Category: Research
Prado Shares 11,500 Publications Online for Free!
September 20 2024
Picture: Prado
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Prado in Madrid have announced a new digital library platform. The website contains 11,500 publications (including 5,600 magazines and 6,000 books) which are all freely accessible. As to be expected, it appears the collection is very strong in relation to the Prado's holdings.
Such a feat of resource sharing has earned this website a place in the much-coveted 'Heroes of Art History' section of this blog.
Lecture on Guillaume Lethière
September 18 2024
Video: The Clark Institute
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
I failed to spot that the The Clark Institute have published this free lecture on Guillaume Lethière on their YouTube channel in August. The lecture gives an introduction to the artist and their ongoing exhibition which closes on 14th October 2024.
Digitising the Firmian Collection
September 17 2024
Picture: CODART
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (the international network of curators of Dutch and Flemish art) have published a fascinating feature on the ongoing digitisation and research of the Firmian Collection of prints kept in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. The collection was gifted to the Italian state in 1864 and is kept in the same mahogany cabinet which accompanied the gift. The article is well worth a read.
Munnings Film
September 17 2024
Video: National Sporting Library and Museum, Virginia, USA
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The National Sporting Library and Museum, Virginia, and the art historian Christopher Garibaldi have teamed up to create this video documentary on aspects relating to the art and life of Sir Alfred Munnings for the Art History Festival 2024. This film also contains presentations by Marcia Whiting, Curatorial Associate, Munnings Art Museum, and Claudia Pfeiffer, George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Deputy Director & Head Curator.
Lecture: The Rough and the Smooth in 17th-century Dutch Painting
September 17 2024
Picture: vmfa.museum
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Virginia Museum of Fine Art will be hosting and livestreaming their inaugural Jordan and Thomas A. Saunders III Lecture on 25th September 2024. This year it will fall to Dr. Ronni Baer, distinguished Curator and Lecturer at the Princeton University Art Museum, to present on the subject of The Rough and the Smooth in 17th-century Dutch Painting. More details, including timings, via the link above.
Applications open for Slade Professorship of Fine Art
September 16 2024
Picture: jobs.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The University of Cambridge is hiring for the Slade Professorship of Fine Art from 2025-26 to 2029-30.
According to the job description:
The Slade Professorship of Fine Art was established in 1869 as the result of a generous bequest in the will of Felix Slade. A list of former holders of the Professorship in the past forty years is attached at the end of these further particulars. It is the intention of the Board of Electors to elect a Professor for each of the academic years 2025-26 to 2029-30.
The duty of the Professor is to deliver a series of public lectures as well as seminar classes on aspects of the History, Theory and Practice of Fine Arts (which can include architecture). It is expected that the lectures will form part of a new scholarly project and that they will not have been given in the same format elsewhere (or published) before they are given in Cambridge. The lectures must be given in Full Term and are open free of charge to all members of the University.
The job comes with an annual salary of £79,792 and applications must be in by 9th October 2024.
Good luck if you're applying!
French Pictures at Witt Library Website Live!
September 16 2024
Picture: courtauld.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Exciting news that the Courtauld Institute have published the French boxes of the Witt Library on their new photographic collections website.
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I've been planning a blog about some of my online Witt researches in the near future. It really is a brilliant resource, albeit a slightly fiddly one at times considering the layout of the site. I'm sure it will become easier with time and transform the way picture research is done.
Symposium on 'Two Women Wearing Cosmetic Patches'
September 11 2024
Picture: YCBA
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Yale Center for British Art will be hosting a symposium on 27th September 2024 on the subject of A Puritan Picture: Vanity, Morality, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Britain. The focus will of course be research into Compton Verney's newly acquired Two Women Wearing Cosmetic Patches, which regular readers of this blog will remember.
Here's a brief list of the presentations and speakers:
Opening Talk — A Painter for a Puritan Picture? - Edward Town
Panel I — Women, Dress, and Morality - Chair: Elizabeth Cleland alongside Jennifer Wu and Jemma Field.
Panel II — Bodies and Voices - Chair: Patricia Fumerton alongside Haijiao Wang, Todd Simmons, Jane Partner and Katherine Aske.
Keynote — Cosmetics and Cultures of Beauty - Chair: Erin Griffey alongside Jill Burkeand Evelyn Welch.
Closing Discussion — Exhibiting the Painting - Chair: Edward Town alongside Oli McCall and Jane Simpkiss.
It appears that the symposium might be free to attend in-person and online. Click on the link to find details for registration.
Funded PhD to Study Rowland Lockey
September 11 2024
Picture: NPG
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The University of Cambridge are offering a funded PhD Studentship on a brilliantly interesting subject entitled The Portraiture of Rowland Lockey (c.1566-1616): A Historical and Technical Examination" (Department of History of Art and National Trust).
According to the university's website:
The studentship will provide an opportunity to undertake technical art-historical research on paintings attributed to Lockey in the collection of the National Trust, understanding the use of techniques such as MA-XRF, cross-section sampling, and X-radiography. Assisted by Trust curators the award holder will research documentary evidence in the Hardwick archives of Lockey's work for patrons such as Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, and her son, William Cavendish. This will be complemented by research in The National Archives and other repositories, to build as full a picture as possible of Lockey's career which will be the backbone of outreach and community engagement activity by the Trust. [...]
The studentship will be based in the Department of History of Art. The successful applicant will work on a collaborative project co-led by Professor Alexander Marr, University of Cambridge, Dr Jane Eade, co-supervisor, Cultural Heritage Curator and Rebecca Hellen, Senior National Conservator Paintings & Wall Paintings at National Trust Midlands/East of England.
The studentship comes with an annual stipend of £19,237 and applications must be in by 7th January 2025.
Good luck if you're applying!
Renaissance Society of America Fellowships
September 10 2024
Picture: rsa.org
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
For those who are embarking on research projects related to Renaissance Art, then the Renaissance Society of America have some rather generous fellowship grants going at the moment. T&Cs apply (follow the link for details) and applications must be in by 17th September 2024.
Good luck if you're applying!
Rembrandt Reunited in Denmark
September 6 2024
Video: RKD
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Nivaagaard Collection in Nivå, Denmark, have just this week opened their latest exhibition Rembrandt Reunited. The show investigates the relationship between two paintings by the Dutch master which survive in separate collections, however, may have once been pendants. Head to the RKD's YouTube channel to see a few other short videos on the subject.
Rare Lely Sketch Unveiled at Dickinson
September 5 2024
Picture: @milo.dickinson via Instagram
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The London dealers Simon Dickinson have unveiled on Instagram their discovery of a rare sketch by Sir Peter Lely.* In this video, presented by Milo Dickinson, the significance of the sketch, sitter and 'another face' lurking in the background is explained!
* - The painting has already been sold, as you might imagine!
Memling in Bruges
September 5 2024
Video: smarthistory
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A new collaboration between VISITFLANDERS, Smarthistory and the Center for Netherlandish Art at the MFA Boston has produced the following video on Hans Memling's Triptych of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist from the Museum Saint John's Hospital in Bruges. Featured within are the voices of Dr. Anna Koopstra, Curator of Early Netherlandish painting, Musea Brugge, Bruges and Dr. Steven Zucker.
New Release: British Miniatures from the Thomson Collection
September 4 2024
Picture: Ad Ilissvm
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
A new book has been published this month on the British Miniatures from the Thomson collection housed in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. The publication was written by Susan Sloman and spans over 300 pages including 250 illustrations.
According to the book's blurb:
Using this collection housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario as a case study, the catalogue discusses the function of miniatures, their material presence, the circumstances in which they were made and aspects of their later history. The homes and studios of the most successful painters, as sumptuous as those occupied by oil painters, often passed from one generation to another: here, one key property in Covent Garden is described and illustrated. In this book, for the first time, a number of specialist artists’ suppliers are identified, showing where ivory could be obtained and enamel plates prepared and fired. The links between enamelling for clock and watch faces and enamelling for miniatures are demonstrated. The illicit practice within the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century art trade of duplicating old miniatures, a topic generally avoided in the literature, is addressed here. Miniatures are difficult to display in museums, but recently-developed photographic methods of identifying pigments are also proving to be a way of introducing a new audience to this multilayered subject. Eighteen years after Ken Thomson’s death, there could not be a more opportune moment to highlight his collection.
Free Lecture - The Body of the Maharani: Portraiture, Gender and Empire at the Royal Academy 1791–1865
September 2 2024
Picture: The Gianfranco Ferré Research Center
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The MET's associate curator for European Paintings, Adam Eaker, will be presenting a free lecture in October on the subject of The Body of the Maharani: Portraiture, Gender and Empire at the Royal Academy 1791–1865. The talk, hosted by the Paul Mellon Centre in London, will take place on 23rd October 2024 and will be published online afterwards too.
According to the talk's blurb:
As the British expanded their territorial control and economic exploitation of the Indian subcontinent over the course of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, portraits of Indian sitters became increasingly visible in London’s exhibitions.
In responding to such portraits, critics gave voice to imperial anxieties around race, colonisation and gender. Because most elite Indian women lived in seclusion shielded from public view, their portraits acquired a special charge of voyeuristic allure, just as accounts of visiting the zenana or women’s quarters provided a centrepiece of much British travel writing.
This lecture explores two portraits of upper-class Indian women that were exhibited at the Royal Academy during this period: Francesco Renaldi’s Portrait of a Mughal Lady (painted in 1787, exhibited in 1791), and George Richmond’s Maharani Jind Kaur (painted 1863, exhibited 1865).
Bookending a seventy-year period of immense political upheaval, these portraits and their reception reveal the transformation in the relationship between British colonisers and Indigenous elites, as expressed in the popular fascination with the lives of upper-class Indian women.
Focusing on debates around adornment, visibility and women’s political power, a paired analysis of these two portraits offers a new vantage point on the development of both British and Indian art under colonialism.
Free Lecture - On Objects and Objectivity: New insights on Rubens's Medici cycle
September 2 2024
Picture: General Representative of Flanders in the United Kingdom
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Trinity Hall Cambridge will be hosting a free lecture organised in association with the General Representative of Flanders in the United Kingdom later in October. Professor Dr. Nils Büttner, of the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart & Centrum Rubenianum, Antwerp, will be presenting a lecture on the subject of On Objects and Objectivity: New insights on Rubens's Medici cycle.
The free talk will take place on 28th October 2024. Registration is required (via the link above).
The Rainbow Portrait Conserved
September 2 2024
Picture: Hatfield House
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Hatfield House are putting on a special event on 20th September to celebrate the recent conservation of the famous Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.
The evening event will feature a range of talks from experts in Tudor history, fashion history, Tudor paintings and paintings conservation. The speakers lined up include Stephen Alford, Dr. Susan North, Karen Hearn FSA and Nicole Ryder.
Tickets cost a mere £45 per person (includes champagne reception!).
New Catalogue for Gemäldegalerie's Netherlandish and French Paintings 1400-1480
September 2 2024
Picture: Gemäldegalerie Berlin
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
CODART (the association of curators of Flemish and Dutch art) have drawn attention to the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin's new catalogue for Netherlandish and French Paintings 1400-1480. Edited by Katrin Dyballa and Stephan Kemperdick, the publication examines 69 paintings in 52 catalogue entries including works by Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Jean Fouquet, Albert van Ouwater and Hugo van der Goes.
Burlington - Art in Italy
September 2 2024
Picture: burlington.org.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Burlington Magazine's September issue is dedicated to the theme of Art in Italy.
Here's a list of the main articles found within:
Two unpublished portraits by Lavinia Fontana - By Antonio Ernesto Denunzio
The ‘Madonna del Baraccano’: Francesco del Cossa’s reworking of a miraculous fresco - By Julie Hartkamp
Guercino’s ‘Moses’: a recent addition to the artist’s ‘prima maniera’ - By Letizia Treves
New documents for Vincenzo Foppa and Ludovico Brea in Liguria - By Michela Zurla
Leonardo da Vinci’s Burlington House Cartoon: a new hypothesis - Shorter notice by Per Rumberg
Parmigianino, Damiano Pieti and the beauty of architecture in the ‘Madonna of the long neck’ - Shorter notice by Mary Vaccaro
A newly discovered Anguissola portrait - Shorter notice by Emanuele Lugli
Even more about the Andrea Vendramin collection - Shorter notice by Lauren Murphy
Oliver James Watson (1949–2023) - By Mariam Rosser-Owen
British Pictures at Witt Library Website Live!
August 3 2024
Picture: courtauld.ac.uk
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The Courtauld Institute in London have just gone live with their latest digitisation of the British Picture cards from the Witt Library (thanks to Neil Jeffares for altering me to this). This first collection of photographs and clippings from old auction, exhibition and historic photos contains over half a million objects, which is staggering.
The opening of this resource is going to change picture research forever, I think. A seminal moment for both academia and the art market. I can't wait to see the discoveries start pouring in.
More national schools are on the way, it's time to get hunting!
