Tag Archive for Melbourne Portrait Group

CHANGE OF VENUE: MPG Seminar on Edward Burne-Jones

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Edward Burne-Jones, Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes, 1895-96. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Monday 1 December, 6:30pm. CHANGE OF VENUE: Visual Culture Resource Centre,  3rd Floor (next door to Room 344), East Tower,John Medley Building. This paper will investigate Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s enigmatic portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes (1895-96), which was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in late 2005. Baronne Deslandes (1866–1929) was the celebrated hostess of a cultured Parisian salon that was frequented by renowned artists, poets and composers. Using contemporary accounts of Deslandes, this paper will explore the degree to which her portrait by Burne-Jones reflected her character. Capturing a sitter’s likeness…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Emily Wubben: ‘Artistic Souls: Baronne Madeleine Deslandes and her portrait by Edward Burne-Jones’

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Edward Burne-Jones, Portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes, 1895-96. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Please note venue change - seminar will now be held in the Visual Resource Centre in the John Medley building. Time and date are the same. This paper will investigate Sir Edward Burne-Jones’s enigmatic portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes (1895-96), which was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria in late 2005. Baronne Deslandes (1866–1929) was the celebrated hostess of a cultured Parisian salon that was frequented by renowned artists, poets and composers. Using contemporary accounts of Deslandes, this paper will explore the degree to which her portrait by Burne-Jones reflected…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Alison Inglis: Portraiture and the colonial collection

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‘Additions to the Public Library buildings’, Australasian Sketcher, 18 April 2021 State Library of Victoria)

Associate Professor Alison Inglis | ‘Portraiture and the Colonial Collection: Searching for Portraits in the National Gallery of Victoria in the Nineteenth Century This paper will investigate the significance of the portrait during the early years of the National Gallery of Victoria by reconstructing this aspect of the collection prior to Federation. To what extent did the Trustees of Victoria’s leading colonial institution (consisting of the Public Library, Museum and National Gallery combined) seek to fulfill the role of a national portrait gallery by adopting such traditions as ‘the hall…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Callum Reid, ‘Semper rectus, semper idem: The Uffizi Self Portrait Collection’

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Francesco Marchissi, ‘Sala dei Pittori’ (detail), c. 1760. Vienna, Nationalbibliothek

The Uffizi collection of artists’ self-portraits, the majority of which is today secreted away in the Vasari Corridor, is the product of several important events in the history of collecting by the Grand Ducal families in Florence. This paper will discuss the various approaches to the acquisition and display of self-portraits across the Medici and Lorraine Grand-Duchies, their changing locations and their significance to the evolution of the broader gallery. First collected throughout the seventeent century and brought to the Uffizi around the turn of the eighteenth century, in many…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Adam Bushby, ‘El Gran Turco: Ottoman Turks in Venetian painting, 1453-1571′

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Gentile Bellini (attr.), Portrait of Sultan Mehmet II (1480). National Gallery, London.

Ottoman Turks often appear in Venetian painting between the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the defeat of the Turkish navy by the Holy League at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The relationship between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire is typically understood through commercial trade, naval battles and religious differences. This paper examines the representation of Ottoman Turks in Venetian painting, including portraiture, identifying a trend of increasingly negative representations, and discussing the extent to which pictorial changes reflected political and commercial changes in the…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Deirdre Coleman

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Automaton clock representing François-Dominique Toussaint (L’Ouverture). Melbourne, Johnston Collection.

Deirdre Coleman ‘Touissant Louverture in the Johnston House Museum’ The Haitian revolution was the only successful slave revolution in history, transforming the French colony of Saint-Domingue into the independent republic of Haiti. To what extent can we see the Johnston House Museum’s automaton clock and other ‘portraits’ of Toussaint L’Ouverture as part of the West’s disavowal of the Haitian revolution’s political goals of racial equality and racial liberation? Date: Monday 27 July, 6:30pm. Venue: Please note changed venue for this month’s seminar - Linkway room, 4th floor, John Medley Building (Building 191),…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar | Mark Shepheard on Mengs

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar: ‘A tale of two portraits: Mengs and Don Luis de Borbón’. The National Gallery of Victoria has recently acquired a superb portrait by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-79), one of the eighteenth century’s greatest portrait painters. The sitter is the Infante Don Luis de Borbón (1727-85), brother of the Spanish king, Carlos III. Don Luis was a major patron of the arts, employing the cellist and composer Luigi Boccherini, as well as being an early supporter of the young Goya. Meng’s portrait of the Infante was painted…

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Seminar | Zoffany’s portrait of Elizabeth Farren - Vivien Gaston | Melbourne Portrait Group

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar: ‘Portraits and Reanimation: Johann Zoffany’s Portrait of Elizabeth Farren as Hermione in Shakespeare’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’, c. 1780‘ Johan Zoffany’s portrait of Elizabeth Farren as Hermione in Shakespeare’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’ represents one of the most striking, controversial and memorable scenes in all of Shakespeare’s plays. It is also a portrait of an actress whose private and public lives were equally intriguing, one of a few highly successful women whose celebrity status enabled their radical upward mobility. As a portrait, which creates the illusion that its…

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Melbourne Portrait Group Seminar Series | Ted Gott on Augustus John

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Next week, the Melbourne Portrait Group launches a series of seminars on various aspects of portraiture. The series opens with a paper from Ted Gott, Senior Curator of International Art at the National Gallery of Victoria, and further seminars are scheduled over the coming months. Monday 24 March, 6:30pm Ted Gott, Portraits of Augustus John in the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1939 the Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, J. S. MacDonald, wrote forcefully about Augustus John’s life-size 1909 portrait of the Lord Mayor of Liverpool: ‘the painting…

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