19th Century

Upcoming Release: Turner and Constable - Art, Life, Landscape

September 26 2024

Image of Upcoming Release:  Turner and Constable - Art, Life, Landscape

Picture: Yalebooks.co.uk

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Yale University Press will be releasing Nicola Moorby's latest book entitled Turner and Constable: Art, Life, Landscape in March 2025.

According to the blurb:

Born just fourteen months apart, one in London and the other in rural Suffolk, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable went on to change the face of British art.

The two men have routinely been seen as polar opposites, not least by their peers. Differing in temperament, background, beliefs and vision, they created images as dissimilar as their personalities.

Yet in many ways they were fellow travellers. As children of the late 18 th century, both faced the same challenges and opportunities. Above all, they shared common cause as champions of a distinctively British art. Through their work, they fought for the recognition and appreciation of landscape painting – and in doing so ensured their reputations were forever intertwined and interlinked.

Nicola Moorby offers us a fresh perspective on two extraordinary artists, uncovering the layers of fiction that have embellished and disguised their greatest achievements. For Turner & Constable is not just a tale of two artists; it is also the story of the triumph of landscape painting.

JMW Turner and changing visions of landscape in Norwich

September 24 2024

Image of JMW Turner and changing visions of landscape in Norwich

Picture: Norwich Castle Museum

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Norwich Castle Museum will be opening their latest exhibition next month. JMW Turner and changing visions of landscape has been organised in-part to celebrate their fairly recent acquisition of Turner's Walton Bridges which was acquired from Sotheby's for £3.5m back in 2019.

According to the museum's website:

JMW Turner and changing visions of landscape is a major new exhibition exploring artists' approaches to landscape from the 17th century to the present day. It commences the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the birth of JMW Turner, one of the most influential artists in the history of western art.

The exhibition explores the evolution of landscape art, centring on Turner's influence, whose landscapes conveyed a full range of artistic, historical and emotional meanings. Featuring seven oil paintings and nine works on paper by Turner, it compares his visionary approach with those who influenced him, like Claude Lorrain, Ruisdael and Canaletto, and those he inspired, from John Sell Cotman to Govinda Sah. Renowned twentieth-century artists like Paul Nash and contemporary figures such as Ibrahim Mahama, Emma Stibbon, and Henna Nadeem demonstrate the ongoing relevance of landscape in art.

Marcel Proust and the Arts at the Thyssen in 2025

September 20 2024

Image of Marcel Proust and the Arts at the Thyssen in 2025

Picture: Thyssen-Bornemisza website

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid have announced a new exhibition on Marcel Proust and the Arts for 2025 (spotted via. @martevelazquez). The show will examine the artistic stimulus for Proust's work, alongside his theories and aesthetic philosophy. Works on display will include examples by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Dyck, Watteau, Turner, Fantin Latour, Manet, Monet, Renoir and Whistler amongst others.

Lecture on Guillaume Lethière

September 18 2024

Video: The Clark Institute

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

I failed to spot that the The Clark Institute have published this free lecture on Guillaume Lethière on their YouTube channel in August. The lecture gives an introduction to the artist and their ongoing exhibition which closes on 14th October 2024.

Bruno Liljefors - Wild Sweden at the Petit Palais

September 16 2024

Image of Bruno Liljefors - Wild Sweden at the Petit Palais

Picture: Petit Palais

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Petit Palais in Paris will be opening a new exhibition next month dedicated to Sweden's foremost painter of animals, Bruno Liljefors (1860-1939).

According to the museum's website:

Less known than his peers, Bruno Liljefors was nevertheless an important figure on the Scandinavian arts scene in the late-nineteenth century. By showing his work for the first time to the French public, the Petit Palais seeks to highlight his pictorial skill and Liljefors’ original contribution to the construction of the imaginative repertoire of Swedish nature.

This unique exhibition features an ensemble of some one hundred pieces, including paintings, drawings, and photographs from the collections of Swedish museums like the Nationalmuseum of Stockholm—partner of the exhibition—the Thiel Gallery, and Gothenburg Museum, as well as numerous private collections.

The show will run from 1st October 2024 until 16th February 2025.

Van Gogh at The National Gallery

September 16 2024

Video: Euronews

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The National Gallery in London have just opened their latest Van Gogh blockbuster entitled Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers. The reviews thus far have been rather positive, so, it looks like one not to be missed!

The show will run until 19th January 2024.

Coming Soon: Caillebotte Painting Men

September 11 2024

Image of Coming Soon: Caillebotte Painting Men

Picture: Musée d'Orsay

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Musée d'Orsay will be opening their latest exhibition next month dedicated to Gustave Caillebotte's paintings of men.

According to the museum's website:

The exhibition on show at the Musée d'Orsay in autumn 2024 focuses on Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) and his predilection for masculine forms and portraits of men, and seeks to examine this artist's profoundly radical modernity through the lens of art history's changing perspective on 19th-century forms of masculinity.

In a desire to produce a new, authentic form of art, Caillebotte took his subjects from his surroundings (Haussmann's Paris, the country houses around the capital), his male acquaintances (his brothers, the workers employed by his family, his boating friends), and ultimately from his own life. In response to the realist movement, he introduced new figures into his paintings: an urban worker, a man on a balcony, a sportsman, and even an intimate portrait of a male nude at his 'toilette'. In an era when virility and republican fraternity prevailed, but traditional masculinity was also in crisis for the first time, these new, powerful images challenged the established order, both social and sexual. Beyond his own identity - that of a young rich Parisian bachelor - Caillebotte also brought profound questions into the male condition at the heart of Impressionism and Modernism.

The show will run from 8th October 2024 until 9th January 2025.

___________

Is it just me, or have French museums been creating some brilliant exhibition posters recently?

Er... what are those doing there?

September 10 2024

Image of Er... what are those doing there?

Picture: Kunstauktionshaus Schloss Ahlden GmbH

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The following Biedermeier era portrait sold at Kunstauktionshaus Schloss Ahlden in Germany a few days ago. As stated in the catalogue, the early nineteenth century painting had been selectively 'overpainted' by the contemporary artist Eike Heinrich Redel (b. 1951). The work sold for 700 EUR (hammer price) in the end. I wonder how much the old painting underneath had cost Redel in the first place!

See here for Banksy's own re-interpretation of an early portrait by Thomas Beach and a similar post on AHN back in 2021.

Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection at the Courtauld in 2025

September 9 2024

Image of Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection at the Courtauld in 2025

Picture: Oskar Reinhart Collection

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Courtauld Gallery in London have announced that they will be opening a loan exhibition of Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection next February.

According to their press release:

The Oskar Reinhart Collection in Winterthur, Switzerland, is one of the most remarkable art museums of its kind, with a collection that ranges from superlative old master paintings and drawings to an exceptional group of Impressionist art.  

The works were assembled in the first half of the 20th century by Oskar Reinhart (1885-1965). Reinhart later opened the collection to the public in his beautiful villa on the outskirts of Zurich, called ‘Am Römerholz’, which, in 1958, became a museum of the Swiss confederation.   

For the first time in its history, a rich array of highlights from the Reinhart collection will be displayed outside Switzerland, making this exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery a unique opportunity to see some of its masterpieces.  

The exhibition will feature major paintings by artists of the generation preceding the Impressionists, such as Goya, Géricault and Courbet, but will focus especially on Reinhart’s extraordinary collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works.

The show will run from 14th February until 26th May 2025.

Upcoming: Scent and the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites

September 4 2024

Image of Upcoming: Scent and the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites

Picture: Barber Institute

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Just over a month to go before the Barber Institute in Birmingham opens their latest multi-sensory exhibition entitled Scent and the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites. The show has been curated by Dr Christina Bradstreet, who wrote a book on the subject a few years ago.

According to the institute's website:

Scent is a key motif in paintings by the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements. Fragrance is visually suggested in images of daydreaming figures smelling flowers or burning incense, enhancing the sensory aura of ‘art for art’s sake’. Scent was also implied in Victorian painting to evoke hedonism – pleasure in exquisite sensations – and a preoccupation with beauty; or to reflect the Victorian vogue for synaesthesia (evoking one sense through another) and the penchant for art, like scent, to evoke moods and emotions.

Motifs of scent and smell intersected with the most vociferous discourses of the day, including sanitation, urban morality, immigration, race, mental health, faith, and the rise in women’s independence. Many 19th- and early 20th-century notions about smell – that it is the manifestation of disease, that rainbows radiate the fragrance of dewy meadows, or that highly-perfumed flowers are asphyxiating – seem outlandish today.

Yet this exhibition demonstrates how an understanding of these and other largely forgotten ideas about smell bring to the fore significant aspects of these extraordinary artworks.

The show will run from 11th October 2024 until 26th January 2025.

Constable Sketch at Woolley & Wallis

September 3 2024

Image of Constable Sketch at Woolley & Wallis

Picture: Woolley & Wallis

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The auctioneers Woolley & Wallis will be offering an unpublished sketch by John Constable tomorrow. The painting, known as Gravel Pits of Hampstead, was completed between 1820 - 1822 and has the blessing of the Constable scholar Anne Lyles. It will be offered with a very tempting estimate of £50,000 - £80,000.

Free Lecture - The Body of the Maharani: Portraiture, Gender and Empire at the Royal Academy 1791–1865

September 2 2024

Image of Free Lecture - The Body of the Maharani: Portraiture, Gender and Empire at the Royal Academy 1791–1865

Picture: The Gianfranco Ferré Research Center

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The MET's associate curator for European Paintings, Adam Eaker, will be presenting a free lecture in October on the subject of The Body of the Maharani: Portraiture, Gender and Empire at the Royal Academy 1791–1865. The talk, hosted by the Paul Mellon Centre in London, will take place on 23rd October 2024 and will be published online afterwards too.

According to the talk's blurb:

As the British expanded their territorial control and economic exploitation of the Indian subcontinent over the course of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, portraits of Indian sitters became increasingly visible in London’s exhibitions.

In responding to such portraits, critics gave voice to imperial anxieties around race, colonisation and gender. Because most elite Indian women lived in seclusion shielded from public view, their portraits acquired a special charge of voyeuristic allure, just as accounts of visiting the zenana or women’s quarters provided a centrepiece of much British travel writing.

This lecture explores two portraits of upper-class Indian women that were exhibited at the Royal Academy during this period: Francesco Renaldi’s Portrait of a Mughal Lady (painted in 1787, exhibited in 1791), and George Richmond’s Maharani Jind Kaur (painted 1863, exhibited 1865).

Bookending a seventy-year period of immense political upheaval, these portraits and their reception reveal the transformation in the relationship between British colonisers and Indigenous elites, as expressed in the popular fascination with the lives of upper-class Indian women.

Focusing on debates around adornment, visibility and women’s political power, a paired analysis of these two portraits offers a new vantage point on the development of both British and Indian art under colonialism.

Fitzwilliam Museum acquires Edme-Adolphe Fontaine

August 1 2024

Image of Fitzwilliam Museum acquires Edme-Adolphe Fontaine

Picture: Elliott Fine Art

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The London dealer Will Elliott, who has recently moved into premises in Jermyn Street in St James's, has announced the Fitzwilliam Museum's acquisition a studio scene by Edme-Adolphe Fontaine (1814-1883).

To quote part of Will's write up on Instagram:

Fontaine’s depiction of his family studio was exhibited at the Salon of 1878, where it was shown under the laconic title ‘Intérieur d’atélier’. At its essence, this is exactly what the painting depicts and yet it is so much more than a simple studio view: intensely autobiographical, the painting is imbued with layers of meaning and is replete with vibrant, animated, detail.

In the Fontaine family studio in Versailles, with the day’s sunlight modulated by a green cloth strung across the window, a young lady wearing an artist’s smock, a sign of her professional status, diligently paints the portrait of a seated woman of similar age. The artist is Marie-Claire Fontaine, daughter of Edme-Alphonse, and she is in the process of painting her portrait of ‘Mlle E.B.’, likewise exhibited at the Salon of 1878. [...]

‘Intérieur d’atélier’ is so many things at once: a biography of a family; a tribute to a daughter; a memorial to a wife; an insight into the professional status of women artists in late 19th-century France; and, finally, a demonstration of the importance of the studio in family life.

Recent Release: Van Gogh and the End of Nature

July 17 2024

Image of Recent Release: Van Gogh and the End of Nature

Picture: Yale Books

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

One of the latest publications to explore the climate theme in art is Michael Lobel's recently published Van Gogh and the End of Nature.

According to the book's blurb:

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is most often portrayed as the consummate painter of nature whose work gained its strength from his direct encounters with the unspoiled landscape. Michael Lobel upends this commonplace view by showing how Van Gogh’s pictures are inseparable from the modern industrial era in which the artist lived—from its factories and polluted skies to its coal mines and gasworks—and how his art drew upon waste and pollution for its subjects and even for the very materials out of which it was made. Lobel underscores how Van Gogh’s engagement with the environmental realities of his time provides repeated forewarnings of the threats of climate change and ecological destruction we face today.

Van Gogh and the End of Nature offers a radical revisioning of nearly the full span of the artist’s career, considering Van Gogh’s artistic process, his choice of materials, and some of his most beloved and iconic pictures. Merging a timely sense of environmental urgency with bold new readings of the work of one of the world’s most acclaimed artists, this book weaves together detailed historical research and perceptive analysis into an illuminating portrait of an artist and his changing world.

MET acquire Bonaventure Louis Prevost Drawing

July 16 2024

Image of MET acquire Bonaventure Louis Prevost Drawing

Picture: Sabrier & Paunet

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The French dealers Sabrier & Paunet have announced on Instagram that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have acquired Bonaventure Louis Prevost's Portrait of a Young Boy.

Queen Victoria's Drawings coming up at Roseberys

July 9 2024

Image of Queen Victoria's Drawings coming up at Roseberys

Picture: Roseberys

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Artnet.com have published a short article on news that Roseberys will be selling a cache of drawings by Queen Victoria next week. The group, which were completed during Victoria's teenage years, are believed to have descended with her drawing instructor George Hayter's family.

National Galleries of Scotland acquire Bessie MacNicol

July 4 2024

Image of National Galleries of Scotland acquire Bessie MacNicol

Picture: National Galleries of Scotland

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The National Galleries of Scotland acquired Bessie MacNicol's The Lilac Sunbonnet earlier in June. The picture had sold at Lyon & Turnbull in December 2023 for £55,201 and was acquired with funds from the Cowan Smith, MacDougall and Treaty of Union Bequests, 2024.

According to the gallery's website:

This bright image of a young fieldworker leaning on a hayfork showcases MacNicol’s confident use of oil paint. Her deft, sweeping brushstrokes skilfully capture the play of dappled sunlight. Born in Glasgow, MacNicol studied at the city’s School of Art and later in Paris. She exhibited widely in the UK and in mainland Europe. From the 1890s onwards she also sent her paintings to be shown in Pittsburgh and St Louis in the USA. MacNicol died tragically young, aged only 34, due to late-stage complications in her first pregnancy.

First known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery on display in Baltimore

June 25 2024

Image of First known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery on display in Baltimore

Picture: The Washington Post

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Washington Post have reported on news that the first known portrait commissioned by an American born into slavery will be going on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art this week. The painting, attributed to the artist James Alexander Simpson, is believed to depict Mary Ann Tritt Cassell, a woman of mixed race whose mother was enslaved on Stratford Hall plantation in Westmoreland County, Va. The article explains the research which has gone into uncovering the life of the sitter and her family.

Upcoming Release: Guillaume Lethière

June 21 2024

Image of Upcoming Release: Guillaume Lethière

Picture: Yale Books

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

It appears that the Clark Institute's upcoming exhibition on Guillaume Lethière is going to be accompanied by what looks to be a rather good scholarly book (pictured). The volume is edited by Esther Bell and Olivier Meslay and features contributions from a long list of scholars.

According to the blurb on Yale Books:

Born in the French colony of Guadeloupe, Guillaume Lethière (1760–1832) was a key figure in the history of art during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The son of a formerly enslaved woman of color and a white government official and plantation owner, Lethière moved to France with his father at age fourteen. He trained as an artist and successfully navigated the tumult of the French Revolution and its aftermath in order to achieve the highest levels of recognition in his time. A favorite artist of Napoleon’s brother, Lucien Bonaparte, Lethière also held important positions at the Académie de France in Rome, Institut de France , and École des Beaux-Arts. A well-respected teacher, he operated a robust studio that rivaled those of his contemporaries Jacques-Louis David and Antoine-Jean Gros.

Despite his remarkable accomplishments and considerable corpus of paintings and drawings, Lethière is relatively unknown today. Lavishly illustrated and authoritative, this groundbreaking study serves to introduce Lethière to new and broader audiences and restore him to his rightful place as one of the most eminent artist of his generation. An international group of scholars offer the first comprehensive view of Lethière’s extraordinary career in its political, social, and art historical context, addressing issues of colonialism, slavery, and diaspora, as well as shedding new light on the presence and reception of Caribbean artists in France during this time.

Turner and the Environment at Turner's House

June 20 2024

Image of Turner and the Environment at Turner's House

Picture: Turner's House

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Turner's House in Twickenham will be opening a new exhibition on 6th July 2024. A World of Care: Turner and the Environment promises to be the must-see event for the environmentalist art lover (just make sure you take public transport there, of course).

According to their website:

This year’s exhibition reveals how Turner captured environmental and social developments that would go on to change Britain and the world‘s climates forever. This will be the first exhibition dedicated to this subject. Highly attuned to changes in the landscape and atmosphere, Turner captured them in his ground-breaking paintings, drawings and engravings. Through his art, he documented plumes of smoke, burning furnaces, urban sprawl, deforested landscapes, overfishing and extreme weather. The exhibition will also seek to connect the changes that Turner was observing and capturing in beautiful works of art, with changes to the environment that we are currently seeing.

The exhibition will run from 6th July until 27th October 2024 and is complimented by an interesting selection of lectures related to the show (click on the link above to read more).

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