New Book | Painters and Paintings in the Early American South
From Yale UP:
Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-0300190762, $75.
This beautifully illustrated volume presents the complex ways in which the lives of artists, clients, and sitters were interconnected in the early American South. During this period, paintings included not only portraits, but also seascapes, landscapes, and pictures made by explorers and naturalists.
The first comprehensive study of this subject, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South draws upon materials including diaries, correspondence, and newspapers in order to explore the stylistic trends of the period and the lives of the sitters, as gentility spread from the wealthiest southerners to the middle class. Featuring works by John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, and Benjamin West, among many others, this important book examines the training and status of painters, the distinction between fine art and the mechanical arts, the popularity of portraiture, and the nature of clientele between 1540 and 1790, providing a new, critical understanding of the history of art in the American South.
Carolyn J. Weekley is Juli Grainger Curator at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. She is co-author of Treasures of American Folk Art: From the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center and The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks.
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Note (added 27 July 2013) — The book accompanies a major exhibition of more than 80 works created in or for the South between 1735 and 1800, on view at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum in Colonial Wiliamsburg from 23 March 2013 until 7 September 2014. The press release is available here.
Alan and Simone Hartman Galleries Open at Boston’s MFA
Press release from Boston’s MFA:
Two 18th-century period rooms from Great Britain have been reinstalled at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as part of a suite of galleries. The Alan and Simone Hartman Galleries comprise the Newland House Drawing Room, Hamilton Palace Dining Room, and British Art 1560–1830. They showcase nearly every facet of British art—paintings, furniture, silver, ceramics, and works on paper—including the Alan and Simone Hartman Collection of English silver, with superb examples made in London by Huguenot craftsmen between 1680 and 1760. The drawing room from Newland House, a manor house in Gloucestershire, England, was acquired by the MFA in 1931 and was last on view at the Museum in the 1970s. The dining room from Hamilton Palace, the vast residence of the Dukes of Hamilton just outside of Glasgow, Scotland, was acquired by the MFA in 1924. It was installed in 1928, but was dismantled during the past decade due to the construction of the adjacent Art of the Americas Wing, which debuted in November 2010. The three adjacent Hartman Galleries are located on Level 2 of the Museum’s Art of Europe wing. Concurrent to their opening, the MFA has unveiled its new Art of the Netherlands in the 17th Century Gallery (the renovation of this gallery was made possible by Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo) and the renovated Leo and Phyllis Beranek Gallery, which together showcase more than 100 works. (more…)
Call for Papers | 2014 Society of Architectural Historians, Austin
From SAH:
Society of Architectural Historians 67th Annual Conference
Austin, Texas, 9-13 April 2014
Proposals due by 1 June 2013
The Society of Architectural Historians is now accepting abstracts for its 67th Annual Conference in Austin, TX, April 9-13, 2014. Please submit abstracts no later than June 1st for one of the 31 thematic sessions or open sessions. Sessions have been selected to cover topics across all time periods and architectural styles. SAH encourages submissions from architectural, landscape, and urban historians; museum curators; preservationists; independent scholars; architects; and members of partner organizations.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words no later than June 1st for one of the 31 thematic sessions. There will also be open sessions for those whose research does not match any of the themed sessions.
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An example of one of the thematic sessions:
The Elusive Gothic in the Long 18th Century
Chairs: Sylvia Shorto, American University of Beirut, ss56@aub.edu.lb; and Zirwat Chowdhury, Clark Memorial Library, UCLA, zirwat@u.northwestern.edu
By the later 18th century, Gothic architecture had already called attention to its own alterity. Western opinions as to its possible Eastern origins were mixed: British academician Thomas Sandby’s lectures disputed Sir Christopher Wren’s earlier genealogy of the Gothic, whilst the painter William Hodges embraced and furthered the position in his Dissertation on the Prototypes of Architecture, Hindoo, Moorish, and Gothic (1786). Meanwhile, antiquarians were busy reconfiguring the Gothic canon with localised studies, new designs and restoration. Later, in the mid-19th century, John Ruskin and his followers would champion a nostalgic and value-laden way of thinking about a past which privileged things made locally and by hand, resulting in the separation between pre-modern and modern, architecture and vernacular building, design and workmanship: false dichotomies that would become cemented in a Modernist historiography of architecture. There were no such artificial distinctions in the manifold awareness of the late 18th-century Gothic.
As a way of registering alternative histories at this transitional stage to industrial making, this session will explore the heterogeneity of the Gothic in Britain and Europe, in their expanding imperial territories, and in contemporary non-Western empires during the long 18th century. While we invite papers that use the Gothic to widen the current discourse on the handmade, topics might also address, but are not limited to, shifts in the antiquarian imagination; revolutionary aesthetics; notions of decay and decline; the peripatetic Gothic; nascent architectural preservation in Europe and its empires; and the material relationships between neoclassicism and Gothic. We especially welcome submissions that address non-European interlocutors of Gothic styles, and that incorporate the use of painting and other visual media in furthering understanding of the topic.
Exhibition | Disegno & Couleur: Dessins italiens et français
From L’Officiel Galleries & Musées:
Disegno & Couleur: Dessins italiens et français du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 27 November 2012 — 17 February 2013
Musée des Beaux-arts, Tours, 16 March — 27 May 2013
Musées Royaux des Beaux-arts de Belgique, Brussels, October 2013 — January 2014
L’exposition présentée par le musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours réunit 75 dessins italiens et français réalisés du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle et appartenant aux musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, à Bruxelles.
Certaines de ces œuvres n’ont jamais été présentées en France et proviennent de la prestigieuse collection Jean de Grez (1837-1910), offerte à l’état belge en 1911. Ces dessins ont été créés à Florence, à Bologne, à Rome, à Venise et ont permis la réalisation de grands projets comme le Palazzo Vecchio à Florence.
Vous pourrez également découvrir des feuilles d’artistes français rendues à Jean Cousin, Claude Déruet, Laurent de La Hyre, Eustache Lesueur, Charles Le Brun, Antoine Watteau, Joseph Benoit Suvée.
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From ArtBooks.com:
Stefaan Hautekeete, ed., Disegno & Couleur: Dessins italiens et français du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Milan: Silvana Edoriale, 2012), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-8836623716, $65.
Les Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique organisent depuis 2001 d’importantes expositions de dessins autour des chefs-d’œuvre de leur collection : Dessins de Rembrandt et ses élèves en 2005, Dessins du Siècle d’or hollandais en 2007. La troisième manifestation réunira les plus belles feuilles françaises et italiennes du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, provenant essentiellement de la prestigieuse collection Jean de Grez (Breda, 1837- Bruxelles, 1910) donnée à l’Etat belge en 1911.
Le musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, première institution française à être associée à ces projets, réunira les plus belles feuilles françaises et italiennes du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, provenant essentiellement de la prestigieuse collection Jean de Grez (Breda, 1837- Bruxelles, 1910) donnée à l’Etat belge en 1911. Le public tourangeau découvrira 75 feuilles exceptionnelles d’artistes italiens qui ont participé à la décoration de grands projets de décoration à Florence (Palazzo Vecchio), à Rome (salles du Vatican), à Venise….tels que Paolo Farinati, Giovanni Stradano, Frederico Zuccaro, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, dit Le Bernin, Tiepolo…. ainsi qu’une sélection française opérée par Pierre Rosenberg, où seront présents les grands noms de la peinture, Jean Cousin, Claude Déruet, Eustache Lesueur, Charles Le Brun, Antoine Watteau… A cette occasion, une vingtaine de dessins français et italiens de la collection du musée de Tours seront confrontés à ces œuvres, notamment ceux de François Boucher, Louis-François Cassas, Jean Cousin, Jacques-Louis David, Prospero Fontana, Augustin-Alphonse Gaudar de Laverdine, Claude Vignons, mais aussi les nouvelles découvertes : Baglione, Bolzoni..
New Book | The Wallace Collection Catalogues: Gold Boxes
From Paul Holberton:
Charles Truman, The Wallace Collection: Catalogue of Gold Boxes (London: Paul Holberton, 2013), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-0900785948, £100.
The 18th-century gold snuffbox was the ultimate fashion accessory – beautifully made, exquisitely carved and very expensive, and, like fashion, its form and ornament changed according to the taste of the time. The skills of the goldsmith, the enameller, the lapidary and the miniaturist combined to form a piece – always different – for the most discerning clientele that Europe has ever known.
The Wallace Collection has some of the finest, and certainly some of the most famous, gold boxes in the world. Paris was the centre of taste in the 18th century and the collection contains a remarkable group of boxes by the greatest goldsmiths of the period: Jean Ducrollay, Pierre-François Drais and Louis Roucel. Somewhat surprisingly the Wallace Collection, which is noted for its French works or art, has some very important German boxes by Jean-Guillaume-Georges Kruger of Berlin, Johann Christian Neuber of
Dresden and Ignatius Peter Krafft of Hanau.
Charles Truman, who has catalogued the collection of gold boxes, is one of the leading authorities on the subject. In this book he discusses the history of snuff-taking and the development, manufacture and collecting of gold boxes, with a particular emphasis on the design sources from which the craftsmen repsonsible for these wonderful works of art took their inspiration. These 99 pieces in the catalogue represent a brilliant cross-section of the products of the European goldsmith from approximately 100 years from the late 1730s. This book will prove invaluable to collectors, academics and students interested in the 18th century.
Call for Papers | The Sites of Opera
From Calenda (published 17 April 2013) and Le Blog de l’ApAhAu (with thanks to Pierre-Henri Biger). . .
Les lieux de l’opéra (XVIIe-XXIe siècle)
Opéra-comique, Paris, 21-23 November 2013
Proposals due by 15 May 2013
Alors que l’on observe depuis plusieurs années un rapprochement entre musicologues et historiens pour aborder la dimension spatiale et sociale des lieux de musique, les lieux de l’opéra n’ont guère fait l’objet d’une approche interdisciplinaire. Observés sous un angle unique, le plus souvent celui de l’architecture monumentale occupant une place à part dans l’espace urbain, ces lieux de spectacle méritent pourtant d’être abordés de façon plurielle. Ils doivent faire l’objet d’une réflexion prenant en compte la complexité des problématiques liées à ces espaces particuliers, qui sont eux-mêmes multiples. Destinés à accueillir des manifestations liant musique et théâtre, ils se prêtent également au jeu de la sociabilité aristocratique dans un premier temps, puis bourgeoise et, dans une certaine mesure, populaire. Intrinsèquement liés à la ville, ces lieux peuvent aussi être ceux offerts par une villa vénitienne, un manoir anglais ou un théâtre de verdure, reconsidérant l’image d’un espace perçu a priori comme essentiellement urbain. De même, si l’opéra est une forme lyrique traditionnellement représentée dans des lieux clos, de nombreuses expériences ont montré, dès le xviie siècle, qu’il pouvait s’épanouir en plein air, ce qui pose la question des rapports entre forme musicale et lieu d’exécution. Une étude des lieux de l’opéra permettra également de mener une réflexion sur la mutation des pratiques culturelles et sociales de la musique entre les XVIIe et XXe siècles, mutation en partie liée à la transformation des espaces qui hébergent et structurent l’activité musicale. (more…)
Exhibition | Trapani Coral
From the exhibition:
I Grandi Capolavori del Corallo: I Coralli di Trapani del XVII e XVIII Secolo
Fondazione Puglisi Cosentino, Catania, Sicily, 3 March — 5 May 2013
Museo Pepoli, Trapani, Sicily, 18 May — 30 June 2013
Il Museo Pepoli di Trapani ospiterà una grande mostra sui coralli trapanesi realizzati dai maestri artigiani della citt siciliana tra il XVII e XVIII secolo. Simbolo della bellezza e perfezione del creato, materia prima con l’oro per meravigliosi oggetti di culto, arredi sacri e profani, il corallo al centro di una grande mostra. Esposti per la prima volta capolavori provenienti da collezioni pubbliche e private che testimoniano come la lavorazione di questo straordinario materiale, in Sicilia e in particolare a Trapani, sia assurta a vera e propria arte.
In mostra oltre 120 preziosi manufatti di inestimabile valore selezionati con grande attenzione: gioielli e arredi sacri (calici, ostensori, crocifissi, reliquiari, rosari e presepi) e ancora calamai, saliere e raffinatissimi elementi darredo come specchiere, cornici, tavoli da gioco, scrigni e monumentali stipi destinati a case principesche e regge.
Si tratta di oggetti di grande valore artistico, realizzati con materiali pregiati per essere donati, tra il 500 e il 600, a principi e regnanti. Naturalia e Mirabilia erano esposti nelle Wunderkammer settecentesche, le cos dette stanze delle meraviglie, dove lappassionato collezionista raccoglieva oggetti della natura arricchendoli con materiali preziosi finemente cesellati in base allestro dellartista, filigrana d oro e d argento, splendidi oggetti destinati al godimento di pochi eletti nelle proprie dimore, piccoli musei ante litteram.
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From ArtBooks.com:
Valeria Patrizia Li Vigni Tusa, Maria Concetta Di Natale, Vincenzo Abbate, I grandi capolavori del Corallo: I coralli di Trapani del XVII e XVIII secolo (Milan: Silvana, 2013), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-8836625888, $65.
Il catalogo presenta ai lettori una rassegna di capolavori in corallo provenienti dalla Sicilia, regione dove la realizzazione di meravigliosi manufatti in questo materiale ha raggiunto nei secoli l’apice della bellezza e della maestria artigianale. Il corallo ha visto fiorire intorno a sè infinite credenze popolari, legate soprattutto alla sua forma e al suo intenso colore: carico di valenze apotropaiche, usato in passato anche in medicina, il corallo è soprattutto simbolo della bellezza e perfezione del Creato e per questo divenne la materia prima, insieme con l’oro, per la produzione di meravigliosi oggetti di culto e arredi sacri. Fra le opere qui documentate, tutte realizzate con il corallo raccolto a Trapani, lungo i fondali delle Egadi e intorno all’isola di Tabarca, spiccano sia gioielli, sia ostensori, crocifissi, reliquari, presepi, nonché elementi di raffinato arredo: specchiere, tavoli da gioco, cornici, scrigni, fino a monumentali trumeaux destinati a case principesche. Queste opere testimoniano la ricchezza e la qualità di alcune collezioni considerate fondamentali nel settore, ovvero quelle della Banca di Novara, del Museo Pepoli di Trapani, della Fondazione Whitaker e del Museo Diocesano di Monreale, qui documentate insieme a singoli pezzi di inestimabile valore apparteneti a raccolte private italiane e straniere.
Symposium | Textile Translations
From the conference website:
Textile Translations: Intermedia Processes of Textile Transfer in the Arts
University of Zurich, 6-7 June 2013
Organised by Anika Reineke and Anne Röhl (ERC-Project “Textile – An Iconology of the Textile in Art and Architecture,” University of Zurich)
Processes of transfer and translation are crucial to the production and fashioning of textile materials: In the production of textiles, images taken from other media are submitted to the structure of warp and weft or translated into loops, stitches and knots. Thus, every textile technique requires translations and alterations of the original draft, even if the relation of the transferred subject or pattern to the media varies according to the technique: In the case of a woven image or a textile print, image and support are inseparable, though an embroidered motif, however, can be clearly distinguished from its backdrop. Translations into the textile and vice versa inevitably entail variation, mutation and adaptation. In this way translation processes leave traces inscribed in the particular object.
Because of the variety of manufacturing processes and their flexibility and malleability as material, technique, medium and metaphor, textiles provide a number of starting points for future research on processes of transfer. The symposium Textile Translations seeks to investigate these. In doing so, it is not the intent to focus on the alleged hierarchy of the original and the copy – or a comparison of before and after – but rather on the process of translation and its effects and implications. In this regard, textiles can be positioned at the beginning and end of such processes, or even due to their flexibility and adaptability, embody transitory conversion. Focusing on the process as the ‘inbetween’, the interactions of textiles and other media are the main concern of the symposium.
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T H U R S D A Y , 6 J U N E
14:00 Anika Reineke and Anne Röhl (University of Zurich), Welcome and Introduction
I. Appropriation of Textile Crafts
Chair: Merel van Tilburg (University of Geneva)
14:15 Leena Crasemann (Freie Universität Berlin), Sewing. Unravelling. Cutting. Of Sewn Everyday Things and Textile Art Objects
14:45 Sara Martinetti (EHESS/INHA, Paris), The Fabricated Image. Pictorial and Textile Situations in the Work of
Robert Gober
15:15 Discussion
15:30 Caroline Schopp (University of Chicago) “…draw him from behind”. The Roth-Wiener Tapestry Collaboration,
1974–1998
16:00 Discussion
16:15 Coffee
II. Textile Transfer
Chair: Anne Röhl (University of Zurich)
16:45 Kathrin Fehringer (University of Erfurt), Textile Handarbeit als Raumkonstitutiv: Das Bild des ‚hortus conclusus’ in Flauberts Madame Bovary
17:15 Johanna Függer (University of Vienna), Hanna(h) Höchs Stickerei der Avantgarde
17:45 Discussion
F R I D A Y , 7 J U N E
9:30 Coffee and Welcome
III. Translations of Motifs, Patterns, and Objects
Chair: Anika Reineke, Tristan Weddigen (University of Zurich)
9:45 Vera-Simone Schulz (KHI, Florenz), Text(ile)s Translated. Woven Words in 14th-Century Italian Painting
10:15 Ariane Koller (University of Berne), Gewirkte Wissenschaft – Kartographierte Geschichte. Intermediale
Transferprozesse zwischen Tapisserien und Karten
10:45 Discussion
11:00 Coffee
11:15 Liza Oliver (Northwestern University, Chicago), Don Quixote in 18th-Century India. Translation and Migration of Indian ‘Kalamkari’ Textile Designs for France
11:45 Karin Westphal-Erikson (University of Copenhagen), Porous ‘Paintings’ – Asger Jorn’s Textile Art in between Painting and Architecture
12:15 Discussion
13:00 Closing remarks
Exhibition | Revisiting the Picture Gallery of Frederick the Great
From the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation (SPSG):
The Most Beautiful Gallery: Revisiting the Picture Gallery of Frederick the Great
Sanssouci, Picture Gallery, Potsdam, 9 May — 31 October 2013
As for the gallery, after St. Peter’s in Rome, it is undisputedly the most beautiful thing there is in the world. –Marquis d’Argens to Frederick the Great, 1761
The Picture Gallery in Sanssouci Park ranks among the first and most magnificent buildings in Europe to be erected specifically for an art collection. Together with the paintings and sculptures selected by Frederick the Great, the building, adorned with portrayals of the arts and precious materials, constitutes a unique overall work of art. As a fitting expression of connoisseurship and education, at the same time it pointed to the importance of the Kingdom of Prussia. 250 years after it was first opened, visitors are now being invited to view through the eyes of Frederick this ‘queen’ of all gallery beauties.
The Picture Gallery was finished in 1763, and the cabinet was hung with paintings in 1764. Many of the masterpieces – for example, by Peter Paul Rubens and Carlo Maratta as well as by sculptors such as Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne and Louis-Claude Vassé – still hang here today. The collection of more than 180 paintings and sculptures has undergone powerful changes since its founding, however. The Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg is now re-introducing the Gallery in a way that corresponds to the original furnishing concept of its royal builder.
For the first time since 1830, antique sculptures, on loan from the Collection of Antiquities and the Sculpture Collection at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin as well as the Muzeum Narodowe in Poznan, are coming to Sanssouci, where they may be admired in the Gallery once again. Among the pieces is the famous statuette of the Girl Playing Knucklebones. The Frederician manner of hanging paintings has been visualized in a photograph presentation. Particularly distinctive is the new hanging of the paintings in the small cabinet: With the return of works in 2010 that were long thought to be war losses, a closer approximation to the historical wall-to-wall hanging has been achieved. Thus, it is now possible to experience the overwhelming gallery rooms in a completely new manner as architecture, painting, and sculpture engage with one another in a unique dialogue.
Catalogue: Die Schönste der Welt: Eine Wiederbegegnung mit der Bildergalerie Friedrichs des Großen (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2013), 144 pages, ISBN 978-342207184, €15.
Additional information is available at ArtDaily»
Forthcoming Book | The Museum of the Horse
From Prestel:
Philip Jodidio, ed., The Museum of the Horse (London: Prestel, 2013), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-3791352985, £30 / $50.
One of France’s most visited monuments, the Château de Chantilly features gardens by André Le Nôtre, a world-renowned art collection and impressive stables, which were the center of eighteenth-century French equestrian culture and transformed into a captivating museum in 1982. Now, under the auspices of the Aga Khan and the Foundation for the Safeguarding and Development of the Domain of Chantilly, the Museum of the Horse has undergone an extensive renovation. In addition to detailing the contents of the museum’s galleries, this beautifully illustrated volume explores the important role that Chantilly has played in horse racing and hunting. It takes readers on a tour of the historic stables and surrounding grounds and, in personal essays, looks at the close ties between horse and rider through the centuries.
Philip Jodidio is the author of more than 75 books on architecture.
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