Previous Posts: January 2025

The End of London Art Week

January 30 2025

Image of The End of London Art Week

Picture: londonartweek.co.uk

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

I was sorry to see that the organisation known as London Art Week had announced that their December 2024 edition was their last. This is of course an enormous shame, as the pooling together of the London trade (not to mention the vast number of talks and events) was always a seasonal highlight.

Caravaggio 2025

January 30 2025

Image of Caravaggio 2025

Picture: Palazzo Barberini

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Palazzo Barberini in Rome will be hosting a blockbuster exhibition on Caravaggio in 2025. Alongside a reported 'exceptional number of autograph paintings', the press release also promises the display of 'new discoveries'.

The show will run from 7th March until 6th July 2025.

Rediscovered Constable Sketch at Tennants

January 30 2025

Image of Rediscovered Constable Sketch at Tennants

Picture: Tennants

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The auction house Tennants in North Yorkshire will be offering a recently rediscovered sketch by John Constable in a few days' time. The scene, which depicts Dedham Vale looking towards Langham and was painted circa 1809-14, relates to a more developed painting in Neue Pinakothek in Munich. It will be offered for sale on 15th March 2025 carrying an estimate of £150,000 - 200,000.

Horace Walpole's Fontana Miniature on display at Strawberry Hill

January 30 2025

Image of Horace Walpole's Fontana Miniature on display at Strawberry Hill

Picture: Period Portraits / The British Museum

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Strawberry Hill House, the marvellous former home of the collector Horace Walpole, will be displaying a recently rediscovered miniature by Lavinia Fontana which had once formed part of its celebrated collection. The miniature was acquired in a provincial US auction by the dealer Nick Cox and subsequent research revealed its attribution and illustrious provenance. The work will be on display there until 23rd April 2025 and there will be a special lecture by V&A curator Adriana Concin-Tavella (who made the connection to Walpole) on 12th February delving further into this rediscovery.

New Release: Canaletto and Guardi - Views of Venice at the Wallace Collection

January 30 2025

Image of New Release: Canaletto and Guardi - Views of Venice at the Wallace Collection

Picture: The Wallace Collection

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Wallace Collection in London are releasing a new book on their paintings by Canaletto and Guardi this month. The publication has been penned by Lelia Packer and Charles Beddington.

According to the museum's website:

Among the renowned Old Master paintings at the Wallace Collection in London is an important group of 27 eighteenth-century views of Venice, known as vedute, by Canaletto and his followers, including Francesco Guardi. They hang together in a dedicated gallery known as the Canaletto Room, but until recently the majority had not been cleaned since the nineteenth century and their original beauty was obscured by multiple layers of discoloured varnish.

The paintings have now been restored, following a multi-year conservation and research project, and this book presents them in their renewed splendour. It features essays and commentaries by Charles Beddington, the global expert on vedute, and by Wallace Collection curator Lelia Packer, which provide fresh insights into the artists’ creative processes, the dating of pictures and their authorship. Canaletto and Guardi is a gorgeous celebration of the beauty of Venice that these paintings convey.

Nationalmusée Luxembourg acquire three works by Monique Daniche

January 30 2025

Image of Nationalmusée Luxembourg acquire three works by Monique Daniche

Picture: tajan.com

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Nationalmusée Luxembourg have announced their recent acquisition of three works by Monique Daniche (1737-1824), a portrait painter who made her fame painting the elite of Strasbourg at the turn of the 18th / 19th centuries. The picture illustrated above appears to have been acquired from Tajan last June.

Click on the link above to read more about her fascinating life.

Edit British Art Studies Journal

January 30 2025

Image of Edit British Art Studies Journal

Picture: Paul Mellon Centre

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Paul Mellon Centre in London is hiring an Editor-in-Chief for the British Art Studies Journal.

According to their website:

An editor-in-chief is sought to lead the team at British Art Studies (BAS). Working collaboratively with authors and colleagues at the journal, the editor-in-chief will set the direction for future issues. They will proactively commission material for publication and carry out hands-on editorial work such as line editing texts and developing projects with authors. This is an exciting new opportunity to develop the future of BAS.

About the Journal
BAS is a peer-reviewed and open access journal for new research on the histories of British art, architecture and visual culture. Opening and testing the boundaries of “British” as a category, and reflecting critically on methodologies for British art history, are core areas of focus for the journal. As a digital-only platform, the journal also explores how to present research in novel ways online, experimenting with new tools and feature formats. In 2025, an updated design will mark the tenth anniversary of BAS.

The job (which is freelance with a requirement of one day a week for two years) comes with a salary of £12,000 per annum and applications must be in by 10th February 2025.

Good luck if you're applying!

A New Renaissance for the Louvre

January 30 2025

Picture: NBC News

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

There has been a lot of coverage in the press recently regarding President Macron's announcements regarding the future of the Louvre Museum in Paris. The headline stories of the announcements are expansions to deal with increased visitor numbers, a new separate home for the Mona Lisa, and increased entrance fees for non-EU visitors (ie. British visitors will have to pay more for entry).

Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art in Baltimore

January 30 2025

Image of Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art in Baltimore

Picture: Baltimore Museum of Art

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Baltimore Museum of Art are due to open their latest exhibition next month entitled Watershed: Transforming the Landscape in Early Modern Dutch Art.

According to their website:

A selection of approximately 40 paintings, prints, and drawings from the BMA’s collection explores the role of water and landscape in defining the early modern Dutch Republic.

The water’s edge was a site of rich and often fraught ideas, where environmental, economic, political, and social narratives came to the fore. It also served as a site of immense inspiration for Dutch artists such as Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacob van Ruisdael, and Salomon Van Ruysdael, among many others. Landscapes depicting harbors, trade, travel, and leisure abounded, as did the production of maps, still lifes, and portraits. Together, these images offer insight into the identity of the young Dutch Republic.

Presented as part of the Turn Again to the Earth environmental initiative. 

The show will run from 9th February until 27th July 2025.

Read More

Blog On...

January 30 2025

Image of Blog On...

Picture: Witt Library

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Apologies for the delay in restarting AHN these past few days. I have been rather tied up with various lecturing and research projects. There's been lots of news developing recently, so it is about time I got going!

As a fun aside, here's a rather nice (as far as I can tell) unrecorded painting by Joan Carlile (c. 1606–1679) that I recently spotted thanks to the digitization of the Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute. The picture, which was given to Adriaen Hanneman many decades ago, was last recorded with the Ehrich Galleries in New York. I wonder where it is now?

Tissot, Women and Time in Toronto

January 16 2025

Image of Tissot, Women and Time in Toronto

Picture: AGO

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The AGO in Toronto (Art Gallery of Ontario) have recently opened their latest temporary exhibition Tissot, Women and Time.

According to the gallery's website:

Exploring the many ways that the French artist James Tissot represented modern women and envisioned their relationship to time during the last decades of the nineteenth century, this exhibition presents two of the AGO’s most beloved Tissot paintings alongside a selection of more than 40 works on paper donated by Allan and Sondra Gotlieb. The contradiction of the period come alive in these works, as the quickness of modernity, exemplified by the newfound speed of travel, fashion and commodity culture, is juxtaposed against the constrained pace of women’s everyday lives, characterized by the wait to find a husband, caregiving, tending to customers or recovering from illness.

The show will run until 29th June 2025.

Hidden in Plain Sight Conference

January 16 2025

Image of Hidden in Plain Sight Conference

Picture: niki-florence.org

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

There might still be enough time to register for online attendance of this rather interesting conference which starts tomorrow. Organised by NIKI (Netherlands Interuniversity Institute for Art History) & NYU-Florence, the conference is entitled Hidden in Plain Sight: Black African Lives and Visual Histories in Early Modern Europe.

Here's the abstract supplied on the website:

Histories are also stories of forgetting. How do we go about recovering long-lost voices and stories to fill the gaps and silences? How do works of art dwelling on the periphery transform and unsettle our understanding of what is in the dominant center? In images sacred and profane from Venice and Genoa, to Florence and Livorno, Antwerp and Lisbon, Black Africans were largely marginalized in Renaissance imagery – often literally so, represented as they typically were as bystanders, nurses, kitchen maids, pages, musicians and entertainers, boatmen and gondoliers, executioners, and servants in crowded banquet halls. Still starker inequalities are impossible to ignore in contemporary lived realities – nowhere more so than that of the slave trade. The international conference Hidden in Plain Sight: Black African Lives and Visual Histories in Early Modern Europe is conceived with these inescapable truths firmly in mind. Hosted by the Dutch University Institute of Art History (NIKI) and NYU-Florence, the three-day event will bring together scholars in a wide-ranging conversation spanning a multiplicity of disciplines. The latter will range broadly, embracing global art history, African and African diasporic studies, anthropology, history, literary culture, and musicology. By necessity, ours must be a collective inquiry, drawing on contributions from specialists in different fields, working on different lands, practices, and knowledge systems.

Royal Collection conserve Elizabeth I Allegory

January 16 2025

Image of Royal Collection conserve Elizabeth I Allegory

Picture: Royal Collection Trust

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Royal Collection Trust has shared news on Instagram of the recent* conservation of Hans Eworth's Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses. The results are rather pleasing, as you can see above.

* - Alas, I can't work out exactly how recently though!

Christie's New York Old Master & British Drawings

January 15 2025

Image of Christie's New York Old Master & British Drawings

Picture: Christie's

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Christie's New York have uploaded their upcoming Old Master & British Drawings sale online. The auction will take place on 4th February 2025 at 10.00am EST.

Amongst the top lots are a rediscovered Turner watercolour of Venice (pictured), a head study of a lady by Jacopo Ligozzi, a Murillo drawing of travellers with donkeys and a rather fine portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Teach Art of the Americas at Oxford

January 14 2025

Image of Teach Art of the Americas at Oxford

Picture: worc.ox.ac.uk

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

Worcester College and the Department of Art History at the University of Oxford are hiring an Associate Professorship in the Art of the Americas.

According to the job description:

Worcester College and the Department of History of Art are looking to appoint an Associate Professor with research and teaching expertise in the Art of the Americas (North and/or South) after 1500.

The appointee will bring together students and scholars working across the University, including in its libraries and collections, through a consideration of the visual and material cultures of the Americas that expands Art History’s traditional geographic, material and methodological boundaries.

This position provides exciting opportunities for the postholder, who will conduct advanced research and build research networks within and beyond Oxford; give lectures, classes, and tutorials; supervise, support and examine students at the undergraduate and graduate levels; play an important part in the academic life of Worcester College; and take on leadership and administrative roles in the Department of History of Art and, as required, in the History Faculty and College.

The job comes with a salary between £55,755 to £74,867 per annum and applications must be in by 5th February 2025.

Good luck if you're applying!

The Art Museum in the Digital Age – 2025

January 14 2025

Image of The Art Museum in the Digital Age – 2025

Picture: belvedere.at

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

The Belvedere in Vienna are hosting their 2025 instalment of The Art Museum in the Digital Age Conference next week. As usual, there are a wide variety of speakers on a vast number of relevant topics, all of which are available to watch online.

Trompe-l’oeil at the Musée Marmottan Monet

January 13 2025

Image of Trompe-l’oeil at the Musée Marmottan Monet

Picture: Musée Marmottan Monet

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

I'm slow to news that the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris opened an exhibition at the end of last year dedicated to Trompe-l’oeil painting.

According to the museum's website:

This exhibition traces the history of the representation of reality in the arts and seeks to pay tribute to a little-known facet of the Museum’s collections, while shining a light on Jules and Paul Marmottan’s penchant for this pictorial genre. [...]

Over the centuries, trompe-l’oeil has been used in various media and has proven to be multifaceted. Not only does it play with the viewer’s gaze, but it is a nod to the potential traps set by our own perceptions. If certain themes of trompe l’oeil are well-known—vanities, hunting trophies, letter holders or racks, and grisailles—other aspects will be explored in this exhibition, such as the decorative variations on furniture, pottery, etc., and even the political significance of this pictorial genre from the revolutionary period up to the modern and contemporary day.

More than eighty key works ranging from the 16th to the 21st century, coming from both private and public collections in Europe and the United States (National Gallery of Art in Washington, Museo nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva, the Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, the Château de Fontainebleau, the Louvre, the Musée de l’Armée, Musée national de la Céramique in Sèvres, the Fondation Custodia, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar, etc.) will be on display, allowing visitors to understand the formal evolution of the trompe l’oeil genre.

The show will run until 2nd March 2025.

Conservation Tours of St Bartholomew's Hospital

January 13 2025

Video: St Bartholomew's Hospital

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

St Bartholomew's Hospital in London are running a limited number of Conservation Tours during the end of January, showing visitors the current progress of work. The tour includes going up on a scaffold, including some insights into the conservation of Hogarth's famous paintings on the staircases. The tours cost £11.55 to attend.

According to the description of the tours:

Join us on this tour to explore the rich history, architecture and people involved in the craftsmanship of the James Gibbs' Great Hall. The tour will highlight the conservation work to rescue and rejuvenate the Grade 1 listed building, including the staircase decorated by William Hogarth.

Get an insider's look at the conservation and restoration work being done to protect this historically significant building.

Please note, this tour involves accessing a scaffolding viewing deck. There are 31 steps on the staircase to reach the deck. The paintings in the Hogarth staircase are partially obstructed by scaffolding as our Conservation Team work on them.

New Release: Salomon Mesdach

January 13 2025

Image of New Release: Salomon Mesdach

Picture: wbooks.com

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

A new monograph on the Zeeland painter Salomon Mesdach (1575/80-ca. 1628) is set to be released on 15th January 2025. The publication is the work of the scholar Carla van de Puttelaar and is the first to carve out the small but distinctive oeuvre of the artist. It contains 170 illustrations, within its 128 pages, and is supported by technical as well as art historical research.

Sleeper Alert!

January 13 2025

Image of Sleeper Alert!

Picture: clarkeny.com

Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:

News on social media (spotted via @mbrehe) that the following picture catalogued as 'FLORENTINE SCHOOL (POSSIBLY 14TH/15TH CENTURY)' sold for $230,000 over its $3k - $5k estimate at Clarke Auctioneers in NY yesterday.

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