Tag: 19th century art

Exhibition | Medieval Moderns: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood | National Gallery of Victoria

An exhibition, which opens this weekend at the NGV International, will focus on the NGV’s impressive collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. Opening weekend talks On Sunday 12th April there will be two free introductory talks to the new exhibition 2pm Explore the role of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, their place in the development of the illustrated book and their profound influence on later generations of artists with International Art Curator, Laurie Benson. Speaker Laurie Benson, Curator, International Art 3pm Capturing a sitter’s likeness was not central to the portraits by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Join Emily Wubben, University of Melbourne, as she explores Burne-Jones’ portrait of Baronne Madeleine Deslandes and provides fresh insights into the sitter. Speaker Emily Wubben, Scholar, University of Melbourne Free Entry. Bookings not required. Meet in exhibition space. More details here. About the Exhibition In 1848…

Symposium | The Legacy of Hugh Ramsay | National Gallery of Australia

Hugh Ramsay’s life was short but his impact endures. In celebration of the endowment of a chair in Australian art history at the University of Melbourne in his name, by his great niece Patricia Fullerton, the Australian Institute of Art History together with the National Gallery of Australia present this one day symposium reassessing his legacies. Date: Monday 30th March 2015, 9:00am – 5.00 pm Venue: James O Fairfax Theatre Free to attend but bookings are essential. Register here. Program 9.45 – 11.00am SESSION ONE Hugh Ramsay and philanthropy Gerard Vaughan, Director, National Gallery of Australia The life of Hugh Ramsay Patricia Fullerton  Hugh Ramsay in an Australian Context Mary Eagle 11.30am – 12.30pm SESSION TWO Hugh Ramsay and George Lambert Anna Gray The portraiture of Hugh Ramsay Angus Trumble 2.00 – 3.00pm SESSION THREE Conservation of Ramsay’s paintings at the NGV Michael Varcoe-Cocks Ramsay’s paintings…

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

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 her character. Capturing a sitter’s likeness was not central to the portraits by Burne-Jones, in which he depicted his own perception of beauty. Further, the deliberate inclusion of the background foliage and the crystal globe resting in the sitter’s delicately entwined fingers suggests a symbolic dimension to the painting’s interpretation.…

Symposium | Patronage, poetry and the art of William Blake

  A symposium exploring William Blake’s poetry, his acclaimed Divine Comedy watercolours and John Linnell’s patronage of the artist. Speakers Professor Gerard Vaughan, The University of Melbourne; Professor Peter Otto, The University of Melbourne; and Associate Professor Jennifer Jones-O’Neill, Federation University (formerly University of Ballarat) Date: Saturday 23rd AUgust, 2pm Venue:NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Ground Level, Clemenger BBDO Auditorium Ticketing Information: Cost $25 A / $20 M / $22 C, Bookings essential Information & bookings: Ph +61 3 8662 1555, 10am-5pm daily, Booking code P1480

Exhibition Review | Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia | David Hansen

  This is a ‘pre-print’ version of a review to be published by the University of Hawai’i Press in The Contemporary Pacific (vol. 17 no.1) in early 2015. Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia is on at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra from 23 May – 3 August 2020 As you pass between the split-text panels at the entrance to Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia, your first encounter is with two semi-abstract totemic figures from a ritual sanctuary or marae, carved by contemporary Cook Island artist Eruera Nia. Embedded in a low, square, grey plinth, these silver-weathered woodenarabesques or parentheses are at once descriptive and abstract, hieratic and dynamic, leaping up into vision and consciousness in a manner comparable to that of the Gallery’s modernist masterpiece, Constantin Brancusi’s Birds in Space. Then, as you turn right to enter the exhibition proper, you…

Study Day | A Day of Dante and William Blake | NGV International

William Blake illustration 'Dante running from Three Beasts'

Study Day: A Day of Dante Delve into Dante’s Divine Comedy and William Blake’s acclaimed series of watercolours inspired by the text. The NGV owns thirty-six of the 102 watercolours Blake executed in the 1820s to illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy, which are regarded as among the artist’s finest and most impressive creations. The watercolours are currently on display at the NGV (along with other works by Blake) in the NGVs William Blake exhibition.  Due to the material’s light sensitivity, these works are only infrequently exhibited and the exhibition provides the rare opportunity to see the Gallery’s complete holdings of Blake’s work which span his full career, from his earliest to his latest years. Explore Blake and the Divine Comedy with Assoc Prof Stephen Kolsky, The University of Melbourne, Dr William Johnston, Visiting Lecturer, Yarra Theological Union, MCD University of Divinity and…

Exhibition Review | Genius and Ambition. The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1768–1918 | David R. Marshall

Genius and Ambition. The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1768–1918 David R. Marshall   At the Bendigo Art Gallery 2 March–9 June 2014. (Closes 9 June; an exhibition of antique sculpture from the British Museum follows on 2 August.) The regional galleries have some interesting exhibitions on at the moment. At the Ballarat Art Gallery is Auld Lang Syne while at Bendigo, with only a few days to run, is Genius and Ambition, which consists largely of works from the Royal Academy, London and is an exhibition generated by Bendigo and the only Australian venue. Following the success of its fashion shows, especially Grace Kelly, the Bendigo Gallery has stimulated an arts-led tourism industry serving day-trippers from Melbourne who come by car, train or chartered bus. Bendigo has a lot of offer in this respect. Its architectural charms are considerable,…

Lecture | The Ruination of Everything: Joseph Pennell, America and Illustration before the Great War – Eric Segal | Sydney University

The Ruination of Everything: Joseph Pennell, America and Illustration before the Great War Eric Segal The Power Institute with Sydney Ideas is proud to present a talk by Eric Segal, of the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida. Segal’s presentation will focus on the artist Joseph Pennell (U.S.A. 1857-1926). Pennell worked throughout Europe and England illustrating Old World cities and landscapes, whist at the same time rendering great American works of architecture and engineering. His dedication to a shabby Europe of the past and a gleaming New-World modernity, reflected contradictions and disappointments in his chauvinistic concerns about the faltering course of American cultural progress. The talk will explore how Pennell tied together thinking about the preservation of art, encroaching immigration and “wonders” of engineering, in an untidy package that led to complex and sometimes explosive…

Public Lectures | Melissa Hyde and Richard Taws | Sydney Intellectual History Network

Two lectures on eighteenth and nineteenth-century French art history in Sydney in June. Painted Women in the Age of Madame de Pompadour | Melissa Hyde In this lecture, Prof Melissa Hyde considers the role that cosmetics played in the court politics and social identities of women at the court of Versailles. Focusing largely on portraits of the most famous mistresses of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, Hyde will discuss ‘making up’ the face as a symbolic practice. The lecture also considers the historical irony and significance of Madame Du Barry’s eventual refusal of rouge. For the artist, François-Hubert Drouais and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who portrayed Pompadour, Du Barry and Marie-Antoinette after them, the problem of depicting an unpainted, natural face through inherently artificial painterly means presented something of a paradox. The lecture also looks at how artists…

Lecture | William Blake in the 21st century – Peter Otto | NGV International

William Blake illustration 'Dante running from Three Beasts'

Keynote Lecture: William Blake in the 21st century        This lecture introduces Blake as artist, poet, and prophet by mapping his attempts radically to transform traditional understandings of the book, from the Songs of Innocence (1789) to the Laocoön engraving (c.1815). The interactive, open-ended, multi-media forms he created are a radical response to the modern, commercial culture of Romantic-era London; yet, as I will suggest, these same forms also seem at home in the early 21st century, where they gesture towards ideals often promised but rarely realised in our now digitally connected world. Speaker Prof Peter Otto, The University of Melbourne                                                             Date: Saturday 5th April, 2pm Venue Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, Ground Level Free. More details here. There will also be two ‘Curator’s Perspective’  floor talks in the exhibition space by Cathy Leahy, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at 12:30pm and 3:30pm on Saturday 5th April. About the…

Exhibition Review | ‘America: Painting a Nation’. Reviewed by Diane Kirkby.

America: Painting a Nation Diane Kirkby  America: Painting a Nation is at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 8th November 2013 – 9th February 2014. At a time when historians are increasingly displacing nation-building as the purpose for knowing the past, it could seem a retrograde step to make this the foundation principle through which to showcase important works of art. Nevertheless, an exhibition organised around the concept of Painting a Nation immediately provokes questions about meaning and definitions that may not have simple answers. Approaching the exhibition as a historian of the United States and its art, I was mindful of the question former Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes asked: ‘What can you learn about America by looking at its art?’ The answer found here is, unfortunately, nothing of depth. It is valuable to have these questions prompted:…

Symposium | Art Gallery of NSW – Revolutionary ideas Perspectives on the building of an American nation

Symposium: Revolutionary ideas Perspectives on the building of an American nation This symposium considers the role of the visual arts and other forms of cultural expression in building an idea of nationhood in America from its foundation as a colony through the beginning of the 20th century. It addresses the aims of portraiture, the meanings of landscape, the rise of genre subjects and the significance of garden projects in the contexts of relationships with Britain, claims of independence, pivotal wars and moments of dramatic social change. Presented in conjunction with the Sydney Intellectual History Network at the University of Sydney Date: Saturday 16 November 2013, 10.30am Venue: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Bookings: $65 non-member/ $50 member/ $30 full-time student/ 02 9225 1878 or via the website. Website: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/calendar/revolutionary-ideas/ Program 10.30am Registration and morning tea, Domain Theatre foyer 11am…

Exhibition Review | ‘Exposing Thomas Clark: a colonial artist in Western Victoria’. Reviewed by David Hansen.

Exposing Thomas Clark: a colonial artist in Western Victoria David Hansen The exhibition runs at Hamilton Art Gallery 21 September – 17 November 2020 At a small but intensely stimulating symposium hosted by the University of Melbourne in November last year, a variety of curators, scholars and writers met to share experiences, insights and ambitions relating to exhibitions of Australian colonial art. Coffee breaks and plenary sessions were particularly interesting in articulating outstanding desiderata for monographic shows: Mary Morton Allport, Thomas Baines, Ludwig Becker, Louis Buvelot, J. H. Carse, Augustus Earle, S. T. Gill, Thomas Wainewright … . Nobody mentioned Thomas Clark, because everyone at the conference knew that Danny McOwan was already working on that one. Had been for quite some time, in fact. Well, that long-anticipated exhibition has finally made it onto the newly and smartly plastered, sky-blue…

Exhibition Review | Australia at the Royal Academy of the Arts. Reviewed by Sheridan Palmer

Australia Sheridan Palmer The exhibition is on at the Royal Academy of the Arts from 21 September–8 December 2013. Entering the grand Georgian courtyard of Burlington House, flanked by the Society of Antiquaries, the Linnaean Society and the Society of Geographers, a large banner with Sidney Nolan’s iconic 1946 Ned Kelly greets the visitor at the steps of the Royal Academy. It is a foretaste of things to come; Kelly is seen from the back riding off into a sandy, sparse scrub, shotgun in hand, a lone outlaw in black iron armor. Inside the Royal Academy Shaun Gladwell’s video Approach to Mundi Mundi (1997) is projected onto black walls (Fig. 1). A black leather-clad motor cyclist, a dawn rider with arms out-stretched reminiscent of Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North, rides along double white lines on an outback bitumen road,…

Art and Art History News | September 13th 2013

A round up of recent news from the world of art Katrina Grant A press release from the Australian Academy of the Humanities has cautioned that ‘the Coalition’s proposal to redirect Australian Research Council funds away from projects it deems to be “wasteful” compromises the fundamental principle of funding research based on the criteria of excellence.’ Made last week, pre-election, but, still relevant. A good post-election follow up in the Guardian Australia by Hila Shacher from UWA who writes that “Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to decide what is “relevant” in research any more than they have the right to tell business owners whether they like or dislike their products.” And that “if the waste lies anywhere, it is in the over-bureaucratic and counter-productive sections in ARC grant applications in “which researchers bend over backwards to mollify politicians concerned that somebody, somewhere, might be doing…