Previous Posts: May 2025

For the very first time, the work of these two legendary artistic figures will be brought together, co-curated by Harewood House Trust and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York.

In 1775, two icons of British culture were born into an era of huge social change. 250 years later, we celebrate Jane Austen and JMW Turner, uncovering their shared interest in the society and culture of the British country house and its landscape.

We imagine an encounter between these iconic figures, whose innovative works recorded the Regency era. Through Austen’s and Turner’s eyes, the show explores the world of the country house in their time and their impact on how we think about stately homes today.

Thrilling, evocative and rarely seen paintings and manuscripts will bring the Regency country house to life. The original manuscript of Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon joins early Turner watercolours and the very paintbox he used when he visited Harewood – all brought to northern England for the first time for this exhibition.

Rosalind Joy Savill (1951–2024) - By Stephen Duffy and Christopher Baker

A new border from Abbot Suger’s Saint-Denis - By Michael W. Cothren and Mary B. Shepard

Friendship tokens: Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s paintings for Madame de Pompadour - By Yuriko Jackall, John K. Delaney and Michael Swicklik

British press reaction to the London exhibitions of David, Lefèvre, Wicar and Lethière - By Humphrey Wine

Recasting and republicanising Millet’s horizons: Félicien Rops, Jean-François Raffaëlli and Jean-Charles Cazin - By Richard Thomson

Bravery, ingenuity and aerial post: an enamelled bowl by Joséphine-Arthurine Blot - By Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Grosheide

Antoine Caron and Italy - By David Ekserdjian

In its pre-Arches form, the Getty Provenance Index represented provenance information gathered from historic documents by replicating the tabular structure of the source material as flat-file records, meaning each entry was a single, independent row without links to other data points. In the remodeled Getty Provenance Index in Arches, those flat-file records have been transformed into a linked open data system. This means each entity is uniquely identified and connected to other relevant data using controlled vocabularies and semantic connections. This remodeling from relational to graph data transforms the implicit relationships recorded in a flat-file row into an explicit, relational web of entities that consolidates people, objects, places, and events into uniquely identified resources.

In Arches, Getty Provenance Index data is generated through events. Often, but not always, these events are related to historic transfers of ownership. These events create data that populates one of nine Resource Models used in the Provenance Index: Activity, Group, Person, Physical Object, Place, Provenance Activity, Set, Textual Work, and Visual Work. These models are based on the Linked.Art metadata application profile of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) reference model.

The identity of the artist responsible for this impressive panel is a mystery. In fact, whether the painter was Netherlandish or French is up for debate. The overall sense of plasticity, monumentality, and the strong shadows recall the work of French painters like Jean Hey. On the other hand, the composition and versatile execution – alternating smoothly painted areas and minute details with more dynamic passages – pay homage to the Netherlandish tradition of Jan van Eyck (The Virgin and Child with the Canon Joris van der Paele; Bruges, Groeningemuseum) and Hugo van der Goes (The Portinari Altarpiece; Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi). The Netherlandish hypothesis is supported by the painting’s Baltic oak panel, since French artists tended to use locally sourced oak.

Stylistic parallels can be found with the early work of Jan Gossaert. The dramatically foreshortened faces of the saints and angels are reminiscent of some of his early drawings, for instance the left saint of The Holy Family with Saints (c. 1510-5; Albertina, Vienna). The treatment of the brocade and metalwork compares well with passages from Gossaert’s Adoration of the Kings (London, National Gallery). Both artists also used similar underdrawing techniques, especially the way of sketching the ocular cavities, the knuckles, the shading of the Virgin’s forehead, and the absence of wash. The eccentricity that pervades the panel also recalls Gossaert’s manner. This painting challenges art historians’ tendency to focus on names and demonstrates that for the late medieval and Renaissance periods, anonymity can intersect with extraordinary quality.