by Carolin C. Young | Anthropomorphic bat pectoral, 900–1600. Gold. © El Museo del Oro del Banco de la Republica, Bogotá, Colombia, on view at the British Museum, London. The British Museum this season proves that gold has more to it than mere sparkle in a major exhibition devoted to the metal’s uses and meanings in pre-Hispanic Colombia. Including more than …
Tudor portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London
by Carolin C. Young |Three Unknown Elizabethan Children, artist unknown, c. 1580. Oil on panel. Private collection, on view at the National Portrait Gallery, London. London’s National Portrait Gallery invites visitors to have a firsthand look at the personalities who inhabited Elizabeth I’s realm. Including portraits of the queen and many of her most renowned subjects, such as Bess of …
Renaissance music at Écouen, Paris
by Carolin C. Young | King David and some Musicians, artist unknown, c. 1500–1510. One of three oil on wood panels. Musée National du Moyen Âge-Musée de Cluny, Paris. © Rmn-Grand Palais, photograph by Jean-Gilles Berizzi. Those seeking a lyrical repose from the bustle of the Parisian art world should head to France’s National Museum of the Renaissance at the Château …
Oceans, Rivers, Lakes, and Ponds
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2013 | Fig. 3. Lake George Autumn by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), 1922. Oil on canvas, 15 by 27 inches. © 2013 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Museums are a fairly recent development in human history, dating back scarcely more than two hundred years. But the founding of such institutions has accelerated so …
How the West was seen
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2013 | The Last of the Buffalo by Albert Bierstadt, c. 1888. Signed “AB[conjoined]ierstadt” at lower right. Oil on canvas, 60 ¼ by 96 ½ inches. The challenge of Go West!: Art of the American Frontier is to present us with a century (1830-1930) of familiar and unfamiliar images and to help us see them …
Betsy Bonaparte in Baltimore
Portrait of Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte [1785–1879] by Firmin Massot (1766–1849), 1823. Oil on canvas. Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. As the heroine of a novel, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte might have suited Edith Wharton or possibly Henry James. We could also think of her as an early version of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Born in Baltimore, the oldest daughter of a wealthy …
William Kent in New York
The Gallery, Chiswick House by William Henry Hunt (1790–1864), 1828. Watercolor. © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth; reproduced by permission of the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. The Bard Graduate Center (BGC) and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum are presenting another of their comprehensive examinations of a renowned and versatile English designer. William Kent: Designing Georgian Britain, now at the BGC, and its accompanying …
Clare Leighton in Virginia
The Bird Cage (for Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree) by Leighton, 1940. Wood engraving on paper. On view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Leighton was raised in England, where she was well known for her illustrations of classic books by authors such as Emily Brontë and Thomas Hardy and for her impressive writings and wood engravings about …
All About Eats: Art and the American Imagination in Chicago
from The Magazine ANTIQUES, November/December 2013 | Fig. 7. Melons and Morning Glories by Peale, 1813. Inscribed “Raphaelle Peale Painted/Philadelphia Septr. 3d. 1813” at lower right. Oil on canvas, 20 ¾ by 25 ¾ inches. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Paul Mellon. Not so long ago you could learn how to cook an opossum by consulting The Joy of Cooking. …
Saint-Gaudens in Washington, D.C.
Shaw Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907), 1900. Patinated plaster. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire, on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Art. On July 18, 1863, one of the first Union Army units of African-American soldiers stormed Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor. Led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the …
