Exhibition | Raynal: Un regard vers l’Amérique
From the Bibliothèque Mazarine:
Raynal: Un regard vers l’Amérique
Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, 13 June – 15 September 2013
Curated by Gilles Bancarel and Patrick Latour
Le nom de Guillaume-Thomas Raynal reste attaché à son œuvre majeure, l’Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes. Cette compilation à visée encyclopédique, l’un des grands succès de librairie de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, suscita autant de critiques que d’éloges de la part de ses contemporains. Elle apparaît comme pleinement représentative d’un paysage éditorial marqué par l’évolution du simple récit de voyage vers la réflexion philosophique sur le rôle de l’Europe dans le monde, particulièrement sur le continent américain.
Le tricentenaire de la naissance de l’abbé Raynal (1713-1796) est l’occasion de mettre en valeur la singularité du regard porté par un homme des Lumières sur l’Amérique, regard plongé dans l’actualité du moment – la guerre d’Indépendance dont il se fait le chroniqueur – mais aussi annonciateur des profondes transformations politiques et sociales qu’engagera la Révolution française, notamment l’abolition de l’esclavage. Ce regard est aussi le reflet des lectures multiples dont s’est nourri un auteur qui n’a lui-même jamais
traversé l’Atlantique.
Autour de différentes éditions de l’Histoire philosophique des deux Indes, l’exposition présente les ouvrages emblématiques de la riche production livresque consacrée, du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, au Nouveau Monde : récits de la découverte et des premiers établissements, relations de colons ou observations de voyageurs. La guerre d’Indépendance, la condition des esclaves dans les colonies européennes, la diffusion et la réception des thèses de Raynal y sont appréhendées par les témoignages, manuscrits ou imprimés, des penseurs des Lumières. Livres rares, journaux, documents d’archives ou simples brochures illustrent ainsi la place éminente occupée depuis 1492 par l’Amérique dans le débat d’idée européen et l’imaginaire collectif.
The Historical Journal, March 2013
From The Historical Journal:
David Gilks, “Attitudes to the Displacement of Cultural Property in the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon,” The Historical Journal 56 (March 2013): 113-43.
Abstract: The French state expropriated an enormous quantity of cultural property from across Europe during the Wars of the Revolution and Napoleon, but much was returned in 1815 after the fall of the Empire. This article examines contemporary attitudes to the displacement of works of art, antiquities, scientific specimens, and rare books. The seizures were controversial: since they occurred at a time when plundering the vanquished was already considered questionable behaviour, they attracted opposition and needed to be justified. The article identifies the resulting repertoire of attitudes, arguing that this repertoire evolved with changing circumstances and was more varied than hitherto maintained. By situating this repertoire in a larger historical context, the article also reassesses the extent to which attitudes were derivative and innovative. It contends that the disputation as a whole did not amount to a decisive rupture in the treatment of foreign cultural property during wartime, but that it was nevertheless remarkable in two respects: concepts from hitherto unrelated subjects were applied to considerations about cultural property; and the perceived conditions under which cultural property could be legitimately transferred were revised.
Exhibition | Home, Land, and Sea: Art in the Netherlands
From the Manchester Art Gallery:
Home, Land, and Sea: Art in the Netherlands, 1600-1800
Manchester Art Gallery, 24 May 2013 — 23 May 2014
Curated by Henrietta Ward
Aelbert Cuyp, River Scene with a View of Dordrecht, oil on panel (Manchester Art Gallery)
Home, Land, and Sea: Art in the Netherlands, 1600-1800 is a new exhibition which brings together over 50 paintings from Manchester City Galleries’ exceptional 17th- and 18th-century Dutch and Flemish collection, one of the most important in the country. It includes exquisite paintings of everyday life, portraiture, landscapes, seascapes, and still lifes by Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, Jacob van Ruisdael and many more. Some of these paintings have not been on display for tens of years, while others have benefited from recent conservation treatment.
For the first time these paintings will be juxtaposed with works by major contemporary artists such as Mat Collishaw’s Last Meal on Death Row, Texas series, sculptures of gnawed apples by Gavin Turk, and Rob and Nick Carter’s homage to Ambrosius Bosschaert: Transforming Still Life Painting. Alongside the seascapes will be Bachelor Machines Part I, a film by 2013 Northern Art Prize nominee Rosalind Nashashibi that focuses on the lives of an all-male crew on board the Gran Bretagna, a modern-day cargo vessel. This exhibition has been curated by Henrietta Ward, The National Gallery Curatorial Trainee supported by the Art Fund.
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From Hettie Ward’s blog for the exhibition, Manchester’s Dutch and Flemish Collection:
February’s Painting of the Month — Innocent Nostalgia or Outright Fraud?
Willem van Mieris, Woman Pulling on a Dog’s Ear,
16 x 12.5 cm (Manchester City Galleries)
This month’s painting is an extension of my previous post which looked at the fineness that can be found in Dutch paintings, particularly the fijnschilders, such as Willem van Mieris (1662-1747). We have 2 works by Willem van Mieris in the collection: Interior with a Cavalier and Lady and the Painting of the Month: Woman Pulling on a Dog’s Ear, which both came to the Gallery through the Assheton Bennett bequest. Woman Pulling on a Dog’s Ear is miniscule and only measures 16 x 12.5 cm (27 x 23.4cm framed) and is so intricately painted that you can’t make out a single brushstoke.
The painting is a portrait of the artist’s mother, Cunera van der Cock, but it is actually a copy of a painting by his father, Frans van Mieris (1635-1681). The original is in the collection of Worcester Art Museum, USA, along with its companion piece A Soldier Smoking a Pipe, or self-portrait of the artist. The Worcester pair dates to 1662 and both measure 14 x 11cm. You can see them here. Willem van Mieris also made a copy of the companion piece, now in a private collection.
Willem’s painting is an incredibly good copy, and whilst the initial reaction is to dismiss Manchester’s version as being just that, there is actually a lot more to it which touches on elements of fraud — to a certain extent — and brings into question the whole value of a fake. It is with great thanks to the recent research of the art historian and academic Junko Aono that this painting can be reassessed and valued in terms of the 18th-century revival of the Dutch Golden Age, and turns it from being an interesting copy to a fascinating bit of history. Much of what I have learnt about this painting has come from her article ‘Reproducing the Golden Age: Copies after Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century’ in Oud Holland Vol. 121, 2008, no. 1, and I urge you to read it yourselves if you can get hold of a copy. . . .
Read Ward’s full posting here»
Glidden and The Cleveland Museum of Art
Last month’s ASECS meeting in Cleveland delivered all sorts of intellectual stimulation, including a lovely reception at The Cleveland Museum of Art, where The Last Days of Pompeii is on show until May 19. We can add the museum to the list of institutions making the most of sponsorship opportunities to include installation wall paint, in this case from Glidden. Given that Glidden’s headquarters have been in the Cleveland area since the company’s founding in 1875, the relationship makes sense. Copies of the following card were available at the exhibition, though interestingly not online (at least, I was unable to find it and thus the less than ideal colors and clarity from my scan). -CH
New Book | Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe
From Ashgate:
Allyson Poska, Jane Couchman, and Katherine McIver, The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 572 pages, ISBN: 978-1409418177, $150.
Over the past three decades scholars have transformed the study of women and gender in early modern Europe. This Ashgate Research Companion presents an authoritative review of the current research on women and gender in early modern Europe from a multi-disciplinary perspective. The authors examine women’s lives, ideologies of gender, and the differences between ideology and reality through the recent research across many disciplines, including history, literary studies, art history, musicology, history of science and medicine, and religious studies. The book is intended as a resource for scholars and students of Europe in the early modern period, for those who are just beginning to explore these issues and this time period, as well as for scholars learning about aspects of the field in which they are not yet an expert. The companion offers not only a comprehensive examination of the current research on women in early modern Europe, but will act as a spark for new research in the field.
Allyson M. Poska is Professor of History at the University of Mary Washington, USA and co-editor of Ashgate’s ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modern World’ book series. Jane Couchman is Professor Emerita of French Studies, Women’s Studies and Humanities at Glendon College, York University, Toronto. Katherine A. McIver is Professor Emerita of Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction, Allyson M. Poska, Jane Couchman and Katherine A. McIver
Part I | Religion
The permeable cloister, Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt
Literature by women religious in early modern Catholic Europe and the New World, Alison Weber
Convent creativity, Marilynn Dunn
Convent music: an examination, Kimberlyn Montford
Lay patronage and religious art, Catherine E. King
Female religious communities beyond the convent, Susan E. Dinan
Protestant movements, Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Protestant women’s voices, Jane Couchman
Part II | Embodied Lives
Maternity, Lianne McTavish
Upending patriarchy: rethinking marriage and family in early modern Europe, Allyson M. Poska
The economics and politics of marriage, Jutta Gisela Sperling
Before the law, Lyndan Warner
Permanent impermanence: continuity and rupture in early modern sexuality studies, Katherine Crawford
Women and work, Janine M. Lanza
Old women in early modern Europe: age as an analytical category, Lynn Botelho
Women on the margins, Elizabeth S. Cohen
Women and political power in early modern Europe, Carole Levin and Alicia Meyer
Part III | Cultural Production
The Querelle des femmes, Julie D. Campbell
Intellectual women in early modern Europe, Diana Robin
Women in science and medicine, 1400-1800, Alisha Rankin
Early modern women artists, Sheila ffolliott
Beyond Isabella and beyond: secular women patrons of art in early modern Europe, Sheryl E. Reiss
Material culture: consumption, collecting and domestic goods, Katherine A. McIver
Images of women, Andrea Pearson
Women, gender, and music, Linda Phyllis Austern
2012-13 Clifford Prize | Messbarger on the Florentine Anatomical Venus
Anatomical Venus, ca. 1780, wax, Museum of Natural History in Florence
(Photo: Saulo Bambi)
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ASECS recently announced that the 2012-13 James L. Clifford Prize was awarded to Rebecca Messbarger for her article “The Re-Birth of Venus in Florence’s Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History” published by the Journal of the History of Collections (May 2012): 1-21.
Messbarger is the author of The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
Study Day | Le sens du métier: identité et organisation
From Entre art et industrie:
Le sens du métier : identité et organisation dans les métiers
d’art et d’industrie en France (XVIIe-XXe siècles)
Université Paris, 31 May 2013
L’historiographie a longtemps fait de l’organisation corporative le pilier institutionnel du monde des métiers sous l’Ancien Régime, s’enfermant ainsi dans un débat opposant « corporatisme » et « libéralisme », et faisant des lois de 1791 l’aboutissement d’un long combat des libéraux contre le supposé archaïsme des communautés d’arts et métiers. Depuis une vingtaine d’années, cette vision ancienne a été complètement révisée : il importe de distinguer entre l’exercice d’une profession et l’appartenance à une corporation ; toutes les professions ne sont pas uniformément « instituées » en métiers corporés ; les réalités professionnelles sont bien plus diverses ; enfin, la dissolution des corporations en 1791 n’a pas supprimé tous les besoins organisationnels ou réglementaires, pas plus que les représentations identitaires des différentes professions artisanales. Ainsi, d’une part, la conscience d’une appartenance professionnelle a existé sous l’Ancien Régime en dehors de la forme corporative, et d’autre part, les identités de métier ont continué d’exister après l’abolition des corporations.
Cette journée d’études est consacrée au cas des professions d’art, qui oscillent entre « art » et « industrie » dans les représentations communes, et se situent précisément bien souvent en dehors du système corporatif : comment penser alors l’identité de métier, quand le savoir-faire ne s’incarne pas dans une forme instituée susceptible de cristalliser et manifester à la fois une appartenance collective, de découper un « eux » et un « nous » ? Quel sens, en somme, peut avoir le métier sans corporation ?
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9.45 Accueil, café/thé
10.00 Introduction : Philippe Minard, Audrey Millet (IDHE-Paris 8)
10:15
• Lesley Miller (Victoria and Albert Museum, Londres), Un pied dans la Grande Fabrique. Les dessinateurs de la soierie lyonnaise au XVIIIe siècle
• Audrey Millet (Université Paris 8, IDHE), Dessiner des indiennes de Pondichéry à New-York : une organisation en réseaux (XVIIe-XIXe siècles)
11.15 Discussion : Corine Maitte (Université Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallée)
12.00 Repas sur place
13.45
• Elodie Voillot (Université Paris Ouest – INHA), Unir, promouvoir et protéger : la Réunion des fabricants de bronzes (1818-1870)
• Eugénie Briot (Université Paris-Est-Marne-la-Vallée), Inspiration vs oxydoréductions : le métier de parfumeur au XIXe siècle, entre chimie et alchimie
• Jérémie Cerman (Université Paris-Sorbonne), L’atelier de dessin industriel de Robert Ruepp, une entreprise prédominante de la Belle Époque
15.15 Discussion : Patrick Verley (Université de Genève)
Call for Papers and Session Topics | CAA and ASECS, 2014
The original May 6 deadline for paper proposals for CAA 2014 in Chicago has been extended to May 13 (thanks, Alicia, for the clarification). More information is available here»
The deadline for proposing a session at ASECS 2014 in Williamsburg has been extended until 1 June 2013. More information is available here»
New Book | Une Facétie de Fragonard
From the publisher:
Carole Blumenfeld, Une Facétie de Fragonard: Les révélations d’un dessin retrouvé (Paris: Editions Gourcuff-Gradenigo, 2013), 80 pages, ISBN: 978-2353401475, 20€.
L’ouvrage de Carole Blumenfeld apporte un éclairage nouveau sur les talents de portraitistes de Fragonard et lève le voile sur l’identité de chacun des personnages qui se cachent derrière Diderot, La Guimard, L’Inspiration, L’étude…
Les Figures de fantaisie de Fragonard comptent parmi les œuvres les plus éblouissantes, les plus célèbres et les plus énigmatiques de l’histoire de la peinture française. La découverte d’un dessin inédit de l’artiste vient bouleverser aujourd’hui tout ce que nous savions de ces silhouettes peintes en « une heure de temps ». Il apporte la preuve indubitable qu’elles sont des portraits et non des figures imaginaires. Fragonard a en effet esquissé au crayon, sur une feuille, dix-huit de ses tableaux en marquant les noms de chacun de ses modèles. Dans de nombreux cas, il s’agit de révélations étonnantes qui contredisent des certitudes acquises au cours des années.
Available from ArtBooks.com
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Didier Rykner reported on the book’s discoveries for The Art Tribune (4 December 2012). . .
The Fragonard portrait which has, almost, always been known as Portrait of Diderot is in fact not a likeness of the philosopher as proven by the drawing recently auctioned off and published for the first time on 17 July on The Art Tribune by Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey.
However, she was not alone in immediately recognizing the probable importance of the sheet. Hubert Duchemin, a Parisian expert and dealer, along with his collaborator Lilas Sharifzadeh, also guessed its likely pedigree. At the auction, Hubert Duchemin made the final bid, a high price given the uncertainty still surrounding the work. After the sale, he turned it over for study to Carole Blumenfeld, the art historian. Now, a small book will appear on 13 December [2012] at Editions Gourcuff-Gradenigo and will reveal the very fruitful results of this research. . .
The full article is available here»
Resource | George III’s Topographical Collection at the BL
Within the British Library’s online gallery (which includes some 30,000 images), a series of online exhibitions highlight particular collections and strengths. One example, the King George III Topographical Collection, underscores how rich are the visual holdings of the British Library, notwithstanding common assumptions that all pictorial materials are now to be found at the British Museum. In fact, this collection alone include approximately 50,000 items dating from 1500 to 1824. Roughly 40% addresses the British Isles, 10% Britain’s former colonies, and a third key sites of the Grand Tour (particularly Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Germany). -CH
Nicholas Hawksmoor, West Front of the Parish Church Wapping-Stepney
pencil and ink on paper, August 1714 (London: British Library).
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From Peter Barber’s introduction at the BL:
Few of King George Ill’s varied interests seem to have been stronger than his fascination with geography. As a child of eleven, when he had barely learned to read, he was painted sitting next to a globe with his brother, the Duke of York. Though an unpromising pupil, George grew into one of the most cultured of English monarchs when he succeeded his grandfather at the age of twenty-two.
Topography was one of the King’s favourite studies: “he copies every capital chart,” observed a contemporary, “takes models of all celebrated fortifications, knows the soundings of the chief harbours in Europe and the strong and weak sides of most of the fortified towers.”
Scattered on shelves and tucked away in drawers of the royal palaces were a considerable number of atlases, maps, plans and charts that had been part of the working libraries of sovereigns and their consorts since the Restoration in 1660. On this foundation, George III began building his topographical collections from the mid-1760s, a period during which Britain was becoming the most prolific, and arguably the most technically skilled, producer of maps and prints in the world.
The King was well served by his librarian, Frederick Augusta Bamard, who employed agents throughout Europe in his mission to acquire large, ready-made collections as well as individual maps and atlases. As ’new found lands’ were opened up beyond Europe by commercial exploration, their territories were mapped and their place-names given the British imperial stamp: Georgia, Georgetown, King George’s Sound. Single maps and bound volumes formally presented to the King by his subjects at home and abroad, and by the occasional foreign visitor, were incorporated into his collections. . . .
The full introduction is available via the online exhibition here»
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