'Perspectives' (ctd.)
June 18 2018
Picture: BG
I wrote a while ago (in one of my occasional nothing-to-do-with-art-history posts) about one aspect of America's struggles to come to terms with its slave-owning past; Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia. Now, the foundation that runs Monticello has opened a new part of the estate to visitors, the place where Jefferson's slave mistress, Sally Hemmings, lived with their children. In Salon, Lucian K. Truscott (one of Jefferson's descendants, by his wife) writes movingly about the development, and what it means to his family to now have his mixed race cousins accepted as part of Monticello's official history:
Today at Monticello, the descendants of Jefferson’s slaves will have their history formally recognized when a space where slaves lived will be opened to the public. The quarters that were occupied by Sally Hemings will be accessible, much as Jefferson’s bedroom has been open to the public all of these years. The space was used for many years as a public restroom until archaeologists and historians at Monticello discovered that it had been the place where Sally Hemings had raised the children she had with Thomas Jefferson.
[...]
In conjunction with the opening of the Hemings quarters, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, has issued a definitive affirmation that Thomas Jefferson fathered all six of Sally Hemings’ children. They are removing qualifiers such as “most likely” from the foundation’s previous position on Jefferson’s paternity in favor of evidence including Hemings’ family oral history, a DNA study carried out in 1998, a written history of Hemings’ and Jefferson’s son Madison published in an Ohio newspaper in 1873, and evidence taken from Jefferson’s own writings in his “Farm Book” confirming that he was present at Monticello each time Sally conceived.
Truscott also discusses the fact that many other white Jefferson descendants (who are part of something called the Monticello Association) still refuse to allow Jeffersons black descendants from Sally Hemings to be members, and to be buried at Monticello:
In 1998, during an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show with my Hemings cousins, I invited them to be my guests at the family reunion at Monticello. In May of 1999, about 50 of them joined me and attended all of the family events, including a service at Jefferson’s grave. Many white Jefferson descendants are buried there, including my brother and my parents, great grandparents, and great aunts and uncles. One day, I will be buried there alongside the rest of my family.
One of the things my Hemings cousins and I were seeking in attending the family reunions in 1999 and over the next several years was the right to be buried at Monticello in the graveyard, should any of the Hemings family express that desire. This became a key issue for the Monticello Association, and finally, in 2002, they took a vote on formally admitting our Hemings cousins into the family. They voted 95 to 6 against the Hemings.
People usually think and write about 'history' as if it is one, definable thing. But it is in fact two things; what actually happened, and what we think happened. The gap between the two is called injustice.
Lorenzo Lotto at the Prado
June 18 2018
Video: Prado
There's what looks to be a fantastic new exhibition on Lorenzo Lotto's portraits at the Prado in Madrid. It opens tomorrow, on 19th June, till 30th September, then travels to London's National Gallery, where it opens on 5th November. What an underrated artist he is. More here.
London Old Master sales
June 11 2018
Picture: Sotheby's
The catalogues for the London July Old Master sales are now online. Christie's Evening sale here, Day here; Sotheby's Evening here, Day here; and Bonhams here. Sotheby's drawing sale is here, and Christie's here.
I'll write more about some of the highlights in due course. My choice above is Turner's Lake Lucerne from Brunnen, at Sotheby's for £1.2m-£1.8m.
incidentally, the most recent Old Master sale at Sotheby's in New York was quite the success, bringing in $9.8m against an estimate of $5.4m-$7.9m. As The Art Market Monitor asked, 'what happened?' More here.
Update - and of course not forgetting sculpture. Here at Christie's, and here at Sotheby's.
Restitution News (ctd.)
June 11 2018
Video: Sotheby's
Sotheby's have made a rather touching video about the recent restitution of a painting by Ochtervelt, which was looted by the Nazis during WW2, and found in 2017 in the collection of the City of London. The picture will feature in Sotheby's London Old Master sale on 4th July.
Heni Talks on... Hogart
June 7 2018
Caro Howell - William Hogarth and the Foundling Hospital from HENI Talks on Vimeo.
Video: Heni Talks
Some of Heni's 'Art Talks' are really excellent, and show UK museums how these things should be done. A new one on William Hogarth (above) is well worth a click. It's presented by Caro Howell, Director of the Foundling Museum.
Update - naturally, a thicket of 'image rights' mean that I can't embed the video on AHN (because God forbid, some museum might lose control of its image). But click on the link in the box above and you can still watch the video.
Brunelleschi castle for sale
June 6 2018
Video: Lionard
A Tuscan castle said to have been designed by Filippo Brunelleschi is for sale in Italy, if you fancy an art history themed holiday home. It's 'price on application', so don't get your hopes up.
More here.
Eyes down... for an empty house
June 6 2018
Picture: via You Tube
A quick plea to all my fellow art historians; when giving a paper at a conference, it's generally not a good idea to read out a prepared text. Not only does it inhibit your normal way of communicating - because unless you're an actor, reading dulls the voice - it also makes it very difficult get across your message. That's because when we listen to someone speaking, we're far less able to absorb the kinds of details and nuance we might pick up when we're reading. I know standing up in front of a room full of people can be daunting, and for many of us (I've even in the past done it myself) having the security of a script helps us get through the ordeal. But it's actually far easier just to talk generally about a few broad points. And your audience will thank you for it.
Update - with perfect timing, the Arts Society is offering a fully funded five day course on how to give a good lecture:
When: Sunday 12th August – Thursday 16th August 2018
What’s covered: confident speaking training, presentation skills training including information on software and sourcing and using illustrative images, learning how to talk about art, accommodation, all meals, transport to all venues, ongoing opportunities to lecture with The Arts Society following completion of the course. Participants will just be asked to cover their travel costs to and from Birmingham.
Sign up here!
Update II - if you do feel the need to read from a script, a reader offers this sound advice:
Academics are terrified of losing their place in a text, so layout skills are essential.
One v useful trick is to print up the talk with a paragraph ending at the close of each sentence, and learn to look up every time. Then look back down at the start of next line.
Most academic sentences are anyway too long and complex for oral delivery, so another trick is divide them into parts, breaking at each conjunction, and looking up again.
Third: read text aloud – really loud – to oneself and listen for moments when the prose stumbles.
Burlington makeover
June 6 2018
Picture: The Burlington Magazine
Michael Hall, the new editor of The Burlington Magazine, continues to shake things up a bit. Above is a preview of their new cover and logo. I like it. I especially like the full-bleed photo, and the eye-catching sub-heading, 'Did Caravaggio make copies?' That's far better than the dry and sometimes rather dull sounding titles were used to in art history.
'Aftermath' at Tate Britain
June 5 2018
Video: Tate
This looks like a must-see show - 'Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One' at Tate Britain. Says the Tate site:
Marking the 100 years since the end of World War One, Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One looks at how artists responded to the physical and psychological scars left on Europe.
Art was used in many ways in the tumultuous period after the end of the war, from documenting its destructive impact, to the building of public memorials and as a social critique.
This fascinating and moving exhibition shows how artists reacted to memories of war in many ways. George Grosz and Otto Dix exposed the unequal treatment of disabled veterans in post-war society, Hannah Höch and André Masson were instrumental in the birth of new art forms dada and surrealism, Pablo Picasso and Winifred Knights returned to tradition and classicism, whilst others including Fernand Léger and C.R.W Nevinson produced visions of the city of the future as society began to rebuild itself.
The show runs from 5th June until 23rd September. What an excellent trailer Tate has made, above.
'The RA - a Chronicle'
June 5 2018
Video: Paul Mellon Centre
It's non-stop coverage of the Royal Academy at the moment, which is celebrating its 250th anniversary. At the beginning of the year we had the stupendous Charles I show. Last month we had the triumphant opening of their new buildings in Burlington Gardens (I went to see the new display of works from the RA collection and mighty fine it is too.) And this week the annual Summer Exhibition opens, curated - if that's the right word - by Grayson Perry. In case you missed it there was a documentary on the BBC all about the RA's history and how it operates today, available here. It's all a fine reflection on the energetic leadership of the RA's team, including the Chief Executive, Charles Saumarez Smith. In his more then ten years at the RA, Charles has transformed an organisation that was in danger of not only losing its way, but losing all relevance. In The Sunday Times last week, Richard Brooks said it was high time Charles was given a knighthood. AHN agrees!
Anyway, the point of this post is to make you aware of the latest exciting RA development; a new website charting the history of the Summer Exhibition. It has been put together by the Paul Mellon Centre in London. Chronicle 250 is a comprehensive database of of every exhibition held since 1769, with scans of the catalogues, and essays by art historians. It's well worth a look, and for many researchers will be indispensable.
It's also a great demonstration of the possibilities offered by digital art history. Not so long ago, this kind of overview of the RA summer show would have been a book, which would necessariliy have been limited in what it could contain (certainly no scans of all 250 years of catalogues) and stuck in stone, so to speak, once it was published. The new site can be constantly updated, a living work of scholarship.
Of course, digital art history has its limitations too. I'm told that the Paul Mellon Centre's bill for image fees was eye watering. Because their image licensing model is based on 20th Century realities (ie, book publishing) most insitutions view online publications as either cash cows, or something which must be 'controlled', usually by the imposition of licenses that limit the number of years an image can be used online. This is because in the old days, insitutions could issue licenses based on print runs. But in the online age, if something is online, it's reach is limitless. So they impose time restrictions instead. It's all very pointless. And it's really only because a few charities like the PMC have deep pockets that projects like the RA Chronicle are able to happen. Imagine how much richer digital art history would be if image fees weren't the barrier to scholarship that they have become.
Art history sexism (ctd.)
June 5 2018
Regular readers will know that AHN has long taken a dim view of auction houses making their younger female employees pose in front of objects for press shoots. For examples of the practice, see here and my favourite here. And for a first hand account of what it's like to be asked to do it, see here.
But now, a victory - in yesterday's Times, David Sanderson reported that both Sotheby's and Christie's have decided to stop using 'art girls':
“We are moving with the times,” Sotheby’s said when questioned about the unusual publicity tactic.
Excellent news. I just have to get UK museums to abolish image fees, and then my work is done.
But wait - what's this?! The Tate gallery didn't get the memo. Here's a page from today's Times, promoting a new exhibition at Tate on paintings from World War One:
Come on Tate - take your lead from Sotheby's, and move with the times!
Update - a reader upbraids me:
It’s not sexist – and ageist – to assume that the young person included in the shot is not the relevant specialist, or in the case of a museum publicity shot, the relevant curator? It sure is.
Although, in this case I'm fairly sure it isn't. And it's usually fairly evident, both in the posing and the captioning, when a specialist or curator is being photographed.
A Derick Baegert for Dallas
June 3 2018
Picture: Dallas Museum of Art
In 2013 the Dallas Museum of Art was given a $17m endowment to buy works made prior to the 18th Century. Five years later, the museum has made its first major purchase with the money, a large Descent from the Cross by the late German Gothic painter Derick Baegert (around 1440-1509). More here in The Art Newspaper.
Walk through a Jan Brueghel
June 3 2018
Video: Sotheby's
Sotheby's have done one of their whizzy videos, walking through a picture by Jan Brueghel the Elder (Est. £2.5m-£3.5m). I love these videos. I think the fact that works by the likes of the Brueghel family and Hieronymous Bosch have consistently performed well in the Old Master market over the last decade or so, is because - in their exquisite and engaging details - they lend themselves perfectly to close looking in the digital age. They're full of wonder, which translates well onto a screen.
Van Dedem collection at Sotheby's
June 3 2018
Video: Sotheby's
Sotheby's has the collection of the late Baron Willem van Dedem for sale in their July London Old Master sales. George Gordon tells us about the pictures in the video above. Van Dedem was for many years the chairman of Tefaf, the great Old Master fair in Maastricht.
Boilly in London
June 3 2018
Picture: via The Guardian
I've always liked the French artist Louis-Léopold Boilly, so I'm glad to see that the National Gallery will put on the first UK exhibition of his work next year (in February). The paintings to be shown - including the above - come from the collection of the late Harry Hyams. More here.
Might Caravaggio's 'Nativity' be found?
June 3 2018
Picture: Guardian
It's unlikely, but there's been some excitement in the news at reports that an aged mobster has told Italian police the painting was offered to a Swiss art dealer after it was stolen in 1969. Reports The Guardian:
The new lead on the whereabouts of the 17th-century painting – a depiction of the newborn Christ on a bed of straw, painted in the chiaroscuro technique – came from a former mobster-turned-informant, who revealed to Italian investigators that it had once been held by Gaetano Badalamenti, a Sicilian “boss of bosses” who was known as one of the ringleaders of an infamous heroin trafficking network in the US called the Pizza Operation.
Investigators announced this week that Gaetano Grado, the mafia informant, said Badalamenti had been put in touch with an art dealer in Switzerland after obtaining the work – also known as The Adoration – from another mafia boss.
Never trust a Swiss art dealer.
Apologies...
May 28 2018
Picture: BG
Sorry for the lack of news lately, it's been too hot and balmy to do anything other than be in the garden. We don't often get Mays like this in Scotland, so we're making the most of it. Above is a view down the Leader Valley in Berwickshire.
And I'm afraid there won't be much news tomorrow either, as I'm heading to London to carry on the campaign to abolish image reproduction fees. We're meeting one of the national museum directors tomorrow. But actually at the time of writing I'm not sure I'll make it, as I'm stuck in Edinburgh airport waiting for a much delayed Easyjet flight. And now the fog is coming in...
I hope you've all had a good Bank Holiday weekend, or for US readers, a Memorial Day weekend.
Update - I finally got into London at 2.30am. But we had the meeting today - at the V&A with Tristram Hunt - which was 'full and frank', as they say in political parlance. But it was also encouraging and positive, and I hope to be able to bring you good news from the V&A on image fees in the not too distant future.
Now I'm waiting in another airport for another delayed flight back home. The things I do for art history!
Tudor and Jacobean miniatures at the NPG
May 23 2018
Picture: NPG
Excellent news - the National Portrait Gallery in London is mounting the first major exhibition in decades on Tudor and Jacobean miniatures. The portrait miniature is one of the few areas in which Britain can genuinely claim to have contributed to the evolution of art history. And it all started in the Tudor and Jacobean era. Says the NPG press release:
Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver, 21 February - 19 May 2019, is the first major exhibition on Tudor and Jacobean portrait miniatures in the UK for over 35 years. The exhibition will bring together key works from the National Portrait Gallery and major loans from public and private collections, including miniatures that haven’t been seen in public in the UK since the early 1980s, to showcase the careers of the most skilled artists of the period, Nicholas Hilliard (1547? – 1619) and French born Isaac Oliver (c.1565 – 1617).
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, miniature painting was regarded as an art form at which the English excelled above all others, and Hilliard and Oliver gained international fame and admiration. The exhibition will explore what these exquisite images reveal about identity, society and visual culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Termed ‘limnings’ at the time, with their roots in manuscript illumination, miniatures were prized by monarchs, courtiers and the rising middle classes as a means of demonstrating favour, showing loyalty and expressing close relationships. They could be set into ornate jewelled cases and worn around the neck, pinned to clothing or secretly concealed as part of elaborate processes of friendship, love, patronage and diplomacy.
Described by Hilliard as ‘a thing apart from all other painting or drawing’, miniature painting was regarded as a particularly refined and expressive art form, capturing, in the words of Hilliard, ‘these lovely graces, witty smilings, and these stolen glances which suddenly like lightning pass’, as well as the rich and elaborate costumes and jewellery of the time. These tiny portraits, many in exceptional condition, bring their sitters before us, four hundred years after they were painted, with astonishing freshness and vivacity. In the words of a later commentator, ‘The art of the master and the imitation of nature are so great ... that the largest magnifying glass only calls out new beauties.’
Catharine MacLeod, Senior Curator of Seventeenth-Century Portraits and Curator of Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver says: “I am thrilled to be able to bring together the miniature masterpieces of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver in this major new exhibition. In addition to exploring the exquisite technique of the artists, portrait miniatures from this period express in a unique way many of the most distinctive and fascinating aspects of court life in this period: ostentatious secrecy, games of courtly love, arcane symbolism, a love of intricacy and decoration.”
If you can't wait till next February to see these early miniatures, then there's always the excellent galleries of portrait miniatures at the V&A, one of the wonders of British museums.
Mantegna discovery in Italy
May 22 2018
Picture: Academia Carrara & Corriere.it
A painting by Mantegna has been discovered in Italy, at the Accademia Carrara. The painting (left, above) was in the museum's store rooms, and thought to be a copy. But sharp eyed curators noticed that it was actually the top part of another painting by Mantegna, the Descent into Limbo (above right), which was once part of the Barbara Piasecka Johson collection. The crucial detail was part of a cross on the top of a rod held in the Piasecka Johnson painting, of which the tip can just be seen at the bottom of the Carrara painting. More here (in Italian), and you can zoom into the painting here, on the Academia Carrara's excellent website.
'Prized Possessions'
May 22 2018
Picture: National Trust
This looks like a good show - the first loan exhibition of works from the National Trust in over twenty years. 'Prized Possessions' opens at the Holburne museum in Bath on 25th May (till Sept 16th), and will then travel to the Mauritshuis, before coming back to the UK at Petworth House in West Sussex. Above is Pieter Saenredam's Interior of the Church of St Catherine, which normally hangs in Upton House in Warwickshire.
More here.
