Exhibition | The Golden Age of the Fan
Thanks to Pierre-Henri Biger for noting this upcoming exhibition of seventy fans at the Cognacq-Jay:
Le siècle d’or de l’éventail: Du Roi-Soleil à Marie-Antoinette
Musée Cognacq-Jay, Paris, 14 November 2013 — 2 March 2014
Curated by José de Los Llanos and Georgina Letourmy-Bordier
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Cette exposition rendra hommage à l’excellence du savoir-faire des éventaillistes français et montrera aussi l’extraordinaire inventivité dont témoignent ces objets fragiles et discrets que sont les éventails.
L’éventail est à la fois familier et méconnu. Accessoire de mode et objet d’art, il allie le savoir-faire d’artisans à la création artistique. Soumis à la fugacité des modes, il se renouvelle sans cesse. Importé d’Asie à la Renaissance, au milieu des cargaisons d’épices et de soies, l’éventail est adopté en France sous le règne de Louis XIV. Une corporation spécifique, celle des éventaillistes, créée en 1676, assure rapidement la domination des artisans français en Europe. Au cours du XVIIIe siècle, Paris devient ainsi la capitale de l’éventail. Le choix des décors suit alors la production des peintres à la mode et participe à la diffusion de l’art français en Europe, tout en montrant une singulière diversité. Tout peut être représenté sur un éventail : la mythologie, l’histoire antique comme l’histoire religieuse côtoient des scènes galantes. Ce sont aussi des décors empruntés à la vie quotidienne de la cour ou du peuple de Paris, ou encore des faits d’actualité, naissances et mariages royaux ou victoires militaires, célébrés par des fêtes publiques.
Avec soixante-dix oeuvres empruntées à des collections publiques et privées, en France et à l’Étranger, l’exposition du musée Cognacq-Jay, hommage à l’excellence du savoir-faire des éventaillistes français, essentiellement parisiens, montrera aussi l’extraordinaire inventivité dont témoignent ces objets fragiles et discrets.
Scottish NPG Acquires Portrait of the Fiddler Patie Birnie
From the museum press release (1 November 2013) . . .
William Aikman, Portrait of Patie Birnie, the Fiddler of Kinghorn, ca. 1718 (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)
A rare, early portrait of a Scottish folk musician, the celebrated eighteenth-century fiddler Patie (or Peter) Birnie, has recently been acquired by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh and is on public display for the first time.
This charming portrait by the Scot William Aikman (1682–1731), who portrayed many of the leading political and literary figures of his day, was probably painted in the period between 1715 and 1720. A memorable and welcome addition to the Gallery’s collection, it is a significant example of a portrait by a prominent Scottish artist in which the sitter, who is clearly identified, comes from the lower ranks of society, rather than the ruling élite. It complements other renowned portraits of musicians in the collection, such Sir Henry Raeburn’s portrayal of the fiddler Niel Gow, painted in 1787, and also provides a compelling contrast with the Gallery’s other portraits by Aikman, which are primarily of aristocratic subjects.
In the striking and unusual composition the famous musician is shown laughing, and is identified not only by the fiddle he holds, but also by a painted inscription which describes him as “The Facetious Peter Birnie / Fidler in Kinghorn.” Although the word facetious is generally used in a derogatory sense today, in the eighteenth century it meant “gay; chearful [sic]; lively; merry; witty” (Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary). Most of our information about Birnie comes from Allan Ramsay the Elder’s Elegy, published, presumably shortly after Birnie’s death, in 1721, which states that Birnie was present at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679. The Elegy was later used by the Rev. James Granger in his Biographical History (1769):
“Patie Birnie resided at Kinghorn, on the sea coast, about nine miles north of Edinburgh, where he supported himself by his consummate impudence. Not by honest labour, but by intruding upon every person who came to the public house… He then fell into the utmost familiarity… his… exploits [involved] showing a very particular comicalness in his looks and gestures; laughing and groaning at the same time. He played, sung, and broke in with some queer tale twice or thrice e’er he got through the tune; and his beard was no small addition to the diversion.”
In addition to performing in such a memorable manner, Birnie is reputed to be among the earliest composers of strathspeys (a type of dance in 4/4 time). His fame was such that a number of engravings after Aikman’s painting were made, an example of which is in the Gallery’s collection. The painting was formerly in the collection of the Earls of Rothes, at Leslie House, Fife (where it was recorded in 1839) and was acquired by the Gallery from the London dealer Philip Mould.
Speaking of the acquisition, Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, said: “This is an especially attractive and endearing addition to our eighteenth-century collection: Birnie was a man renowned for his music and vivacious performances and Aikman commemorated him in a wonderfully appropriate, informal and engaging manner.”
Call for Papers | The English Urban Renaissance Revisited
From the Call for Papers:
The English Urban Renaissance Revisited
A Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, 18 July 2014
Proposals due by 1 February 2014
In 1989 OUP published Peter Borsay’s The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 1600–1770. 2014 will therefore mark the 25th anniversary of this seminal text in urban cultural history. It inspired a new generation of researchers and developed some of the key themes that have since dominated the historiography of the ‘long’ eighteenth century:
• importance of provincial towns in the long eighteenth century as hubs of economic, cultural and political activity
• the strength and vitality of urban culture beyond the metropolis
• the transformation of the provincial urban townscape
This symposium is an opportunity to celebrate the anniversary and to:
• reflect on how eighteenth-century urban and cultural history has developed since 1989
• consider ‘urban renaissances’ in other European countries
• discuss new directions and possible collaborations
Papers (of 20 minutes’ duration) are invited on topics relevant to these themes. Please email proposals (300 words max) plus a brief biographical statement (60 words max) to John Hinks jh241@le.ac.uk and Roey Sweet rhs4@le.ac.uk by 1 February 2014.
New Book | Magnificent Entertainments
From Yale UP:
Melanie Doderer-Winkler, Magnificent Entertainments: Temporary Architecture for Georgian Festivals (London: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2013), 270 pages, ISBN: 978-0300186420, $75.
A thoroughly original study of ephemeral architecture and design, Magnificent Entertainments examines the spectacular displays created for large-scale public celebrations in the Georgian period. The book focuses on a number of specific events—including royal weddings, coronations, battle victories, and birthday fêtes—that employed elaborate decorative measures to outshine the typical festivities of the day. Some of these elements, ranging from floral displays and scenery to music and light shows, transformed existing venues into unfamiliar marvels; other times, completely new settings were devised for short-lived occasions.
Drawing on primary sources such as commemorative prints, newspaper accounts, and diary entries, the book investigates just how essential these fanciful designs were in creating events with lasting impact and popular appeal. The author also delves into the various materials used for construction and embellishment: applications of sugar, sand, marble dust, or chalk lent luster and color to surfaces, while stand-alone firework temples and temporary reception rooms were often crafted of little more than wood, canvas, paint, and paste.
Melanie Doderer-Winkler is an art historian and former furniture specialist at Christie’s, London. She writes and lectures about the splendour and pageantry of eighteenth-century entertaining.
Lecture | Jill Lepore on Benjamin Franklin’s Sister’s Books
This year’s Lewis Walpole Library Lecture takes place on Friday:
The Ladies Library: Or, Benjamin Franklin’s Sister’s Books
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 8 November 2013
The Twentieth Annual Lewis Walpole Library Lecture, 5:30pm
Professor Jill Lepore, National Book Award finalist and author of Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, will discuss her work reconstituting the lost library of Benjamin Franklin’s sister Jane (1712–1794). Most of what Jane read, she borrowed, but she was an avid and discriminating reader, writing to her brother, “I Read as much as I Dare.”
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her books include New York Burning, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Name of War, winner of the Bancroft Prize; The Mansion of Happiness, a finalist for the Carnegie Medal; The Whites of Their Eyes, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; and The Story of America. Her 2008 novel, Blindspot, written jointly with historian Jane Kamensky, was also a Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. In October 2013, Book of Ages, Lepore’s landmark biography of Benjamin Franklin’s youngest sister, was
published and nominated for the National Book Award.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Jon Seydl Apointed New Director of Curatorial Affairs at WAM
Press release (29 October 2013) from the Worcester Art Museum:
The Worcester Art Museum (WAM) today announced the appointment of Jon Seydl as its new Director of Curatorial Affairs. In this position, he will direct the Curatorial department, as well as the Conservation, Registration, and Collections and Exhibition Services departments; he will also be the Museum’s curator of European art. Recognized for his specialty in 17th- to 19th-century Italian art, Seydl currently serves as the Paul J. and Edith Ingalls Vignos, Jr., Curator of European Paintings and Sculpture at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He will assume his new position in January 2014.
“We are excited for Jon to lead our talented, growing team of curators,” said WAM Director Matthias Waschek. “While his Old Master focus is in keeping with one of WAM’s traditional strengths, his proven track record of working innovatively outside his field of specialization will be crucial to us as we work to better engage audiences with our own collection. Cleveland’s impressive arms and armor collection will also inform his thinking and leadership role in our integration of the Higgins Collection into WAM’s encyclopedic holdings. Jon will provide an invaluable perspective as we continue toward our goal of accessibility for all audiences.”
Most recently coming from the Cleveland Museum of Art, Seydl’s previous positions include Program Specialist at the National Endowment for the Humanities Program, followed by Research Coordinator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He joined the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2002 as Assistant Curator of Paintings before becoming an Associate Curator of Paintings in 2006. He came to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2007. Since then, he has reinstalled and thematically reinterpreted Cleveland’s entire collection of European Art as part of the Museum’s renovation and expansion project. Seydl’s acquisitions for the Cleveland Museum of Art include St Peter of Alcántara by Pedro de Mena and Julius Caesar by Mino da Fiesole, an Apollo Magazine 2009 Acquisition of the Year.
During his career, Seydl has curated and co-curated many major exhibitions, including Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile (2005), Tiepolo Oil Sketches (2005), From Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Painting from Dresden (2006), Rembrandt in America (2011–12), and The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection (2012–13). Seydl wrote the catalogue for Tiepolo Oil Sketches (2005), which he curated at the Getty, and has co-edited two volumes of essays: Gerhard Richter: Early Work, 1951–1972 and Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In 2013 the Association of Art Museum Curators awarded him the Outstanding Catalogue Essay prize for “The Last Days of Pompeii.”
Seydl completed his BA in art history at Yale University and received his MA and PhD in art history from the University of Pennsylvania. He specialized in 17th- and 18th-century Italian Art and wrote his dissertation on images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the 18th century.
“I am incredibly pleased to be joining the Worcester Art Museum,” Seydl said. “With the upcoming integration of the Higgins Armory and the recent reinstallation of the Museum’s European paintings in [remastered], this is an exciting time for the Museum. Matthias’ vision for the future is thoughtful and compelling, and I look forward to working with him and the rest of the WAM team on advancing the Museum’s goal of increased accessibility and engagement through the presentation and interpretation of a very great collection.”
Journées d’étude | La cuisine, une artification par les arts?
On at the Centre d’archives de BAnQ:
La Cuisine: Une artification par les arts ?
Montréal, Centre d’archives de BAnQ, 13–14 November 2013
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Journées d’études internationales organisées dans le cadre du programme L’Art de la cuisine : artification et patrimonialisation du culinaire dirigé par Julia Csergo (Université du Québec à Montréal / Université de Lyon 2) et Frédérique Desbuissons (Institut national d’histoire de l’art / HiCSA), avec le soutien du Laboratoire d’excellence Création, arts et patrimoine du Pôle de recherche et d’enseignement supérieur Hautes Études-Sorbonne-Arts et Métiers)
L’Art de la cuisine : artification et patrimonialisation du culinaire étudie le statut de la cuisine, entre savoir, science, tekhnè et art. Il aborde la dimension esthétique du culinaire à travers le statut du cuisinier et de sa création, l’art du service (art de découper, de présenter, de servir), par l’étude des objets de la table et des menus imprimés, de la médiatisation du spectacle culinaire, par l’iconographie et les représentations artistiques, par celle du jugement de goût – en particulier le rôle de la critique culinaire. D’un point de vue théorique, il s’interroge sur la manière dont la cuisine se situe par rapport aux autres arts, le statut et le rôle des sens, la spécificité des saveurs par rapport aux autres sens. D’un point de vue institutionnel et sociologique, il questionne le statut des cuisiniers, leur formation, leur starification contemporaine en tant qu’ “artiste”. Dans la perspective de l’anthropologie historique, il envisage la tekhnè du culinaire (lieux, gestes, recettes, outils, savoir-faire).
Poursuivant la réflexion engagée lors des journées d’études Le Cuisinier et l’art (Paris, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, 2 et 3 octobre 2012), qui interrogeaient le statut artistique de la cuisine, celle du cuisinier comme artiste et du plat comme création, ce second volet explore le rôle et la fonction des arts visuels et décoratifs, de la musique et des arts de la scène dans la construction des représentations de la cuisine comme art, et s’interroge sur les caractéristiques de cet éventuel « autre » art. Considérant que la cuisine a été jusqu’à présent peu étudiée dans ses relations avec les pratiques artistiques instituées, si ce n’est par métaphore, ces deux journées entendent continuer à élargir sa compréhension en l’inscrivant d’emblée au sein de l’histoire des arts et des pratiques
culturelles, et poursuivre ainsi cette ouverture d’un champ de recherche innovant fondé sur l’interdisciplinarité.
Ces deux journées sont présentées par l’Université du Québec à Montréal – ESG/DEUT, l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris et l’Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, en partenariat avec Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec et avec le soutien du Labex CAP, de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en patrimoine urbain de l’ESG-UQAM et de l’Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec.
Exhibition | Antichità, Teatro, Magnificenza: Images of Rome
Press release (14 May 2013) from the Carlos Museum (with thanks to Hélène Bremer for noting it) . . .
Antichità, Teatro, Magnificenza: Renaissance and Baroque Images of Rome
Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, 24 August — 17 November 2013
Curated by Margaret Shufeldt and Sarah McPhee
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Antichità, Teatro, Magnificenza: Renaissance and Baroque Images of Rome will be on view at the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University from August 24 through November 17, 2013. This spectacular temporary exhibition includes maps, views, and books on Rome from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
Over 130 works of art, many from the Carlos Museum’s permanent collection, representing ancient Rome will be showcased in three major sections—Antichita, Teatro, and Magnificenza. Antichita includes the Antiquae urbis imago, Pirro Ligorio’s 1561 reconstruction of the ancient city as the focal point of the antiquarian interests during the Italian Renaissance of the sixteenth century. Ligorio’s reconstruction will be surrounded by works by Hieronymous Cock, several others from the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, Mirror of the Magnificence of Rome, a Renaissance ‘coffee table book’ of prints of the sights of Rome produced by the French print seller and publisher Antonio Lafreri (1512–77), and images of the obelisks moved by Sixtus V—all from the Museum’s collection. This section also includes volumes from the rare book collections of the Emory Libraries such as De ludis circensibus by Onophrio Panvinio.
Antiquarians of the Renaissance were humanist scholars who sought to reconstruct, at least intellectually, Rome as it was in antiquity by studying coins, inscriptions, fragments, and the city’s ruins. The images show monuments that have been restored, healed of the ravages of time. Ligorio was one of the leading antiquarian scholars of his day. Cock on the other hand depicts the ruins just as they appeared in the sixteenth-century. The Colosseum is ravaged by time, with plants sprouting among the stones. This is the picturesque Rome that contemporary visitors to the city actually saw.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
The Teatro of the seventeenth century, the second section of the exhibition, is anchored by an impression of Giovanni Battista Falda’s 1676 Nuova pianta, lent by Chicago collector Vincent J. Buonanno. Also included are images from Falda’s depictions of the Giardini di Roma, as well as several books of the period. These works record the efforts of the seventeenth-century popes to refocus attention on the modern city through urban interventions known as ‘theaters’ or ‘teatri’. Piazzas were broadened and opened up to become stages where the life of the city took place and the power of the Church could be asserted. The most striking example is St. Peter’s Square. Falda’s many etchings show the theaters of the Baroque city.
The Magnificenza of the eighteenth century features Giovanni Battista Nolli’s Pianta grande and Giuseppe Vasi’s Prospetto dell’alma città di Roma. Also included are numerous views by Giovanni Battista Piranesi from the Museum’s collection and a copy of Jean Barbault’s Les plus beaux monuments de Rome ancienne among other items from Emory’s rare book collections. Also featured is a survey of Roman guidebooks through the centuries. In this section there are three different types of representations of the magnificence of the Eternal City by three different designers. Nolli’s map is an example of the rational, scientific thinking of the Enlightenment. Vasi follows in Falda’s footsteps making an encyclopedic collection of views of contemporary Rome. Piranesi takes an archaeological interest in the city and creates strikingly dramatic, imaginative views of the ancient monuments. Visitors to Rome on the Grand Tour purchased these prints as mementos of their sojourn and as evidence of their own learned interests.
Margaret Shufeldt, Carlos Museum Curator of Works on Paper, and Sarah McPhee, Emory’s Professor of Art History, are co-curators of the exhibition. Shufeldt notes, “This exhibition offers our visitors a chance to experience the Eternal City through the works of master printmakers across three centuries. One will be able to wander the city in detailed maps and marvel at imposing architecture in the diverse images of Rome.”
A Virtual Experience of Rome
In an exciting and innovative use of technology to bring the exhibition to life, the Carlos Museum is collaborating with Sarah McPhee and Jordan Williams and Erik Lewitt of plexus r + d to develop Virtual Rome. The virtual experience is grounded in the celebrated bird’s-eye view map of Giovanni Battista Falda, published in 1676, which subsumes the fine detail of over 300 etched views of the city made by the young artist. The composite image shows the urban fabric in exquisite visual detail, allowing the patient viewer to stroll the streets, count the windows in facades, and distinguish deciduous trees from evergreens.
Falda’s two-dimensional map will be transformed into a virtual, walkable Rome using the gaming platform known as NVis360. A team of educators, architects, and IT experts are documenting Falda’s Rome in maps and views, checking Falda’s data against Rome today, the surveyed map of 1748 by Giambattista Nolli, and the seventeenth-century ichnographic and surveyed maps that survive in the Roman archives. Through Virtual Rome, museum visitors will be able to journey back in time to experience the Eternal City of the seventeenth century. Virtual Rome is possible because of the generosity of Vincent J. Buonanno, who has made his extraordinary collection of Falda maps and views available in actual and digital form. McPhee notes, “The gaming platform allows us to follow the invitation of Falda’s prints to stroll the city with our eyes: to navigate lost streets and squares, take in vanished prospects, experience seventeenth-century Roman teatri in the round. This is the first time a gaming platform has been used at Emory University to recover urban history through an immersive and interactive reconstruction. We look forward to sharing the exciting results.
This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of the Lamar Mixson Foundation, the Emory Libraries and the Manuscript and Rare Book Library (MARBL), and Mr. Vincent J. Buonanno.
Call for Papers | British Material Cultures in Global Contexts
Objects, Families, Homes: British Material Cultures in Global Contexts
University College London, 11–12 July 2014
Proposals due by 15 December 2013
Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers for Objects, Families, Homes: British Material Cultures in Global Contexts, an end-of-project conference organized by UCL History’s Leverhulme Trust-funded East India Company at Home team. Confirmed keynote speakers include Deborah Cohen, Professor of Modern British and European History at Northwestern University and author of Household Gods: The British and their Possessions (2006) and Family Secrets (2013), in dialogue with Marietta Crichton-Stuart, a descendant of the Marquess of Bute, who has researched how Margaret Bruce designed and furnished Falkland House in Fife in the 1830s and 1840s.
Since 2011, The East India Company at Home project has focused on country houses—and the families and objects that inhabited them—to explore how British material culture developed in a global context during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The project’s goals have been twofold. First, we have sought to illuminate the broad-ranging ways in which the activities of the English East India Company shaped elite material cultures in Britain—and by doing so, shaped British identities in the Georgian and Victorian periods, and beyond. Second, we have sought to develop new ways of connecting diverse communities of historical researchers (archivists, curators, family historians, freelance historians, local historians, stately home volunteers and university-based historians) and in so doing have weaved otherwise dispersed studies into a transnational material narrative. At the same time, by disseminating research findings through our website we have made them available on an open-access basis.
For the end of project conference we welcome papers from all researchers engaged in investigating the themes and methodologies compatible with the core subjects of The East India Company at Home. These include:
· Distance, longing and return in the imperial family
· Race, gender, class and age: negotiating identities across imperial spaces
· Narratives of empire: colonial collecting, arrangement and display
· Meaningful objects: the role of Asian goods in British material culture
· Making histories: collaboration and engagement across historical research communities
· Building homes and houses in global contexts: research, interpretation and display
Individual papers or whole panel proposals are invited. Please send a 200-word abstract and a brief biographical note (for each paper) to EICathome@ucl.ac.uk by 15 December 2013. Please note in your email whether your paper is part of a panel or an individual submission: if proposing a full panel, indicate in 1–3 sentences its title and overarching theme (in addition to providing abstracts of each paper). The selection committee will notify applicants on its decisions by 31 January 2014. Further details about the conference can be found at http://www.blogs.ucl.ac.uk/eicah. Any queries about the call for papers or conference please email EICathome@ucl.ac.uk. It is hoped that a small number of bursaries will be available for the students and the unwaged.
A New Frame for The Blue Boy
Catherine Hess, the chief curator of European art at The Huntington, offers this posting at The Huntington’s blog Verso:
Catherine Hess, “How Do You Frame a Masterpiece?” Verso (24 October 2013).
This digital rendering shows the new frame as it will appear on The Blue Boy after installation in late November 2013.
In 1921, Henry and Arabella Huntington purchased what would become the most famous work of art in their collection: The Blue Boy (1770) by Thomas Gainsborough. Its celebrity rests on many factors, not least of which is the superb quality of the painting, with its brilliant brushwork and the frank earnestness of the boy’s gaze. Its price—at roughly $725,000—was the highest ever paid for a work of art up to that time. The scandal provoked by its departure from Britain also increased its notoriety. The fact that it was exhibited at the National Gallery, London, after the art dealer Joseph Duveen sold it to the Huntingtons further expanded its fame.
So The Blue Boy is a big deal. But what’s the story behind the famous painting’s frame?
When the painting arrived in San Marino, The Blue Boy’s frame was likely the same one in which it was displayed by the previous owner, Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster. By 1938, the Huntington’s curator of art collections, Maurice Block, was ready to respond to complaints about the painting’s “bulky 19th-century frame.” According to a memo written on May 6 of that year, “We have cut down one of our old frames to put the Blue Boy into it.”
The replacement frame appears to have been an extra supplied by Duveen and probably had been in storage for some time in the Huntington Art Gallery basement. This frame is of the so-called Carlo Maratta type, widely used in England from 1750 through the turn of the 20th century. . .
The Huntington recently began exploring ways to reframe The Blue Boy. We first approached Michael Gregory, frame specialist at Arnold Wiggins & Sons in London, a workshop specializing in the adaption and reproduction of antique frames. It supplies frames to the Royal Household and London’s National Portrait Gallery. . .
The full posting is available here»
leave a comment