Category: Exhibitions
Whistler at the Musée d'Orsay
January 17 2022
Picture: The Frick Collection
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
It seems that visitors to both Paris and London will soon have the chance to visit two large exhibitions of works by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The Musée d'Orsay will be opening their latest exhibition in February dedicated to Whistler's Masterpieces from the Frick Collection. Henry Clay Frick famously purchased eighteen pictures by Whistler, including the likes of Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs. Frances Leyland (pictured). The exhibition will run from 8th February until 8th May 2022.
Coincidentally, the Royal Academy's show Whistler’s Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan will be running in London from 26th February until 22nd May 2022.
Pier Francesco Foschi Exhibition at Georgia Museum of Art
January 14 2022
Picture: University of Utah
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Georgia, USA, will be opening their latest Renaissance art exhibition at the end of this month (spotted via. @Mweilc). Wealth and Beauty: Pier Francesco Foschi and Painting in Renaissance Florence will run from 29th January 2022 till 24th April 2022.
According to the museum's website:
This is the first exhibition dedicated to Pier Francesco Foschi (1502 – 1567), a highly prolific and fashionable Florentine painter whose career spanned nearly five decades. Despite his success among the contemporary public, he fell into nearly complete obscurity after his death. The exhibition offers a timely and critical reevaluation of this versatile and innovative Renaissance master with exceptional works of art from world-renowned museums including the Gallerie degli Uffizi (Florence), the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid) and the Royal Collection Trust (London) that have never been presented in the United States.
“Wealth and Beauty” will feature paintings and drawings by Foschi and his contemporaries, along with decorative arts objects that provide insight into the world of wealthy 16th-century Florentines. Born in Florence to a family of painters (his father was a member of Botticelli’s workshop), Foschi trained with Andrea del Sarto, one of the most influential artists of the Renaissance. He received commissions from numerous prominent families of Florence, including the Medici, Pucci and Torrigiani. His assignments included small devotional images and large church altarpieces and frescoes, but he is best known today for his portraits. In his own lifetime he became one of the most sought-after portraitists in his city, celebrated for his ability to convey the gravitas of his subjects and represent the objects that connoted their social and economic status.
It looks like the museum will also be running some very interesting events and workshops alongside the exhibition, in case any readers happen to be in the area!
'Picturing the City' with the Bank of England's Art Collection
January 13 2022
Picture: The Bank of England
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Bank of England have launched a new online exhibition entitled Picturing the City. The online site, powered through Google Arts and Culture, allows you to compare historic views of the city from the bank's art collection against modern photographs of the same spots.
According to their website:
This digital exhibition brings together eight landscape paintings from our collection, showing us the beautiful scenery historic London has to offer. These paintings reveal the changing economic landscapes that built this city, as well as the people who have lived, worked and played here.
You’ll go all over London – from leafy Hampstead Heath to the industrial landscape of the Docklands – and meet a variety of people on your journey.
Soane Drawing Collection on Display in March
January 12 2022
Picture: Soane Museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Ever wanted to peer inside the many albums of drawings held by the Sir John Soane's Museum? The museum will be opening a new exhibition of masterpieces from the drawings collection of Sir John Soane in March 2022.
According to their website:
Sir John Soane, one of the leading architects in Georgian Britain, compiled what was probably the first comprehensive collection of architectural drawings in the world. By his death in 1837 it numbered 30,000 sheets, including works by the most prominent architects: Thorpe, Wren, Talman, Hawksmoor, Vanburgh, Gibbs, Kent, Chambers, Piranesi, Adam, Clérisseau, Pêcheux, Wyatt, Playfair and, of course, Soane himself. The collection, which includes illuminated manuscripts, Italian Renaissance drawings, and volumes of exquisite Indian and Persian miniatures, demonstrates the range of Soane’s interests and his extraordinary connoisseurship. It remains one of the most important graphic resources in the world and is widely referenced by architects and architectural historians.
The quality of Soane’s collection of drawings is rarely paralleled elsewhere. Because of their fragility, these items are rarely seen by the public. This exhibition, and its associated book, offer visitors a unique opportunity to see some of the highlights of the collection, bringing together a selection of the most beautiful and important works from among the Soane Museum’s drawings collection. Moreover, it offers a glimpse into the ways in which this collection supported Soane’s activities as an architect and teacher.
The exhibition will run from 9th March 2022 until 5th June 2022.
Major Cezanne Exhibition in Chicago
January 11 2022
Picture: Art Institute of Chicago
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Art Institute of Chicago have released more details about their major upcoming exhibition on Cezanne. The show will run between the 15th May 2022 until 5th September 2022.
According to their website:
This exhibition is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States in more than 25 years and the first exhibition on Cezanne organized by the Art Institute of Chicago in more than 70 years. Planned in coordination with Tate Modern, the ambitious project explores Cezanne’s work across media and genres with 90 oil paintings, 40 watercolors and drawings, and two complete sketchbooks. This outstanding array encompasses the range of Cezanne’s signature subjects and series—little-known early allegorical paintings, Impressionist landscapes, paintings of Montagne Sainte Victoire, portraits, and bather scenes—and includes both well-known works and rarely seen compositions from public and private collections in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.
Musée des Beaux-Arts Marseille Conserve and Redisplay Plague Scenes
January 10 2022
Picture: @marseille
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Apologies for missing this late last year. The Musée des Beaux-Arts Marseille have conserved and redisplayed their masterpiece Le chevalier Roze à la Tourette in a special exhibition at the museum. Curators have brought together a set of canvases which depict various scenes around the town during the plague of 1720 (pictured).
The display will run until 28th February 2022.
How many Baroque Beheadings can you fit into one room?
January 7 2022
Picture: finestresullarte
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
It seems that the Palazzo Barberini may have managed to set a record for the amount of Baroque Beheadings in one room. I was bemused to see this press photo for the aforementioned The Challenge of Judith exhibition in Rome. This temporary collection of Judiths by the likes of Caravaggio, Artemisia, Fontana and others looks rather impressive (or terrifying) indeed.
The show will run until 27th March 2022.
Pen to Brush at the Courtauld
January 6 2022
Picture: Courtauld Gallery
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I've forgotten to mention that the Courtauld Gallery have a temporary exhibition of works on paper which runs until 27th February 2022. Pen to Brush: British Drawings and Watercolours features highlights from the gallery's collection including works by Sir Peter Lely (pictured), JMW Turner, John Constable and Edward Dayes.
The gallery have also uploaded a free virtual tour of the exhibition which is accessible online.
MNAA Lisbon to send 15 Masterpieces to the Louvre
January 4 2022
Picture: MNAA Lisbon
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon will be sending 15 masterpieces of the Portuguese Renaissance to the Louvre later this year. Works by the likes of Nuno Gonçalves (active 1450-before 1492), Jorge Afonso (active 1504-1540), Cristóvão de Figueiredo (active 1515-1554) and Gregorio Lopes (active 1513-1550) will be sent for a special exhibition entitled L’Age D’or de la Renaissance Portugaise.
The show will run from 10th June 2022 - 10th September 2022.
Boilly Exhibition at the Musée Cognacq-Jay
January 4 2022
Picture: Musée Cognacq-Jay
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris will be opening their latest exhibition next month. Boilly. Parisian chronicles will examine the artist's career in no less than 130 works chosen to show his singularity, brilliance, humour and his inventiveness. Furthermore, the show was intended as a sort of extension to the catalogue raisonné by Etienne Bréton and Pascal Zuber published by Arthena in 2019.
The show will run from 22nd February 2022 until 26th June 2022.
Louis Chéron Exhibition in Caen
January 3 2022
Picture: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen have recently opened a new exhibition dedicated to Louis Chéron (1660–1725). Although born in Paris, Chéron is known for having spent a considerable time in England worked alongside the likes of James Thornhill and others. The show contains around forty works sourced from French and English collections covering the years 1678 - c.1720.
The exhibition will run until 6th March 2022.
Manet's Philosophers Reunited at the Norton Simon Museum
December 31 2021
Picture: @NortonSimon
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Norton Simon Museum in California opened an exhibition earlier this autumn dedicated to reuniting three of Manet's Philosophers. This is the first time in over 50 years the paintings have been exhibited in the same space.
According to the exhibition's blurb:
In 1865, Édouard Manet (1832–1883) traveled to Spain to “see all those beautiful things and seek the counsel of maestro Velázquez,” as he wrote to a friend, later declaring “the philosophers of Velázquez” to be “astounding pieces” that were “alone worth the journey.” Indeed, Diego Velázquez’s paintings of Aesop and Menippus, both c. 1638, would provide a model for Manet, whose guiding artistic ambition was to relate art historical tradition to contemporary life.
Shortly before and after his trip to Spain, Manet painted three of his own “philosophers,” which, along with an earlier painting of an absinthe drinker, were loosely grouped as a series when he sold them to his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, in 1872. The works depict disheveled, down-and-out male figures, all of whom would have been legible urban types to viewers of the mid-19th century. Portraying the men at nearly life size against an indecipherable dark background, Manet borrowed Velázquez’s format and updated it to offer a modern equivalent.
This special installation reunites three of Manet’s Philosophers for the first time since the artist’s major retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1966-7: The Norton Simon’s Ragpicker, c. 1865–70, and two paintings on loan from the Art Institute, Beggar with Oysters (Philosopher) and Beggar with a Duffle Coat (Philosopher), both dated 1865/67. Together, these richly resonant works reveal Manet at his most provocative, harnessing the authority of an established style to convey dignity on a class of people overlooked by French society.
The exhibition will run until 28th February 2022.
Still Life Exhibition at the Louvre for Oct 2022
December 30 2021
Picture: Louvre
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Louvre in Paris will be opening a large exhibition on Still Lifes in October 2022 entitled Les Choses: Une histoire de la nature morte depuis la Préhistoire. As the title suggests, artworks will span from antiquity to the twentieth century, and will also include works outside western culture. The exhibition is scheduled to run from 13th October 2022 until 23rd January 2023.
Painting En Plein Air 1780 - 1870
December 28 2021
Video: Beaux Arts Magazine
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Fondation Custodia in Paris opened their latest exhibition earlier this month entitled PEINDRE EN PLEIN AIR 1780–1870 SUR LE MOTIF. Artists featured within the exhibition include the likes of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Achille-Etna Michallon, Camille Corot, Rosa Bonheur, John Constable, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Johan Thomas Lundbye, Vilhelm Kyhn, Johann Martin von Rohden and Carl Blechen.
According to the exhibition's blurb:
The exhibition brings together over one hundred and fifty oil studies from the collections of the Fondation Custodia in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and a private collector, offering a fresh look at open-air landscape painting in Europe between 1780 and 1870.
Occupying a place between painting and drawing, these études – or studies – were small-scale works, mostly executed on paper, and painted quickly before the motif in order to train the hand and the eye in capturing fleeting effects of light and colour. Though some were later embellished in the studio, they were not seen as finished pictures intended for sale or exhibition, but as a precious resource which artists could draw upon to bring a sense of freshness and immediacy to their official work. At the time, they would only have been known to an intimate circle of friends, colleagues or students.
The exhibition will run until 3rd April 2022.
Update - I've been reminded by a reader that the exhibition will travel to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, on 3rd May 2022 and will run there until 29th August 2022.
Virtual Veronese at the NG for March 2022
December 23 2021
Picture: The National Gallery, London
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery in London have announced a virtual reality research and development project for March 2022. Virtual Veronese will allow visitors to virtually see Veronese's The Consecration of Saint Nicholas housed in its original setting of San Benedetto al Po, near Mantua, Italy.
According to the gallery's website:
Virtual Veronese is a research and development (R&D) project looking at how we can share research with a wider audience by using immersive technologies to explore new ways of telling stories. The project will enable us to understand how immersive storytelling can add depth of information, meaning, and emotion to Gallery visitors’ experiences of our paintings.
For two weeks, we are inviting visitors to experience Veronese’s painting The Consecration of Saint Nicholas as it would have been seen in 1562 by using augmented and virtual reality headsets. This is a working prototype that will allow us to collect audience feedback to inform the development of this and other projects.
Click here to read more on the tech developer's own website.
Forgeries? Forgeries!
December 16 2021
Picture: ngprague.cz
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Gallery Prague opened an exhibition last month at the Sternberg Palace on Forgeries? Forgeries!
According to the exhibition blurb:
The exhibition Forgeries? Forgeries! mounted in Sternberg Palace on Hradčanské náměstí square will show imitations of medieval paintings, sculptures and drawings. It will present forgeries executed in the style of the Dutch Old Masters of the 17th century, as well as fake works allegedly by prominent Czech painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition, there will be objects imitating non-European works of art, such as Oriental carpets and arts-and-crafts objects. Works on paper will also be displayed. The exhibition will include a number of iconic vases from foreign collections that brought worldwide fame to their creators and it will acquaint visitors with forgeries that are in the National Gallery’s holdings. Attention will also be devoted to famous masters’ signatures on paintings, which are no proof whatsoever that the artists had actually painted them.
Visitors to the exhibition will learn in an intriguing way about the methods used to verify the authenticity of works of art. This will give them the opportunity to acquire further knowledge about the “behind-the-scenes” work of the National Gallery’s whole team of specialists – from curators, to conservators-restorers, to chemists in the laboratory. The exhibition will explain to visitors the difference between a replica, copy, imitation and forgery, executed for purposes of financial gain.
The show will run until 1st May 2022.
A Late Caravaggio (?) on Display in Camaiore
December 15 2021
Picture: Finestresullarte
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's a curious story from Italy. The Museo di Arte Sacra in Camaiore, Italy, are exhibition a painting of Saint John the Baptist from a Maltese private collection. Some scholars suggest that the work could be one of the paintings Caravaggio had in his workshop right at the end of his life. The painting was very badly damaged in the past and various restorations have left areas (particularly the face) looking rather disfigured. Scholars Roberta Lapucci and Mina Gregori have been in favour of an attribution to Caravaggio, however, Pietro Di Loreto and Vittorio Sgarbi have been against.
Click on the link above to read the full story.
The painting will be on display until 31st December 2021, in case any readers of AHN want to go and have a look to make up their own minds.
Pontormo Drawings Exhibition in Rome
December 15 2021
Picture: grafica.beniculturali.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A new exhibition of drawings by Pontormo opened at the Istituto Centrale per La Grafica in Rome yesterday. This is the first time all of the institute's drawings by the artist have been on display at the same time. Many, due to their state of preservation, have never been on public display before.
The show will run until 20th March 2022.
Baroque Brilliance: Drawings and Prints by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione
December 10 2021
Picture: @KunsthausZurich
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Kunsthaus Zurich have just opened their latest exhibition entitled Baroque Brilliance: Drawings and Prints by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.
According to the exhibition's blurb:
Castiglione embodies everything that makes the Baroque so enduringly fascinating: its celebration of inspired artistic brilliance, opulent magnificence and a striving to enrapture the viewer’s senses. Yet Castiglione, who hailed from Genoa and was also dubbed ‘Il Grechetto’, has been overshadowed by Italy’s more celebrated artists. The last comprehensive exhibition to focus on his graphic works called him a ‘lost genius’. He carved out a path of his own between Titian, Bernini and Poussin – artists whom he greatly admired – and left behind a highly individual body of work that curators Jonas Beyer and Timothy J. Standring have condensed into a representative exhibition of some 80 works on paper. It is the first monographic presentation of Castiglione’s graphic oeuvre in a German-speaking country.
The show will run until 6th March 2022.
Zaganelli Acquisition Celebrated with Exhibition
December 10 2021
Picture: Museo Civico Luigi Varoli
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Museo Civico Luigi Varoli, Palazzo Sforza, in Cotignola, Italy, will be opening a special exhibition tomorrow to celebrate their recent acquisition of Bernardino and Francesco Zaganelli's Christ Carrying the Cross (pictured). The picture, dating to c.1510, was produced by the brothers who were born in the town. Three of the nine variations of the work will be on display for visitors to compare and contrast along with other works including contemporary interpretations of the picture.
The show will run until 6th March 2022.
