The Magazine Antiques articles from May 2003

The Magazine Antiques archives from May 2003

Cincinnati and the arts. (Current and Coming).(management of the collection at the Cincinnati Art Museum)
May 1, 2003... Cincinnati has a rich history of patronizing the arts. By 1842 William A. Adams could write to his friend the artist Thomas Cole: "Wealth has engendered a taste for the arts [in Cincinnati], and the inhabitants seem to be peeping out of the...

Houdon. (Current and Coming).(Jean-Antoine Houdon, sculpture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
May 1, 2003... The French sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon, who Thomas Jefferson thought was "unrivaled in Europe," is still considered to have been the finest sculptor in Europe during the Enlightenment. Yet until now there has not been an international...

Painted fashion. (Current and Coming).(James McNeil Whistler; painting; Frick Collection, New York, New York)
May 1, 2003... In 1864 when James McNeil Whistler exhibited the languorous painting illustrated at right at the Royal Academy in London, a critic remarked: "The picture is among the finest pieces of colour in the Exhibition--see the beautiful harmonies of the...

Prendergast paints the city beautiful. (Current and Coming).(Maurice Brazil Prendergast, painting, Adelson Galleries, New York, New York)
May 1, 2003... The productive career of the American artist Maurice Brazil Prendergast is difficult to categorize. Some of his watercolors and paintings can be allied with a specific style, while others fall outside the prevailing artistic trends of the late...

Museum accessions.(Soap Hollow chest of drawers; tambour desk-and-bookcase; Herter Brothers cabinet acquired by museums)
May 1, 2003... Pennsylvania German artisans in Soap Hollow--a small valley in Somerset County in southwestern Pennsylvania so named from the soft soap made there--produced a recognizable body of painted furniture from about 1834 into the second quarter of the...

Italian mannerist armor. (Report from Europe).(Musee Rath, Geneva, Switzerland)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Armor in sixteenth-century Europe reached an apogee of craftsmanship, and Milan became one of the most important centers for the production of luxury armor. The combination of design and the quality of the metalsmith's work meant that armor...

London 1753. (Report from Europe).(British art, various media, British Museum, London, England)
May 1, 2003... The British Museum was founded 250 years ago. Taking 1753 as its starting point, the institution is holding an exhibition entitled London 1753, on view from May 23 until November 23. It looks at life in the capital from the Jacobite rebellion...

Carolus-Duran retrospective. (Report from Europe).(paintings; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France)
May 1, 2003... In 1903 the art critic Arsene Alexandre wrote that "There are few names as illustrious at the moment in the French school and among the various schools worldwide than that of Mr Carolus-Duran." A century later this nearly forgotten artist (born...

June fairs in London. (Report from Europe).
May 1, 2003... Next month six antiques fairs are being held in London. The Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair takes place from June 11 to 17, and this year has been redesigned by George Garter. The theme of the loan exhibition is international trade, and...

American clothes, 1690 to 1830. (Books About Antiques).('What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America')(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... As befits Colonial Williamsburg, which has everything, the present large book about its costume collection covers all bases and many baselines. It is not a tramp through clothes I have known and loved, which you might suspect from the...

Calendar: the arts here and abroad--a compendium of exhibitions, symposiums, and lectures.
May 1, 2003... Alabama BIRMINGHAM Birmingham Museum of Art: "Desire and Devotion: Art from India, Nepal and Tibet in the John and Berthe Ford Collection"; to May 25. * Arizona PHOENIX Phoenix Art Museum: "Vital Forms: American Art and Design in...

Antiques.
May 1, 2003... Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836 The American Revolution gave rise to major symbols that this country celebrated conscientiously thereafter. National loyalty passed...

Furniture from Marbleheads Massachusetts.
May 1, 2003... Between 1740 and 1780, three towns on the North Shore of Massachusetts possessed sufficient population and economic prosperity to support the furniture-making trades: Salem, Ipswich and Marblehead. However, a review of current...

Furniture designed at the Byrd Cliffe Arts and Crafts Colony.
May 1, 2003... Since the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony in Woodstock, New York, in 1984 and 1985, the furniture produced there has been of great interest to students of the arts and crafts movement in the...

New Haven's six-board chests.
May 1, 2003... Six-board chests were a common seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century furniture form in the New England colonies and were an alternative to more costly joined chests. Regularly they were embellished with crease moldings and decorative...

Eighteenth Century chairs at Stenton.
May 1, 2003... Stenton today is the finest early eighteenth-century house in Philadelphia, having been built between 1723 and 1730 as the countryseat of James Logan (1674-1751). Northwest of the city and near the roads to Germantown and New York City, Stenton...

Wallace Nutting and the intention of old America.
May 1, 2003... "Whatever is new," wrote Wallace Nutting (Pl. III), "is bad." (1) A well-known Congregational minister turned photographer, antiquarian, and entrepreneur, Nutting was a man of few words when it came to the vices of his time, but many in...

The incredible elastic chairs of Samuel Gragg.
May 1, 2003... In 1801 at the age of twenty-nine, Samuel Gragg arrived in Boston and began earning his living as a maker of "common" chairs. His name occasionally appeared in Boston tax records, and he frequently branded "S. GRAGG BOSTON" boldly on the...

Calendar of shows.
May 1, 2003... HISTORIC HOUSES, LANDMARKS & MUSEUMS THE MIDWEST Calendar of Shows for May 2003 OHIO YOUNGSTOWN: The Butler Institute of American Art, 524 Wick Ave., 44502. The Butler Institute of American Art is the first structure in the United...

Aesthetic walls and ceilings. (Design Notes).(Christian Herter)
May 1, 2003... One of the hallmarks of interior design during the time of the aesthetic movement was the concept of a room as a total work of art. This meant that everything from the color of the walls to the shape of a doorknob or the silk selected to make...