Tag: 18th Century Art

NGV Appeal to buy François Marie Poncet’s 1782 Vénus

The NGV is asking for donations to support its acquisition of François Marie Poncet’s 1782 ‘Vénus’. Poncet was a French sculptor who was a pupil of the famous Etienne-Maurice Falconet at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris. He left for Rome in 1760 and spent much of his career in Italy. His first fifteen years in Rome seem to have been spent at the fringes of the Académie de France (he had twice entered the Prix de Rome but been unsuccessful), in contact with British, German and Scandinavian Neo-classical artists. In 1771 he was elected to the Accademia degli Arcadi, and on a journey to Paris in 1775, Poncet stopped in Lyon, where he was received (reçu) as a member of the Lyon academy. At Ferney he made a bust of Voltaire, a striking masterpiece of great realism and vitality. In…

Exhibition | Eighteenth-Century Porcelain Sculpture | NGV International

A new exhibition at the NGV will celebrate the gallery’s excellent collection of eighteenth-century porcelain sculpture. The exhibition opens this weekend and will offer a window into eighteenth-century life in Europe. The collection is the largest of its kind in Australia and holds examples of many rare porcelain sculptures, such as one of only three examples of the Chelsea Porcelain Factory’s Pietà (you can read more about the Pietà in an article by NGV curator Matthew Martin here). Eighteenth-Century Porcelain Sculpture will showcase over eighty exquisite examples from famed European factories including the German Meissen, French Sèvres and English Derby factories, of intricately modelled porcelain figures, large-scale sculptural works and celebrity portraits. Whilst today porcelain sculptures are often considered ‘decorative’ items, in the eighteenth century many of the finest artists of the time were drawn to the novel medium. The exhibition will…

Lecture | Scorn, Greed, Malevolence & Mischief: Goya’s graphic expression of emotions – Deanna Petherbridge | University of Melbourne

This presentation will examine the consummate skill with which Goya represents emotions in his late private albums and some of the print series associated with these drawings. From 1795-6 Goya borrows the figure of the bruja or witch as an historically subversive topos for portraying his disgust with a corrupt clergy, monarchy and cruel social order. As the proportions of his figures change in the album drawings so his ability to suggest subtlety of facial and bodily emotions in his brush and pen work deepens. Language also becomes more intense for Goya, isolated by his total deafness, and the texts appended to drawings and prints are variably metaphoric, playing with language/visual puns or seeming blocks to clarity of meaning. Like his drawings the titles become sparer but more esoteric, especially in his late self-imposed exile to Bordeux. The relationship between…

Symposium and Concert | Goya and Spanish Music | NGV and VCAM

The Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and National Gallery of Victoria are delighted to host a program of specialist talks and music performance, exploring music in the time of Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, and the impact of his art on the emergence of Hispanic musical modernity in the early twentieth century. Symposium: Goya and Spanish Music (9.30am – 2.45pm) Speakers: Convened by Michael Christoforidis the speakers include distinguished Spanish scholars Francesc Cortes* (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Miguel Ángel Marín (Universidad de La Rioja), Luisa Morales (FIMTE), and local experts from the University of Melbourne and the NGV, including Michael Christoforidis, David Irving, Liz Kertesz, Geraldine Power, and Yolanda Acker. Download the full program here (pdf) Tickets: Free, no booking required Venue: Clemenger BBDO Auditorium Ground level, NGV International 180 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne NB entry via Groups entrance off Arts Centre…

Lecture | The Artist as Collector: Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Collection of Art | Donato Esposito

Dr Donato Esposito will present a lecture on Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the first and most famous President of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, focussing upon his activities as a collector of art. Dr Donato Esposito was a curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, London (1999-2004). He co-curated the exhibition “Sir Joshua Reynolds: the acquisition of genius” at Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery in 2009. He was recently an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He is currently working on a monograph on Reynolds as an art collector. Date: Wednesday 29th July, 6:30pm Venue: theatre D, Old Arts Building, University of Melbourne Parkville Website: https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/5480-the-artist-as-collector-sir-joshua-reynolds-and-his-collection All Welcome. Free to attend.  

News | NGV winter exhibition ‘Masterpieces from The Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great’

The NGV has announced this year’s Melbourne Winter Masterpiece exhibition will be ‘Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great’. From one great empire to another – last year we took in the Royal Collection of the Hapsburg’s of Spain in ‘Italian Masterieces from the Prado‘, this winter we look to Russia and the  collection of Catherine the Great. The Hermitage holds one of the most important collections of European Art and one of the largest collections of art anywhere in the world. This exhibition will highlight the collection as it was drawn together by Catherine the Great. She founded the Hermitage in 1764, but she had begun to collect pictures from the moment she ascended to the throne in 1762. The works coming out for this exhibition range in date from artists who would have been ‘old…

Exhibition and Talks | Opening weekend of A Golden of China: Qianlong Emperor 1736-1795 | NGV International

The exhibition A Golden of China: Qianlong Emperor 1736-1795 opens today at the NGV International. The exhibition draws on the collections of the Beijing’s Palace Museum in the Forbidden City to tell the story of the great eighteenth-century Qianlong Emperor who ruled China for almost sixty years. He was the fourth emperor of the Qing dynasty and the longest living emperor in Chinese history. The Qianlong Emperor’s long 60-year reign (1736–1795) was a particularly fascinating time in China’s history. Under his rule, China was the wealthiest and most populous nation in the world. Qianlong’s ability to preserve and foster his Manchu warrior-huntsman traditions whilst adopting the Confucian principles of political and cultural leadership, resulted in the successful governing of 150 million Chinese people. It was his ability to adopt Chinese ways, yet honour his Manchu traditions that made him one of the most successful emperors of the Qing dynasty. The Qianlong Emperor studied Chinese…

Lecture | The Rococo Erotics of Disguise and Innocence: Revisiting the issue of viewing pleasure in the ancien régime | Patricia Simons

The erotic pleasure of rococo art is usually considered frivolous and feminine, but what if the seeming superficiality and insincerity did have emotive impact? By considering images of playful babes and mythological nymphs, this lecture demonstrates that the masquerade of insignificance enabled the true mask, the nonchalant disguise of innocence, which nevertheless luxuriated in sensuality. Patricia Simons’ scholarly interests include the art of Renaissance Europe (primarily Italy, France and the Netherlands) with a special focus on the representation of gender and sexuality and interdisciplinary research on materiality, visuality and material culture. Her work, published in anthologies and peer-review journals like Art History, Renaissance Quarterly, and Renaissance Studies, has investigated such issues as portraiture as a mode of fictive representation, medical discourse in relation to visual culture, the representation and reception of homoeroticism, and metaphors both visual and textual (literary or “popular”). It is…

Reminder | ‘Ideas and Enlightenment’ David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies | 10-12 December, Sydney

Online registration closes soon for the David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies XV. 10-12 December 2014 | The University of Sydney | Sydney, Australia The Sydney Intellectual History Network and ‘Putting Periodisation to Use’ Research Group at the University of Sydney invite you to the Fifteenth David Nichol Smith Seminar (DNS), with the theme ‘Ideas and Enlightenment’. Inaugurated and supported by the National Library of Australia, the DNS conference is the leading forum for eighteenth-century studies in Australasia. It brings together scholars from across the region and internationally who work on the long eighteenth century in a range of disciplines, including history, literature, art and architectural history, philosophy, the history of science, musicology, anthropology, archaeology and studies of material culture. Keynote speakers Full details of each keynote here – individual registration for each keynote is available. John Dixon Hunt…

Sydney Event | Jennifer Ferng on Jean-Jacques Lequeu’s Maison gothique (1777-1814)

Sensuality and the Subterranean: Jean-Jacques Lequeu’s Maison gothique (1777-1814) during the late Enlightenment Dr Jennifer Ferng, Lecturer Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning As one of the French utopian designers of the late Enlightenment, Lequeu is regarded by many architectural historians as having an enigmatic inventory of unbuilt work. He envisioned Grecian-Egyptian temples, Masonic grottoes, and neoclassical tombs and civic monuments. Enhanced by his training as a draughtsman, his studies of human anatomy verged on the edge of explicit prurience. This lecture surveys some of his fanciful imagery in relation to the intellectual discourses surrounding the subterranean, focusing on how myth and occult knowledge came to define his ideas of architecture and the body.Dr Jennifer Ferng is Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Sydney. She received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and serves as co-editor of Architectural Theory…

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…

Exhibition Review | Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court | Katrina Grant

Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado Reviewed by Katrina Grant The exhibition runs until until 31st August 2014 at the NGV International, St Kilda Rd. This exhibition tells two stories. The first is the story of Italian art from Raphael to Tiepolo and the second is the story of Spanish engagement with Italian art over this period. The exhibition highlights the close artistic relationship between Italy and Spain in the Early Modern period. It includes paintings that were directly commissioned by the Spanish Royal family from such artists as Titian, as well as works collected a century or more after they were painted, such as the Holy Family by Raphael. There are also works by artists who travelled to Spain to undertake commissions in various royal residences. And, of course, there are paintings by a number of…

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,…

Workshops | Enlightenment Cosmopolitanisms and Sensibilities and Cosmopolitan Moments: Instances of Exchange in the Long Eighteenth Century Emerging Scholar Workshop | Sydney

Two workshops on ideas of cosmopolitanism June 11-12 in Sydney. Enlightenment Cosmopolitanisms and Sensibilities The character of practiced cosmopolitanism during the Enlightenment often appears to amount to little more than an extension of early modern courtly internationalism infused with a new language of ideas. Further investigation reveals the desire on the part of Enlightenment cosmopolites to open borders in the name of economic, political, intellectual and artistic progress. This workshop explores cosmopolitanism in practice during the long eighteenth century in Europe and, through circulation, beyond its borders. It seeks out lived experiences of cosmopolitanism in the evidence of visual, social and textual expressions, and then asks how to interrogate this evidence. What were the opportunities through which border crossings became fixed in the minds of participants and observers? How was Enlightenment cosmopolitanism in practice inflected with different forms of sensibility?…

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…