate was coated in varnish and could then be drawn on with a metal stylus—transformed the practice from a specialized technique practiced by an exclusive group with extensive training, to a highly accessible art form. Some artists, like Antoine Watteau and François Boucher, encountered the process within the thriving commerce of the Paris print trade, where a painter would sometimes be asked to make a preliminary sketch on a prepared copper plate to guide the professional printmaker who would later reinforce the design with engraving. Others, like Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Hubert Robert, first experimented with the technique during their student years in Rome, where Piranesi’s studio was in close proximity to the French Academy. For some, like Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre, etching formed a bridge with amateurs, wealthy members of the court or aristocracy who wanted to learn etching as a cultured, leisure pursuit. Because of these relationships, the making of the prints became intermingled with the collecting and studying of prints, creating an environment of cross-fertilization which led to a flourishing of the art form.

Jacques François Joseph Saly, Design for a Vase with Two Mermaids, from the “Vases” series, 1746 (NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Artists and Amateurs will highlight the freedom, spontaneity, and creativity of the medium of etching in the hands of artists and collectors.  Over the course of the century, etching came to be viewed not solely as a reproduction medium, but also, as one capable of original artistic expression.  As the free and improvisational aesthetic of the etching process increasingly was embraced, French artists looked to seventeenth-century masters—such as Rembrandt in the North and Salvator Rosa and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione to the South—for inspiration. The expressive potential of the technique was also explored in a more experimental manner by artists like Gabriel de Saint-Aubin and Louis Jean Desprez, who harnessed the inky tonalities of the medium to their personal and idiosyncratic vision. The painters who felt the urge to pick up the etching needle were drawn to the freedom and accessibility of the technique, and not necessarily focused on exploiting commercial potential. Their prints tend to be rare and are valued for their qualities of expressiveness and experimentation—in many ways the opposite of the mass production and technical expertise of professional printmakers like Demarteau and Bonnet.

The exhibition will also focus on the French Academy in Rome as a setting that provided the means and freedom to explore this medium; the etchings made by amateurs, both in Rome and in Paris; and, finally, the increasing stylistic engagement with past masters. Overall there will be a balance between works of the most successful painters of the period and lesser known, but equally accomplished figures, including the work of amateurs and the working relationships between them where the influence went both ways.

The exhibition will be organized thematically and will explore how, where, and why artists first learned to etch, their occasional experimentation with marketing their prints for sale, and their technical innovations as they found new ways to manipulate the medium for individual expression. Highlights include Watteau’s Recruits Going to Join the Regiment (ca. 1715-16), Fragonard’s The Satyr’s Family (1763) and The Armoire (1778), Liotard’s Self-Portrait, Boucher’s Andromeda (1734), Gabriel de Saint-Aubin’s View of the Salon of 1753, de Boissieu’s Study of Thirteen Heads (ca.1770), and amateur Ange-Laurent de la Live de Jully’s etching after a drawing by Jacques-François-Joseph Saly of Nicolas Bremont, Cook at the French Academy in Rome (ca. 1754).

From Yale UP:

Perrin Stein, ed., Artists and Amateurs: Etching in Eighteenth-Century France (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-0300197006, $60. With essay by Charlotte Guichard, Rena M. Hoisington, Elizabeth Rudy, and Perrin Stein.