Medieval and Renaissance Art. People and Possessions. By Glyn Davies and Kirstin Kennedy. 320 pp. With 350 illustrations in colour. Hb. £40.00. V&A Publishing.
“Making sense of the past can be difficult,” remarks Kirsten Kennedy, one of the authors of this magnificent book. Her colleague Glyn Davies asks: “What do we mean by 'Europe'?” suggesting that “The term can be more slippery than it seems.” Both these comments reveal the freshness of their approach which by taking the objects, their makers and owners, as starting points, seasoning with the salt and pepper of literary and archival sources, “presents” in the words of their Chief Curator Peta Markham “a novel and informed exploration of art and culture” north and south of the Alps, “from the fall of the Roman Empire to what is arguably the establishment of modern Europe.”
Suddenly therefore much becomes clear, with the distinction between 'medieval' and 'renaissance' seen to be essentially artificial, as we introduced to the complexities of the strength of the continuity of ideas and practices, interrupted from time to time across the period by change and innovation. Another factor that becomes increasingly apparent is the extraordinary cultural diversity of Europe at the time which, nonetheless and despite its geographical extent, was united by two ideas those of “the universal Roman Empire” and “the notion of Christendom.” These can be difficult concepts to grasp in our secular and historically antediluvian age.
But reading becomes exciting as we learn about personal backgrounds, technical innovations, political and artistic rivalries and religious devotion. Consider, for example, a large hanging from the early 16th century on which the nuns who made it have embroidered their names “as an offering to God” and as an example to encourage their successors; or an earlier painting of The Virgin and Child by Carlo Crivelli who has included his name on the front as a trompe l'oeil carving in part as a “plea for his own salvation” but as a reminder too “of the superiority of paint over stone to render a representation of reality.”
From the previous century Chinese porcelain began to be desired and collected by rich and fashionable persons, none more so than the Grand Duke Francesco I de' Medici who about 1575 set out to discover the formula through a special workshop built at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Neither he nor his potters were successful but they did manage to create a soft-paste porcelain with blue and white decoration on a white ground, examples of which are as immensely rare as they would have been considered the height of the luxury at the time.
These days we pay great regard to “signatures” which had varying purposes in the past: they might have been added at the behest of a competitive-minded patron anxious to be seen to be associated with a notable artist or maker; as a guarantee of authenticity; as a requirement for professional identification; as a way of trumpeting expertise; or simply to acknowledge and confirm the “author” whether an individual patron or perhaps the head of a workshop.
Bearing in mind that the authors of this book are working on a kind of palimpsest that is not only geographically very wide, with the Mediterranean at its heart, but one that historically ranges from the proclamation of Constantine as the first Christian Emperor, to the collapse of Byzantium and the rise of Protestant nationalism, it is important to take account of “the role of the arts as a reflection of God's creation.” Furthermore, with the primary purpose of an object of art being then to express a “social message” about its owner, the inherent value of the material used was secondary to what the object demonstrated about the learning and technical skills of its maker, qualities requiring equivalent admiration on the part of a similarly cultured viewer.
Perforce, as the majority of the very fine illustrations prove, most of what remains to us was the province of the wealthy in materials to match, but among the many “telling fragments of past life” a little wooden trencher, or bowl, made for use by the “less important members” attending courtly meals has somehow survived, as has the information that the lowly could expect to receive little or no meat. Things could be different in England where the national love for silver not only “baffled” the Venetian ambassador whose wealthy compatriots proclaimed their status through the luxury of their garments, but led a German visitor in 1584 to remark that “he must be a poor peasant indeed who does not possess silver-gilt salt cellars, silver cups and spoons.”
This fabulous book's sub-title “people and possessions” immediately confirms its contents as fresh and original; its authors were closely involved with the making of the new and universally acclaimed Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, which it is published to complement. The Museum's Director Mark Jones confirms the purpose of it all in the choice of illustration for his Foreword: a piece of 15th century English stained glass, a little roundel with the ancient Gospel theme of “Giving drink to the thirsty.”
Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese. Rivals in Renaissance Venice. By Frederick Ilchman. 304 pp. With 160 colour and 10 duotone illustrations. Hb. £40.00. Lund Humphries.
Even for the casual tourist to Venice, by turns captivated and bewildered by the interplay of streets, canals and buildings, the city's unique public array of paintings in churches, palaces, or corporate institutions, marvel the eye. This very beautiful book reveals another and so far little considered aspect of Venetian life in the first half of the 16th century, the rivalry between three great artists: Titian and his younger contemporaries, Tintoretto and Veronese. That there was such rivalry seems, on reflection, to have been inevitable but the fact and its consequences have no so far been studied before – which provides this volume with more than a frisson of excitement for the non-specialist, non-scholarly reader.
At that time Venice was at the height of its international economic power, a “crossroads of materials, culture and human populations” encompassing an urban, competitive energy that coursed through its peoples affecting themselves and everything about them – including a rapidly growing interest in art and artists. In line with the Venetian concept of governance, there was no monarchical or aristocratic court to set the pace or mark good taste, instead there was an interconnected combination of “hierarchies” of individuals that acted as patrons: nobles, followed by merchants, bureaucrats and the like, with a “lower tier” comprising small shopkeepers and artisans. A second source of patronage was corporate, whether by lay confraternities or by those charged with the decoration of government buildings. Somehow and in a uniquely Venetian way these various committees were able to exercise patronage on a scale and of a quality whose results still astound.
One of the purposes of this book is to set forth how Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese responded to each other and to the challenges of this hectic Venetian milieu, responding in ways that reflected not only their respective personalities but their individual business acumens. Somehow, collectively, these three created what we now recognize as the Venetian style: loose technique, rich colouring and often sensual subject matter. Moreover, as Frederick Ilchman points out, they created a contemporary art works that in their time were seen as “experimental, bold, even shocking.” It is only through time's perspective that we think of them today as the “ultimate old masters.”
Not the least of the values of the essays by Mr Ilchman and his colleagues are their sudden illuminations. How, for instance, each of the artists made often sublime use of the opportunities presented by working in the new medium of oil on canvas supports, rather than with egg tempera on wood panel; for larger commissions they also eschewed fresco as too fragile for the damp Venetian climate. In our aggressively secular age, we need to be reminded too that Christian belief “permeated virtually every sphere of Venetian Renaissance existence.” Furthermore, it was the demands and social circumstances of Venice that gave rise to portraiture “as an independent subject.”
It was this overall competitive climate in Venice that drove patrons to want to be seen to be associated with celebrated artists, famous also for their individual skills. Later, as patronage gave way to collecting and the associated business of art dealing, buyers felt driven to acquire “names” before quality, so encouraging the production of more and more copies, only some of which were authorised workshop replicas. The consequences of all this continuing to confuse and seduce collectors and scholars today.
Nonetheless, “since their creation, the paintings of Titian, Tinteretto and Veronese, have been widely praised, coveted and collected.” None more so than Titian, famous not only for his “representation of female beauty” but for his unique empathy with his human subjects, whether sacred or profane. This handsome volume forms the catalogue of an exhibition jointly organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Its many very fine illustrations including a number of seductive details teasingly and rather mysteriously without captions.
Points of View: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs. By John Falconer and Louise Hide. 176 pp. Illustrated throughout. Pb. £15.95. The British Library.
It is such a relief to be presented with this very attractive book which is in itself a compendium of very fine photographs, yet neither claims to be a definitive history nor a collection of art masterpieces. In fact this book in a sense is both of these for, as well as including very useful historical and technical information, it begins with a selection from the archives of William Fox Talbot and concludes with another from the Kodak archive – from that is one of the inventors of photography in the late 1830s down to the company that popularised the medium all of fifty years later.
If it's masterpieces you are looking for, then they are here aplenty. One example might be the brooding figure of a country labourer, scythe on shoulder, walking home from work, photographed by Peter Henry Emmerson about 1886. Another, a picturesquely composed view of the corner of an Indian hill lake, Naini Tal, photographed by Samuel Bourne about 1867. And a third, a twilight scene showing horse cabs waiting in Trafalgar Square taken by an unknown photographer about 1907.
The authors make no imperious claims about the British Library's collection which forms the basis of this book and the exhibition there that it accompanies (until 7 March 2010). Instead they are at pains to point out that the collection was acquired more as a by-product of the British Museum's collecting policies rather than with a deliberate aim to collect the medium. Moreover many of the photographs were (and are) illustrations for important books acquired for their documentary or scientific value which remain significant: none of which diminishes their present-day fascination for ourselves.
Here are portraits of celebrities such as the playwright George Bernard Shaw and Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India with his wife, with others of different humanitarian or anthropological interest. In addition there are scenes from many corners of the globe including Europe as well as the Middle and Far East. Photographic records of works of art include those made for the Louvre in Paris and the Royal Armoury in Madrid, there are others of great construction projects such as the London underground railway and the Aswan Dam in Egypt, and of the aftermath of war in the United States and France. Images of urban buildings and streets, sometimes including their inhabitants, are invariably touching and all long gone, all anyhow filtered through the unreality of a photographer's lens. Nonetheless it is heartening as well as salutary to learn that the photographs taken by Charles Le Morvan for a great Atlas of the Moon published in Paris between 1896 and 1910 “remained the definitive work for more than half a century.”
Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize 2009. Introduction by Stuart Maconie and interviews by Richard McClure. 72 pp. Illustrated in colour throughout. Pb. £12.99. National Portrait Gallery.
When last year I saw the exhibition of work for the first Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London, I was startled and enthralled by the range and integrity of the portraits on view: collectively an unusually refreshing display. I clearly remember too offering my private respects to the judges for their work, which must have been mighty, and to the sponsors for supporting such a quietly important project. Important because this was an international competition open to both professional and amateur photographers, aiming also to “cultivate new talent. The selected results were neither technically flashy nor painfully self-indulgent and, moreover, without a portrait of a celebrity anywhere in sight.
This year's exhibition is equally fine. The judges were faced with more than 6,300 submissions from 2,452 photographers, numbers that speak for themselves, as do the remarks of the Gallery's Director Sandy Nairne: “Judges do not always agree... Little is gained by compromise, but there are many ways to reach a consensus – to produce the strongest set of images and select the most talented winners.” These wise and fruitful observations must explain why the exhibition (in London until 14 February after which it tours) of a selection of 60 portraits is both so attractive and so telling. Tim Eyles, from the sponsors, sums it all up by noting that “The 2009 exhibition celebrates the resilience shown by so many people, even when they are at their most fragile.”
This slim volume is in effect a beautifully produced “souvenir” of the 2009 Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize. As well as reproducing the prize-winning and all other images selected for exhibition, it offers comments by the judges, a delightful introduction by Stuart Maconie and fascinating interviews with the prize-winners by Richard McClure. If nothing else the whole proves that the art of photographic portraiture across the world not only thrives but blossoms.
For the record: Paul Floyd Blake was the winner of the First Prize; Vanessa Winship, the Second; Michal Chelbin, the Third; Mirjana Vrbaski, the Fourth. Ali Lomas was the winner of the Godfrey Argent Award for an exhibitor aged between 18 and 25; she also received the inaugural ELLE commission to shoot a story for the magazine.
The Darker Side of Light.
Arts of Privacy, 1850 – 1900. By
Peter Parshall with
contributions by S. Hollis Clayson, Christiane Hertel and Nicholas
Penny. 192 pp. With 90 illustrations in colour. Hb. £35.00. National
Gallery of Art, Washington in association with Lund Humphries.
This
book is a treasure. Ostensibly it is concerned with a period of art
universally associated with impressionism and post-impressionism,
subjects however it eschews, but far more importantly its authors
dwell on the rarely considered, more private, pleasures associated
with the study and enjoyment of prints: etchings and lithographs -
and small sculptures and medals: particularly in bronze. Furthermore,
all of these share through the very means of their making, the
likelihood of there being similar, replicated examples so bringing to
their owners, remarks Peter Parshall, a peculiar sense of community
“rooted in the mutual possession of an object.” Which is not to
deny collectors the contrarily mutual desire to hunt for and possess
rare or unique examples.
In the 19th century, “The habit of intimate collecting was pronounced among the European bourgeoisie, which cultivated an appreciation for this shadowed world and the quiet of a time and place set aside for it.” That is one point, quite another, continues Mr Parshall, is “the post-romantic world” of Darwin, Marx and Freud “in which the human condition came to be defined in material terms.” In other words, the idea of an overarching and optimistic spiritual life gave way to more mundane elements represented by psychology, society and politics, and with these rampant human uncertainty in the face of the darkness of death - without hope of resurrection.
This provoking analysis aside, Peter Parshall also discusses the origins and progress of the “etching revival” in Europe and the United States during the latter part of the 19th century which was led by artists, critics and publishers, as much to encourage the purchase of original works of art as to “elevate public taste.” One consequence, unforeseen perhaps, was the debate, that continues to this day, about what in fact constitutes an original print: in itself seen as offering “a means of direct communication with the artist.”
As the inclination to collect prints spread through the middle classes so, as night follows day, did writers and manual-makers publish advice and peremptory counsel on what constituted good taste in the domestic arena: how and where pictures should be hung, arranged and generally appreciated. Reflecting the time, there was a gender-distinction in that “men were seen to collect objects, whereas women surrounded themselves with them.”
Peter Parshall's three colleagues have specialised interests. S. Hollis Clayson discusses the consequences of the discovery of the interior as a domestic ideal “the paradoxical modern anchor of both personal well-being and discontent,” illustrating her essay with prints by Whistler, Degas and Tissot. Christiane Hertel investigates the complex ideas of privacy through the medium of disturbing prints by Max Klinger and Käthe Kollwitz. Finally, Nicholas Penny dwells at on the private erotic possibilities presented by bronze statuettes derived from religious subjects; then on carved and cast secular relics, and the re-emergence of low relief sculptures; his illustrations include works by Alfred Gilbert, Rodin and Dalou.
This
'onlie begetter' of this handsomely produced volume of many and
various reflections is Peter Parshall, Curator of Old Master Prints
at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a specialist in the
Renaissance when, as he says, the interest in the collecting and
organization of prints (and medals) first became apparent and indeed
possible. It is a rare scholar who praises the help and expertise of
“better-versed colleagues” having first admitted that for himself
“the requirement for remedial learning has been unremitting.” On
the evidence of this book also, Peter Parshall himself represents
someone who understands “that curiosity [is] properly motivated not
by an object but by what can be learned from it.”
The
associated exhibition, The
Darker Side of Light,
opened
first at the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles;
presently it is at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1
October 2009 – 18 January 2010; thereafter at the Smart Museum,
University of Chicago, 11 February – 10 June 2010.
Chinese Ceramics.
By Stacey Pierson. 200
pp. With 200 illustrations in colour. Hb. £30.00. V&A
Publishing.
The
customary use of the word “china” for domestic ceramics reflects
a careless use of the word as a portmanteau description as well as
unconscious recognition of China as the origin and inspiration for
much of the design and decoration of manufactured wares still in
daily use - or individually admired.
Which being admitted, Stacey Pierson's book represents a revolution in its historical approach. Customarily, Chinese ceramics have been studied in ways devised by scholars and connoisseurs in thrall to the attractions of individual wares, developing increasingly sophisticated notions that have seamlessly led to the designation of some objects as 'works of art' these days individually worth rather more than a millionaire king's ransom. Whereas, as Ms Pierson explains, these same objects “were made by many people on an assembly line” their transformation into 'works of art' displacing “their true origins as designed products.” Many and diverse were the factories in China, generally near a town and certainly within easy reach of the necessary basic materials, producing recognizable types of ware which when seen to be successful were copied elsewhere. This is one of a number of problems associated either with miss-identifications, or “fakes” deliberate or otherwise, sometimes centuries old. The most famous centre for making ceramics especially porcelain were the factories at Jingdezhen in south-east China, where multitudes of workers were employed and which has “recently celebrated its thousand-year anniversary.” Its national importance was recognized in the 1980s by its government designation as “one of China's historical and cultural cities.”
Given therefore “the industrial nature of ceramic production in China” Stacey Pierson has decided on a different and much more compelling historical strategy offering the opportunity for agreeable “understanding and appreciation of Chinese ceramics.” Her first chapter is concerned with production, from the basic potter's wheel to the modular techniques used to make the famous 'Terracotta army,' on to glazed stonewares, and the discovery and decoration of porcelain. Aesthetics is a tricky subject, instead Ms Pierson has chosen to deal with 'design and style' using an historical (and anthropological) approach that takes account of the many archaeological discoveries that have revealed the diversity and complexity of many early wares unknown to, or not valued by, past connoisseurs, Chinese or otherwise. Then and perhaps closer to home, Stacey Pierson considers the uses of many types of ceramics used in daily living – eating, drinking and cooking; as gifts; for interior decoration; for ceremonial use; and in death as burial objects.
The range and extent of China's export trade in ceramics is apparent in the number of shipwrecks containing thousands and thousands of items designed and destined for Japan, Malaysia, the Near East and Europe. Furthermore these same shipwrecks confirm the antiquity of this seaborne trade as well as the widespread admiration for blue and white wares in particular: which is the subject of a self-contained section. There are others of these useful synopses include one on the vessels used by the Chinese for consuming wine and for drinking tea and another devoted to personal and state rituals associated with various belief systems: Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
Which brings the reader to one of the attractions of Stacey Pierson's elegantly designed book: the continuation of its theme into the wares made in the Post-Imperial years of the early 20th century and on into the aftermath of the Communist revolution with its 'propaganda' pieces. In recent years new freedoms have been expressed through varieties of studio wares and by artist decorators, some at work outside China. How these latter are to be regarded in terms of their 'Chineseness' is not so much the point perhaps, as the fact that they represent another form of extra-territorial Chinese influence on the making of ceramics. Another form of export, in fact? Don't miss a witty visual irony: the first illustration in the book shows a magnificent Neolithic earthenware jar with painted decoration dating from 2600 - 2300 BC; and the last a pot of similar shape and size by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei: Neolithic Culture Pot with Coca Cola Logo, 1997 – 2007.
Stacey Pierson's new book is published to coincide with the opening of the new and finely redesigned Ceramics Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum, as has European Ceramics. By Robin Hildyard. (144 pp. With 207 illustrations in colour. Pb. £19.99. V&A Publishing.) First published in 1999, its author has recently retired as a Senior Curator in the Ceramics and Glass Department at the V&A which he joined in 1968. It is a joy to read, to look at and to possess: there can be no better or wiser introduction to the subject.
Ancient American Art In Detail. By Colin McEwan. 144 pp. With 150 illustrations in colour. Hb. £14.99. The British Museum Press.
“One of the threads running through this book,” writes Colin McEwan, “is the relationship between an invisible world – the timeless and ever-present spirit realm – and the visible world, where the creative forces that drive the universe find material expression in space and time.” In the midst of the secular materialism that drives so many today these are unfashionable sentiments, but without an understanding of them appreciation of ancient American art is well nigh impossible. Furthermore, while we owe the existence of much that survives to the interest of past collectors, and their classification first to those who saw these objects as examples of 'primitive art' and then to art historians trained in Western ideas of aesthetic worth, it is only in recent times that attempts have been made to properly view, value and understand “the works of indigenous traditions.”
Such sensitive awareness is manifest throughout Colin McEwan's book, captions and introductory texts alike, offering insights that add immeasurably to the pleasure of studying the many fine illustrations – all of objects in the British Museum's collection. Including a marvellous Aztec turquoise-decorated double-headed serpent, works in gold, stone sculptures, painted ceramics, carvings in wood, rare textiles and painted deerskins among them. Some especially notable examples might include an Iroquois pipe that channelled “spirit energies made visible in the curling wreaths of tobacco smoke;” a fiercely male Taino wood sculpture that stands “in a rigid frontal pose of hallucinogenic possession;” and an Inca cotton khipu whose intricate series of knotted and coloured cords encompassed the essential records and accounts needed by imperial bureaucrats.
The very name 'America' derives of course from the first European contacts in the 16th century and takes no account either of the prehistoric origins of its many native peoples, or of the colossal dimensions of a continent that stretches from the Arctic to the near Antarctic and from the Pacific to the Atlantic. For these reasons alone one must be in awe of Mr McEwan's purpose let alone admire the success with which he has accomplished it.
Henry Moore Textiles. Edited by Anita Feldman with an introduction by Sue Prichard. 160 pp. With 188 colour and 26 black & white illustrations. Hb. £30.00. Published in association with The Henry Moore Foundation. Lund Humphries.
From the outset, it has to be said that this is an especially attractive book, with beautifully composed photographs of the textiles by Matt Pia, and evocative interiors of the Moore's house Hoglands photographed by Michael Phipps. The accompanying texts by Sue Prichard who is Curator of Contemporary Textiles at The Victoria and Albert Museum, and Anita Feldman, Curator of The Henry Moore Foundation, are not only informative but historically very interesting. The archive photographs include one of Moore's wife Irina, an accomplished needlewoman, making curtains in the 1940s from one of his textile designs to hang at Hoglands, where they (or their successors) still do.
For an artist who eschewed colour in his sculpture, it is surprising to learn that for Moore “colour was a bit of a holiday” and even more surprising that he won a prize for dress design when a student at Leeds School of Art in 1919/21. Decades later Henry Moore explained his interest in textiles: they were not simply a method of colour reproduction but “a translation from one medium into another” so the results would be different and “a surprise.”
The 1920s and 1930s in Britain were something of a “highpoint in the marriage between industrial art and design” with several small manufacturers successfully commissioning contemporary artists and sculptors to produce textile designs – using screenprinting and the newly invented man-made fabric Rayon. For Moore, it was the arrival in London in 1939 of the Czech emigres Zika and Lida Ascher that was to provide the stimulus for his textile designs. They were a remarkable couple who had had, before their Norwegian honeymoon escape to Britain, a successful textile business in Prague. Invalided out of the Royal Air Force, Zika energetically set about contributing to the British war effort by engaging “leading modern British painters, sculptors, graphic artists and theatrical designers” to create “all the verve and vitality of the modern art scene in their designs.” Zika's admiration for Henry Moore's Shelter Drawings which he saw at the National Gallery seems to have been the inspiration for his approaching the artist to take part in his project.
Like many artists of his generation, Henry Moore had Socialist ideals believing that modern art should be part of daily living, that art itself could form a positive link for society in general, and modern design an inspiration for new ways of family living. Even given Zika Ascher's doubtless persuasive charm and dynamism, his ideas for a better Post-war Britain must have attracted Moore therefore and the two worked closely during the course of the project. At all events, for nearly a decade from 1943 the artist filled four notebooks with textile designs for various purposes – and it is these notebooks that form the basis of this splendid catalogue where they are illuminated by manufactured examples from the Ascher collection.
Ascher's flair for publicity saw the glamorous Sally Grey, one of the stars with Trevor Howard of Alberto Cavalcanti's 1947 film “They made me a Fugitive” (in the US, “I became a Criminal”) wearing a dressing gown made from Moore's “Barbed Wire” fabric. In the same year the Lefevre Gallery in London held The First Exhibition of Artist Designed Squares where the examples by Matisse and Moore in particular attracted widespread, including television attention. The fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar also remarked that such scarves had practical use as well as being works of art. In 1953 another influential magazine The Ambassador sponsored an exhibition Painting into Textiles at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Dover Street, London which proved in the event to be Moore's last involvement with textile design. The press was excited, Manchester's Daily Dispatch enthusing, “We can't all afford to hang a Picasso on the wall – but very soon we'll be having Henry Moore Curtains at the windows!”
William
Orpen: An Onlooker in France. A
critical edition of the artist's war memoirs.
By Robert Upstone
and Angela Weight. 240 pp. With 100 illustrations mostly in colour.
Hb. £30.00. Paul Holberton Publishing.
Ninety
years ago, William Orpen attended The Peace Conference in Paris after
the First World War to paint portraits of the principal participants.
"It was very amusing to sit there and listen to Clemenceau - Le
Tigre - putting the fear of death
into the delegates of the smaller nations if they talked too long...
President Wilson occasionally rose and spoke of love and forgiveness.
Lloyd George just went on working."
Famous, fashionable, charming and socially well-connected, William Orpen voluntarily enlisted in the British Army at the end of 1915. He was Irish, from a nation increasingly fractious with demands for independence and disavowals of its involvement in the Great War. These perturbations culminated with the Easter Rising when armed nationalists proclaimed a republic in 1916.
This background is important and is discussed by Robert Upston in a lengthy introductory essay to Orpen's own account of his experiences, tragic and gay, of life at the front as a War Artist from 1917 to the Armistice at the end of the following year. Non-commissioned and commissioned soldiers and airman, including a fair sprinkling of generals and even politicians were grist to Orpen's sparkling prose, along with fellow artists, journalists and numbers of French civilians.
Those still well-known include: Max Aitken (Lord Beaverbrook) and Sir Philip Sassoon; the French print-maker Jean Laboureur; the war correspondent Philip Gibbs; the painter Sir Alfred Munnings; air aces Lt Rhys Davids and Capt Reginald Hoidge; as well as Orpen's friend Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, and the ever courteous Marshal Foch. Orpen's young mistress Yvonne Aubicq also appears as does his faithful driver Gordon Howlett, whom she later married.
William Orpen may have described himself as an "onlooker" but his sympathies for the plight and courage of the ordinary soldier are passionately expressed. He was shocked as much by these, as he was by the ignorance of civilians he met at home whose own travails were minimal by comparison. All the while he feared that with the War's end, the soldiers' efforts would be forgotten and their personal miseries neglected.
Illustrated with many of his portraits as well as tender sometimes frightening drawings and watercolours confirming overall the artist's mastery of figures and landscapes. Orpen's war memoirs were first published in 1921 and are here presented in a fresh and very attractive form. Angela Weight's detailed commentary on the personalities and places add materially to the value of the whole.
After Orpen's death in 1931 his reputation spiralled into a decline. Happily, deservedly and increasingly, this has been reversed in recent years. All those involved in making this book possible are to be warmly congratulated.
Sir John Soane's Museum, London. By Tim Knox. Photography by Derry Moore. 160 pp. Illustrated in colour throughout. Hb. £24.95. Merrell.
Sir John Soane's Museum in London's Lincoln's Fields attracts upwards of 90,000 visitors every year, all entranced as much as bemused by its amazing conglomeration of paintings, sculptures and other works of art which, quite literally, fill every available wall and surface of his house. Since it first opened, entrance has been free as it founder stipulated by Act of Parliament in 1833, also enjoining its Trustees to make no changes to the arrangements of his collections - a responsibility keenly felt as much by their successors as by successive curators.
Despite these constraints, perhaps even inspired by them, Tim Knox has, since his appointment in 2005 as the Museum's first Director, set in train something of a revolution at Soane's unique house-museum. Supported by often long-serving staff and building on the work of his curatorial predecessors, Mr Knox has embarked on a major programme of opening up to public view for the first time Soane's private rooms. In addition he has set about the reinstatement with their original objects of a number of important spaces, whose contents were exhaustively listed in Soane's own guidebooks, and not least illustrated in watercolours by the architect's talented associate Joseph Gandy.
Rich and successful Sir John Soane (1753 - 1837) intended his house and his collections to be an inspiration principally though not necessarily exclusively for students of architecture, objectives which it continues to fulfil. At the same time Soane's own often revolutionary architectural work has become increasingly influential and widely admired today.
Tim Knox's book is the first to be published in modern times with the aim of providing a comprehensive illustrated introduction to Soane's life and ideas as well as a room by room guide to his museum. It is a triumph, not least too because of the often dazzlingly beautiful and always sensitive photographs of interiors and individual objects by Derry Moore.
This new book priced at £24.95 is available at the Museum, which is open Tuesday - Sunday, or by post at extra cost from Julie Brock, Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3BP. Tel. +44 (0)20 7440 4279. Email: jbrock@soane.org.uk. Internet orders: www.soane.org
Constable Portraits: The Painter & His Circle. By Martin Gayford and Anne Lyles. 160 pp. With some 70 colour illustrations. Hb. £20.00. National Portrait Gallery.
John Constable's fame and enduring influence derives from his practice as a landscape painter, that his subjects were English is hardly relevant to the results of this passionate dedication.
It is true that for Constable portrait painting was secondary to his vocation as a landscape painter, the former a means of earning money to support his wife and family, nothing dishonourable in that. Nonetheless, the best of his portraits are shown in the pages of this very attractive volume to be of subjects personally close to him, either family, friends or social equals, where his strivings to capture a likeness do not hinder the exercise of his painterly skills. Today in fact, the great contemporary artist Lucian Freud urges us to judge Constable's portraits as paintings first.
This wise observation has led to this book and the collaboration in its making of art critic Martin Gayford and art historian Anne Lyles. Together they offer a sympathetic synopsis of John Constable's life and background, in the context of the professional circumstances of the time - the first four decades of the 19th century, in which he worked. The result is not only exceptionally interesting but often touching, as well as genuinely revealing of a long misunderstood aspect of a very great artist.
Love and Marriage. By Jennifer Ramkalawon. 94 pp. With 45 illustrations in colour. Hb. £9.99. The British Museum Press.
In the last two decades of the 18th century England was prey to social and political turmoil at home with threats of war and revolution abroad. It was also the golden age of caricature led by Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray. Their fame endures. Not so well known today are John Collett and his successor Robert Dighton, nor Richard Newton who died aged only 21 producing in his short life a remarkable 300 prints.
Caricature prints by Collett and Dighton were published by Carrington Bowles whose premises were in St Paul's Churchyard, then the centre of London's booktrade. Both these artists worked in mezzotint, coloured when needed and as the medium required in thick gouche paints for sale at double the price. Newton used etching which was much quicker and delicate enough to be enhanced with watercolour.
Jennifer Ramkalawon is a British Museum curator and her choice of prints by these and other artists and publishers, most of which were generally issued in a standard size, serve as a very useful illustrated introduction to late 18th century English caricatures. In addition, as her book's title suggests, her wicked selection of bawdy images dwells on true love, unrequited love, marital disillusion, delightful temptation, cuckolded husbands and beaten wives. No persons were too high to be traduced and gossip always overcame truth. Unsurprisingly, such caricatures were immensely popular in their day.
www.artnewsletter.com
February/March
2010