National Gallery Research Articles

Unlearning Inherited Histories or Introducing Entangled Memories from the Baltics

ABSTRACT This exhibition review discusses the past exhibition Difficult Pasts. Connected Worlds (2022) at the National Gallery of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania. The project tried to shed light on the shared impact that long-silenced traumas and counter-memories have on the Baltic region, especially from a transnational perspective. A special focus lies on the oscillations between individual memory and public history as the exhibition participants engage in the creation of so-called ‘artistic historiographies’ based on unexplored and unknown memories by minorities and women. The displayed artworks are experimentally trying to provoke a process of ‘unlearning inherited histories’ by developing multifocal viewpoints and interpretations, an ongoing process the text accompanies. Navigating through the exhibitions’ conceptual threads, artistic manifestations, and ways of storytelling, the review introduces a generation of artists that is bonded to difficult and therefore challenging historical events from the 20th century, from the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine to the Dąbroszczacy soldiers and autofictional lesbian literature.

Nineteenth-Century French Painting of Rural Life on Diplomatic Mission to China

Abstract Paysages et paysans: la vie rurale en France au XIXe siècle, 1820–1905 was the anodyne title of a loan exhibition inaugurated in March of 1978 at Beijing's National Gallery of China. As the first exhibition of Western painting in China after the instauration of the Communist regime in 1949, the show was a cultural- diplomatic landmark; its planning and reception can refresh our understanding of both Franco–Chinese cultural relations in the waning years of Maoism and the diplomatically recuperative uses of French nineteenth-century painting. This article uncovers the rationales of French actors and institutions as revealed in archival documents and then scrutinizes the unexpected reception of an art exhibition that remains an important episode in cross-cultural relations and aesthetic reclamation.

Kehinde Wiley at the National Gallery: The Prelude

Kehinde Wiley became a household name and widely recognized as one of the most important living American artists with the 2018 unveiling of his official Smithsonian portrait of President Barack Obama. Another milestone in the nation’s halting evolution towards racial equality had been reached: The first Black president of the United States painted, in exquisitely saturated colours, by the first Black artist to have a presidential portrait added to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection (along with Amy Sherald who painted Michelle Obama’s portrait). About three years earlier, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton (2015) had given us a Black George Washington, but with Wiley’s portrait, we now had an actual, heroic African-American president artistically represented, no non-traditional casting required! Allow me to add a few caveats and a bit more on Wiley’s Obama portrait before I turn to his latest exhibition ‘The Prelude’ (and the stunning and edifying catalogue thereof) that is the subject of this review since I think the contrast between his earlier portraiture and his latest foray into what art historian Sarah Thomas calls the ‘Black sublime’ (pp. 65–75) is quite interesting.1 The caveats first: I was unable to see the exhibition at the National Gallery and I am going to blame this, whether fairly or unfairly, on Covid-19. I am thus reliant on Riding’s (2021) catalogue for a second-hand experience. That said, the catalogue does reproduce all of the paintings and film stills in the exhibit in vivid colours and in a fairly large format, so this seems like the next best thing. Additionally, the scholarly and art critical essays, the interview with the artist, and the selected Chronology greatly enriched my appreciation of the works in the catalogue. But the element of ‘The Prelude’ exhibit that really intrigued me, and was not addressed at any length in the catalogue, was a striking stylistic departure that Wiley takes from his earlier portraiture, and this brings me back to the famous Obama portrait.

Emma Capron, The Ugly Duchess. Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance. London: National Gallery, 2023. Distributed by Yale University Press. 80 pp. 45 ills. ISBN 978‐1‐85709‐694‐1.

Renaissance StudiesEarly View Review of Exhibitions Emma Capron, The Ugly Duchess. Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance. London: National Gallery, 2023. Distributed by Yale University Press. 80 pp. 45 ills. ISBN 978-1-85709-694-1. Larry Silver, Corresponding Author Larry Silver [email protected] University of PennsylvaniaSearch for more papers by this author Larry Silver, Corresponding Author Larry Silver [email protected] University of PennsylvaniaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 15 May 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12872Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Early ViewOnline Version of Record before inclusion in an issue RelatedInformation

Chéri Samba

Research Article| May 01 2023 Chéri Samba: Kinshasa Kingpin Riason Naidoo Riason Naidoo Riason Naidoo is a researcher, artist, and former director of the South African National Gallery (2009-2015). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Nka (2023) 2023 (52): 34–43. https://doi.org/10.1215/10757163-10434966 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Permissions Search Site Citation Riason Naidoo; Chéri Samba: Kinshasa Kingpin. Nka 1 May 2023; 2023 (52): 34–43. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10757163-10434966 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsNka Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2020 New Frame (Johannesburg)2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, November 20, 2022–February 23, 2023)

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, November 20, 2022–February 23, 2023)

A Lexicon for Positioning ‘The Idea Photography’ in Our Nation’s Art Museum

Between the 1930s and the 1990s, as art museums across the USA began contending with what place photography might hold within their programmes, key individuals framed photography’s value in language that itself deserves consideration. Amid this museological reckoning with the medium, at the National Gallery of Art, which was established in the 1930s as a national public repository for Western art of the highest standards, the question of whether and how photography might fit into that lineage presented new questions. How would the greatness of photography be defined? What would its presentation look like? Sarah Greenough joined the National Gallery of Art in 1978 with a PhD in Art History and an expertise in the work of Alfred Stieglitz. I argue that as she aimed to integrate photography seamlessly into the set of values established by Andrew W. Mellon at the founding of the Gallery, she drew upon Stieglitz’s own terminology for valuing the medium, modelling her own philosophy of its import on his notion of ‘the idea photography’.

Margarito d’Arezzo’s <i>Virgin and Child Enthroned</i>: Victorian Beauty Under Attack?

My chosen work of art for the Gallery section of Professor Hilary Fraser’s Festschrift is the National Gallery’s second oldest painting, Margarito d’Arezzo’s Virgin and Child Enthroned of the 1260s and the debates it aroused when the inaugural director Sir Charles Eastlake bought it in 1857 as part of his revolutionary introduction of early Italian art into the national painting collection, much of which was seen as not at the time at all beautiful — ‘unsightly’ to use his own phrase. This warranted him explaining in the first annual report that such art was acquired not for its aesthetic merit but on the grounds of its historic importance. The article will examine the expanding public role of the National Gallery in terms of educating the widest possible public about the history of Western European painting in addition to offering what were deemed to be suitable teaching aids to encourage the native school of painters. It will also shine a light on various women who have played significant roles in promoting interest in and knowledge about early Italian art, including Margarito’s panel, in the National Gallery’s collection.

Overview of Materials and Techniques of Paintings by Liu Kang Made between 1927 and 1999 from the National Gallery Singapore and Liu Family Collections

This article summarises the extensive research conducted in recent years on the paintings by Liu Kang (1911–2004), a renowned modern Singaporean artist. The investigation considered 97 paintings made between 1927 and 1999 from the National Gallery Singapore and Liu family collections. While detailed results of the analytical studies were presented in a series of publications, the scope of this article comprises an overview of the artist’s preferential painting supports and pigments and an outline of the evolution of his working methods. The collected information considerably increases the knowledge about Liu Kang’s painting practice and may assist conservators in the diagnosing, treatment, dating and authentication of artworks of uncertain origin. The results demonstrate the importance of comprehensive multi-analytical studies, which combined with documentary sources and art history research, provide a full understanding of the artist’s painting practice.

Lope de Vega. Lo fingido verdadero

Lope de Vega. <i>Lo fingido verdadero</i>

An Interview with Marc Balet: A Lifetime in Design, Fashion, and Film, from Warhol to Scorsese

An Interview with Marc Balet: A Lifetime in Design, Fashion, and Film, from Warhol to Scorsese

From the Editor

From the Editor Dominic Rainsford Whether David Copperfield was the hero of his own life is a matter for inexhaustible debate–for him and the rest of us. He is now, however, the hero of his own issue of Dickens Quarterly. This has happened, like so many things in life, quite by chance. In other words, this is an "unofficial" special issue. While Bleak House has been, for some time, the most written-about Dickens novel, it is very good to see that Dickens's "favourite child" also continues to attract strong interest, resulting in essays of the caliber of those included here, all of which, I think, have something new and important to say about the novel. Like almost all of Dickens's writing, Copperfield has the paradoxical merit of being both sweet and disturbing, as we can see in the two pictorial interpretations of David meeting Betsey Trotwood shown below: the first by Phiz, in a delicately tinted version; the second by the obscure Danish modernist and Aunt Betsey-obsessive, Christian Kongstad Petersen.1 [End Page 5] Click for larger view View full resolution "I make myself known to my aunt". Frontispiece by Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz") to David Copperfield, London Edition, Caxton Publishing Company, undated, c. 1900. [End Page 6] Click for larger view View full resolution Christian Kongstad Petersen (1862–1940), David Copperfield opsøger sin tante, Miss Betsey Trotwood i Dover (David Copperfield Seeks out his Aunt, Miss Betsey Trotwood, in Dover), pen and ink, scraped paper, 421 x 313 mm, 1925 and 1927; The Royal Collection of Graphic Art, National Gallery of Denmark, KKS1992-156. [End Page 7] Dominic Rainsford Aarhus University Footnotes 1. For many more reproductions of Kongstad Petersen's Dickens-inspired art, see my article on him in Dickens Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 4 (2017). Copyright © 2023 The Dickens Society

A Multi-Analytical Investigation of Liu Kang’s Colour Palette and Painting Technique from the Shanghai Period (1933–1937)

This study presents the analytical characterisation of Liu Kang’s paint mixtures and the painting technique used during the important Shanghai artistic phase (1933−1937). Liu Kang (1911–2004) was a Chinese artist who received an academic art education in Shanghai (1926–1928) and Paris (1929–1932). He settled permanently in Singapore in 1945 and became a leading contributor to the national art scene. This study showcases 12 paintings on canvas from the collections of the National Gallery Singapore and the Liu family. An integrated approach combined non- and micro-invasive analytical methods supplemented with archival sources and enabled characterising the investigated paint mixtures and revealing details of the artist’s painting technique. The study has proved the artist’s ability to produce a variety of hues by utilising a conventional palette of colours. The predilection for ultramarine, viridian, yellow and red iron-rich earth pigments, umber, yellow chromate pigments, as well as lead white, zinc white or Zn-base compounds like lithopone and barium white was recorded. The study emphasises a minor use of Prussian blue, emerald green, cadmium yellow or its variant and bone black. Although it remains unknown what brands of paints Liu Kang used, the available archival sources give insights into the painting materials available in Shanghai that the artist could have had at his disposal during the period under review. The archival information is based on the Chinese and overseas colourmen advertisements printed in Chinese journals and the respective contemporary colourmen catalogues. The artist’s painting technique departs from the experimental approach of his Paris phase. In Shanghai, he focused on synthesising the painting principles of the School of Paris with traditional Chinese calligraphy. The outcomes of this research may support future technical studies of works by other artists contemporary to Liu Kang and who were active in pre-war Shanghai.

Indigenous Dispossession and Settler Colonial Art Galleries: Anguish at the National Gallery of Victoria

Histories of settler colonial art galleries have tended to present these institutions as distant attempts to replicate British models. This essay argues that settler/Indigenous interactions, and the violent dispossession of Indigenous peoples, were fundamental to the formation of settler colonial art galleries, through a case study of the 1880s acquisition and reception of Danish painter A. F. A. Schenck's Anguish (1878) at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, on unceded land of the Kulin nation. Examining the career of the NGV's London art adviser, Alfred Taddy Thomson, from the violence of the colonial frontier in the 1840s, to his art advising practice in late nineteenth‐century London, it demonstrates the ways in which frontier violence permeated the formation of British settler colonial cultural institutions. The acquisition and reception of Anguish provides a stimulus to rethink approaches to histories of settler colonial art galleries, and to European paintings in their collections.

The Unexpected Discovery of Syngenite on Margarito d’Arezzo’s The Virgin and Child Enthroned, with Scenes of the Nativity and the Lives of the Saints (Probably 1263–4) and Its Possible Use as a Yellow Lake Substrate

The oldest painting in the National Gallery collection, The Virgin and Child Enthroned by Margarito d’Arezzo (NG564), dated to about 1263–4, depicts the Virgin and Child in a mandorla, surrounded by scenes of the Nativity and lives of the saints, set within red and decorative black borders, against a gilded background. The materials and technique were investigated using a combination of non-invasive techniques, such as Fibre Optic Reflectance Spectroscopy (FORS) and macro X-ray fluorescence scanning (MA-XRF), and the analysis of a small number of paint samples using energy dispersive X-ray analysis in the scanning electron microscope (SEM-EDS), High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Attenuated Total Reflectance—Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and micro X-ray Diffraction (micro-XRD). The results provided evidence for the use of a number of organic colourants, with both indigo and red lake pigments identified. The finding of an unusual compound, syngenite (K2Ca(SO4)2·H2O), is here postulated as a potential substrate for an organic yellow lake pigment. In addition, reference pigments were prepared to explore this hypothesis. Although documentary evidence confirms that yellow lakes were being produced from an early date, there is very little direct evidence for their use in 13th-century panel paintings.

Risky Business: Ivan Durrant Versus the National Gallery of Victoria

Risky Business: Ivan Durrant Versus the National Gallery of Victoria

‘The Hatton gallery will be the scene of an experiment’: The impact of the relationship between a university institution, its art gallery and its fine art professor

ABSTRACT In the early 1950s, Lawrence Gowing, as Professor of Fine Art, King’s College, Durham (now Newcastle University) curated significant exhibitions for the College’s Hatton Gallery. During 1951 and 1952 these included Pictures from Collections in Northumberland, and two exhibitions concerned with the display of Poussin’s series of paintings The Seven Sacraments, loaned from the National Gallery of Scotland. Pictures from Collections in Northumberland engaged Gowing with country house collections, art scholars and connoisseurs, and resulted in the reattribution and global relocations of artworks. The Poussin project similarly drew on academic expertise and involved the Hatton Gallery in what Gowing described as ‘the scene of an experiment’. Concurrently, Gowing was also formulating the idea of creating an art collection for the Hatton Gallery. In this article, these projects are described, and examined for their contribution to the art market, art scholarship, art education, and the formation of a university art collection within the structure of a higher education institution. Consideration is also given to how Gowing’s use of the Hatton Gallery may have set the scene for its use, later in the decade, for the experimental and acknowledged ground-breaking exhibition-making of Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore.

A Fast Automatic Method for Deconvoluting Macro X-Ray Fluorescence Data Collected From Easel Paintings

Macro X-ray Fluorescence (MA-XRF) scanning is increasingly widely used by researchers in heritage science to analyse easel paintings as one of a suite of non-invasive imaging techniques. The task of processing the resulting MA-XRF datacube generated in order to produce individual chemical element maps is called MA-XRF deconvolution. While there are several existing methods that have been proposed for MA-XRF deconvolution, they require a degree of manual intervention from the user that can affect the final results. The state-of-the-art AFRID approach can automatically deconvolute the datacube without user input, but it has a long processing time and does not exploit spatial dependency. In this paper, we propose two versions of a fast automatic deconvolution (FAD) method for MA-XRF datacubes collected from easel paintings with ADMM (alternating direction method of multipliers) and FISTA (fast iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm). The proposed FAD method not only automatically analyses the datacube and produces element distribution maps of high-quality with spatial dependency considered, but also significantly reduces the running time. The results generated on the MA-XRF datacubes collected from two easel paintings from the National Gallery, London, verify the performance of the proposed FAD method.

Fall and Apocalypse in the Painting of Benjamin West

Fall and Apocalypse in the Painting of Benjamin West Kathryn Wehr, Managing Editor Key Words Benjamin West, Colonial American Painter, Progress of Revealed Religion, Windsor Royal Chapel, Expulsion of Adam and Even from the Garden, Fall of Man in art, Book of Revelation in art, National Gallery of Art Washington DC Click for larger view View full resolution Our cover art is part of a series entitled Progress of Revealed Religion which was intended to decorate a new Royal Chapel at Windsor Castle. Artist Benjamin West (1738–1820) was born into a Quaker family in the colony of Pennsylvania, studied painting in Italy, and then settled in London. There he rose to great acclaim and was called “le Raphaël Americain,” receiving the patronage of the elite, including this royal commission by King George III.1 He was an important pioneer in neo-classicism, Romanticism, and in the use of contemporary dress in his paintings.2 Today he is remembered for his lasting influence on American art through his teaching of Colonial American painters who came to London to study before the Revolution.3 West’s self-described “great work” for the Royal Chapel4 was cancelled in 1801 due in large part to the king’s mental illness, but an inventory from that year shows West had already completed, sketched, or drawn plans for thirty-six works, including large-scale oil paintings and [End Page 153] plans for the chapel’s stained-glass windows.5 The selections from biblical history had been chosen so that “Christians, of all denominations, might contemplate without offence to their tenets,”6 yet, in a kingdom still largely worshipping in whitewashed churches due to Reformation and Commonwealth iconoclasm, it was a daring plan. West’s contemporary biographer John Galt writes that King George “began to think that the tolerant temper of the age was favourable to the introduction of pictures in the churches: at the same time his scrupulous respect for what was understood to be the usage, if not the law, relative to the case, prevented him for some time from taking any decisive step.”7 Church of England bishops were consulted who gravely considered the matter and concluded it was not a violation of church law and so West proceeded with the plans until told to discontinue. The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise is not currently on display at its home of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, but its commanding size (over six by nine feet) would surely attract the attention of any viewer. We can read the painting from left to right: from light to darkness, from the beauty of Eden to the new disordered reality of a fallen world. Taking details from the account in Genesis 3 and Milton’s Paradise Lost, West depicts the Archangel Michael chasing Adam and Eve out of the Garden, with a flaming sword—here more like a shaft of light—hovering above. Adam and Eve are clothed in skins made by God, and Adam covers his face in shame while Eve looks back in anguish. At their feet, the serpent leads the way into the new, darker reality with details borrowed again from Milton: a lion attacking horses and an eagle fighting midair with another bird, perhaps a pelican Christ-figure. While the dark side of the painting has an unfinished quality, the central figures are alive with detail and energy. The Archangel Michael is a weak point—he is more gentle than terrifying—but our focus keeps being drawn back to the faces of Eve and Adam. In Adam’s half-covered face and Eve’s upward glance we feel their shame, their despair. However the creation of our human ancestors came about (see Kemp’s article), we too find ourselves in a world that is broken. [End Page 154] Click for larger view View full resolution Benjamin West, Destruction of the Beast and the False Prophet, 1804. Oil on Panel, 39" x 56½". Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. Public Domain. A counterbalance to The Expulsion is found in Benjamin West’s apocalyptic painting, Destruction of the Beast and the False Prophet (1804). Taking his subject from...

From Landscapes to Projection Drama

From Landscapes to Projection Drama