Art history, eighteenth-century studies

In recent years, there has been increasing scholarly interest in the history of museums, academies and major exhibitions. There has been, however, little to no sustained interest in the histories of alternative exhibitions (single artwork, solo artist, artist-mounted, entrepreneurial, privately funded, ephemeral, etc.) with the notable exception of those publications that deal with situations involving major artists or those who would become so—for example J.L. David's exhibition of Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799) and The First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874—despite the fact that these sorts of exhibitions and critical scholarship about them have become commonplace (and no less important) in the contemporary art world. The present volume uses and contextualizes eleven case studies to advance some overarching themes and commonalities among alternative exhibitions in the long modern period from the late-eighteenth to the late-twentieth centuries and beyond. These include the issue of control in the interrelation and elision of the roles of artist and curator, and the relationship of such alternative exhibitions to the dominant modes, structures of display and cultural ideology.

In the competitive environment of the eighteenth-century London art scene, Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds were often perceived as great rivals. While they shared patrons, sitters, and a stake in the future of British art, their differing artistic approaches caused considerable friction, indeed Gainsborough seceded from the Royal Academy of Art in 1784, boycotting its exhibitions and activities. This essay, however, argues that Gainsborough’s Charity Relieving Distress, painted in the year of his secession, proposes a charitable resolution of their aesthetic attitudes. The complex interrelation of allegorical and anecdotal form is interpreted as a pictorial attempt to reconcile their approaches through the concept of charity, a virtue of powerful artistic lineage in the western tradition, and of contemporary social importance.

The monument to the queen Maria I, a majestic statue celebrating Maria’s reign together with the power of monarchy, reveals the purpose of its patron Pina Manique (1733-1805) to magnify his own prestige into the Court. Both the grandeur and the iconography of the monument suggested the power he reached in the government by supporting the queen in the aim of the preservation of the Ancien Régime. This paper focuses on the different phases of the commission of the statue, also thanks to new documents that come to increase the knowledge concerning its execution

Between 1760 and 1765, the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Gricci headed a team of artists in the creation of a Gabinete de Porcelana [Porcelain Room] at the Royal Palace of Aranjuez. Porcelain rooms were not unknown at this time, but Gricci ambitiously tested the limits of porcelain with an exuberant design scheme, an elaborate chinoiserie theme, and nearly three-dimensional deployment of the ceramic medium. The room's innovative technique, which employs porcelain as the framework for the walls and ceiling as well as the medium for the design, is befitting this country estate of King Charles III (r. 1759–88). While the ornamentation offers a rich sensory experience, it also has deliberate political implications and may be read as an idealized expression of Charles III's identity. As a space constructed during the Seven Years' War (1754–63) at the commencement of his reign, the Porcelain Room had both pleasurable and political purposes that allowed the king to forge a modern Bourbon agenda and a modern Bourbon sense of kingship with international scope. The Porcelain Room, like many of Charles's other projects, was created to exemplify the king's opulence while also embodying political messages that promoted his reign and legitimated the Bourbons as the rightful heirs to the Spanish crown.

This book examines a famous series of sculptures by the
German artist Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783)
known as his "Character Heads." These are busts of human
heads, highly unconventional for their time, representing
strange, often inexplicable facial expressions. Scholars have
struggled over the years to explain these works of art. Some
said that Messerschmidt was insane. Some said that he was
trying to illustrate some sort of intellectual system. Michael
Yonan argues that these sculptures are simultaneously
explorations of art’s power and also critiques of the
aesthetic limits that would be placed on that power.

The name François Boucher is synonymous with the visual and material culture of luxury in mid eighteenth-century France. His paintings are filled with desirable objects that informed the tastes of collectors. What is less known is that Boucher was a prolific collector of art and nature, with more than 13,000 different objects in his collection at the time of his death in 1770. Despite this, a formal study of his collection is
almost entirely absent from the existing field of historical scholarship. This article brings to light Boucher’s activities as a collector, in particular his interest in natural objects for which he was especially well known. It also considers the extent to which Boucher’s passion for collectable objects had an impact on his practice as an artist.