Category: Research

The proposed PhD project, ’Experimental Approaches to Global Histories of Art and Architecture’, will uncover and historicise experimental approaches to the history of art and architecture, with the aim of exploring diverse epistemological viewpoints. We are interested in PhD projects on artists, architects, historians, critics, and curators who used alternative media to challenge the narratives and methodologies of the history of art and architecture. The PhD project could focus on objects and practices that take the form of artworks, buildings, more complex intermedia projects, or curatorial and pedagogical experiments. The experimental practices under study may have emerged at any point from the nineteenth century to today, anywhere in world. Methodologically, the project encourages PhD candidates to uncover unpublished and under-examined sources that can help us rethink existing disciplinary frameworks.

One of the main goals of this unique series is to understand the complex and multi-layered interaction between women and the evolution of a major national museum. It will include new studies focused on female artists’ production and their presence or absence in museum rooms. But it will go beyond these established topics to examine the link between the formation of the collections of the Prado Museum and women patrons. It will also commission work on women who inspired and received works of art that were incorporated into the collections, not forgetting the contribution of women in technical and ancillary roles. The broad chronology will enable us to trace and reflect the changing role of women and their relationship with the arts, as well as the evolution of a major Western cultural institution and its dependence on women.

Presenting a more expansive and inclusive history of sculpture, Great Women Sculptors surveys the work of more than 300 trailblazing artists from over 60 countries, spanning 500 years from the Renaissance to the present day.

Organized alphabetically, each artist is represented by an image and newly commissioned text. This wide-ranging survey champions the best-known women sculptors from art history alongside today’s rising stars. From more recognizable names such as Camille Claudel, Gego, Barbara Hepworth, and Yayoi Kusama to some of today’s most significant contemporary artists including Huma Bhaba, Mona Hatoum, and Simone Leigh, this book showcases 500 years of sculptural creativity in one accessible, visually stunning volume.

The inventory, which is part of the government’s efforts to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of the conflict and the subsequent dictatorship, was posted online on Wednesday. [...]

Spain’s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, said the list was about much more than his department fulfilling the obligations set out in the Democratic Memory law, which was approved by the senate in October 2022.

“We’re offering a space in which people can learn about our history,” he said. “We’re also opening the door to returning those pieces that can be identified to their rightful owners.”

The ministry said that applications for the return of the lost items would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Largely unknown to the general public and art historians, the Orléans collection comprises some 900 drawings by Dutch, Flemish, German, Austrian, English, Swiss and Swedish artists from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. A selection of more than 150 drawings, most of which have never been shown to the public, is presented in the exhibition.

The catalogue raisonné by David Mandrella, a specialist in Dutch and Flemish art, is the result of several years of research. It includes entries and reproductions of all of the drawings in the collection, from Goltzius to Jongkind, through Rubens, Jordaens and Spranger.

Nothing to do with Menander: a rediscovered Roman cameo from the Caylus Collection - BY ITTAI GRADEL 

Reaching the Buddhist paradise: early images of Buddhas and bodhisattvas in Koguryŏ - BY ARIANE PERRIN

Expanding the oeuvre of the master metalsmith Orazio Fortezza - BY FLORA TURNER-VUČETIĆ

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-la- Conception, Pondicherry - BY GAUVIN ALEXANDER BAILEY

The art of Qing imperial afterlife: the ‘Pictures of ancient playthings’ (Guwantu 古玩圖) revisited - BY RICARDA BROSCH

Renaissance exhibitions in Paris - BY NICHOLAS HERMAN

We are currently looking for a permanent staff member to join our Restitution team in London. The role includes research into the provenance of artworks predating 1946 as well as servicing our global client base. The candidate must be a fluent German speaker and have a strong interest in history and the art world, in particular research and restitution issues relating to cultural property. They should have experience of and enjoy working in a fast-paced, commercial environment where analysing and assessing risks goes hand in hand with making decisions independently under time pressure. While a background in art and/or (German) history is useful for this role, we are looking for candidates with risk management/risk assessment skills. This experience does not necessarily need to have been gained in the art world.

John Trumbull (1756–1843) experienced the American Revolution firsthand—he served as aid to George Washington and Horatio Gates, was shot at, and was jailed as a spy. He made it his mission to record the war, giving visual form to what most citizens of the new United States thought: that they had brought into the world a great and unprecedented political experiment. His purpose, he wrote, was “to preserve and diffuse the memory of the noblest series of actions which have ever presented themselves in the history of man.” Although Trumbull’s contemporaries viewed him as a painter, Trumbull thought of himself as a historian.

This fully illustrated catalogue presents the most up-to-date research on the seventy-five paintings in the National Gallery created in the German-speaking lands before 1800. Among them are important groups of works by artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger—including his famous double portrait The Ambassadors of 1533—Lucas Cranach the Elder, Albrecht Dürer, Adam Elsheimer, the fifteenth-century Cologne painter known as the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece and his Westphalian contemporary, the Master of Liesborn.

This is the first catalogue of the National Gallery’s German paintings since 1959 and includes revelatory entries on a number of important new acquisitions, among them significant works by Albrecht Altdorfer, Wolf Huber, Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Hans Rottenhammer and Hans Wertinger. The German Paintings before 1800 also includes two essays, the first discussing the history of the paintings’ acquisition by the National Gallery and the taste for German painting in Britain, and the second addressing the ways in which these German artists produced their work.

Lincoln College invites applications for a three-year, non-renewable, Junior Research Fellowship in Material Culture: Art History, available from 1 September 2024. This post is intended to provide a career development opportunity for a scholar in the early stages of an academic career. Applicants should have recently obtained, or be about to obtain, a doctorate in an appropriate field, and will be in the early stages of developing a research profile within their field of scholarship.

This richly diverse study examines the evolving image and contested status of the artist in late nineteenth-century France through the lens of the artist’s studio, which became a central theme in art and literature, stretching from Balzac to Proust and from Corot to Picasso. The studio was a hybrid space that blurred the distinctions between public and private, professional and domestic, artistic production and display. Besides a material space for art making, the studio was a social and commercial nexus and an extension of the artist’s persona. Drawing on paintings, prints, photographs, and primary sources ranging from memoirs to popular journals, this book sheds new light on the modern studio’s heightened significance as a laboratory of creative struggle and a platform for self-expression and the staging of artistic identity. It elucidates how the concept of the studio as a creative space emblematic of artistic identity, first theorized in the Renaissance, was reinvented and popularized after mid-century as debates about the role of art and the status of the artist intensified. Breaking new ground in focusing on the intersecting issues of artistic identity and the evolving role of the studio as creative arena, social and commercial locus, and informal exhibition space, McPherson allows us to participate in the popular ritual of visiting the artist’s studio.

A medal of the Sun King by Claude I Ballin - BY LUDOVIC JOUVET

‘The swing’ by Jean-Honoré Fragonard: new hypotheses - BY YURIKO JACKALL

The provenance of ‘The death of Sardanapalus’: new insights from unpublished correspondence - BY ANDREW M. WATSON

Dāvūd Gürcü, Ottoman refugee and Girodet’s first Mamluk model - BY THADEUS DOWAD

Jacob Rothschild (1936–2024) - BY MICHAEL HALL

Radiography is a technique that has been employed in the study of paintings for more than a century. The history of this method of analysis indicates that its development has been modest since the 1960s, as its use has been limited to reductive approaches that take into account no more than the immediately intelligible signs. By systematically considering the physical mechanisms involved in the creation of an image, this volume seeks to demonstrate that we can access new fields of radiological analysis by identifying two categories of 'signs': those that may be obvious but whose meaning is misleading, and those which are not immediately comprehensible.

This study has been primarily based on a thorough and essential reviewing of current literature concerning the materials and processes used for the making of paintings. The semiological analysis is based on the understanding of the physical phenomena occurring in the formation of the image, and on correlations between the radiographic images of a painting and the information stemming from its observation, other scientific results, and the restoration reports. Furthermore, a number of experiments were conducted to consolidate certain assumptions regarding image-formation mechanisms. Ultimately, this book hopes to show how data resulting from radiographic analysis can be seen and set in a broader context of information on a specific work or a group of works, in order to enrich our knowledge of art history, history of technology, and conservation as well as restoration.

1. REFUGEES AND FORTUNE SEEKERS - Rieke van Leeuwen
2. NICHOLAS STONE THE ELDER (C. 1587-1647) AND HIS CIRCLE - Adam White
3. BETWEEN TWO COURTS: GERARD VAN HONTHORST AND STUART PATRONS IN LONDON AND THE HAGUE - Michele L. Frederick
4. FIRE AND PLAGUE: SAMUEL VAN HOOGSTRATEN’S CAREER IN ENGLAND - John Loughman
5. THE VAN DE VELDE STUDIO AT THE QUEEN’S HOUSE - Allison Goudie and Imogen Tedbury
6. DUTCH TERMINOLOGY IN ARTISTS’ WORKSHOPS IN LONDON - Ulrike Kern
7. LEATHERWORK AND KWAB FRAMES - Gerry Alabone
8. COPYING THE CARTOUCHE: ANGLO-DUTCH ENCOUNTERS IN CARTOGRAPHY AND SLAVERY - Eleanor Stephenson
9. JOHN VAN COLLEMA: A DUTCH INDIA GOODS MERCHANT IN LONDON - Amy Lim
10. THE PRINT COLLECTION OF WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT (1606-1686): A RECONSTRUCTION - Ellinoor Bergvelt
11. THOMAS WORLIDGE'S CLAIM TO FAME - Rebecca Welkens
12. THE GRIFFIER FAMILY OF PAINTERS AND THE YOUNG THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH - Rica Jones
13. WILLEM VAN DE VELDE'S FAME IN 18TH-CENTURY ENGLAND - Remmelt Daalder 
14. IN THE WAKE OF THE OLD MASTERS - Quirine van der Meer Mohr