Previous Posts: January 2024
Women Artists Exhibition at Tate (ctd.)
January 25 2024

Picture: tate.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Tate have published a press release with more details on their upcoming Women Artists in Britain exhibition.
Alongside a very helpful list of artists to be included (pictured) is this blurb which gives us a better idea of the aims of the show:
This spring, Tate Britain will present Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920. This ambitious group show will chart women’s road to being recognised as professional artists, a 400-year journey which paved the way for future generations and established what it meant to be a woman in the British art world. The exhibition covers the period in which women were visibly working as professional artists, but went against societal expectations to do so.
Featuring over 100 artists, the exhibition will celebrate well-known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman, Julia Margaret Cameron and Gwen John, alongside many others who are only now being rediscovered. Their careers were as varied as the works they produced: some prevailed over genres deemed suitable for women like watercolour landscapes and domestic scenes. Others dared to take on subjects dominated by men like battle scenes and the nude, or campaigned for equal access to training and membership of professional institutions. Tate Britain will showcase over 200 works, including oil painting, watercolour, pastel, sculpture, photography and ‘needlepainting’ to tell the story of these trailblazing artists.
Daumier Treasure Trove Gifted to Städel
January 25 2024

Picture: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Germany that a serious collection of works by Honoré Daumier have been gifted to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt. The collection of 4,200 prints, 19 drawings, 2 paintings and 36 sculptures were gifted to the institution by Hans-Jürgen Hellwig and his wife Brigitte to celebrate the museum's 125th anniversary. 120 works from the collection have been put on public display in recent days.
Sleeper Alert!
January 25 2024

Picture: drouot.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News via @auctionradar that the following 'Italian School, beginning of the 18th century' realised €130,000 over its €2,000 - €3,000 estimate the at Hôtel de Ventes Horta in Brussels the other day. Regular auction watchers will know that copies of Caravaggios tend to do rather well, due to a variety of reasons which are rather hard to pin down at times (read Caravaggio's Cardsharps on Trial if you're interested in this subject). Readers may want to compare this painting to a version in the Royal Collection and to this version which sold at Christie's in 2016.
New Release: Artists’ Things
January 25 2024

Picture: getty.edu
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's a new and interesting sounding release from Getty Publications. Artists’ Things: Rediscovering Lost Property from Eighteenth-Century France examines the lost and found items belonging to some of France's most famous painters.
According to the blurb:
Artists are makers of things. Yet it is a measure of the disembodied manner in which we generally think about artists that we rarely consider the everyday items they own. This innovative book looks at objects that once belonged to artists, revealing not only the fabric of the eighteenth-century art world in France but also unfamiliar—and sometimes unexpected—insights into the individuals who populated it, including Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun.
From the curious to the mundane, from the useful to the symbolic, these items have one thing in common: they have all been eclipsed from historical view. Some of the objects still exist, like Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s color box and Jacques-Louis David’s table. Others survive only in paintings, such as Jean-Siméon Chardin’s cistern in his Copper Drinking Fountain, or in documents, like François Lemoyne’s sword, the instrument of his suicide. Several were literally lost, including pastelist Jean-Baptiste Perronneau’s pencil case. In this fascinating book, the authors engage with fundamental historical debates about production, consumption, and sociability through the lens of material goods owned by artists.
Most importantly of all, Getty publications have made this book freely available online, including creating a rather fun website which allows you to click through the various objects included in the book. Well done to all those involved!
New Ideas Needed for the Low and Middle End Market?
January 24 2024

Picture: The Art Newspaper
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Art Newspaper have published an interesting piece focusing on the Middle and Low End of the Old Master Paintings market. Despite high prices being achieved for top end works, especially considering the involvement of museums, there is a continuing perception that private collectors for middle and low-end works are increasingly rare. The piece contains lots of interesting quotes from art dealers, including their thoughts on the future of Maastricht's TEFAF (the world's largest annual fair for historic art) which will be cutting its 2024 edition from ten to seven days.
New Release: Art, Medicine, and Femininity
January 24 2024

Picture: McGill-Queen's University Press
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
McGill-Queen's University Press in Canada have just released the following intriguing book. Art, Medicine, and Femininity: Visualising the Morphine Addict in Paris, 1870–1914 was written by the Edinburgh College of Art scholar Hannah Halliwell and is released this month.
According to the book's blurb:
“Paris is the centre of the cult,” wrote Robert Hichens in Felix, his 1902 novel on the rising number of morphine addictions in Europe. In Paris, artists depicted the morphine addict numerous times, yet they disregarded the reality of France’s addiction problem: male medical professionals made up the highest proportion of people who used morphine habitually. In oil paintings, caricatures, and lithographs, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Eugène Grasset, and Théophile Steinlen almost always depicted the morphine addict as a deviant female figure.
Artists sensationalized addiction to elicit shock and stand out in the crowded Parisian art market. Their artworks show influences from contemporary medical texts on addiction and artistic depictions of sex workers, lesbians, and other women deemed socially deviant. These images proliferated in French society, creating false narratives about who was or could become addicted to drugs and setting a precedent for the visualization of drug addiction. Hannah Halliwell links the feminization of addiction to broader anxieties in late nineteenth-century France - the defeat by Prussia in 1871, concerns about social decadence, a declining population, and a rising feminist movement.
Research Dutch & Flemish Paintings in Chicago
January 24 2024

Picture: TheCollector
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (International network for curators of art from the Low Countries) has shared news that the Art Institute of Chicago are hiring a Curatorial Fellow, Painting and Sculpture of Europe - Dutch and Flemish Paintings Collection Catalogue.
According to the job description:
Painting and Sculpture of Europe seeks a 2024-27 Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Foundation Fellow to assist with researching the collection of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings for an online collection catalogue. This three-year fellowship builds upon Painting and Sculpture of Europe’s record of in-depth digital collection publications, such as Gauguin: Paintings, Sculptures, and Graphic Works at the Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and Monet: Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014), thereby augmenting the museum’s impressive roster of digital catalogues and ensuring worldwide access to new research. Although several paintings from this group were part of the museum’s founding purchase in 1890, the 17th-century Dutch and Flemish collection has never been extensively studied, and technical and stylistic research will generate new discoveries about these foundational works. The artists identified for this project include Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Steen, Frans Hals, Jacob van Ruisdael, and David Teniers the Younger, among others.
Applications must be in by 8th April 2024 and no salary is indicated in the materials online, alas.
Good luck if you're applying!
Rome's Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria Hotel opens for Art Tours
January 23 2024
Video: euronews
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
For those who have exhausted all of the art collections of the Eternal City (if such a feat is even possible!), then Rome's Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria is opening up its art collection for special tours. The initiative has been organised as part of the hotel's 60th anniversary, a building which is said to contain a large private collection of artworks amassed by its former proprietors, the Terruzzi family.
According to press reports:
“It is a pleasure to do a tour in this space because it is open to the public, so anybody can come in and admire the works of art that constitute this collection which is quite unique,” says art historian and guide, Alexandra Massina.
She adds: "We range from Beauvais tapestries like the ones here to paintings by Tiepolo, to followers of Caravaggio, to sculptures, to magnificent pieces of furniture because it is a collection that comprises about a thousand pieces of art throughout the hotel."
In the reception hang four canvases by Giuseppe Zeis, one of the most illustrious Venetian landscape painters of the 18th century, whose paintings are housed in London's National Gallery. In the lobby, a commode that belonged to the King of Poland. Next to the lifts, you'll find the stage costumes of the famous Soviet-born ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. And a bronze by Bertel Thorvaldsen, the marble twin of which is in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
Sassetta Exhibition in Massa Marittima
January 23 2024

Picture: ansa.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Devotees to Italian gold ground painting will be sure to head to Massa Marittima in southern Tuscany later this spring. The Museo di San Pietro all'Orto will be opening an exhibition dedicated to Stefano di Giovanni di Consolo, known as il Sassetta (active by 1427; d. 1450) later in March. Press releases explain that 50 works by the artist and his contemporaries will be on display, including some newly conserved works from Italian parish churches and collections.
The show will run from 14th March until 14th July 2024.
The Winter Show
January 23 2024

Picture: thewintershow.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Winter Show opened in New York last Friday. Here's a list of some links to catalogues / pages which give an idea of what the main picture dealers have on view:
Robert Simon (plus recent Pontormo catalogue here)
Eguiguren Arte de Hispanoamérica
[Do remind me if I've missed any others!]
For those able to attend this important dealer fair, the show will be open until 28th January 2024.
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are Hiring!
January 23 2024

Picture: famsf.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are hiring an Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs.
According to the job description:
Under the supervision of the Curator in Charge, the Assistant Curator provides support to the curatorial staff for the day-to-day operation of the Prints and Drawings Department, known as the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts. This position contributes to the care and interpretation of the collection of more than 90,000 works on paper. This position works effectively and collegially with a broad range of staff, donors, trustees, curatorial support group members, and the general public. A strong customer service orientation and the ability to achieve and sustain best curatorial practices are essential.
The job comes with an annual salary between $68,000 - $75,000.*
Good luck if you're applying!
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* - UK institutions take note, a very fair wage for an Assistant Curator I think!
Conserving Boucher at the Timken Museum
January 23 2024
Video: Balboa Art Conservation Center
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I'm a little slow to the news that the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego have recently conserved a large painting by François Boucher. The conservation project on the artist's Lovers in a Park was made possible due to a $1m grant from the Paull Mellon Foundation, which includes a wider project to broaden the museum's conservation work. Have a look at the museum's Instagram page to see before and after shots, including a video of the varnish removal.
CFP: Dress and Painting: Clothing and Textiles in Art
January 23 2024

Picture: dresshistorians.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Association of Dress Historians have a rather interesting call for papers out for their upcoming conference in the autumn. The event will focus on the subject of Dress and Painting: Clothing and Textiles in Art, and confirmed key note speakers already include Professor Aileen Ribeiro, Dr Timothy McCall and Anna Reynolds.
According the CFP blurb:
Papers are invited that investigate, but are not limited to, any of the following prompts:
• The value (and limitations) of painted sources for historians of dress including portraits, genre scenes, illuminated manuscripts, frescoes and miniatures
• The reality (or otherwise) of clothing portrayed in paintings through comparison with extant garments, documentary sources etc
• The practices of dressing up (e.g. fancy dress, professional robes) or dressing down (e.g. déshabillé) for portraits
• The symbolism of dress in paintings
• The role of clothing in interpretations of meaning or narrative
• Individual artists and their different approaches to depicting dress
• Artists’ involvement in decisions about what sitters should wear for portraits
• Artists’ personal attitudes to fashion and the selection of clothing worn in self-portraits
• Techniques used by artists to represent textiles and three-dimensional garments in paint
• The draped figure in painting – depictions of the clothed and unclothed body
• The role of the specialist drapery painter in artists’ studios
• Overlapping spheres of production in the raw materials for paintings and textiles e.g. pigments and dyes, linen canvas, animal hair
• Paintings as fashion illustration, and their role in the fashion design process
• Textile designs inspired by paintings
• Painters who were also fashion/textile designers
• Museum practices of exhibiting paintings alongside items of dress
{/box}
Images fees and UK copyright law - a breakthrough
January 21 2024

Picture: via TAN
Posted by Bendor Grosvenor
Regular readers will know I and many others in the art historical community* have been campaigning for the free use of images of publicly owned artworks for some years. The high fees some museums charge are a counterproductive tax on art history, and limit the public’s ability to see and learn about the art they own. By encouraging museums to see their collection as something to monetise, they create a culture of control, both physically and intellectually. But there has been a significant development in UK copyright law which changes museum’s practical ability to charge these fees. I’ve written about it in The Art Newspaper, but here is a longer Q&A about image fees, what they are, what is new in copyright law, and why in most cases you don’t now need to pay them.
[If you're on the home page, click 'Read on']
Antonio Rossellino Conserved
January 19 2024

Picture: ansa.it
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
News from Italy that a marble Madonna and Child by Antonio Rossellino has been conserved. The sculpture, originally deposited in the Church of San Domenico in Ferrara, will go on display in the city's Museo della Cattedrale from 22nd January. The project, first initiated in 2022, was undertaken by the conservator Fabio Bevilacqua.
Marina Abramović Skincare Range
January 19 2024
Video: Marina Abramović Longevity Method
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Fans of the contemporary performance artist Marina Abramović, to whom the Royal Academy devoted a large-scale exhibition recently, will be able to buy products from her new skincare range this month. Marina Abramović Longevity Method was developed by the artist to "focus on what is most important- to live in the present, long and healthily." For a more interesting art historical write up, here's Marta Zboralska article on the seriousness (or not) of this new product.
Château de Chambord acquires Monkey Landscape
January 19 2024

Picture: Christie's
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I'm a little late to the news that the Château de Chambord have announced the acquisition of this rather fun landscape, which depicts the château with monkeys and birds in the foreground. The work was sold at Christie's Paris in November where it realised €16,380.
Conserving Eden
January 19 2024

Picture: getty.edu
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Getty and Norton Simon Museum have partnered up for an interesting conservation project. In particular, the J. Paul Getty Museum’s conservation department has just conserved two paintings of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder, two pictures which are from the Norton Simon Museum. Regular art followers will remember that the pair had been claimed by the Goudstikker heir Marei von Saher, a legal claim which was rejected by a US court in 2018.
The accompanying exhibition to highlight the work, entitled Conserving Eden, will run at the Getty from 23rd January until 21st April 2024.
Petr Brandl in Prague
January 19 2024
Video: Národní galerie Praha
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I failed to spot that the Národní galerie Praha opened an exhibition at the end of last year dedicated to the Bohemian painter Petr Brandl (1668–1735).
According to the gallery's website:
After over fifty years, this exhibition will show the work of the most important Baroque artist in Bohemia – Petr Brandl (1668 Prague - 1735 Kutná Hora). It will present his monumental altarpieces, which have been restored specially for the occasion, as well as his portraits and genre paintings of very interesting subject matter. Visitors will also see newly discovered works by Brandl for the very first time.
The exhibition is organized around two parallel narratives: the painter’s works and his life. We have numerous archival documents of Brandl’s life of bohemian revolt, which is remarkable even today and also offers interesting contexts for the problems of our time. For instance, Brandl was a lifelong debtor due to his penchant for the luxury lifestyle of nobility, which he was keen to enjoy himself. It also led him to court battles with his wife Helena over alimony. Brandl was also in trouble with his commissioners, as he often failed to comply with the terms of his contracts. The painter’s unbound life has inspired a contemporary theatre play Three Women and a Hunter in Love, which will be staged together with the exhibition (Geisslers Hofcomoedianten).
The show will run until 11th February 2024.
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I rather like the exciting visuals employed in this video. However, I'm not sure the electro music does it much justice!
Lecturer Jobs at the Courtauld
January 19 2024

Picture: courtauld.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Courtauld Institute in London are looking to hire new lecturers in the following subjects:
Lecturer in Italian Art, c. 1300-1500
Lecturer in the Arts of Early Modern France
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader in Curating
Click on the link above for the full job descriptions for each.
Each of these full-time positions comes with a salary starting at £50,942 (or £61,662 for a senior lecturer) and applications must be in by 12th February 2024.
Good luck if you're applying!