Gallery Paintings Research Articles

Is There a Timeless Truth for Good Arrangement of Paintings in Art Galleries and Museums? An Experimental Investigation of the Barnes Collection

The Barnes Foundation is a traditional art collection and it is one of a kind as for the assorted hanging of the paintings. The sophisticated wall compositions by Albert Barnes were created as a tool for art education, and they have not been altered since 1951. Today, we are interested whether Barnes’ taste withstood the test of time. We asked participants in an online study to create their own hangings on five of the original gallery walls, and also tested whether beholders are able to identify a missing painting from a selection of suitable alternatives. Results show that Barnes’ motifs are reproduced by a significant number of participants and that experts produce more Barnes-like displays than naive participants. We conclude that Albert Barnes based his choices at least to some degree on universally valid visual aspects that are still understood today, especially by people trained in the visual domain.

Benefits of Wayang Kamasan Klungkung Bali in Improving Dignified Cultural Character and Sustainability of International Tourism

So great is the importance of the meaning of Kamasan paintings as previous writers have explored the uniqueness and attractiveness of kamasan klungkung paintings. Wayang art is very full of meanings as in the study of writing: The Role of Painting as a Critical Media in the Industrial Revolution Era (Gusti Agung Widia Widyasari), namely painting is not a display item but as an intermediary for imformation and criticism, then the study unravels the meaning of Kamasan puppet painting in Puri Klungkung (Tzabit Azimer Ahmad) which peels Kamasan paintings telling books such as Adiparwa, Tantri, Sutasoma, and the lives of the Gods.Then the teachings of Hinduism as inspiration for the creation of traditional Balinese painting works (Wayan Agus Gunada). Painting is part of the art of Kamasan puppet art has unique cash characteristics such as natural forms, folklore, mythology and Hindhu religious teachings, which are manifested in the forms of symbols in it that are thick with spiritual value. Painting is not only as a display material but also as a material for forming human characters. Because in puppets there are good teachings and bad teachings. In puppets there are ways of behaving, ways of thinking, ways of dealing with life are all contained in puppet stories. Positive characters bring peace while negative characters bring misery. For example, Ravana, a puppet character who has a great lust that cannot hold back his ego, then makes all people miserable, Korawa who loba makes the entire palace miserable. Likewise, the wise character of Rama, the wise admiral character can be used as an example in behaving in everyday life. The reason for this research is to preserve traditional art assets as one of the wealth of the Indonesian nation (Bali). To introduce Indonesia in international especially tourism. While the uniqueness of painting is: 1 as the meaning of life / philosophical learning. 2 Wayang paintings have survived until now not extinct 3, puppet paintings as an economic breakthrough of the community, 4 Puppet paintings of ancestral assets, 5 Wayang paintings as friends of tourism to come to Indonesia.Almost all corners in the Sangging Kamasan Klungkung Bali banjar, there are puppet painting galleries that are ready to welcome tourisms visiting Indonesia, especially Bali. Great services of classical puppet painting or Balinese Traditional Paintings as a loyal friend of tourism, so that Indonesia can get acquainted with international countries because of the contribution of this classic puppet painting service (Balinese Traditional Paintings)

Truth and Denial: Intertextual Compositions and Visual Transformations in the ‘Caravaggisti’ Gallery Paintings

In the seventeenth century, religious paintings entered Roman private galleries transforming into a movable repertory of motifs apt for re-elaboration through intertextual relationships with other artistic genres. The re-location and unorthodox arrangement of sacred paintings in the stanze dei quadri has been generally understood as a process resulting in their commodification. However, the creation of biblical representations specifically intended for the Galleria suggests that subject matter still retained an important function, although a radically different one. New Testament narratives now offered artists new opportunities to reinvent painting. The so-called Caravaggisti distinguished themselves for exploring these newly-opened paths by conflating sacred and profane subjects in their gallery paintings - such as those representing the Denial of St. Peter. By examining some of the numerous representations of this biblical narrative set in seventeenth-century Roman taverns, this article explores the overlooked visual and theoretical conception behind the creation of these complex images produced by a generation of painters that, so far, has been overshadowed by Caravaggio. The concept of denial will be pivotal to the re-assessment of the function of religious representations created for the Roman Galleria. The exploration of such representations, in turn, will be crucial for opening up widespread, yet still under-investigated concepts that underlie the making of what is now called Caravaggisti - particularly truth in painting, mimesis and the process of replication that still binds their works with the uncontested notion of Caravaggio as the original.

A Study of the Art of Painting in Kabul

Today, in most countries, painting has made great progress, along with science and technology. Recently, relative attention have been paid in the scientific, cultural, and social fields in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, but little progress in the field of painting. In this research, an attempt was made to study the art of painting in Kabul, which its result would be important for those who are interested in the art of painting.Both library and field research methods have been used for collecting data. In the background section, some authoritative books, articles, and magazines have been used. In the field research method, some observations and interviews were used to collect data. The aim of the study was to study the art of painting in Kabul from the perspective of experts, professors of the Kabul College of Fine Arts, and directors of painting galleries in Kabul. It is summarized as follows:Painting in Kabul is relatively stagnant due to insecurity, war, religious prejudice, the irresponsibility of the Ministry of Information and Culture, and the lack of public awareness. Only from a specialist, slight changes can be seen in the works of painters. These changes have taken place in the field of painting since 2002, due to the movement of artists abroad, and have opened up new perspectives. Some of the painters’ works represent their efforts in search of having a unique and new method. However, most of the paintings are portraying the same method and repetitive subjects as in the past.

Мовний образ Києва в текстах І. С. Нечуя-Левицького

The article attempts to outline the linguistic image of Kyiv in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries in the artistic texts of I. S. Nechui-Levytskyi. Analyzing a particular word Kyiv, as well as the attributive phrase St. Kyiv, the old great Kyiv, the old city in the texts under the analysis, we revealed the expansion of the artistic-figurative paradigm of the linguistic image.
 In the created linguistic portrait of the city, the lexical-associative connections used for the conceptualization of the general concept of "beauty" in the expression Kyiv-beauty city is semantically significant. The writer uses this expression when it is necessary to convey the positive impressions of the description of the urban space. Fascinated by the beauty of the evening Kyiv landscape, I. S. Nechui-Levytskyi writes about «a huge round rotunda temple», «a temple rich in paints and colors of nature», «a world gallery of paintings by a weird artists», «a gallery of paintings and views». These individual poetic associations fill the writer's artistic prose style with hues of celebration and exaltation.
 The structure of the linguistic image of city plays a significant role in the landscape. Expanded landscapes described by I. S. Nechuy-Levytsky, as a rule, intensify the trivial syntactic connection, which combines the names of urban realities such as monasteries, churches, baths, crosses, monuments and names of spatial notions of alley and mountains into a holistic contemplative picture.
 In the studied works, the specific verbal images that have rich factual content, are the key and conceptual issues for the creation of the language image of Kyiv. These are architectural and sacral buildings: the monument to Prince Volodymyr, the St. Andrew's Cathedral, the Lavra, the Sofia, the Desyatinna and others.
 It has been found out that in the descriptions of Kyiv there are often comparisons with golden bouquets, as well as epithetic phrases used with a bunch of golden flowers (about church baths), golden bouquets of the baths and crosses. The writer sees the entire space around through the prism of unearthly beauty, imposes the net of something fantastic and unreal on the picture of nature.
 
 Key words: linguistic identity of I.S. Nechuyi-Levytskyi, creative heritage of the writer, linguistic image, landscape, history of the Ukrainian literary language.
 
 References
 Bybyk, Svitlana. ““Ta nich, yak Bozhyi rai” (linhvopoetyka peizazhotvorennia u tvori Ivana Nechuia-Levytskoho “Nich nad Dniprom”)”. Kultura slova, iss. 79, 2013, pp. 45–54.
 Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Hermenevtyka i poetyka. Kyiv: Yunivers, 2001.
 Yermolenko, Svitlana. Narysy z ukrainskoi slovesnosti (Stylistyka ta kultura movy). Kyiv: Dovira, 1999.
 Yermolenko, Svitlana. “Oslovlenyi ukrainskyi peizazh i portret u tvorakh I. Nechuia-Levytskoho”. Movno-estetychni znaky ukrainskoi kultury. Kyiv, 2009, pp. 119–30.
 Mandryka, Mykola. «Vin uvichnyv staryi Kyiv». Ukraina, no 45, 1970, p. 12.
 Mialkovska, Liudmyla. “Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyj – Cultural, Etnographer, Writer”. Ukrainska mova, no 1, 2019, pp. 138–50.
 Mialkovska, Liudmyla. «Misto u khudozhnomu prostori I. Nechuia-Levytskoho». Mova i kultura, iss. 14, 2011, pp. 330–6.
 Nechui-Levytskyi, Ivan. Zibrannia tvoriv. 10 vols. Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1965–1967.
 Slovnyk ukrainskoi movy, edited by I. K. Bilodid. 11 vols. Kyiv: Naukova dumka, 1970–1980.
 Tarnavskyi, Maksym. Nechuvanyi Nechui. Realizm v ukrainskii literaturi. Kyiv: Laurus, 2018.
 Yavorska, Halyna. «Do problemy formuvannia yevropeiskoi identychnosti v Ukraini». Naukovi zapysky Instytutu politychnykh i etnonatsionalnykh doslidzhen im. I. F. Kurasa NAN Ukrainy, iss. 42, 2008, pp. 269–77.

Sebuah Perancangan Sistem Informasi Pemasaran dan Penjualan Lukisan pada Polesan Art Galeri

Abstract— This research was conducted to design a web-based painting sales information system design in an art gallery. The research method used in this study uses descriptive methods, namely by explaining the phenomena that occur from data collected through observation and interviews. And using a structured approach method and for system development using the waterfall method. The results of this study are website-based painting sales application designs in art galleries. Currently the painting marketing process is still limited to certain areas, which makes it difficult to increase the sales volume of paintings when tourists visit a little, and consumers are required to come directly to the gallery to make transactions so consumers who don't have time to buy paintings in art galleries. Thus to improve the marketing process and make it easier for consumers to buy paintings anytime and anywhere, then design web-based marketing and sales information systems. The design of this marketing and sales information system aims to improve marketing by disseminating information about products to be sold and providing services to consumers to make purchases that can be done anywhere and ultimately will provide maximum service which will ultimately increase revenue from art galleries. polished.

The Palazzo Foscarini in Venice and the Celebration Honoring the Dukes of Modena (1749) in a Getty Research Institute Manuscript

The Palazzo Foscarini in Venice and the Celebration Honoring the Dukes of Modena (1749) in a Getty Research Institute Manuscript

Reconstructing Histories: Analyzing Exhibition Photographs with Computational Methods

Displays of art in public or private spaces have long been of interest to curators, gallerists, artists and art historians. The emergence of gallery paintings at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the photographic documentation of (modern) exhibitions testify to that. Taken as factual documents, these images are not only representative of social status, wealth or the museum’s thematic focus, but also contain information about artistic relations and exhibition practices. Digitization efforts of previous years have made these documents, including photographs, catalogs or press releases, available to public audiences and scholars. While a manual analysis has proved to be insufficient, because of the sheer number of available data, computational approaches and tools allowed for a greater access. The following article describes how digital images of exhibitions, as released by the New York Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 2016, are studied with a retrieval system to analyze in which artistic contexts selected artworks were presented in exhibits.

A Tribute to Dr. Mariano B. Caparas

It is very difficult to write about a man who is bigger than life. And that is Dr Mariano B. Caparas.
 Professor and former Chairman, Department of Otolaryngology, University of the Philippines- Philippine General Hospital
 
 A native of Balagtas, Bulacan, his first love was to be an artist (a painter) but his parents dissuaded him from doing so and asked him to take up medicine instead. He entered the UP College of Medicine and graduated in 1958. He went on to train in the then Department of EENT in UP-PGH. Two years in training, Ophthalmology separated from Otolaryngology. He chose Otolaryngology, thus graduating in 1961. He went on to do further training in Princess Margaret Hospital in Canada specializing in maxillofacial prosthesis.
 My first encounter with Dr. Caparas was when we had an immersion program in Bay, Laguna, as a first year student in UPCM. He was one of our facilitators who stayed with us in the barrio for one week. He taught us how to be true and caring physicians and at the same time, instilling in us the true spirit of nationalism.
 
 Dr. Cap, as he is fondly called was the fiery consultant with a lot of vision, patriotism, and a very strong desire to improve Otorhinolaryngology- Head and Neck Service in the country. He was the chairman from 1978-1987 in the Dept of ORL, UP-PGH, the early part of his term was a time of unrest and national strife. We had limited resources then, so he taught us to be self- reliant. He started the development of instruments, from scraps or rundown machines that were practical and easy to use, like suction dissectors, headlights, automyringotomy set and otoscopess. This started the era of innovation in the department.
 
 He was a co-founder of the Asean Otorhinolaryngological Head & Neck Federation in 1980. It was organized to present and discuss common ORL problems in our region. He always believed in ASEAN first.
 As a teacher, he would not just give you facts but rather teach you the hows and whys of things. He challenges you to think out of the box. As a surgeon, he was highly skilled and did a lot of innovative techniques. We had flaps which was fondly called Cap flaps. He was bold enough to do unconventional techniques.
 
 He is a true nationalist. During the Marcos era, he led us to fight for freedom. He was at the forefront in the fight for corruption, imperialism and militarism. He was one of the primemovers of the then Doctors for Cory. He risks his life for democracy.
 Apart from his being a nationalist and a great doctor, he was also an artist.
 He is a great painter. We marvel at how he would up to the board and draw the anatomy of the ear or the neck. He had a gallery of paintings which he gave out to his friends and residents.
 On the lighter side, he was an avid golfer. He thought us to learn the sports. When he was getting old and weak, golf kept him going.
 
 When he got sick, 2 years ago of prostate cancer, he didn’t want any further treatment but we, his ORL family convinced him to fight the big C. He agreed and we supported him on this (We thank all who helped him).
 We will miss you Dr. Caparas. But I know that you live in each one of us you trained. You have touch the lives of so many Filipinos. Your legacy will live on. Goodbye sir and may you rest in peace.

Культурные и товарные бренды Москвы: интегрированный подход Или что общего у фабрики «Красный Октябрь» (Эйнемъ) и Третьяковской галереи.

There is justif ed the necessity of f nding new solutions in the f eld of ef cient use of urban historical and cultural space in terms of sightseeing and tourism on the basis of a variety of compounds of urban brands including landscape features of the landscape, historical and cultural monuments, as well as the well-known product brands. Based on a particular example of «Red October» («Einem») factory product brand and cultural brands of the Tretyakov Gallery (paintings of I. Shishkin «Morning in a Pine Forest»), the author demonstrates the possibility of creative integration of brands into a single storyline and of ers a new type of tour product — «branded tour.»

Fallax Imago: Ovid's Narcissus and the seduction of mimesis in Roman wall painting

In the late first century CE, the myth of Narcissus became one of the most frequently represented subjects in Roman wall painting. The well-known, often reproduced images from the House of Octavius...

Warsztat malarski cyklu obrazów emporowych z kościoła pod wezwaniem św. Jana w Gdańsku

The article presents issues concerning the techniques used by the painting workshop commissioned to make a cycle of paintings (dating 1666) which decorate the choir gallery in St John’s Church in Gdańsk. The technical specification of the paintings as well as the identification of the painting materials were carried out by means of mutually supplementary modern physical methods, including microscopic, chemical and instrumental examinations. The analyses of the technology and painting techniques of the paintings in question show that they came from a local guild workshop. The evident differences in the artistic level indicate that the paintings were made by several craftsmen, which was typical of big painting workshops of the time. The workshop used a variety of techniques characteristic of 17th – century painting, such as the use of linen painting basis, oil binder, dark red priming ground, as well as the use of formers in the process of creating a painting. (In this particular case, the inspiration came from the drawings by Matthew Meriana the Older, to be found in a Lutheran Bible printed in Strasburg in 1630 by the printing house of Lazarus Zetzner.) The workshop used special mixtures of paints for individual parts of a painting, together with grey underpainting layer and multi-layer modelling. It has been found that, with respect to both the content and the painting techniques, the choir gallery paintings from St John’s Church in Gdańsk manifest features typical of the guild painting of the northern school of the second half of the seventeenth century.

Determination of the Annual Light Exposure Received by Two-Dimensional Museum Objects Displayed on Vertical Surfaces using Photometric Measurements

Accurate estimates of cumulative light exposure are an important prerequisite for the assessment and limitation of photochemical damage to museum objects on display The task is complicated because spotlights used to highlight particular features illuminate objects' surfaces unevenly and also because indirect light sources, for example diffuse sunlight within exhibition spaces, result in changing total illumination levels throughout the day and seasonally. This paper presents a methodology for determining the annual light exposure of 2-D objects by combining the results of continuous light readings adjacent to the object and one-off point measurements over its illuminated surface, a method that allows a more accurate estimate of total exposure than either monitoring method alone. Two pieces of information are required to calculate Cumulative exposure: first, the ratio of direct to indirect lighting, which is arrived at by quantifying the amount of visible light falling on the object relative to that received by its surroundings; and, second, the diurnal and seasonal variation in illuminance of indirect light sources, particularly diffuse daylight. Two paintings in different galleries exposed to different ratios of diffuse sunlight to direct artificial light – one low and the other high – were used to refine and test the method.

'Een doek van geene beteekenis' De nachtelijke samenzwering van Claudius Civilis in het Schakerbos van Govert Flinck en Jürgen Ovens technisch onderzocht

'Een doek van geene beteekenis' De nachtelijke samenzwering van Claudius Civilis in het Schakerbos van Govert Flinck en Jürgen Ovens technisch onderzocht

The Hand of the Artist: Reflections on the Notion of Technê in some Antwerp Gallery Paintings by Frans II Francken and his Circle

This paper explores and highlights the value given to craftsmanship or technê in the community of liefhebbers and artists associated with the pictures of collections genre. Taking as its case study a group of gallery interiors by the probable inventor and leading light of the genre, Frans II Francken, it places pictures of collections within the reform of attitudes towards manual dexterity and the mechanical arts that took place in the Early Modern period. Antwerp gallery interiors exemplify the intellectual metamorphosis of the hand, urging us to see in them an appeal both to the senses and to the intellect, which are fused together by the skilled artist’s technical facility.

Portraying technology in gallery paintings

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the FPU Grant Programme and the Project HUM2007‐63267 from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the Fundación Esquerdo and the Residencia de Estudiantes of Madrid. Notes 1. Jones and Galison, Picturing Science; Lefèvre, Renn, and Schoepflin, Power of Images. 2. Speth‐Holterhoff, Les peintres Flamands; Filipczak, Picturing Art. 3. Hill, ‘Scientific instruments.’ 4. Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities; Olmi, L'Inventario; Grote, Macrocosmos in Microcosmo; Lugli, Naturalia et Mirabilia; Evans and Marr, Curiosity and Wonder. 5. Filipczak, Picturing Art. 6. Las Ciencias y las Artes. 93 × 114 cm. Oil on panel. Catalogue no. 1.405. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1297–1301; Díaz Padrón and Royo‐Villanova, David Teniers, 195–201. 7. De Maere and Wabbes, Flemish Painters, vol. 1, 374. 8. In fact, attributions regarding authorship vary according to interpreters. Particularly noteworthy is the similarity with the work entitled The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet (The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore), attributed to Hieronymus Francken II. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1300–1. 9. From the history of science perspective see, for example, Daston, Renn, and Rheinberger, ‘Visions.’ 10. Alpers, Art of Describing; Stafford, Devices of Wonder; Kusukawa and Maclean, Transmitting Knowledge. 11. Burke, Eyewitnessing. 12. Hill, ‘Scientific Instruments.’ 13. Michel, ‘Mouvement perpetuel’; Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile.’ For a thorough and up‐to‐date account on Drebbel, see Keller, ‘Cornelis Drebbel.’ 14. Speth‐Holterhoff, Les peintres Flamands, Figures 11, 12, 21, 25, 32, 39, 42, 49. 15. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ 124–38. 16. Galileo, Opere, vol. XI, no. 652, 655. Rubens, Letters, no. 52, 58 (to Valavez), 60 (to Valavez), 196, 235. 17. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ Figures 1, 2, 3, 4; Marr, ‘Gentille curiosité,’ Figure 8.2. A drawing made by the Bohemian gentleman Heinrich Hiesserle von Chodaw, who attented Drebbel's presentation of the perpetuum mobile to King James I in 1607, is perhaps the one that resembles the painted version most (Drake‐Brockman, Figure 2). 18. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile’, 143–4. This mechanism for perpetual motion has been regarded as a predecessor of the barometer. Michel, ‘First Barometer.’ 19. Many are compiled in Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners, 232–42. 20. Drake‐Brockman, ‘Perpetuum Mobile,’ 137. 21. An interesting exception could be the painting entitled Allegory of Hearing, by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Rubens (Prado Museum, catalogue no. 1.395). One of the instruments on the wall (the second from the left), at the right‐hand side of the composition, seems to feature the distinctive ring‐shaped glass tube filled with liquid. This could be a model of perpetuum mobile rather different to those conventionally depicted. I was persuaded to look for a perpetuum mobile/clock‐like device in this painting after observing a perpetuum mobile in another Allegory of Hearing (Ertz, Breughel the Younger, 350, Figure 184) mentioned in Michel, ‘First Barometer’, 92, n. 7. Vera Keller has also noted this in her work on Drebbel. See Keller, ‘Cornelis Drebbel,’ 268. 22. I thank Simon Schaffer for his suggestions on accumulation and technology. On collecting and collections, Elsner and Cardinal, Cultures of Collecting and Impey and MacGregor, Origins of Museums. 23. Grote, Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. 24. Daston and Park, Wonders, chap. 7. 25. Swan, ‘Ad Vivum.’ 26. Schiebinger and Swan, Colonial Botany, Part IV. 27. Smith and Findlen, Merchants and Marvels; Freedberg, ‘Science, Commerce, and Art.’ 28. Cook, ‘Time's Bodies’; Impey and MacGregor, Origins of Museums. 29. Rubens, Letters, no. 58, 97. 30. DaCosta Kaufmann, Mastery of Nature. 31. In sharp contrast with the allegories of ignorance represented in two paintings, most notably the one that rests on a chair in the center of the composition. Díaz Padrón, Siglo de Rubens, 1298–1300. 32. Daston and Park, Wonders, chap. 7. 33. Brown, Kings and Connoisseurs. 34. Stoichita, Self‐Aware Image.

The Diastolic Rhythm of the Gallery: Copies, Originals, and Reversed Canvases

As part of a larger project on reversed paintings, this paper looks at the powerfully reflexive motif of the reversed painting in paintings of art galleries (hereafter 'gallery paintings') over a period and space that extends from 1620s Antwerp through the post-Revolutionary Louvre to the present. A reversed painting (or 'back') is defined as a painting within a painting that is depicted from behind, of which the most famous example is probably in Diego Vel zquez's Las Meni as (1656). Victor I. Stoichita argued in The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting (1997) that the seventeenth-century 'gallery paintings' made famous by David Teniers were intended to serve as inventories of the collections they represent. In such works, our 'eyes are constantly ricocheting [across the walls of paintings] from one spot to another, unable to stop on any one thing. It is up to the spectator to construct, step by step, a combinatory technique, to establish bridges and correlations.' Although the meaning of such sequences are often obscure to modern interpreters, clues can be found in paintings that are out of sequence and that consequently serve as 'stop signals' in 'the inevitability of a regrouping': 'the one a connoisseur is contemplating, the one not yet hanging on the wall'. Some of these 'stop signals' include backs turned towards us while owners and connoisseurs discuss the fronts that are hidden to us. We see one in the bottom-right corner of the seventeenth-century Cabinet of Rubens, attributed to Willem van Herp. Also within this painting is an unfinished portrait of the then King of Spain, Philip IV, next to a table of painting utensils that remind us of 'the process by which all paintings are produced'. By depicting the unfinished front of the one and the back of the (presumably finished) other painting, the act of creating works in the studio is conflated with the act of appreciating them in the gallery, so as to draw these activities and locations into the same orbit of activity.

The nation's mantelpiece: a history of the National Gallery

Ever since its conception in 1824, the 'much loved friend' in Trafalgar Square has been part of national life to an extent unmatched by any other great museum. Established, housed and maintained directly by their representatives in parliament, the British gallery was always owned by the people. And they exercised their ownership rights in ways that could surprise and confound the Trustees and staff charged with the Gallery's administration: from Victorian working-class matrons enjoying gin-fuelled picnics to the postwar teenagers who made Trafalgar Square their 'snogging shop'. While the site gave the Gallery a ring-side seat on some of the most violent political demonstrations of modern times, its location at the heart of the capital also made it a place of refuge in times of national crisis - and never more so than during World War II, when thousands of Londoners thronged the famous one-picture shows and free concerts organized by Kenneth Clark.Extensive new research reveals the close personal and often highly political interest taken in the Gallery's affairs by the Trustees, who included many well-known figures: from Sir Robert Peel and William Ewart Gladstone, through Curzon and John Maynard Keynes, to Noel Annan and Isaiah Berlin. But its phenomenal success in becoming a national symbol also made the Gallery a tempting target for those seeking political change - from the Suffragette who slashed Velazquez' Rokeby Venus in 1914 to the Birmingham man who stole Goya's Wellington in 1961. first history of the Gallery ever published, The Nation's Mantelpiece traces the development of an institution whose superlative collections often set the pace in art history, but whose dependence on parliamentary funding regularly implicated it in debates surrounding education, social cohesion and national heritage. story of the Gallery's paintings offers an intriguing opportunity to follow the changes in taste and connoisseurship that have helped create the Old Master canon we know today. building itself has been a test of taste, and its carbuncle-strewn history also receives unprecedentedly close attention.Copiously illustrated with a fascinating selection of previously unseen architectural plans, cartoons and other images that illuminate every aspect of the Gallery's history, as well as sixty of its most significan paintings, The Nation's Mantelpiece deserves a place on the mantelpiece of everyone interested in British history or in the history of art.

Ford Madox Ford and the regiment of women: Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, Stella Bowen, Janice Biala

Engaging and energetic, this biography of Ford Madox Ford presents the modernist writer in a previously unexplored way. Other biographies have approached Ford as an author; indeed, his memoirs give almost no indication that the women in his life were of any importance or, in fact, that they ever existed. Literary scholar Joseph Wiesenfarth revises this approach by tracing Ford's relationships with four women central to his life. Wiesenfarth shows how these women - Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, Stella Bowen, and Janice Biala - established themselves as artists in their own right and depicted Ford in their works as different than the proper man he thought himself to be. For the women, he was both a lover and a leaver, a collaborator and a companion. Wiesenfarth examines the artistic and romantic interplay among these writers, painters, and lovers. This book features a beautifully illustrated color and black-and-white gallery of Bowen and Biala paintings.

The Carel Fabritius Exhibition in The Hague: A Personal View

My monograph on Carel Fabritius which was also my much-delayed doctoral thesis appeared in 1981 and five years later I published the discovery of the painting Mercury y Argus and Io, which is now in Los Angeles (see p. 76, fig. i).1 Since then apart from cataloguing the two National Gallery paintings in the National Gallery Dutch catalogue in 1991 I have not contributed to the study of Fabritius and so it was with great pleasure that I accepted the invitation to give a personal view of the Fabritius exhibition and its accompanying catalogue.2 The exhibition, which I had the opportunity to study with great care during the symposium in The Hague, was a great achievement. If only it had taken place before I published my book on the artist, that book could have said so much more. I congratulate Frits Duparc and his colleagues on a superb exhibition and an excellent catalogue. In writing a monograph on Fabritius in 1981 my key tasks, as I saw them then, were to review the documents which had largely been published for the first time by Obreen, Bredius and Wijnman and see if there were any more to be found, and to pare down the myriad of attributions to Carel Fabritius to a reliable core which would then permit others to work from a secure base on which to add new attributions. Reviewing the documents with the benefit of one graduate course in palaeography ten years earlier in Oxford involved getting a great deal of help from archivists in Delft, Purmerend and Amsterdam. I was treated with immense kindness and patience especially because I was not then a research student who was able to sit in the archives for months on end but a working curator at the National Gallery who was rarely able to spend more than a week or so at this task on any one occasion. I did manage a few corrections to Wijnman and I published the documents in full for the first time. I added six new documents, although in every case they were brought to my attention by generous colleagues, as I acknowledged in the documents section. This work seems to have stood up quite well. In the documents reprinted in the catalogue there are some improvements in my transcriptions although not so many that a new edition of the documents was thought worth appending to the catalogue but no new documents. The documentary story of Carels life remains, therefore, the same.