The Fine Arts and Crafts Supplement to THE OSCHOLARS

Associate Editors: Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch, Isa Bickmann, Sarah Turner.

Contributors: Cristina Pascual Aransáez, Tine Englebert, Eva Thienpont.

Spring 2008

For the Table of Contents, click   | To hub page | To THE OSCHOLARS home page

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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Exhibitions: Austria - Belgium – Canada – England – Germany – Italy - The Netherlands – Scotland – Spain – Sweden - Switzerland – USA
Reviews
Abstracts
Conferences – Seminars – Symposia – Lectures
Publications
Bibliographies
Societies
Brushstrokes

EXHIBITIONS

(recent, current, soon)

AUSTRIA

From Monet to Picasso. The Batliner collection

Vienna, Albertina

14th September 2007 – 6th April 2008

BELGIUM

Hector Guimard: A Collector’s Album

Horta Museum

Amerikaansestraat 25,

Brussesl – Sint-Gillis

7th November 2007 – 13th January 2008

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.

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/

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.

British Vision: Observation and Imagination in British Art 1750-1950

Museum of Fine Arts, Citadelpark,

9000 Gent, Belgium

6th October 2007 – 13th January 2008

‘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.

Goya, Redon, Ensor. Peintures et dessins grotesques

Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten

14th March 2009 – 14th June 2009

CANADA

Women's Fashions of La Belle Époque 1890 - 1914

Vancouver Museum

Vancouver BC, Canada

13th September 2007 – 23rd March 2008

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.

TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945

Vancouver Art Gallery

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
Julia Margaret Cameron, Baron Adolph de Meyer, and Alfred Stieglitz, as well as other photographers from Britain, the US, Australia, France, Germany, and Japan. For more details see the Gallery's website:
http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_truthbeauty.html

ENGLAND

From Russia

The Royal Academy, London

Ended 18th April

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/from-russia/about-the-exhibition/

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.

The Agony and the Ecstasy: Guido Reni's Saint Sebastians

Dulwich Picture Gallery

5th February – 11th May 2008

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.

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/

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.

Victorian Celebrities in Photographs: G.F. Watts and his World

Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London EC2

7th January to 13th April, 2008

Walter Crane

Whitworth Art Gallery,

The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL

Ended 26th March 2008

GERMANY

Wilhelm von Gloeden: Et in arcadia ego

27th January-26th October 2008

MEWO Kunsthalle, Memmingen

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.

Félix Vallotton. Idyll on the Edge

(Félix Vallotton – Idylle am Abgrund)

15th February.-18the May 2008

Kunsthalle Hamburg

http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/

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)

Impressionistinnen (Women Impressionists)

22nd February.-1st June 2008

Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt

San Francisco Fine Arts Museums, 21.6.-21.9.2008

http://www.schirn-kunsthalle.de/

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)

Symbolist Masterworks from Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt

(Meisterwerke des Symbolismus aus dem Hessischen Landesmuseum Darmstadt)

16th April - July 2008

Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Paintings and Sculptures by Arnold Böcklin, Franz von Stuck and Max Klinger, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood e.g. John William Waterhouse and Walter Crane.

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

http://www.impressionismus-wallraf.de/wrm-en/wrm-01.html

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)

High Society

American Portraits of the Gilded Age

7th June –31st August 2008

Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg

http://www.buceriuskunstforum.de/h/index.php?lang=en

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)

Hans von Marées (1837-1887)

Retrospective

Von-der-Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal

8th June to 14th September 2008

http://www.von-der-heydt-museum.de/

Retrospective of the influential German Painter, important representative of Neo Classicism and ancestor of Symbolism.

Franz von Stuck

25th September 2008 – 18th January 2009

Museum Villa Stuck, Munich

Traces du Sacré

traces of the spiritual in 20th century art

19th September 2008 -- 11th January 2009

Haus der Kunst, München

http://www.hausderkunst.de/

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.

ITALY

Rodin and Italy

Brescia, Museo di Santa Giulia

24th November 2007 – 4th May 2008

THE NETHERLANDS

“Van oude mensen en nieuwe dingen” (“Of Old People and New Things”)

The Couperus Museum

The Hague

25th November 2007 -- 18th May 2008.

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

SCOTLAND

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

SPAIN

Maestros Modernos del Dibujo	27th November 2007 – 17th February 2008	Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza http://www.museothyssen.org
An exhibition with more than 70 works by Goya, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Miró, Freud, Warhol.
Picasso y su Colección	20th December 2007- 30th March 2008	Museo Picasso de Barcelona http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/index.htm
An exhibition with works by Pablo Picasso and other artists such as Renoir, Cézanne, Rousseau, Braque and Matisse.
Colección Arte XX	21st January 2008 – 2nd March 2008	Museo Bellas Artes de Bilbao http://www.museobilbao.com
An exhibition which shows 48 paintings and 18 sculptures by 47 artists, among them Sorolla, Kandinsky, Klee, Picasso, Léger, Braque, Gris, Chagall, De Chirico, Miró, Dalí, Chillida, Tàpies, Blanchard, Saura, Barcelò.
Modigliani y su Tiempo	5th February 2008 – 18th May 2008	Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza http://www.museothyssen.org
An exhibition which attempts to show the relationship of his vision of art with that of other great artists whose works are also exhibited (Paul Cézanne, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso).
La Colección del Museo Nacional Picasso París	6th February 2008 – 5th May 2008	Museo Reina Sofía http://www.museoreinasofia.es
An exhibition with more than 400 works by Pablo Picasso.
Las Cosas del Surrealismo	29th February 2008 – 7th September 2008	Museo Guggenheim (Bilbao) http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es
An exhibition which shows ceramics and paintings by Joan Miró and Jean Arp, sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, jewellery by Alexander Calder, furniture by Aldo Mollino.

SWEDEN

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Stockholm, Nationalmuseum

21st February 2007 – 25th May 2008

SWITZERLAND

Ferdinand Hodler – A Symbolist Vision

Kunstmuseum Bern

http://www.kunstmuseumbern.ch

Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts, 7th September -14th December 2008

9th April -10th August 2008

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)

Rivoluzione! Italian Modernism from Segantini to Balla

26th September 2008 -11th January 2009

Kunsthaus Zürich

http://www.kunsthaus.ch

USA

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

The Dancer : Degas, Forain, and Toulouse-Lautrec	2nd February 2008 – 11th May 2008	Portland (Oregon), Art Museum
The Impressionists at the seaside	9th February 2008 - 11 May 2008	Hartford, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Watercolours by Winslow Homer : the colour of light	16th February 2008 – 11th May 2008	Chicago, Art Institute
Landscapes in the Age of Impressionism : French and American Paintings from the Brooklyn Museum	22nd February 2008 – 11th May 2008	Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Courbet	27th February 2008- 18th May 2008	New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
In the forest of Fontainebleau : painters and photographers from Corot to Monet	2nd March 2008 – 8th June 2008	Washington, National Gallery of Art
Impressionist inspiration: the Impressionists and the art of the past	19th June 2008 – 21st September 2008	Seattle, Art Museum
Women Impressionists: Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès, Marie Bracquemond	21st June 2008 – 21st September 2008	San Francisco, Legion of Honor
Alma-Tadema and Antiquity : Imagining classical sculpture in 19thc. England	28th June 2008 – 28th September 2008	Hanover, Hood Museum of Art
American Impressionism in the Phillips collection	4th July 2008 – 19th October 2008	Montgomery, Museum of Fine Arts
From Monet to Gauguin, The travelling artist in the age of Impressionism	14th November 2008 – 28th February 2009	New Orleans, Museum of Art
Edvard Munch et le modernisme européen	14th February 2009 – 10th May 2009	Chicago, Art Institute
Photocollages Victoriens	10th October 2009 – 3rd January 2010	Chicago, Art Institute

REVIEWS

Sue Prideaux: Edvard Munch Behind the Scream: Yale University Press, New Haven and London

Review by Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch

Much has been written about Edvard Munch (1863 –1944) including by the artist himself. Especially concerned with the expressive representation of emotions and personal relationships, he was associated with the international development of Symbolism during the 1890s and recognized as a precursor of Expressionism, particularly in his paintings and woodcuts. This volume is much more than simply another biography of his career. In her forward the author states ‘Munch repeatedly emphasized that the pictures he painted fitted together ‘like the pages of a diary’ and that all of his work was an endeavour to paint his ‘soul’s diary’ of whatever happened to him throughout his life.

The following three hundred and ninety-one pages then proceed to provide an absorbing account of the artist’s life and career as articulated through the medium of art. There are twenty-five chapters and as their headings convey, they cover every year from his birth in 1863 to his death in 1944. It was a life permeated with intense emotional experiences. Born to an obsessively religious father and a mother who died when he was just five, followed by a sister Sophie in 1877 his life was dogged not only by tragedy but a strong personal feeling of guilt. He described how he felt growing up in Kristiania (now Oslo). ‘I felt like a boat built of helpless material, of old rotten wood, launched by the shipbuilder onto the stormy sea of life with the words: ‘If you sink it’ll be your own fault and you’ll burn in hell for your failure, burn forever in the eternal flames.’

His art career began in 1879 when he entered Technical College, then the Royal School of Design and Frits Thaulow’s Open Air Academy in 1883. His first exhibited painting At the Coffee Table dates from the same year. Two years later he visited Paris via Antwerp where he met Millie Thaulow who was to become his first of his many lovers. At the end of that decade he was awarded a state scholarship and returned to Paris once more. Here he spent time in the studio of Pierre Bonnard and exhibited work at a Synthétiste exhibition. In the 1890s he found himself a fairly regular guest at Stephane Mallarmé’s Mardis where he met among others, artists Alphonse Mucha, Douanier Rousseau and Edouard Vuillard and the composers Edvard Grieg and Maurice Ravel. It was here that he also met the exiled Oscar Wilde. Munch and August Strindberg were close to Salpetrière psychiatrists and Paris occultism. By 1902 he reached success with his Frieze of Life, exhibited for the first time at the Berlin Secession.

In the first decade of the new century there were exhibitions across Europe; Paris, Oslo, Copenhagen, Prague. But the breakneck pace of his life which included complicated love affairs and large amounts of alcohol was brought to a halt with a nervous breakdown in 1908. Yet in the clinic, he found time to write, paint a portrait of his doctor, Dr. Jacobsen, and a fine self-portrait. Meanwhile paintings were on show with the German Bridge group and the Berlin Secession movement. In 1913 he was invited to exhibit at the famous Armory Show in New York with the Berlin Freie Secession. That same year he travelled extensively. His activities during the 1920s were marked by a large retrospective in Berlin including 223 paintings from public collections. There was a show in San Francisco and at the Royal Society in London. In 1932 he was awarded the Goethe Medal for Science and Art and two years later presented the Legion d’honneur. Four years before his death he bequeathed all his works to the city of Oslo. The Munch Museum opened in Oslo in 1963.

Sue Prideaux’s exploration and analyses of his work is thoroughly grounded in an impressive range of primary and secondary sources. Not only that, but she shows an empathy for this tortured man while managing to remain objective at the same time. For instance Munch’s way of articulating his response to his sister Sophie’s death from tuberculoses is revealed in a very moving way in the account of the painting of The Sick Child. Rather than take a model from the Bohemian circle in which he moved (considered a desecration) he chose a twelve year old undernourished child, Betzy Nielsen. She was put in the bed while Munch’s aunt, tante Karen, sat beside the bed, her pose expressing one of profound sorrow. Prideaux notes how the artist simplified his subject. There are no extraneous narrative details ~ the praying father, the complicated family tensions, the context of room and furniture. He repainted the picture numerous times, scratched it out, let it become blurred in the medium, scraped off half the background. Using his own eyelashes he painted wavy lines across the picture. Overwhelmed by emotion as he worked, tears poured down his cheeks. So he took up a fixative sprayer and sprayed the canvas with liquid paint to imitate his tears.

In spite of an enormous schedule of exhibitions interspersed with powerful emotional upheavals in his personal life in the period 1892-94, Munch found time to paint the original of ten of his greatest works which was to become The Frieze of Life. These include The Voice depicting the call of love, the awaking of physical love in The Kiss, its inevitable pain in The Vampire, the mystery of sex in Madonna followed by Jealousy and finally despair, The Scream. He wrote of how the visionary experience of this last representation had come to him at sunset, high up on Ekeberg, to the east of Oslo, the only point from which the city can be viewed. The main slaughterhouse for the city was up there as was the mental hospital in which his manic depressive sister, Laura Catherine, was incarcerated. The author believes that he had gone to visit her. The screams of the animals being slaughtered and the screams of the insane from the hospital were reputedly terrifying to hear. She then goes on to remind the reader that Munch believed that artists ‘paint souls’. Thus she interprets The Scream as a portrait of the soul, an image on the reverse, ‘the hidden side of the eye ball as Munch looked into himself’. The image is so striking that it has come to be seen as a metaphor of the dilemma of modern man. It is often linked with the German philosopher Schopenhauer’s concept of dread but Prideaux is quick to point out that Munch did not come across him until much later in life!

This is a book whose presentation and lay out is user friendly. The illustrations (of very good quality) are grouped together throughout the volume. As each one is mentioned in the text, its number is placed in the margin to the side of that text. This is helpful in not breaking the flow of the narrative for the reader. Footnotes, a bibliography and an extensive index are supplied at the end of the book while a map of Munch’s Oslo is helpfully provided at the front. For all those interested in the cultural life of Europe in the last half of the 19th century this biography is a must.

Women Impressionists

Exhibition at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt/Germany –

and some thoughts on the fin-de-siècle situation of women artists

Isa Bickmann

Times were changing ... Last year, at the 49th Venice biennial the countries France, Great Britain and Germany were represented by Women artists (Sophie Calle, Tracey Emin and Isa Genzken).

Exhibition View

So you might think that a gender orientated exhibition will not fit in these days, where female artists have the same possibilities as their male colleagues? No, it is better to say, it is a little bit late – 35 years after Linda Nochlin’s famous essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’, – but it fits. Sad to say, you still have to find an institution that gives the chance to do an exhibition that is gender study based. The Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt/Gemany did so. Apart from the fierce feminist tone the exhibition keeps a promise: in a wide range of aubergine-coloured walls you see masterly painted images, in wonderful impressionist brush strokes and lines by the four most important Women Impressionists: Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Eva Gonzalès and Marie Braquemond.

In the USA Mary Cassatt is very well-known for two reasons: first, Americans do like Impressionism very much; secondly, in America the status of female artists had changed during the nineteenth century very much. Mary Cassatt is the only one of the four women who received an training at the academy. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest academy in the US, ‚provided a culture of mutual acceptance and personal growth, appreciated women artists’ creativity, and supported them by inviting them to participate in exhibitions, by offering them teaching positions, and by awarding them prizes, scholarships, and travel funds.’[1] In comparison with Pennsylvania the academies in Paris, Berlin and London seem backward. In Berlin female students won admission for the first time in 1919, in Munich in 1921, and in Düsseldorf in 1922. In Paris the private Académie Julian had allowed women to study since the 1870s.

Because in Europe the women artists did not have the chance to get a good education in the arts they were considered as amateurs and dilettantes. Furthermore breadwinning was unusual for these women, given that the impressionist style is allocated in the upper middle class[2].

But some (like Morisot, Braquemond and Gonzalès) did not take this for granted. They worked with or in classes of academy trained painters or with colleagues. Morisot met Eduard Manet in 1868 (in 1874 she married his younger brother Eugène, who supported her work) and they worked together and influenced each other. Gonzalés was educated in painting and drawing by Charles Chaplin and by doing copies in the Louvre. In 1869 she became Manet’s sole student. Marie Bracquemond was educated by two Ingres-followers. At the end of the eighties she gave up painting because of the continued disputes with her husband Felix Bracquemond. Mary Cassatt worked with Edgar Degas.

The life-worlds of women and their male colleagues were different. That is visible in motifs and subjects: Women and child scenes dominate this exhibition, portraits of sisters and daughters in plein air, too. These are the results of a lack of elbow-room in contrast to male artists. But you cannot call it a typical female impressionist motif – considering that Impressionism in general has been called ‘feminine’[3]. Odilon Redon several times drew and painted his children. He was a representative of a new look on children in general, their innocence and curiosity. And it has to be discussed, what Griselda Pollock[4] called in her catalogue essay ‘eroticization of the relations of maternal and infant bodies’. Whoever saw mothers in France or other Mediterranean countries kiss, cuddle, hug their children, something that is quite unusual in protestant areas, cannot wonder about Mary Cassatt’s paintings. On the contrary: it shows Cassatt’s excellent power of observation.

Mary Cassatt:
Woman In A Red Bodice And Her Child, c. 1901

Maurice Denis loved painting his wife, his sister-in-law and his children. Women in rich clothes can also be seen in the paintings of Aman-Jean.

These are the connections – time immanent – between Impressionism and Symbolism, that did not stop in the relationships. Téodor de Wyzewa wrote on Berthe Morisot. The Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé, close friend of Berthe Morisot, and after her death in 1895 guardian of her daughter Julie, welcomed in 1891 Oscar Wilde and Paul Valéry.

Family, husbands who are full of envy like Félix Bracquemond, and society, who did not accepted women’s talent and strength of purpose are the chief causes for the fact that brilliant female artists are still unknown.

Marie Bracquemond: Le Gouter, 1880

What does this mean for us, friends of the Wilde-Era: There a still some unknown symbolist and idealist women artists’ oeuvres still seeking research: Jean David Jumeau-Lafond did a very important job on Jeanne Jacquemin[5], but what about the sculptor Charlotte Besnard (married to Albert Besnard), who e.g. designed the tomb of Georges Rodenbach, or the painter Elisabeth Sonrel (1874-1951)?

It might be that very talented painters like Berthe Morisot were the reason for Josephin Péladan’s misogyny: In the postscript of the ‘Rules of the Salon De la Rose+Croix’[6] he wrote: ‘Following Magical law, no work by a women will ever be exhibited or executed by the Order.’

The catalogue is also published in English (Trade edition: hardcover ISBN 978-3-7757-2079-3)

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt: 22nd February to 1st June 2008

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: 21st June to 21st September 2008

[1] Anna Havemann, A Call to Arms: Women Artists’ Struggle for Professional Recognition in the Nineteenth-Century Art World, in: Exhib. Cat. Women Impressionists Frankfurt/Ostfildern 2008, p. 283.

[2] Ingrid Pfeiffer, Impressionism is Feminine. On the Reception of Morisot, Cassatt, Gonzalès,

and Bracquemond, in: Exhib. Cat. Women Impressionists, p. 15.

[3] Pfeiffer, op.cit., p.15 ff.

[4] Griselda Pollock, Mary Cassatt: The Touch and the Gaze, or Impressionism for Thinking People, in: Exhibit. Cat. Women Impressionists, p. 154-167, here: p.161ff.

[5] See Revue de l’art, Sept. 2003, p. 57-78.

[6] Règle et Monitoire, cit. in: Robert Pincus-Witten, Occult Symbolism in France. Joséphin Péladan and the Salons de la Rose-Croix, New York/London 1976, appendix II, p. 216.

ABSTRACTS

This section will present abstracts of theses and conference papers.

CONFERENCES – SEMINARS – SYMPOSIA – LECTURES

To accompany the exhibition "Painting Light - Hidden techniques of the Impressionists" (29.2 - 22.6.2008), the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud will host a symposium. From 12 to 14 June 2008, international experts will talk about "Painting techniques of Impressionists and Postimpressionists" at the Stiftersaal of the museum. The keynotes of the event are information on the current state of scholarship and interdisciplinary exchange between conservators and art historians. The symposium starts on Thursday, 12 June with a keynote lecture by Richard Brettell (University of Texas, Dallas). On Friday, 13th June and Saturday, 14th June sixteen talks will be given. The symposium will be conducted in German and English. All German talks will be translated simultaneously into English. The symposium will be held by the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in co-operation with the Cologne Institute of Conservation Science (CICS) and the Association of German Conservators (VDR). It is being generously sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the RheinEnergieStiftung Jugend, Beruf und Wissenschaft. Full details of the symposium are available on the exhibition website (go to www.impressionismus-wallraf.de and click symposium)

Lectures at the Van Gogh Museum

The Van Gogh Museum presents a series of lectures for all those interestedin finding out more about Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. Every first Sunday of the month the museum hosts a presentation highlighting the latest research into the collection or a current exhibition. Researchers, curators and restorers tell the story behind the art on display andpresent new insights and findings. The lectures start at 14.00 in the auditorium and last 30-45 minutes.Entrance is free for visitors to the museum. The language is Dutch. Incase of speakers from abroad the language is English.

Sunday, 6 April 2008: ?The sunflowers according to Van Gogh? by Louis van Tilborgh, curator Van Gogh research (Van Gogh Museum) and author of 'Van Gogh and the sunflowers'. Van Gogh attached great importance to his still lifes with sunflowers, and after his death they quickly gained iconic status. But would Van Gogh have regarded this as justified? A lecture on the significance of the sunflower
still lifes for Van Gogh, and how they subsequently came to be regarded.

Sunday, 13 April 2008: 'Illustration, Caricature, Comics' by Patricia Mainardi, professor of art history (New York City University)
(in English).

Sunday, 4th May 2008: ‘Ophelia's eyes: the Shakespeare of Millais?’ by Bart Westerweel, professor emeritus of early modern English
Literature (Leiden University). Literature was an important source of inspiration for the English artist John Everett Millais. This lecture gives contextual background to Millais' depictions of scenes from poems and plays by authors such as John Keats and William Shakespeare. The lecture concentrates particularly on Ophelia, the famous painting inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which Millais depicts Hamlet's beloved Ophelia just before she drowns herself.

Sunday, 1st June 2008: ‘Gauguin in the Van Gogh Museum?’ by Leo Jansen, curator of paintings (Van Gogh Museum). The paintings by Paul Gauguin in the Van Gogh Museum’s collection tell the story of his quest for a new style and for recognition as a modern artist. At the same time they are illustrative of the admiration Vincent and Theo van Gogh felt for his talent and the support they gave him. This exceptional triumvirate is the focus of this lecture

PUBLICATIONS

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu: The Most Arrogant Man in France. Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media. Princeton University Press 2007.

Ruth E. Iskin: Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting. Cambridge University Press 2007.

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Laurinda S. Dixon (edd.): Twenty-First-Century Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Art: Essays in Honor of Gabriel P. Weisberg. University of Delaware Press 2008.

Elizabeth Prettejohn: Art for Art’s Sake Aestheticism in Victorian Painting. New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2007. £35.00

This book is the first to analyse the distinctive role of painting in the many debates surrounding the idea of ‘art for art’s sake’. It features innovative interpretations of major works by Rossetti, Whistler, Leighton, Burne-Jones and other artists associated with the movement. S.B-L.

Katherine M. Bourguignon (ed.): Impressionist Giverny, A Colony of Artists, 1885-1915. Giverny: Musée d’art Américain, Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. Distributed by the University of Chicago Press. 219 pp. Exhibition catalogue with foreword, illustrations, essays, catalogue of the works shown in the exhibition, historical documents, map, list of artists working in Giverny, selected bibliography, index. $49.00 (cl) ISBN 978-0932171-52-8.

A review by Sally Webster may be found on the H-France web page at:

http://www.h-france.net/vol7reviews/webster.html (H-France Review Vol. 7 (December 2007), No. 149)

Alfred Weidinger: Klimt. Prestel, Munich, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel 2007. £89.00/ $165.00.

This is the definitive complete catalogue of the paintings of Gustav Klimt. A sumptuous volume, it is a must for all devotees of the Austrian Symbolist painter who was one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau. S.B-L.

Isa Bickmann’s review of the Odilon Redon Exhibition at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2007 has been published in
Kunstchronik, No. 1, January 2008, p.3-8

Antoine Capet’s recent reviews on line in La tribune de l'art include

‘Modern Painters : The Camden Town Group’ at the Tate

http://www.thearttribune.com/Modern-Painters-The-Camden-Town.html

‘A Victorian Master: Drawings by Frederic, Lord Leighton’ at the Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

http://www.thearttribune.com/A-Victorian-Master-Drawings-by.html

‘Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937’ at The British Library

http://www.thearttribune.com/Breaking-the-Rules-The-Printed.html

and for H-Museum

‘Millais, Hunt and Modern Life’ Symposium, Tate Britain, London Thursday 29 November 2007, 19.00h-21.30h Friday 30 November 2007, 10.00h-19.00h

and in the Historians of British Art Newsletter January 2008:

Blakesley, Rosalind P. The Arts and Crafts Movement. London & New York: Phaidon, 2006. 272 pp;

Cumming, Elizabeth. Hand, Heart and Soul: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2006. xv, 240 pp.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

A bibliography of the publications of Gabriel Weisberg on the art of the latter half of the 19th century has been compiled with generous co-operation of Professor Weisberg. To see this, click the icon

SOCIETIES

(click on their colophons to reach their websites)

THE ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS

This English Association ‘represents the interests of those involved in all aspects of the discipline, including art, design, visual culture, architecture, film, photography, conservation and museum studies.’

THE IRISH ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS

The IAAH is the representative association for art historians in Ireland and is responsible for the election of the Irish National Committee of the Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art (CIHA).

Since its foundation, the IAAH has maintained a programme of lectures, events, seminars and tours to significant sites in Ireland and abroad. The range of lecture subjects has been broad and varied. Visits are also arranged to important collections and exhibitions at home and abroad. Financial assistance is given from time to time for research, publications and restoration projects and the IAAH funds an essay prize for History of Art undergraduates.

Although the Association itself is still active, its website site promising quarterly updates on its news and events has been abandoned. The last event announced was for September 2004. Our attempt to contact them at the address given on the website (iaah@ireland.com) brought the reply ‘User unknown’.

We wrote the above in the spring of 2007; in April 2008 the website has not changed.

THE SCOTTISH SOCIETY FOR ART HISTORY

The SSAH was founded in 1984 to promote Art History in Scotland. It is open to everyone interested in art, from people with a general interest to specialist scholars, and from students to teachers, museum curators, collectors and dealers. The Society aims to be relevant to all fields of art, including applied art, architecture and design, as well as fine art. It also embraces the art of all periods and countries, though of course it has a strong commitment to Scottish art. The Society publishes both a Newsletter and a Journal, and Tables of Contents are available on the Society’s website (the latest Journal there being Vol. 11, 2006). THE OSCHOLARS on our Publications page will note articles covering our concerns that appear in the latter. The website has now been upgraded since we last checked on 7th January 2008.

THE ARTS & CRAFTS SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

The Arts and Crafts Society of Central New York is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of the Arts and Crafts Movement through a schedule of lectures, symposia, tours and other educational programs for the purpose of increasing awareness of this rich cultural heritage and stimulating interest in its preservation.

The Society's website maintains a number of fora dedicated to different aspects of Arts and Crafts, and its latest newsletter can be downloaded as a .pdf.

The objectives are:

· To preserve, document, and understand the artifacts and ideals of the Arts & Crafts Movement.

· To accomplish these objectives, the society encourages study groups in such areas as architecture, ceramics, glass, furniture, books, and other topics.

· Support conferences, seminars, publications and exhibitions relating to the Arts & Crafts Movement.

· Sponsor research and publication of Arts and Crafts material.

· To work toward the establishment of an Arts & Crafts research center to serve as a place of study, exhibitions, meeting, and collection.

THE DECORATIVE ARTS SOCIETY

Founded in 1975, The Decorative Arts Society encourages the study and appreciation of the applied arts, architecture and interior design on an international basis throughout Europe and America from 1850 to the present. In its activities and publications the Society embraces all the different media – furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, jewellery and fashion as well as industrial design, stage and film design and the graphic arts. Membership is international and is open to all who are interested in any aspect of this vast field. No specialist knowledge is required. Existing members comprise collectors, dealers, libraries, museum curators, teachers, students, artists and designers, as well as those from other walks of life, all of whom wish to share their enthusiasm with others.

The DAS has an international reputation for its scholarship on the decorative arts which is disseminated world-wide through the annual journal, sent free of charge to all members. This illustrated publication contains authoritative articles based on original research usually collected around a particular theme or topic. With at least 100 pages and over 100 illustrations, many in colour, the Journal is of permanent scholarly value to both institutions and collectors.

There is a full cumulative index of past Journals, most of which are still available. Back numbers are available through Richard Dennis Publications, The Old Chapel, Shepton Beauchamp, Ilminster, Somerset TA19 OLE, England. Tel +44 (0) 1460240044books@richarddennispublications.com

For membership details contact The Membership Secretary, Decorative Arts Society, PO BOX 136, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 1TG, England. The Society maintains a website which can be reached by clicking its monogram.

THE FURNITURE HISTORY SOCIETY

1 Mercedes Cottages, St John's Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, RH16 4EH, England. @

The small, and rather reticent, webpage that used to be at http://www.iserv.net/~plucas/fhsoc.htm no longer exists, and has been replaced by a much grander site (click below). Among the information given on its various pages we cite the following:

Furniture History, the journal of the Furniture History Society, is an extensively illustrated scholarly journal issued annually to members only. It is the only journal devoted to the history of furniture from all parts of the world and is internationally recognized as authoritative. Subjects range from the work of individual makers and designers to aspects of interior decoration, domestic economy and trade practice. Contributions have been made by the foremost scholars in the field.

From time to time, single issues devoted to individual subjects or notable articles published in special editions for sale to the public. One can use the link Special Publications for a list of available back issues.

The Furniture History Society’s illustrated Newsletter, published four times a year, comprises about 24 pages of notices of the Society’s activities, news items and short articles on current matters of interest, such as recent discoveries, research topics or museum acquisitions. The Newsletter also reports on past visits, lectures and study tours at home and abroad and includes numerous book reviews.

THE ASSOCIATION OF HISTORIANS OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY ART

Founded in 1993, the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art currently has more than three hundred members. AHNCA's goal is to foster dialogue and communication among those who have a special interest in the field of nineteenth-century art and culture. Nineteenth-century art is broadly defined as all art that was produced between the American Revolution and the Paris International Exposition of 1900, regardless of geographic boundaries.

Current members in good standing receive two newsletters annually and a directory of association members. All memberships run from January to December of the calendar year in which you join or renew. The Association’s journal, Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, published on-line, has long been featured in the Publications section of THE OSCHOLARS.

The AHNCA's annual session ‘New Directions in 19th-century Art History’ was held at the College Art Association annual conference in Dallas in 20th to 23rd February 2008.

The Association’s website (last modified 29th August 2007) can be found by clicking the banner.

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE SOCIETY

‘The Pre-Raphaelite Society is dedicated to the celebration of the mood and style of art which Ruskin recognised and preserved by his writings, and to the observation of its wide-ranging influence. In co-operation with societies of similar aims world-wide, it seeks to commemorate Pre-Raphaelite ideals by means of meetings, conferences, discussions, publications and correspondence, and to draw attention to significant scholastic work in this field. First and foremost, however, it is a society in which individuals can come together to enjoy the images and explore the personalities of the Pre-Raphaelites and their followers through the medium of fine art, the appreciation of good design and the excellence of the traditional arts.’ (Written for the Society by the late Anthony Hobson – author of J W Waterhouse.)

The Society organises a varied programme of lectures and visits to exhibitions and places of interest each year.

Membership enquiries: Michael Wollaston - 18 Floyd Grove, Balsall Common, Coventry, CV7 7RP England; General enquiries: Barry Johnson - 37 Larchmere Drive, Hall Green, Birmingham, B28 8JB England

The Review of the PRS: First issued in the Spring of 1993, The Review has appeared three times a year (except in 1998, 2000 and 2003), when special issues on Burne-Jones, Ruskin and Millais each represented two numbers. Many of the issues are available for sale. Please contact for an order form. Tables of Contents of The Review of the PRS are published on the website, and are covered in our Publications section.

BRUSH STROKES

Serena Trowbridge, editor of the Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society has been interested in contacting anyone working on the Pre-Raphaelite painter F.G. Stephens: ‘All suggestions welcome’ to Serena Trowbridge @.

NICE Paintings - the National Inventory of Continental European Paintings

Announcing the launch of a new web resource for the study of history of art, museum studies and picture research. NICE Paintings (http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/NIRP/index.php) contains detailed records of nearly 8,000 pre-1900 Continental European oil paintings from 200 public collections across the United Kingdom. Over 2,500 are illustrated with digital colour images, and more images are being added regularly. This pioneering database is the first phase of a project to bring together in one searchable catalogue all 22,000 old master paintings in UK museums. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Getty Foundation and the Kress Foundation. NICE Paintings was produced by the National Inventory Research Project (NIRP), based at the University of Glasgow. NIRP is a partnership between the University of Glasgow and Birkbeck University of London. It is managed by a steering committee of curators from national and regional collections across the UK, chaired by Dr Susan Foster, Director of Collections at the National Gallery, London. The project is continuing to add digital images to the database, contributed by museums and the Public Catalogue Foundation, and is working to complete the project by adding to the database records on the 15,000 old master paintings in national university and other major regional museums not included in this initial research phase of the project. URL: http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/NIRP/index.php; contact: Andrew Greg @

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