Previous Posts: April 2024

This lecture argues for affinities between Dickens’ prose evocation of Venice and Turner’s oils and watercolours of the city. In 1844, writing from there to a friend, Dickens confided that “I never saw the thing before that I should be afraid to describe. But to tell what Venice is, I feel to be an impossibility”. The same letter also invoked the Venetian paintings of Canaletto, Stanfield and Turner. Accordingly, in composing his Pictures from Italy (1846) Dickens gave a separate chapter to Venice, titled “An Italian Dream”, which shows a radical stylistic rupture from the broadly conventional travel narrative in the rest of the book.

The National Gallery is seeking an Exhibitions Assistant to support the organisation and delivery of a range of exhibitions for our Trafalgar Square and Touring Exhibitions programme. Working concurrently on multiple projects, supporting different Exhibition Managers, you will need to be a highly organised, positive individual with a keen eye for detail. You will bring experience of working in a busy administrative role and can show yourself to be a calm, considerate and collaborative team member with the ability to work well with departments across the Gallery as well as with a number of external stakeholders.

Before the painting landed in Cincinnati, it was briefly displayed in Detroit. The painting's frame reads "collection of E. Raymond Field," a previous owner, and "Exhibited Detroit Institute of Arts."

The exhibition in Detroit was one of only two times in the last 50 to 75 years the "Scourging of Christ" was publicly displayed, [Chris] Platts said.

"Most people don't even know it exists because it's not on public display. It's not in a lot of the Hemmesen books and articles," he said.

"So curators who are doing a show on famous Renaissance women or Baroque women artists wouldn't even know about its existence, or if they do, they wouldn't know where to find it," he added. "That's what makes it special to have it here."

The National Gallery seeks a dynamic and motivational senior curator to lead its renowned prints and drawings division. The new Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings will join the National Gallery at a transformative moment in its history as it implements a reinvigorated mission, vision, values, and strategic priorities that center diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in all its work. The position is a remarkable opportunity for a creative scholar interested in activating the art of the past and present for contemporary audiences. [...]

The Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings plays a vital leadership role at the National Gallery and is one of four senior curators reporting to the Chief Curatorial and Conservation Officer (CCCO). The new curator will galvanize and direct the activities of the prints and drawings division to conceive and implement innovative, forward-thinking and audience-centered curatorial strategies, scholarship, and public service. The incumbent will be committed to diversity, equity, access, and inclusivity (DEAI) principles as they impact scholarship, collections development, staff management, and audience engagement. The three other senior curators oversee respective curatorial departments of European and American art, modern and contemporary art, and photographs. Together with the Chief of Conservation and Chief Registrar, the four senior curators serve the CCCO as a key leadership team to help manage and direct the curatorial and conservation division by advancing the National Gallery’s mission, vision, and values.

The Frick Pittsburgh partners with New York-based The Frick Collection for the first time to unite the collections of 19th-century industrialist Henry Clay Frick and his daughter, philanthropist Helen Clay Frick. Vermeer, Monet, Rembrandt: Forging the Frick Collections in Pittsburgh & New York explores the Fricks' shared passion for art collecting, how their iconic acquisitions shaped the museums they established, and how we define great art today.

Vermeer, Monet, Rembrandt features awe-inspiring masterworks, including works by Titian, Rembrandt, Monet, Degas, Whistler, El Greco, Ingres, and Vermeer—one of only 36 known works by the artist in the world. The exhibition marks a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see artworks from these two extraordinary collections alongside—and in some cases reunited with—one another.

Napoli in Bergamo explores the wonders of painting in between Naturalism and Baroque, its excesses and contradictions through more than forty pieces of art, with custom made restorations and new research. The core of paintings, from the Fondazione Giuseppe e Margaret De Vito, is complemented by unpublished canvases from the Accademia Carrara collection and works on loan from churches in the city and the Bergamo area.

The exhibition takes into consideration the production going from an early Neapolitan follower of Caravaggio, Battistello Caracciolo (1578 – 1635), to the Classicism of Massimo Stanzione (1585 – 1656), from the Tenebrismo of Jusepe de Ribera (1591 – 1652) to the grandeur of Baroque painting by Mattia Preti (1613 – 1699), Luca Giordano – present with more than twenty works – and his pupil Nicola Malinconico.

The Courtauld is seeking to appoint a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader (equivalent to Assistant or Associate Professor) with a specialist knowledge of the history of the art market.  Applications are welcomed from those with a scholarly expertise in any aspect of the art market from the early modern period to the late twentieth century, but who also have a broader knowledge of the histories of art markets both in the UK and internationally. We are seeking candidates who will engage with and drive forward debate and scholarship, who will critically engage with current issues and debates in the field, and whose research is of world-class quality.

Working with a specialist on today’s art market, the post-holder will make a leading contribution to the design and delivery of a new MA in Art and Business at The Courtauld, which will launch in September 2025. This MA will aim to be the leading postgraduate programme in the subject, equipping students with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the contemporary art world.

Portrait of a Woman is believed to be one of two ambitious, full-length portraits the artist exhibited at the 1818 Salon in Brussels, her public debut at just 21 years old. A talented pupil of the neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David, then the most celebrated painter in Europe, Fremiet’s Portrait of a Woman shows how thoroughly she had mastered David’s style, while highlighting her own particular talents in the rendering of different fabrics and materials.

Aroung the same time that Fremiet painted Portrait of a Woman, David tasked her with creating a copy of his The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis, which he declared was so skillfully executed that it appeared indistinguishable from his original. She continued to impress David and critics at the various Salons where she exhibited her portraits, historical scenes, and mythological compositions like La Belle Anthia. Upon seeing the last work, a fellow mentee of David wrote to him that Fremiet was “a woman only in clothing but a man by her merit.” While pejorative today, this comment legitimized her in the eyes of her male peers.

The Beaux-Arts de Paris owns a remarkable collection of ten works by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), making it the second-largest public collection of the artist's drawings in France. Above all, this collection is the only one in France to include drawings not only by Giambattista, but also by his two painter sons, Giandomenico (1727-1804) and Lorenzo (1736-1776), as well as another of Tiepolo's assistants in the 1730s, Giovanni Raggi. This collection alone provides an overview of graphic practices within the family and the studio.

The study of these sheets and prints, combined with works by other artists - sources of inspiration such as Rembrandt, masters such as Piazzetta, and contemporaries such as Canaletto, Guardi and Novelli - highlights the great modernity of their art. This is particularly evident in their ability to produce variations on the same theme, both in traditional religious and mythological subjects and in figure studies, particularly caricatures, as well as scenes from Venetian life. The exhibition also explores the relationship between the father and his sons, and the work within a family of artists.

She said there was a "massive" problem with the condition of National Museum Cardiff.

"Unless we're able to secure more funding for that building that that will have to close," she said.

The chief executive said Cardiff council had already shut the next door building, City Hall, which is the same age and had "exactly the same problems as us".

"So when you have water coming through and failing electrics, there is a question hanging over the future of that building anyway." She said unless there was more money for the Cardiff museum – which houses "extraordinarily special objects" - it could close.

Wenzhou Business College is a top ranked private university approved by the Ministry of Education in China. With nearly 20,000 students and over 1,000 faculty members, the College invites applications for 10-year full-time tenure positions at all ranks in Art or Art History to begin in Fall 2024. The successful candidate will be able to teach lower level undergraduate art or art history courses. English fluency is a must. Applicants should possess a PhD degree in Art, Art History or related field. ABDs with anticipate completion by July 2024 are encouraged to apply. Candidates graduated from a Top 50 ranking university with master degrees in Art, Art History or related field may be considered at Lecturer level with a 10-year contract.

Sofonisba Anguissola (ca. 1532–1625), an Italian Renaissance painter born in Cremona to a relatively poor noble family, was one of the first women artists to establish an international reputation during her lifetime. This stunningly illustrated monograph explores the evolution of Anguissola’s art from her youth in Cremona through her service as a lady-in-waiting to the Spanish queen Elisabeth of Valois to her later years as a married woman in Sicily and Genoa. Alongside discussions of Anguissola and her work, author Cecilia Gamberini offers a tantalizing exploration of Renaissance court life, detailing how the circles of influence and power operated.

This volume highlights the social, political, and cultural preconditions surrounding Anguissola’s role in the court of King Philip II of Spain and her ascent to becoming an internationally acclaimed painter. Gamberini draws on archival documentation, as well as her own original research, to shine a new light on Anguissola’s life, career, and work in this tribute to a truly groundbreaking artist.

Presented in honor of the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth in 2024, Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature is the first comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the artist held in the United States. Organized in cooperation with the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and Hamburger Kunsthalle, with unprecedented loans from more than 30 lenders in Europe and North America, the exhibition will present approximately 75 works by Friedrich. Oil paintings, finished drawings, and working sketches from every phase of the artist’s career, along with select examples by his contemporaries, will illuminate how Friedrich developed a symbolic vocabulary of landscape motifs to convey the personal and existential meanings that he discovered in nature. The exhibition will situate Friedrich’s art within the tumultuous politics and vibrant culture of 19th-century German society and, by extension, highlight the role of German Romanticism in shaping modern perceptions of the natural world.