Sunday, November 12, 2017

Decorative Impulses of the 18th century

Adriaen van der Werff
Judgement of Paris
1716
oil on panel
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

"The Cypria told the story of the Judgement of Paris, often mentioned in subsequent literature.  Incited to rivalry by Eris, the goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite appointed Paris to decide between them.  They were brought to him by Hermes, and, bribed by the promise of Helen, he chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful.  . . .   In art various episodes from his career are represented. The Judgement is especially popular, and is identifiable as early as the 7th century."

 Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition (1996), edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth

Pietro de' Pietri
Putto and seated youth
before 1716
drawing for fresco
British Museum

Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier
Chariot of Apollo ceiling design for Count Bielinski's Cabinet, Warsaw
1734
watercolor, gouache
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Louis Joseph Le Lorrain
Architectural fantasy - Vase, Herm & Colonnade
ca. 1750
wash drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Louis Joseph Le Lorrain
Ruin Fantasy
ca. 1752
wash drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum


Louis Joseph Le Lorrain (1715-1759)  Painter, neo-classical designer and etcher. Rome Prize in 1739, resident in Rome 1739-47, where he designed the Chinea in 1745-47 [annual ceremony in Rome with grand temporary structures built for staging of tribute presentation by Kings of Naples as vassals of the Pope].  Then Le Lorrain returned to Paris, where patronised by Caylus and Tessin.  1756-58 designed famous early neo-classical furniture for [financier and arts patron] La Live de Jully.  Moved to Russia in 1758 as first director of the Academy of Arts, and died soon after his arrival. 

 curator's notes from the British Museum

Teodoro Viero after Alessandro Algardi
Decapitation of St Paul, in niche
ca. 1760-1810
engraving
British Museum


collection of Charles Townley
Satyr and Maenad with infant Bacchus in liknon
or winnowing-basket, from terracotta Campagna relief

ca. 1768-1805
drawing
British Museum

collection of Charles Townley
Athena with Gorgoneion from terracotta Campagna relief
ca. 1768-1805
drawing
British Museum

Charles Townley (1737-1805)  Collector and connoisseur of mainly classical antiquities.  Collection purchased by the British Museum in 1805 (classical sculpture) and 1814 (other antiquities, sold by his cousin and heir Peregrine Townley). 

 curator's notes from the British Museum

Wedgwood & Co.
Plaque with Quadriga after engraved gem by Pietro Santi Bartoli
ca. 1775-80
black basalt with encaustic painting in brass frame
British Museum

Paul Sandby
Study of  tree
ca. 1780
watercolor
Yale Center for British Art

Paul Sandby
Couple in a farmyard
1782
watercolor
Yale Center for British Art

Benjamin West
Death of the Stag
1786
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Francesco Guardi
Architectural capriccio
before 1793
oil on panel
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Carl Wilhelm Kolbe
Satyr pursuing Nymph
1795-96
etching
British Museum

"Stage directions for a Greek play must be entirely inferred from the context.  We do not know whether the boy has been standing the whole time, sitting thoughtfully on the steps, wandering about with his myrtle-branch or erect in some rapt pose, as he watches the distant sky for the down-flight of some hovering bird, or whether he walked away with the last tragic questioning about the purpose of his divinity.  Did he go into the temple to gain spiritual strength?  Has he been listening to the choirs inside, the harpists, the lute and flute-players?  Has he stood outside the very sacred circle that surrounds the holy-of-holies, the tripod where the high-priestess, the Pythia, gives the strange two-edged answers to those who have come to learn the future, at this famous shrine?  Does he himself ponder the wording of a question, which, later, he is on the point of asking: who he is, after all, and how he had got here?"

"We can only infer something of all this, but our imaginations fill out this harmonious outline.  We can, if we are strictly of a purist tendency, leave the place bare, imagine the choros in hieratic posture, scarcely moving. Or we can imagine the trail of various priests, officials from the town even, visitors who may cross and re-cross, votaries with presents.  The mind has full power of expanding the "romantic"  life, in and out of the court, the come and go of worshippers through the great doors.  Or, as I say, we may preserve the strictly "classic" outline, the great pillars, the formal tense figures of the chanting women." 

 H.D., from the stage-directions for her translation of the Ion of Euripides, originally published in 1937