Saturday, October 31, 2020

Portrait Sculptures - 1850-1900

Benjamin Cheverton
William Huntington
ca. 1850
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous German Artist
Bust of a Youth
(after Michelangelo's Daniel)
ca. 1850
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Ernst Julius Hähnel
Posthumous Bust of Beethoven
ca. 1850
marble
Royal Academy of Music, London

Thomas Woolner
Death Mask of Joseph Mallord William Turner
1851
plaster
Tate Britain

John Bailey
Queen Victoria
1855
marble
Government Art Collection, London

I lived on Dread –
To Those who know
The stimulus there is
In Danger – Other impetus
Is numb – and vitalless –

As 'twere a Spur – upon the Soul –
A Fear will urge it where
To go without the spectre's aid
Were challenging Despair

– Emily Dickinson (1862)

Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier
La Capresse des Colonies
1861
bronze and marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Copeland & Garrett, Stoke-on-Trent
Alexandra, Princess of Wales 
wearing the Thebes Jewel

1863
porcelain
British Museum

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse
Mary, Queen of Scots
ca. 1860-70
terracotta
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Palace of the Legion of Honor)

Aimé-Jules Dalou
Eugénie Maria Wynne
1875
terracotta
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Aimé-Jules Dalou
Miss Helen Ionides
ca. 1879
terracotta
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Mary Grant
Lady Augusta Elizabeth Frederica Stanley
1877
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Paul Gauguin
Emil Gauguin, the Artist's Son
ca. 1877-78
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Aristide Fontana
Bust of a Young Woman
1887
marble
Guildhall Museum, Rochester, Kent

Auguste Rodin
Madame Vicuña
1887
bronze
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Auguste Rodin
Mrs Russell (Mariana Mattioco della Torre)
1888
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Friday, October 30, 2020

Portrait Sculptures - 1800-1850

Jean-Marie Nogaret
Portrait Bust of a Young Woman
1802
terracotta
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Jean-Antoine Houdon
Napoleon Bonaparte
ca. 1802
marble
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Antonio Canova
Franz I, Holy Roman Emperor
1805
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Russian Artist
Paul I, Emperor of Russia
ca. 1800-1850
ivory
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Francis Legatt Chantrey
Mr. Warp
1816
marble
Tate Britain

Edward Hodges Baily
George Gordon, Lord Byron
ca. 1810-30
marble
Government Art Collection, London

Edward Hodges Baily
Henry Fuseli
1824
marble
National Portrait Gallery, London

François Carlo Antommarchi
Death Mask of Napoleon Bonaparte
modeled 1821, cast 1833
bronze
Art Institute of Chicago

from Canto XXXVI

Where memory liveth,
                it takes its state
Formed like a diafan from light on shade
Which shadow cometh of Mars and remaineth
Created, having a name sensate,
Custom of the soul,
                will from the heart;
Cometh from a seen form which being understood
Taketh locus and remaining in the intellect possible
Wherein hath he neither weight nor still-standing,
Descendeth not by quality but shineth out
Himself his own effect unendingly
Not in delight but in the being aware
Nor can he leave his true likeness otherwhere.

– Ezra Pound (1934)

Thomas Campbell
Portrait Bust of a Lady in Classical Style
1823
marble
Astley Cheetham Art Collection, Manchester

John Gibson
William Bewick
ca. 1827-50
marble
Tate Britain

Samuel Joseph
Posthumous Bust of King George IV
1831
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Jean-Pierre Dantan the Younger
Portrait Bust of a Young Woman
1836
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Swedish Artist
Posthumous Bust of Christina, Queen of Sweden
ca. 1830-50
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

François-Joseph Bosio
Marie-Amélie, Queen of France
1841
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Neville Northey Burnard
The Right Honourable Charles Buller
1849
plaster
National Trust, Carlyle's House, London

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Narratives in Relief - 1750-1800

Gaspar van der Hagen
Sacrifice to Hercules
ca. 1766
marble
Yale Center for British Art

Pierre-François Berruer
Louis XV protecting the Académie Royale
1770
marble
Musée du Louvre

Clodion (Claude Michel)
Bacchic Scene, or, Faun Family
1773
terracotta
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
Bacchus and Venus
ca. 1750-75
marble
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Theodore Xavery
Mercury and Argus, with Io in the Background
1775
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Gaspare Capparoni
Zeus as Eagle drinking from a Cup held by Hebe
ca. 1775-1800
onyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Caspar Bernhard Hardy
Artemisia mourning her Husband's Remains
ca. 1775-1800
colored wax
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Thomas Banks
Thetis and her Nymphs rising from the Sea
to console Achilles for the loss of Patroclus

1778-79
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

from Consolation

Though he, that ever kind and true,
Kept stoutly step by step with you,
Your whole long, gusty lifetime through,
Be gone a while before,
Be now a moment gone before,
Yet, doubt not, soon the seasons shall restore
Your friend to you.

          *             *           *

He is not dead, this friend – not dead,
But in the path we mortals tread
Got some few, trifling steps ahead
And nearer to the end;
So that you too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
You fancy dead.

– Robert Louis Stevenson (published 1899)

Samuel Percy
Dead Christ
ca. 1780-90
colored wax and linen
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Nathaniel Marchant
Achilles mourning Patroclus
late 18th century
plaster cast of sard intaglio lost in the London Blitz, 1941
British Museum

Louis-Simon Boizot
The Elements paying Tribute to Friendship
ca. 1783
marble
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

John Deare
Allegory of Lust
(Venus reclining on Goat-Headed Sea Monster,
attended by Cupid and Putto)

1785-87
marble
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Charles and William Brown
Catherine the Great instructing her Grandsons
1789-91
agate cameo
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Sèvres Manufactory
Six Draped Huntresses
ca. 1790
porcelain plaque
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Philipp Jakob Scheffauer
Artemisia mourning her Husband's Remains
1794
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Narratives in Relief - 1700-1750

Anonymous German Artist
St George and the Dragon
ca. 1700
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Johann Baptist Cetto
Resurrected Christ as a Gardener, recognized by Mary
ca. 1700
wax
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Angelo de' Rossi
The Annunciation
ca. 1700-1715
terracotta
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous German Artist
The Flagellation
ca. 1700-1725
ivory
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Magnus Berg
The Entombment
1710
ivory
(rilievo schiacciato)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous French Artist
Andromache mourning Hector
early 18th century
wax
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

"Being past, being no more, is passionately at work in things.  To this the historian trusts for his subject matter.  He depends on this force, and knows things as they are at the moment of their ceasing to be."

– Walter Benjamin, from First Sketches for The Arcades Project, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Harvard, 1999)

Jean Le Blanc
Atlas supporting the Heavens
1715
bronze
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Ermengildo Hamerani
Venus and Hercules
(modello for reverse of a bronze medal commemorating
the marriage of James Stuart and Clementina Sobieski)
1719
wax on slate
British Museum

Leonhard Stainhart
The Disrobing of Christ
before 1721
ivory
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
 
Ignatius van Logteren
Venus and Adonis
1730
marble
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

"There are, at bottom, two sorts of philosophy and two ways of noting down thoughts.  One is to sow them in the snow – or, if you prefer, in the fire clay – of pages; Saturn is the reader to contemplate their increase, and indeed to harvest their flower (the meaning) or their fruit (the verbal expression).  The other way is to bury them with dignity and erect as sepulcher above their grave the image, the metaphor – cold and barren marble."

– Walter Benjamin, from First Sketches for The Arcades Project, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Harvard, 1999)

Jacob Dobbermann
Homage to Venus
ca. 1730-40
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Antonio Montauti
The Triumph of Neptune and Europa
ca. 1735-40
bronze
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Jan Baptist Xavery
Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl
1742
marble
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Peter Hencke
Abduction of the Sabine Women
1743
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London