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The Fine
Arts and Crafts Supplement to THE OSCHOLARS |
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Associate Editors: Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, Isa Bickmann, Sarah Turner. Contributors:
Cristina Pascual Aransáez, Tine
Englebert, Eva Thienpont. |
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Spring 2008 |
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For the
Table of Contents, click |
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In this supplement we bring together the material devoted to the fine arts and crafts that were previously scattered through THE OSCHOLARS under Exhibitions, The Critic as Critic, Being Talked About, Conferences, Publications and the Society Page. In this way we hope to deepen our coverage of the arts movements that fed into and were nourished by the fin-de-siècle and decadence: symbolism, arts & crafts, late Pre-Raphaelitism, art nouveau, Secession and so on. |
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EXHIBITIONS(recent,
current, soon) |
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AUSTRIA |
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From
Monet to Picasso. The Batliner collection 14th September 2007 – 6th April 2008 |
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BELGIUM |
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Hector
Guimard: A
Collector’s Album Horta
Museum Amerikaansestraat
25, Brussesl
– Sint-Gillis 7th November 2007 – 13th January 2008 |
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The Hortamuseum
showed an exhibition of the Guimard Circle in Paris. In 1903, on the
occasion of the first Exhibition de l’Habitation in Paris’s Grand Palais,
Hector Guimard printed a series of postcards with which he hoped to promote
his own achievements as an architect. The buildings he selected to be
featured on these cards showed his distinct style and advertised his capacity
to partake in the revival of architecture and the decorative arts. The
presentation of these images – postcards, leaflets, and invitation cards – at
the Horta Museum aims to clarify the way in which Guimard tried to develop
advertising by means of the postcard at the beginning of the twentieth
century. It was then a modern and fairly inexpensive means to diffuse images,
and served to illustrate a clear but unfamiliar concept: ‘The Guimard
Style’. Guimard repeats the experiment
around 1910, capturing on postcards his real-life project of building
apartment blocks in the rues La Fontaine, Gros and Agar; he even manages to
reproduce the plans of the buildings on certain postcards. His last
contribution to this type of publicity concerns the town hall of the French
village at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial
Arts of 1925 in Paris. Guimard was not
the only architect to use this medium, but he was certainly the one most
invested in it. His strategy worked: a significant number of French Art
Nouveau buildings are of his hand. |
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Le musée imaginaire de Maurice
Maeterlinck Musée
provincial Félicien Rops Namur,
Belgium 19th January to 13th April 2008 www.ciger.be/rops
or http://www.ciger.be/rops/museum/expo41/ |
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Poet, dramatist and philosophical essayist Maurice
Maeterlinck is thus far the only Belgian author ever to have received the
Nobel prize for literature (1911). He became famous for his symbolist poetry
as well as his work for the theatre. Not only did he leave a mark on the
cultural history of Belgium; he also befriended some of the greatest poets
and artists of his day and age: Mallarmé, Verhaeren, Redon, Burne-Jones,
Khnopff, Debussy (– and, one might add, Oscar
Wilde, though Wilde’s name does not appear in the museum’s leaflet). The
temporary exhibition at the Rops Museum is conceived as Maeterlinck’s
imaginary museum: on display are works that inspired the author, as well as
works that he inspired in others. A number of Belgian and French artists like
Anto Carte, William Degouve de Nuncques, Maurice Denis, Auguste Donnay,
Charles Doudelet, Fernand Khnopff, George Minne, Odilon Redon, Léon
Spilliaert and Félicien Rops engaged with Maeterlinck’s literary work through
paintings, drawings and illustrations.
The trajectory of the exhibition starts with poetry and moves towards
the theatre. The visitor will be confronted with works using an array of
different media and techniques, ranging from illustrated works to sculptures,
bound books, photographs and documents, all of which are connected with
Maeterlinck’s texts. |
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British
Vision: Observation and Imagination in British Art 1750-1950 Museum of Fine Arts, Citadelpark, 9000 Gent, Belgium 6th October 2007 – 13th January 2008 |
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‘British Vision’ was the first exhibition of the newly refurbished Museum of Fine Arts (MSK) in Ghent, and the successor of the highly acclaimed ‘Bruxelles/Paris – Paris/Bruxelles’ of 1997, a collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay. For ‘British Vision’, the MSK could count on three British art historians – John Gage, Timothy Hyman and Andrew Dempsey – and got hold of more than 300 paintings, sculptures, watercolours, drawings, photos and books from public and private collections, many of which were on loan from European and American museums. |
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Goya, Redon, Ensor. Peintures et dessins
grotesques Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten 14th March 2009 – 14th June 2009 |
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CANADA |
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Women's
Fashions of La Belle Époque 1890 - 1914 Vancouver Museum Vancouver BC, Canada 13th September 2007 – 23rd March 2008 |
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This exhibition, curated by Ivan Sayers, one of Canada’s leading experts in historical women’s fashions, dives into the elegance and inventiveness of La Belle Époque. The garments astound with vibrant colours, rich fabrics, fringes, beadwork, and fur. Parisian haute couture was the arbiter of styles and silhouettes. Even in distant Singapore, Stockholm or Vancouver, fashionable ladies could pour over photographs of the latest Paris trends in style magazines. |
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TruthBeauty:
Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945 Vancouver Art Gallery |
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The formation of the Pictorialist movement from the second
half of the nineteenth century till the Second World War. The exhibit
features the works of some of the leading figures in fin de siècle
photography such as |
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ENGLAND |
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From
Russia The Royal Academy, London Ended 18th April http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/from-russia/about-the-exhibition/
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Valentin Serov, Ida Rubinstein, 1910. Tempera and
charcoal on canvas, 147 x 233 cm. The
State Russian Museum, St Petersburg. Photo The State Russian Museum, St
Petersburg |
Over 120 paintings by French and Russian artists
working between 1870 and 1925 were displayed together for the first time in
this exhibition. It was in effect a
homage to Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morosov as rival collectors. Of special
interest was the section of the exhibition devoted to Sergei
Diaghilev, who though best known for the Ballets Russes, was at the forefront
of the World of Art movement. He played a vital role not only in presenting
modern French art in Russia but also in taking Russian art to the West,
particularly in Paris. Artists presented in this section of the exhibition
included Alexander Benois and Leon Bakst, Boris Kustodiev, Nochiolas Roerich,
Alexander Golovin and Valentin Serov as well as a selection of impressive
portraits of great figures of Russian cultural life such as Vsevolod
Meyerhold, Feodor Chaliapin and Anna Akhmatova. |
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The Agony
and the Ecstasy: Guido Reni's Saint Sebastians Dulwich Picture Gallery 5th February – 11th May 2008 |
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The Agony and the
Ecstasy: Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastians is the first exhibition focusing on
all Reni’s paintings of Saint Sebastian together, except for the one in the
Louvre which is too fragile to travel.
Five other Saint Sebastians from Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, the
Pinacoteca Capitolina in Rome, the Museo del Prado in Madrid , Museo de Arte
de Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki in
Auckland, New Zealand, will join the picture at Dulwich and will be displayed
in one room. This will be an opportunity to compare directly the six
masterpieces. Guido Reni’s painting of Saint Sebastian was the focal point of
Sir John Soane’s Gallery at Dulwich for most of the nineteenth-century and is
one of the collection’s best-known works. Reni’s paintings of the saint
respond to a religious subject by means of a sensually-charged image. Oscar Wilde wrote: ‘the vision of
Guido’s Saint Sebastian came before my eyes as I saw him at Genoa, a lovely
brown boy, with crisp, clustering hair and red lips, bound by his evil
enemies to a tree and, though pierced by arrows, raising his eyes with
divine, impassioned gaze towards the Eternal Beauty of the opening Heavens’. Doubts about the authorship of the painting
at Dulwich were raised in the 1880s. The 1997-98 restoration confirmed the
fully autograph status of the work and since the 2000 refurbishment of the
Gallery it is back in its place of honour.
Reni painted several versions of St Sebastian following two main
prototypes and scholars have long debated the exact relationship between
these canvases. The catalogue will examine the history of the paintings,
their subsequent fortune, and recent technical analysis. The exhibition is
organized with the Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa. |
THE OSCHOLARS thanks Kate Knowles of the Dulwich
Picture Gallery for her courteous help.
We had hoped also to illustrate the Luca Giordano Saint Sebastian in
the National Gallery of Ireland, which the gallery acquired in 1868, when Wilde was living just across the
road, but we could not afford the reproduction fee. A black and white plate can, howver, be
found in Davis Coakley: Oscar Wilde, the Importance of being Irish, Dublin:
Townhouse 1994.
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Return from Exile: The Life and Times of George Gissing The John Rylands University Library, The University of Manchester Ends 19th May http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/specialcollections/exhibitions/current/ |
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The John Rylands Library acquired The Gissing/Kohler
Collection in 2005. The collection includes autograph letters, manuscript
material, photographic material, printed books and several presented by
Gissing to friends and relatives. It is a significant collection that will
add greatly to our understanding of the man, his life and his works. The
Gissing Collection is an important addition to the library's existing Gissing
holdings, which include, some forty volumes published during his lifetime, a
number of which are first editions and many examples of his magazine fiction
and occasional writing. This
exhibition showcases items from the collection and tells the story of
Gissing's life. A web
exhibition with educational resources (Key Stage 2, Victorian Britain)
has been created to accompany the exhibition. |
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Victorian
Celebrities in Photographs: G.F. Watts and his World Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London
EC2 7th January to 13th April, 2008 |
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Walter
Crane Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road,
Manchester M13 9PL Ended 26th March 2008 |
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GERMANY
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Wilhelm von Gloeden: Et in arcadia ego 27th January-26th October 2008 MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen |
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Works by the photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden ‘... auch ich in Arkadien’ (And I was also in Arcadia). Under this title, standing for idyll and beatitude, 400 photographs of von Gloeden are exhibited from the Collection Heinz-Peter Barandun, Zürich, Switzerland. Oscar Wilde was among the collectors of his works. |
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Félix Vallotton. Idyll on the Edge (Félix Vallotton – Idylle am Abgrund) 15th February.-18the May 2008 Kunsthalle Hamburg |
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Lovers’ trysts, revelations, illicit liaisons. In 1909 the
first exhibition of the work by the Swiss artist Félix Vallotton (1865–1925)
was presented in Zurich; young girls were not admitted to the show which was
deemed too offensive for their eyes. Attitudes have changed in the meantime.
Nowadays he is recognised not only as a skilled painter and draughtsman but
also as a keen observer of his own time, whose paintings present bourgeois
convention in a critically ironic light. The acuity of his vision, often more
than his contemporaries could bear, earned him an international reputation as
an avant-garde artist. This selection of 90 paintings – including some largeformat
compositions – covering the full spectrum of his artistic output (many on
loan from private collections) will once again affirm Félix Vallotton as the
leading Swiss artist in the early days of Modernism. (Text: Kunsthaus Zürich) |
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Impressionistinnen (Women Impressionists) 22nd February.-1st June 2008 Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, 21.6.-21.9.2008 |
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Everyone knows the names of famous Impressionists – Manet,
Monet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro – but it is less well known that important
women painters also belonged to their circle. Berthe Morisot, a successful
and admired colleague and close friend of and model for Manet, was highly
praised by critics for her relaxed brushstroke as the ‘most Impressionistic
of the Impressionists.’ The American artist Mary Cassatt developed her
unmistakable style during her studies in Paris and through her close contact
with Degas. Eva Gonzalès, a student of Manet, left behind an oeuvre of great
quality though limited quantity, as a result of her early death. Marie
Bracquemond exhibited with the Impressionists but began to compete with the
work of her husband, Felix Bracquemond, and ultimately abandoned painting.
This exhibition includes some 160 works from international museums and
private collections and uses the example of these four women painters to
present the feminine contribution to the Impressionist movement. (Text: Museum) |
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Symbolist Masterworks from Hessisches
Landesmuseum Darmstadt (Meisterwerke des Symbolismus aus dem
Hessischen Landesmuseum Darmstadt) 16th April - July 2008 Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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Paintings and Sculptures by Arnold Böcklin, Franz von
Stuck and Max Klinger, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood e.g. John William
Waterhouse and Walter Crane. |
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Painting Light: The Hidden Techniques Of The
Impressionists (Impressionismus. Wie das Licht auf die
Leinwand kam) 29th February—22nd June 2008 Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 11th July.-28th
September 2008 |
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Which Impressionist painted on the lids of cigar boxes?
How fast did Van Gogh really work? What secret was revealed by an X-ray of a
Renoir? How can a fake be spotted? This presentation answers these and many
other absorbing questions. With over 130 works, the show takes the visitor
through the captivating world of Impressionist painting techniques. Apart
from masterworks by Caillebotte, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir,
Signac and Van Gogh, the exhibition features modern images showing the
technical findings on these paintings.
By bringing art and research face-to-face, the visitor is given an unparalleled
glimpse behind the scenes of Impressionism. And the Wallraf will be stocking
up for this show, with first class loans coming from the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Musée d’Orsay
in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago. (Text:
Museum) |
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High Society American Portraits of the Gilded Age 7th June –31st August 2008 Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg |
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Mark Twain called the period following the American Civil
War the ‘Gilded Age’. This term conveys the immense wealth of the newly established
American moneyed aristocracy, which includes such famous families as that of
railway baron Cornelius Vanderbilt. The urge of these industrial magnates to
display their wealth was not only exhibited in their palatial dwellings in
New York City and their spectacular country homes along the nearby eastern
seaboard. This exhibition will demonstrate the influence that these members
of the plutocracy exerted on portrait painting and its market at the end of
the 19th century. The commissioned works reflect the fine social nuances
which the winners of the explosive economic boom used to illustrate their
position in society. The exhibition includes around fifty prestigious works,
including paintings by John Singer Sargent and James Whistler, which offer
European audiences a coherent introduction to late 19th century American
portrait painting. (Text Museum) |
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Hans
von Marées (1837-1887) Retrospective
Von-der-Heydt-Museum,
Wuppertal 8th June to 14th September 2008 |
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Retrospective of the influential German Painter, important
representative of Neo Classicism and ancestor of Symbolism. |
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Franz von Stuck 25th September 2008 – 18th January 2009 Museum Villa Stuck, Munich |
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Traces du Sacré traces of the spiritual in
20th century art 19th September 2008 -- 11th January 2009 Haus der Kunst, München |
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The 20th century emerged during a time of a great
crisis of faith. Nietzsche's philosophy with its declaration that 'god is
dead', Max Weber's assertion of the 'world's disenchantment' were expression
of this spiritual crux, which led to a changed relationship between people
and religion. This, however, did not mean the end of metaphysics in art;
rather it seems as if modern art, from Kandinsky to Francis Bacon and from
Barnett Newman to Bill Viola, has a close relationship particularly to
metaphysical questions. Artists showed and still show their will to find new
forms for their aspirations in understanding endlessness. this extensive
exhibition 'traces du sacré' explores the most extraordinary artistic modes
of representation of this path in the 20th century and shows how it still to
this day has led to the invention of new forms of expression. Amongst many
others, the works shown are by Constantin Brancusi, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul
Chan, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Giorgio De Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Lucio
Fontana, Caspar David Friedrich, Paul Gauguin, Damien Hirst, Ferdinand
Hodler, Alexej Von Jawlensky, Martin Kippenberger, Kasimir Malewitsch, Piet
Mondriaan, Edvard Munch, Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter. also included are
several non-western works in order to point out the universality of this
spiritual question. In
collaboration with the Centre Georges Pompidou – Musée National d’art
moderne, Paris. |
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ITALY |
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Rodin and
Italy Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia 24th November 2007 – 4th May 2008 |
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THE NETHERLANDS |
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“Van oude mensen en nieuwe dingen” (“Of Old People and New Things”) The Couperus Museum The Hague 25th November 2007 -- 18th May 2008. |
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The theme is the confrontation in Couperus’s work of old age with modern developments and inventions. An important source is the Sine Qua Non collection which the Letterkundig Museum Den Haag acquired last year. http://www.couperusmuseum.org |
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SCOTLAND |
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A
Victorian Master: Drawings by Frederic, Lord Leighton
Until 17th April, 2008 Whistler
and Drawing Until 17th April 2008 Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, 82 Hillhead Street University of Glasgow |
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SPAIN
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SWEDEN |
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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 21st February 2007 – 25th May 2008 |
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SWITZERLAND
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Ferdinand
Hodler – A Symbolist Vision Kunstmuseum Bern Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts, 7th September -14th December 2008 9th April -10th August 2008 |
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The main focus of the exhibition will be on Ferdinand
Hodler's symbolistic vision of a great, harmonious unity of Humankind and
Nature. The presentation will make clear that Hodler, from his early work
through to his late work, consistently intensified his depiction of reality
towards the symbolic and with this very personal symbolism, made a major
contribution to the avant-garde of his time.
Hodler's international importance will be evident in his absolute
masterpieces. For the first time, in this exhibition different settings of
the large, symbolic figure compositions will be systematically placed in
relation to one another thus making new insights into Hodler's complex
development of motif possible. The landscapes, portraits and self-portraits
of the artist will also be illuminated by this aspect. All significant
collectors as well as museums at home and abroad will be generously
supporting the Museum of Fine Arts Bern with loans for the exhibition. (Text: Museum) |
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Rivoluzione! Italian Modernism from Segantini
to Balla 26th September 2008 -11th January 2009 Kunsthaus Zürich |
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USA |
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Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of
Writers and Artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection The Grolier Club 47 E. 60th Street, New
York
21st February – 26th April 2008 |
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The Grolier Club is pleased to present an exhibition that examines noted Victorians through portraits. Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, curated by Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Delaware, provides the opportunity for visitors to come face to face with famous British poets, painters, novelists, playwrights and illustrators. |
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Illustration: Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), Oscar Wilde. Pencil, ink, and watercolour, [ca. 1894-1900] © Estate of Max Beerbohm. Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware Library |
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The exhibition takes audiences back more than one hundred years to explore a phenomenon that seems astonishingly modern and familiar. Like the world we know now, Britain at the end of the nineteenth century was a nation filled with images. Whether circulating by means of posters, books, newspapers, magazines, cards, and advertisements, or hanging on the walls of art galleries and of private homes, images were everywhere. As is true today, what people most wanted to see then were images of faces and bodies, especially those of celebrities. A visual industry arose in the late Victorian period to satisfy the demand for portraits in every medium, from photographs to drawings and paintings, and to reproduce these on a mass scale. Pictures of monarchs and stage performers, of course, were in great demand; more surprisingly, so were portraits of what we might call cultural celebritiesthat is, writers and artists.Figures such as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Aubrey Beardsley, J. M. Whistler, W. B. Yeats, “George Eliot,” and the feminist “New Women” writers were as famous for the way they looked and dressed as for anything they created. |
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Just as the twenty-first century requires us to decode
images, so life in the late Victorian age required portrait literacy. The
public learned to read representations of faces for their social meaning, in
order to glean information about the class, the economic success, the degree
of masculinity or femininity, and the special temperamental qualities of the
persons depicted. When looking at pictures of writers and artists, however,
what spectators hoped most to find was visual evidence of that elusive thing
called “genius.” It was up to the makers of the images, therefore, to provide
what audiences wanted and to create visible signs of genius, just as it was
up to the subjects of the portraits to compose themselves and their
surroundings in a way that would send desirable messages. Writers and artists
trafficked in commodities, and they became commodities. Their portraits also
provided material for other workers in this industry, such as caricaturists,
who knew that the public took just as great a delight in seeing its cultural
heroes skewered as idealized. These caricature artists, in turn, became
celebrities themselves thanks to the “New Journalism,” which was eager to
circulate unflattering images of the same poets and painters it made famous |
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Facing the Late Victorians features portraits of
dozens of well-known figures such as George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, H. G.
Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and John Singer
Sargent, who dominated the world of the arts, along with pioneering
children’s book authors and illustrators, such as E. Nesbit and Kate
Greenaway. Many of these are rarely seen images, such as the unpublished
sketches of themselves that Rudyard Kipling and Aubrey Beardsley included in
letters to friends; the comical drawing of William Morris that the painter
Edward Burne-Jones added to his guest-book; or Max Beerbohm’s savage
caricature of Oscar Wilde’s head, which seems to decay before our eyes faster
than did Dorian Gray’s face. But the show ranges widely to include
photographs and drawings of many lesser lights whose work was important in
advancing British art and literatureonce celebrated writers such as the
feminist novelist Olive Schreiner and the Catholic poet Alice Meynell, as
well as the artists Walter Sickert and William Rothenstein. |
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The show draws its eighty items from the Mark Samuels
Lasner Collection, which has been assembled over the past thirty years by one
of the premier authorities on nineteenth-century book history. That
collection of first editions, presentation copies, authors’ correspondence,
and works of art and design is on loan to the University of Delaware Library.
Margaret D. Stetz, the exhibition’s curator, is the Mae and Robert Carter
Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of
Delaware. |
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Catalogue: Facing the Late Victorians
is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated book by Margaret D. Stetz, published
by the University of Delaware Press. Copies are available on site at
the Grolier Club or may be purchased from Associated University Presses,
2010 Eastpark Boulevard, Cranbury, NJ 08512; Tel. (609) 655-4770,
e-mail aup440@aol.com, web www.aupresses.com ($49.00. ISBN:
978-0-87413-992-1). |
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