Determining the Accuracy of Historical Landscape Paintings

Historical landscape paintings are widely used to reconstruct past environments. However, artists did not necessarily fully depict reality, many exercising license to relocate and remould features. This paper applies photogrammetric techniques to the problem of determining the accuracy of artistic depictions of landscapes. Four 19th century paintings of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia by different artists were used to test the methods. The artists varied in their accuracy, with Frankland, the surveyor, being the most accurate, and Glover, the romantic professional artist, being the least accurate. This variation suggests that the use of paintings for historical reconstructions and measurements of historic features should be preceded by an accuracy assessment.     

谈清宫皇帝后妃油画半身像

油画对于中国来说是一个外来的画种,经过美术史家多年的努力,它东传的时间和途径已然大致明确。但研究中还是有很多缺环。近些年来对清朝宫廷绘画实物及相关资料的发现,为欧洲油画东传的过程提供了更多的信息。本文通过对流传至今的清宫油画作品进行梳理,提出一些想法,或可补充关于"西画东渐"的叙述。     

The Armada Paintings in the New Palace of Westminster

In June 2008 a team of artists began the gargantuan task of creating the series of Armada mural paintings for the house of lords. They were embarking on a two-year project, which would bring to completion the original decorative scheme planned for the prince's chamber by the Royal Commission on Fine Arts ¹ during the 1840s. This, in turn, would reconnect the original historical association, which the Armada tapestries had held with the house of lords since the mid 17th century until their destruction by fire in 1834. This article places these Armada mural paintings within the historical context of this project at the Palace of Westminster and documents some of the methodology behind the programme of work to re-create this celebrated series for the walls of the house of lords.     

翰墨丹青 神韵长存 湖北省博物馆藏明清书画展

湖北省博物馆历时3年的扩建工程圃满完成形成具有楚韵文化特色的“一馆二翼”的建筑格局,展厅面积达13420余平方米,共11个展厅,展出文物万余件。新馆借2007年11月8日在湖北举办的第八届全国艺术节之际开馆接纳观众。其中,《馆藏明清书画展》是自建馆50余年来首次公开展出,为搞好这次展览,相关人员经过长期筹备,精心布局,将其具有代表性书画作品拣选出来,展出作品60余件。     

The Image of the Sámi in Finnish Visual Arts before the Second World War

Abstract

This article examines how Finnish artists depicted the Sámi people in their paintings from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the Second World War. In the first paintings that represented the Sámi, the attitude was very romantic and artists were not interested in knowing the Sámi culture or even in encountering the Sámi people. In the nineteenth century, nationalism required building an image of the Finns, thus most Finnish artists were not interested in the Sámi. The French philosopher Hippolyte Taine's writings influenced the young artist Juho Kyyhkynen, who started to depict the Sámi culture. In the 1920s and 1930s, Sámi were thought to be primitive or Mongolian, so Finnish artists painted relatively few portraits of Sámi. All this time it was only Finnish painters who depicted the Sámi, as the voice and ideas of the Sámi themselves did not become prominent in Finland until the 1970s.     

Quantification and the Scientific Study of History

Abstract

A survey of the illustrations in art history textbooks reveals that the most important Modern American painters, including Pollock, Johns, and Warhol, failed to produce individual paintings as famous as the masterpieces of a number of major French artists, such as Picasso, Manet, and Seurat. Analysis of the textbooks reveals that art historians do not consider the American artists to be less important than their French predecessors or judge the Americans' innovations to be less important. The absence of American masterpieces instead appears to be a consequence of market conditions. as changes over time in the primary methods of showing and selling fine art reduced the incentive for artists to produce important individual works. This study demonstrates that the study of markets is essential to a full understanding of the development of Modern art.     

明清鉴藏家对女画家艺术的鉴赏

晚明清初江浙一带一些持才善绘的女性进入了当时文人、书画史家和鉴藏家的视野,在同时期的诗文、笔记或书画著录中留下了有关其事略的直接记述,如作品的递藏、题跋或品评等情况。针对这一美术史现象,本文拟从女画家作品进入当时鉴藏领域的方式和收藏家对女画家艺术的品评两方面进行初步的探讨。     

Holy Organ or Unholy Idol? Forming a History of the Sacred Heart in New Spain

In the eighteenth century, Novohispanic painters produced some of the most innovative and visually complex images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. While they are based in part on European printed frontispieces of books about Christ's heart, the paintings are not mere copies or derivatives of European artworks. This article explores the reasons for the particular pictorial strategies of Novohispanic paintings of the Sacred Heart. I argue that the visual strategies employed by Novohispanic artists were intended to argue in support of the legitimacy and historicity of the cult of the Sacred Heart; the cult was under attack in the eighteenth century for, among other reasons, being too new and thus lacking historical roots, making it potentially heretical and apocryphal. Novohispanic depictions, like religious texts produced to defend the Sacred Heart, champion the cult, thereby attempting to shape perception through the power of the images.     

The life and passion of Artemisia1

When reading Susan Vreeland's novel The Passion of Artemisia, we find ourselves in seventeenth century Renaissance Italy and the social life of Artemisia d'Orazio Gentileschi, a woman painter who was raped, tortured by the Inquisition and due to her fine and original paintings, was the first woman painter to become a member of the famous Accademia del Disegno. In sum, she struggled for her personal and artistic liberation long before anyone in Europe had heard about feminism. Moreover, Artemisia is a timely reminder of how sometimes in the past for Europeans, and more specifically for Italians, Art in general and Painting in particular, was an integral part of a form of life not only for artists but for ordinary people as well.     

The Death of Beauty: Goya's Etchings and Black Paintings through the Eyes of André Malraux

Modern critics often regard Goya's etchings and black paintings as satirical observations on the social and political conditions of the time. In a study of Goya first published in 1950, which seldom receives the attention it merits, the French author and art theorist André Malraux contends that these works have a significance of a much deeper kind. The etchings and black paintings, Malraux argues, represent a fundamental challenge to the European artistic tradition that began with the Renaissance, an essentially humanist tradition founded on the pursuit of a transcendent world of nobility, harmony and beauty—an ideal world outside of which, as Malraux writes, ‘man did not fully merit the name man’. Following the illness that left him deaf for life—an encounter with ‘the irremediable’, to borrow Malraux's term—Goya developed an art of a fundamentally different kind—an art, Malraux writes, ruled by ‘the unity of the prison house’, which replaced transcendence with a pervasive ‘feeling of dependence’ and from which all trace of humanism has been erased. Foreshadowing modern art's abandonment of the Renaissance ideal, and created semi-clandestinely, the etchings and black paintings are an early announcement of the death of beauty in Western art.     

Suburban Identity in Paul Maitland's Paintings of Cheyne Walk

The aim of this article is to consider the extent to which Paul Maitland's paintings of Cheyne Walk addressed the problem of establishing suburban identity at the end of the nineteenth century. The emergence of the modern suburb during this period presented a particular problem with regard to how this form of urban living might be defined, understood and experienced. As part of a group of artists that could loosely by described as British Impressionists, Maitland was among the first to engage in a close study of this subject. This article situates Maitland's visual project within its wider cultural context, comparing his work with that of associated artists also interested in the suburban subject and in Cheyne Walk in particular and with a range of contemporary texts that addressed the complex problem of Chelsea's place identity, including guidebooks, letters, novels and the work of local historians. Drawing on the methodology of cultural and historical geography, this article highlights the extent to which place identity changes through time and how its formulation is based upon the economic and social structures of those who ‘live’ the place. Adopting and elaborating a range of visual signifiers associated with the modern suburb, including both its rural and working aspect, Maitland's paintings of Cheyne Walk provide a valuable and subtle insight into how this new urban space was being conceptualized at the end of the nineteenth century.     

元代画家李士行简论

作者通过整理元代画家李士行的传世作品及生平资料,对画家的生平经历有了一个简括的认识,并归纳出画家作品的两种风貌,即古木竹石类继承北方王庭筠和李成、郭熙传统;山水类则师承董源、巨然。李士行于不同题材师法不同大师的现象,一方面是由于元初名家赵孟(兆页)的“提醒品格”,另一方面与其生存环境的艺术传统和造化熏染密不可分。     

十八世纪杭州地区的画家方薰及其作品——以故宫博物院藏品为中心

18世纪末至19世纪中期,嘉兴府艺术家辈出,有史家甚至称之为所谓"嘉兴画派",认为它对后来的海派起到了重要影响。方薰并非这一派中的杰出艺术家,但他却生活在一个承上启下的时期,他的艺术承接了17、18世纪正统工细的艺术风格,同时也是19世纪后半叶上海艺术形式创新的前奏,从这个角度看,北京故宫所保存的5幅方薰的画作具有很大的价值。本文通过深入研究方薰生平并结合其作品,认为浙北知识精英阶层的生活品位与艺术需求同画家的创作有着密切的互动关系。对方薰个案的研究,可以使我们在某种程度上找到认知18世纪苏杭文人圈的捷径。此外,作者还指出,每个艺术中心都拥有它相对独特的文化,我们不应以偏概全地认为乾隆朝的宫廷以及扬州一带是18世纪所有中国画的原产地。     

‘The land and its people’: reflections on artistic identification in an age of nations and nationalism

From the late eighteenth century onwards, increasing numbers of visual artists came to identify with their nations and with the homeland and its people. This development was strongly influenced by growing national cultural support and regulation of the arts by academies, art schools, museums and art markets in Western Europe. On a subjective level, the Rousseauan movement of a ‘return to Nature’, Herder's espousal of vernacular cultural self‐expression and, above all, the widespread Romantic cult of authenticity, were potent influences on the inner self‐identification of visual artists after 1800, and were manifested in the novel importance accorded to landscape and rural genre painting in Western Europe. Here I consider the role of national sentiment, the ‘return to Nature’ and the cult of authenticity, first in landscape paintings by Paul Sandby, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable in early nineteenth‐century Britain, and then in the rural genre paintings of Jean‐Francois Millet and Jules Breton in nineteenth‐century France and Josef Israels, Anton Mauve and Vincent Van Gogh in the later nineteenth‐century Netherlands. Their work reveals how nineteenth‐century visual artists became inwardly identified with the ‘land and its people’, and how they in turn contributed, especially through prints and engravings, to the dissemination of national imagery and a cultural nationalism.     

Hockney Country

This paper reviews David Hockney RA, A Bigger Picture, an exhibition held at the Royal Academy in London, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne in 2012–3, and the associated catalogue and DVD. Geographical and historical questions, of region and space, movement and dwelling, are evident in Hockney's work in a variety of genres, in portraiture and theatre design as well as more recent excursions into landscape. Particular attention is paid to Hockney's paintings of the Yorkshire Wolds.     

Mythological Themes in Iranian Culture and Art: Traditional and Contemporary Perspectives

In Iran, ancient mythical elements are very much alive in the present as a part of the fabric of ordinary people's lives and worldview. This paper explores the relationship between culture, myth, and artistic production in contemporary Iran, using the specific examples of symbols and mythological themes evoked in the work of painter/writer Aydin Aghdashloo and photographer/video artist Shirin Neshat. The paintings of Aghdashloo, in which he deliberately damages beautifully-executed classical style Persian miniatures, convey a sense that the angelic forces have failed and that the world is succumbing to the destructive and degenerative activities of the demonic. The photographs, videos and installations of Neshat likewise draw heavily on cultic forms inherited from ancient Iranian tradition. It is important to note that in none of these cases does the artist use mythological themes and symbols to express their original cultural meaning; rather, they appropriate well-known elements of ancient Iranian culture and imbue them with new meanings relevant to contemporary issues and understandings. What these examples do illustrate is the persistent resonance of ancient Iranian culture among Iranians up to the present day. Iranian artists have demonstrated the effectiveness of evoking their target audience's deep sense of cultural identity to convey contemporary messages using ancient cultural concepts, sometimes on a subconscious level.     

Fictive Layering and Inversion in the Paintings of Ali-Akbar Sadeghi

In Iran surrealism is spoken of by artists and critics as a living element in art, long after its popularity in Europe and North America has waned. This article explores key features of the work of one of the most prolific contemporary Iranian artists, Ali-Akbar Sadeghi. While Sadeghi says that he thinks of himself as a “surrealist,” his work is distinguished from many self-professed surrealists in Iran: whereas the latter are concerned with representing metaphysical, even mystical, meanings, Sadeghi sees his art as a kind of intellectual exercise, presenting a dramatic theater in which the viewer engages in epistemological interrogation. Though Sadeghi's paintings are full of apparent references to surrealist themes and tropes from the past, here it is argued that his work is not so much a storehouse of surrealist content as a series of puzzles for the viewer to solve.     

Identification of Green Pigment Used in Persian Wall Paintings (ad 1501–1736) Using PLM,FT–IR,SEM/EDX and GC–MS Techniques

The technique of oil painting was introduced to Iran via a cultural exchange with Europe in the Safavid period (ad 1501–1736). Since the first attempt at scientific conservation of wall paintings in Iran in the 1960s, the nature of green pigment used in Persian wall paintings has not been clear, although work on contemporary miniature paintings has identified malachite and verdigris. PLM, FT–IR, SEM/EDX, GC–MS and the study of contemporary historical treatises of the Safavid period were the main tools used in the present study to identify the green pigments in Persian (oil‐based) wall paintings. Eight samples taken from the two famous Safavid buildings, Chehel Sotoon Palace and the Sukias House in Isfahan, were analysed. Here, the identification of copper‐based pigment and of verdigris in oil as oleate amends the existing knowledge of the green pigment used in these paintings. It also suggests that oleate was introduced to Persian artists via the European influence on Persian painting as a result of cultural exchange in the Safavid period, when the technique of Persian painting changed from tempera to oil painting. However, as verdigris in oil and resin can appear as oleate over time, it is unknown whether the Persian artists did this deliberately or accidentally.     

同治、光绪朝如意馆

本文以《内务府造办处各作成做活计清档》为基本文献,以故宫博物院所藏同治、光绪两朝内廷画士的奉旨之作为重要参照,探讨了晚清宫廷绘画机构——如意馆的诸项制度(入值画家的选拔与考核、奖惩与等级、画作的审查与作品格式等),并论述了如意馆绘画的主要功用(纪实、装饰和案头观赏)及其各自不同的绘画风格。