Author: Mark Shepheard

Lecture | ‘Re-visiting Peter Lely’: a Dutch painter in seventeenth-century London – Diana Dethloff | University of Melbourne

Peter Lely's Portrait of Sir John Rous

The Dutch-born artist Peter Lely was an important figure in seventeenth-century British portrait painting. His position as Principal Painter at the court of Charles II, and his portraits of royal mistresses and privileged courtiers have, for many, come to define the Restoration period, as well as earning Lely the reputation of being nothing more than a fashionable face painter. This lecture aims to present a more balanced assessment of an artist who enjoyed a working life of almost forty years, only half of which were as royal painter, and examines Lely’s work during the earlier periods of English civil war and Commonwealth government, in addition to that for the Restoration Court. As well as arguing for a more balanced view of this interesting and prolific artist, this discussion will provide a useful context for the National Gallery of Victoria’s own Lely portrait…

Symposium Keynote | Contemporary Architects and the Pavilion

A public forum with Bijoy Jain, Sean Godsell and Robert Grace. Moderated by Professor Philip Goad, Melbourne School of Design. On the eve of the launch of MPavilion 2016, hear three distinguished architects discuss the contemporary pavilion and its significance for audiences today. The speakers at this public forum have all experimented with the idea of the pavilion: Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai is the designer of the 2016 MPavilion; Sean Godsell of Sean Godsell Architects designed the 2014 MPavilion; and Robert Grace, of Robert Grace Architecture, designed the Garden Room at Woodchester House in 2011. This public conversation on the meaning of the Pavilion will be moderated by Professor Philip Goad, of the Melbourne Design School. Monday 3 October 2016, 6:15pm-7:15pm. Venue: Basement Theatre (B117), Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, Parkville. Free event but booking essential via…

Symposium | Pavilions

To mark of the launch of the 2016 MPavilion, the University of Melbourne is hosting a symposium that brings together leading architects, artists, curators, architectural historians, cultural historians and art historians to focus on the theme of ‘The Pavilion’, an architectural structure with an ancient lineage and continuing contemporary resonance. Experts from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds will provide different perspectives on the ‘The Pavilion’ over three sessions. The first session—held at the University’s Melbourne School of Design—will include art historians and cultural historians; the second and third sessions—held at the VCA—will include architects, architectural historians and art historians, and artists and curators respectively. Tuesday 4 October 2016, 10:00am-6:00pm. An outline of the three sessions is provided below and full details can be found on the Australian Institute of Art History website. This is a free event but places are…

Art and Music Lecture Series | University of Tasmania | Professor Antonio Baldassarre

UPDATE from the Uniersity of Tasmania “We wish to advise that due to circumstances beyond our control, Prof. Antonio Baldassarre is unable to join us to present his scheduled public lectures at the University of Tasmania. We are currently in negotiations with Prof. Baldassarre for the public lectures to be presented at a later date. We will advise details once known.” The University of Tasmania Conservatorium of Music, in association with the Tasmanian Chapter of the Musicological Society of Australia, presents a series of free lectures by visiting scholar Professor Antonio Baldassarre exploring the interconnections between art and music from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Antonio Baldassarre is Professor and Head of Research and Development of Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, School of Music, and is appointed Guest Professor at the Facultad de Música of the Universidad…

Faculty of Arts Dean’s Lecture | Art and Detection: Investigating Louis Duffy, a Forgotten British Painter of the Second World War – Ted Gott | University of Melbourne

In September 2006 the National Gallery of Victoria acquired at auction a remarkable painting by a virtually unknown artist: Christ Turning Out the Money Lenders, a work attributed by the auction house to a ‘Louis Duffy, 20th century’. This impressively large painting shows sixteen men dressed in c. 1940 business suits, gathered in tense confrontation in a modern-day retelling of the New Testament account of Christ expelling the money changers from the Temple. In Duffy’s composition, the Temple setting has been transmuted into a modern graveyard, and the money changers have morphed into mid-20th-century arms dealers trading munitions on the graves of the dead, the ultimate profit-and-loss indicators of their grim transactions. The subsequent arrival of Duffy’s painting in Melbourne in late 2006 sparked considerable debate about the meaning and significance of the gallery’s new acquisition. Examination of the painting’s…

Lectures | David Solkin, Kate Retford and Martin Myrone on Portraiture | National Gallery of Victoria

A trio of public lectures on portraiture by three leading art historians: David H. Solkin FBA (Courtauld Institute of Art), Kate Retford (Birkbeck, University of London) and Martin Myrone (Tate Britain). These scholars are coming to Melbourne as part of the University of Melbourne’s international conference, Human Kind: Transforming Identity in British and Australian Portraits, 1700-1914 and will present three free lectures at the NGV. Information and bookings for the full Human Kind conference can be found here. David Solkin: English or European? Portraiture and the Politics of National Identity in Early Georgian Britain. Thursday 8 September, 6:00pm. Clemenger Theatre, National Gallery of Victoria (International). The influence of European art created a fundamental shift in British portraiture in the mid eighteenth-century. With some artists championing native tradition and others embracing Continental trends, a struggling national identity was played out in British portraiture.…

Jobs, Funding, Calls for Papers | Art History and Curatorship | 26th August 2016

Jobs Australia Cripps Foundation Chair in Cultural Materials Conservation, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne – deadline 14th September 2016 Gallery Director/Curator, East Gippsland Art Gallery – deadline 16th September 2016 Curator, Bayside City Council – deadline 5th September 2016 Cultural Co-ordinator, Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative – deadline 8th September 2016 Collections Coordinator, UOW Art Collection – deadline 4th September Collections and Display Coordinator, UOW Art Collection – deadline 4th September 2016 International Senior Lecturer/Reader in Museum Studies, University College London – deadline 17th September 2016 Editor, Burlington Magazine – deadline 31st August 2016 Funding Michael Bromberg Fellowship in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum – deadline 21st December 2016 Paul Mellon Centre, Research Support Grants – deadline 30th September 2016 Paul Mellon Centre, Digital Project Grants – deadline 30th September 2016 Casa de Velázquez Residential Fellowships in Madrid -…

EVCS | Angelo Lo Conte, ‘Landscapes & Garlands of Flowers: an example of naturalistic Lombard devotion’.

Angelo Lo Conte Landscapes & Garlands of Flowers: an example of naturalistic Lombard devotion. This paper explores the invention and the development of the garland of flowers in European art, characterizing it as an example of mutual synergy between Italian philosophy and Flemish art. During the second half of the sixteenth century, Christian philosophy was strongly influenced by figures such as Filippo Neri, Agostino Valier and Federico Borromeo, who introduced a second wave of Counter-Reformational thought based on an innovative, optimistic idea of the world and of mankind’s role in it. According to this interpretation, all created things, animate and inanimate, had a positive value. Nature was thus seen as a manifestation of God’s goodness, and contemplation of nature became a way to establish a spiritual connection with God. Federico Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, explored this philosophical approach in the…

News | NGV 2014 Winter Masterpieces Revealed

Italian Masterpieces from Spain coming to Melbourne Mark Shepheard The National Gallery of Victoria today announced the 2014 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition: Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado. This follows hot-on-the-heels of last year’s Portrait of Spain exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane (and also at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) and again reflects the Museo del Prado’s new—and very welcome—initiative to broaden access to its holdings and strengthen its international profile. Another Prado show, then, but completely different from the Queensland/Houston exhibition, and exclusive to Melbourne. The focus here will be on the Italian works in the Prado collection. For much of the period 1500-1800, Spain ruled large sections of the Italian peninsula and was also extremely influential at the Papal court in Rome. The breadth and quality of the Prado’s Italian holdings are…

EVCS | Felicity Harley-McGowan ‘Being Blunt: The art history ‘revolution’ in 1940s London′

  Felicity Harley-McGowan ‘Being Blunt’: The art history ‘revolution’ in 1940s London In 1940, London was home to a thriving network of scholarly activity in the discipline of art history. Three books published in that year have been seen within their own fields of research to epitomise the radical transformation of the discipline in the English-speaking world across the 1930s and 1940s. Concerning aspects of classical, medieval and Renaissance art and intellectual culture, each was published by a leading institution (The Courtauld Institute, British Museum, and The Warburg Institute), and authored by now-celebrated scholars (Anthony Blunt, Ernst Kitzinger, and Jean Seznec). This paper will examine aspects of the innovative pedagogical and research ideas epitomised by the books collectively; and with reference to the current state of the discipline, will reflect on the ways in which each was a catalyst for…

Early Modern Art History sessions at 2013 AAANZ Conference

Subscribers to the EVCS may be interested in following sessions at the forthcoming AAANZ Conference, to be held in Melbourne from the 7th to the 9th of December. The sessions below are particularly relevant to anyone working on early modern European art history. For the full call-for-papers and details on submitting a proposal see http://aaanz.info/aaanz-home/conferences/2013-conference/inter-discipline-2013-call-for-papers/ Art, science and German travellers: inter-disciplinary and transnational exchanges in nineteenth-century Australia and New Zealand Dr Kathleen Davidson  | University of Sydney | k.davidson@ozemail.com.au Dr Ruth Pullin |Fellow, State Library of Victoria 2013 | ruth.pullin@gmail.com German-speaking émigrés and visitors were a significant presence in Australian and New Zealand arts and sciences throughout the nineteenth century. From the embrace of Romanticism to their favorable reception of Darwin’s theory of evolution, German travellers arrived in the Antipodes with a sophisticated understanding of the arts and sciences and…