The Magazine Antiques articles from July 2001

The Magazine Antiques archives from July 2001

Rubens and his age.(Peter Paul Rubens, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... The State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg is one of the largest museums in the world. It houses some three million objects in an astonishing variety of mediums, collected in large part by the insatiably acquisitive Empress Catherine II...

Meissen for royalty.(Meissen porcelain, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Augustus II (the Strong), elector of Saxony (r. 1694-1733) and king of Poland (r. 1697-1704 and 1709-1733), possessed that rare combination of traits that makes a great collector--excellent taste for both the rare and the exotic and the deep...

Lawrence retrospective.(Jacob Lawrence, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.,)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Over the course of his sixty-year career, the artist Jacob Lawrence found his subject matter in some of the most controversial and hotly debated topics of the twentieth century. As a black artist, he was deeply concerned with social injustice...

Pennsylvania fraktur.(various artists, Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center Pennsburg, PA and York County Heritage Trust, York , PA)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Two exhibitions of fraktur taking place in southeastern Pennsylvania, where this art form flourished, present many examples that have not previously been on view, making this part of the state a rewarding destination for folk art enthusiasts...

Museum accessions.(Virginia Museum of Fine Arts acquires objects by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Edward William Godwin)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Louis Comfort Tiffany and Edward William Godwin had many things in common. Both were seminal figures in design on their respective sides of the Atlantic Ocean in the second half of the nineteenth century; both were influenced by the painter...

The art of caricature.(James Gillray, Tate Britain, London, England)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... Satirical art, particularly in Britain, has a long and interesting history. There were unexpected practitioners, such as Joshua Reynolds, who painted several caricatures when he was in Rome between 1750 and 1752. Among those well known for this...

The Bonapartes and the Italian connection.(various artists, Musee Fesch, Ajaccio, France)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... An exhibition entitled Napoleon, les Bonaparte et l'Italie (Napoleon, the Bonapartes, and Italy) is on view at the Musee Fesch in Ajaccio, Corsica, France, until September 30. The curator Jean Marc Olivesi has assembled both historic and...

Photography and the human condition.(various photographers, National Portrait Gallery, London, England)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... The invention of photography in 1839 coincided with a surge of interest in scientific examination and classification. The new tool made possible the study of the human face and the human skull (phrenology being but one system of supposedly...

Venus.(various artists, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, Belgium)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... From the days of the Greeks, who created her and named her Aphrodite, until the present, Venus has been depicted in art and literature. In what it calls "the first ever attempt to provide an overview of the Venus theme in mythology and art,"...

Dutch draftsmen in Italy.(various artists, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... As northern Europe has experienced its wettest autumn, winter, and spring in decades, the exhibition on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam until September 30 is particularly apt. Entitled Drawn to Warmth: Dutch Draughtsmen in Italy, it...

Ephemera enshrined.(Review)
July 1, 2001... Ephemera is the plural form of the Greek word ephemeron (epi = on, about, round; hemera = day). Literally it refers to something that lasts through the day, which is the case with some winged insects." The Encyclopedia of Ephemera, from which...

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaslessly into the past.(importance of nostalgia in American history)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925 The great international fair, or Centennial Exposition, held in Philadelphia in 1876 demonstrated how insistently mechanization was modifying the daily habits of the American people. At every turn...

The Richard H. Mandel house in Bedford Hills, New York.
July 1, 2001... Well before it was finished in 1935, the Richard H. Mandel house (Pl. I) was lauded by the New York Times as "a radical departure from the conventional house in plan, construction and use of materials." [1] Sited on what was originally some...

Edward Lycett and the Faience Manufacturing Company.
July 1, 2001... The Faience Manufacturing Company (1881-1892) was an important, if short- lived, art pottery maker in New York City. It owed its artistic and commercial success to Edward Lycett (Fig. 1), an English china painter who became its art director in...

The Pennsylvania-German FOURSQUARE GARDEN.
July 1, 2001... Benjamin Franklin did not particularly like the Pennsylvania Germans, but along with many of his compatriots, he admired the rich produce of their farms and gardens, and, indeed, the Pennsylvania Germans' reputation for gardening excellence...

H. F. du Pont's Chestertown House, Southampton, New York.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... In 1926 Henry Francis du Pont, who is widely regarded as one of the most important antiques collectors and interior decorators in American history, received eloquent praise from Thomas B. Parker, a visitor to du Pont's Chestertown House in...

Reverie on a pair of Japanese Screens.
July 1, 2001... The idea of landscape in the West has historically been aligned with geography. The appearance of a given earthbound place in a painting or photograph normally initiates for the Western viewer an immediate response of physical orientation. We...

Art deco silks.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2001... The Exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels modernes, which took place in Paris in 1925, is widely considered a watershed event in the history of design. The exposition engendered considerable press because, as one American...