Art History Today

A Correction, and some Technical Notes on Holbein

1.Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait, Princess Elizabeth Tudor, Private Collection, about 1542,tempera and oil on oak panel, 52 x 42 cm.	2.Details showing bonnet and brooch. A miniature world of elegance hinting at the sitter’s status and wealth.

I need to make a correction about the Holbein in the review of Graeme Cameron’s book, which has been pointed out to me by the author. Still, it gives me the opportunity to show better quality images of the painting.

I erroneously said that the frame of the Holbein portrait of the young Princess Elizabeth had been dated to 1542. This is not the case. The frame was examined in 1997 by Dr Peter Klein, of Universitat Hamburg, for dendrochronology testing, but he was unable to find any Oak end grain growth rings to help the dating. However, the panel of the portrait has been dated to 1542. In addition to various scientific testing, including infra-red scanning carried out by others, Dr Libby Sheldon of University College, London, analysed its pigments and materials. To cut a long story short, the painting materials in the portrait were found to be consistent with other works by Holbein, including the Lady with a Squirrel and Starling, in the National Gallery, London.

3.Ground azurite powder for use as a pigment.	4.Natural ultramarine.

Interestingly, the blue pigment azurite, which a NG Technical Bulletin says was “a standard pigment of German artists in particular” was detectable in both. To the uninitiated it might look like lapis lazuli or ultramarine, and in fact the two were often confused, since lapis lazula was a term applied to many blue pigments. However, azurite was also in demand; research  has shown that azurite was used more in the past, especially in medieval times. It;s interesting to speculate why Holbein and other German artists favoured this blue rather than others. Below is a composite image showing the face of Elizabeth and the woman in  the London portrait, which shows the colour. Note that Elizabeth’s face is shown during restoration, with earlier darkened over painted layers removed, the whole in need of further restoration, including filling in the craquelure.

5.Faces of Elizabeth and Lady with Squirrel merged. Similar technique and physiological features,, e.g. eye. Elizabeth panel suffers from craquelure.	6.Hans Holbein the Younger, Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling, National Gallery, London, about 1526-8, oil on oak, 56 x 38.8 cm.

In addition to colour and technique, there are also physiognomic concordances between the Elizabeth portrait and another Holbein, this time in Toledo, Ohio.

7.Hans Holbein, Elizabeth Tudor and Portrait of a Lady, probably a member of the Cromwell family, Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, c. 1535-40.

This has been a short post, but I’ll return to these matters at length in a post I’m planning on the newly discovered Judgement of Paris, later in the month. Images 1,2,5,6,7 courtesy of Graeme Cameron.

Poussin’s Revenge

The above is what  a colleague of mine is calling the wave of  impending strikes at the National Gallery. In response to concerns about security, the foot soldiers of the museum are threatening a series of strikes next month that could seriously disrupt the high-profile Leonardo exhibition due to start on the 9th November.  The cause of these projected walkouts are the new security arrangements. From the Guardian:

“Under pressure from government cuts, the gallery has instructed its warders – now called "gallery assistants" – to each watch over two rooms rather than one, as previously. Warders claim the new arrangement allowed the Poussin vandal time to attack two paintings because the warder was in the adjoining room.

About 200 members of staff – including curators – have signed a protest petition to the gallery's director, Nicholas Penny.”

Security has been a burning issue since the attack on Poussin’s Golden Calf perpetuated in the summer. I can only assume that the great French master would have approved of the action the warders, or “gallery assistants” as they are now forced to call themselves, might take on behalf of his art, Leonardo’s and all the other old masters in the gallery.

The article doesn’t mention it, but it remains to be seen how other major museums like Cracow and the Louvre are going to react to this growing storm, since their valuable masterpieces will be vulnerable too.

I haven’t yet booked a ticket for the show, and that might prove a blessing in the long run.

A Medic in the Museum

The connection between museums and medicine does not spring to mind, although there is a historical link. Some museums were originally ecclesiastical institutions that ministered to the sick, such as the Hôtel Dieu in Beaune or the Museo di San Marco in Florence. At Beaune, the sick were placed before Rogier van der Weyden’s impressive Last Judgment for solace.

One of the best attempts to fuse the art museum and the medical institution is in Ivan Gaskell’s Vermeer’s Wager in which he says the following:

“Many analogies can be drawn between art museums and hospitals: more, probably, than between art museums and the institutions with which, as sites of scholarship, they are most often compared: universities. One analogy concerns the techniques of education of their staffs. Pierre Bourdieu has described the differences in education conferred by medical facilities of arts and science. He demonstrates that, whereas in the latter the production and reproduction of knowledge are formalized and transmitted rationally, medical education is the acquisition of an internalised set of skills constituting an art. In consequence, the relationships between the teacher-patrons and the pupil-clients differ markedly within the two institutions; Conditions in art museums more closely approximate the medical model than they do those of the arts and science faculties.”[1]

The French sociolinguist Pierre Bourdieu- mentioned in Gaskell’s extract- compared the “great surgeon” to the “supremo” of a hospital department. As Gaskell’s says, we need only substitute “museum director” or “head of curatorial department” for the medical categories. The pupil-clients become interns, or junior members of staff, who follow the teacher-patron on his rounds.

However, I’m now reading about a surgeon who takes his students on walks round the London National Gallery, visiting pictures like patients on morning call. Professor Michael Baum, a cancer expert, brings his diagnostic skills to bear on the problem of interpreting famous works like Piero di Cosimo’s so-called Nymph and Satyr. More generally, Baum stresses the importance of the eye in diagnosis and the art of painting itself.

"Art and medicine have parallel histories: accurate drawings of dissections were crucial for anatomical education, for example, while art therapy has provided patients with powerful cathartic releases. And now when we look with a trained eye, it is clear these artists had considerable medical knowledge and often used it with considerable subtlety."

The quality of perspicacity, not just defined as acuity of vision, but also the act of penetrating beneath the surface is of paramount importance here . As Baum obviously knows, in the early modern period some surgeons and doctors were art admirers and were trained in the analysis of pictures. To them there were parallels between opening up the body to determine the nature of a disease or the cause of death, and stripping back the layers of both paint and meaning in a work in their own collections. It’s true that Baum could be over-interpreting in his artistic/medical exposition of Piero’s painting, but many art historians have been guilty of wielding the scalpel of over-analysis when probing the mysteries of Piero’s work. As for the “waiter’s tip”, I’m in no position to say- not a medical expert. However, I think Baum’s surgical approach is instructive, and  I look forward to more diagnoses from the hospital ward of the National Gallery in the future.

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[1] Ivan Gaskell, Vermeer’s Wager: Speculations on Art History, Theory and Art Museums, Reaktion, 197-8.

Room for more Gallery Warders?

The answer is a resounding yes, but despite the looming flagship Leonardo exhibition, as this Guardian article reports, the National Gallery is pressing ahead with its plans to have warders guard two rooms instead of one. This comes a few weeks after the attack on Poussin’s art, and amid claims that the gallery’s security is on a par with other leading museums. Really? Surely Artwatch UK’s Michael Daley is right to express concern at this policy. As he’s quoted in the Guardian:

"The most alert and attentive person cannot be in two places at once … and cannot see through walls." He acknowledged the gallery's claim that perambulatory staff were more effective, but said: "The quantity of surveillance is halved whether or not its quality improves."

Meanwhile, taking a break from his coverage of the London riots, Jonathan Jones of the same newspaper  lashes out at Artwatch for even broaching the subject? In the comments section he splutters:

“This "story" is sensationalist hysteria that relies heavily on a very dubious source, ie, Artwatch UK.

Artwatch is quoted here as a neutral voice of authority on such matters. It is nothing of the sort: it is a dogmatic pressure group with a long history of picking on the National Gallery in particular.

The reporter says "such is the concern that Artwatck UK has been contacted". That makes it sound like Artwatch is a bit like the Hague court or Ofart, a cool and responsible public body.

This is a bit like a political story that said, "such is the concern that the English Defence League has been contacted."

Artwatch is not neutral, and should never be allowed to speak with unquestioned authority in any news story.”

Why? Artwatch UK is expressing the view of many people, curators, security experts, art historians, employees of the N.G., anybody interested in protecting its art, especially after the dreadful attack on the Poussin paintings. It’s a legitimate concern, and Artwatch only have the welfare of the art in mind. And do you really, Mr Jones, need to bring the English Defence League into this?

Here Comes the Deaccessioning Flood?

Back to museum politics and, inevitably, money.

A few days ago Bendor Grosvenor reported the dismal story of Bolton Council deciding to sell off 36 works of art. Though they bowed to pressure from arts groups about stopping the deaccessioning of a picture by a local painter, all the other 36 are going under the hammer at Bonham’s. Due to some famous artists on this list, I can’t help thinking Bendor might be on to something about this opening the floodgates for other council sell-offs, especially with the current evisceration of local government funds. The Dughet classical landscape (above) is top-notch, the Millais (below) is good and the Romney is a fine work. What a sorry state of affairs.

Some of the works doomed to deaccessioning and auction:

Gaspard Dughet Classical Landscape (pictured)
Richard Ansdell Buzzard and Ptarmigan
William Powell Frith A Dream of the Future
18th Century French School The Finding of Oedipus
Arthur Ambrose McEvoy Madame Errasuriz
Walter Richard Sickert Pauline de Talleyrand-Perigord
Philip Wilson Steer The Falls at Aysgarth
John Everett Millais The Somnambulis (pictured)
George Romney King Lear
Edward Burne-Jones Danae and the Brazen Tower
Charles Ginner English Landscape

 

  The real tragedy is that people who have grown up with these works will now be deprived of them. We tend to forget about what could be called the “history of viewing”, in local museums. Each painting has welcomed many visitors over and over in its time, like a reassuring friend; now that bond will be broken.  Reading this article I can’t help contrasting it with another experience: attending the 1998 Art Treasures of England: The Regional Collections exhibition, masterminded by Richard Verdi and Richard Foster. I can visualise the R.A. packed with wonderful pictures, from every provincial museum in the country, (Bolton included), and me marvelling at the richness of holdings in our local museums, set up with philanthropic drive and civic virtue. How different things seem today with our cultural lifeblood being drained away by a philistine government completely out of control, forcing local councils to take these measures. I fear BG’s thought about floodgates opening might prove prophetic.

Perino in Peril.

There’s a corker of a post over at Artwatch concerning the recently acquired Perino del Vaga Holy Family and Infant St John by the Met in New York. A very important article with implications for the world of conservation, and the art market.

The Perino del Vaga was a triumph for the Met, bought for $2.098 m, along with a drawing by this master at Sotheby’s New Year Old Master sale. So what, you might say. Well, the Perino picture was unrestored, Sotheby’s deciding not to clean it up for the market.

This literally paid off with the picture selling for a record price unlike a restored old master which underperformed- Titian’s A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria. The re-touched Titian failed to reach its upper estimate only selling for $16.9 m (£10.6 m). This is significant according to Artwatch….

“Although even this low price broke a 20 years old auction house record for the artist, it did so when the going “museum rate” for privately sold large multi-figure Titians is about £50m (as with the Diana and Actaeon when recently bought jointly by the National Gallery, London, and the National Galleries of Scotland).”

And this points up an important development…

“The high premium that auctioneers now place on little or un-restored works is, to critics of restoration practices, one of the most heartening developments of our times. Another is the fact that some restorers, even, acknowledge that less has proved more in the preservation of old masters. The New York dealer/restorer, Marco Grassi, has disclosed that of the paintings coming into his hands, the ones enjoying the best condition are those of relatively minor and unfashionable artists. As he concludes, because such lesser works are so often “impeccably preserved, so we have to think something terrible started in the nineteenth century when the painter/restorer trade began.”

And the Met’s position on this? Artwatch is disappointed to report an “eccentric reading of the sale” by Keith Christiansen, one of the museum’s senior curators…“Though the work sold for more than its estimate, Mr. Christiansen said the museum actually benefited from what he called ‘negative chatter’ about it from dealers. Although the painting is in good condition, he said, it is filthy and will go on view only after it is cleaned. Paintings by this Renaissance master are rare.”

And even worse, the fate of this rare Perino to be satisfied by taste!??

“Restoration is interpretation”, and, “in the end, it’s a matter of taste. And I guess I have confidence in my taste.”

Artwatch have neither confidence in Keith Christiansen’s taste nor the possibility that he might re-consider the fate of the Perino. A long and painful silence prevails, though contacts tell me that pressure is being put on the Met to respond. Personally, I think Artwatch have got KC over a barrel. Just from the reproduction I can see that the work is in great condition and crying out to be admired by the public. Why this compulsion to clean it?

Art Themes and Memes of 2010

Connoisseurship and Science.

  The topic of how science can help us identify painters, styles, authorship etc, has figured highly on this blog over the past year. In a July post, I said that Martin Kemp’s and Pascal Cotte’s book on the troublesome La Bella Principessa drawing showed how the two approaches could function for the artistic good, without feeling the need to outdo each other. I’ve received e.mails and comments from top Leonardo scholars/connoisseurs who believe that this compromise augurs well for an age of increasing complexity in museum politics and practice. Yet, despite this attitude of rapprochement, why do some still harbour doubts and clamour for a “return to traditional connoisseurship.” Perhaps that’s valid; one word that didn’t feature much in the National Gallery’s Close Examination exhibition was connoisseurship.

Rediscoveries, Rediscoveries, Rediscoveries!

We ended last year with the rediscovery of a Velasquez at the Met in New York, and guess what? We’re concluding 2010 with another Velasquez (pictured) dredged from the vaults of the Met. I found last year’s attribution completely convincing, but have to agree with Culture Grrl about the lamentable quality of this year’s find, despite the attribution’s support by one of the leading experts on the painter. This seems to be a cumulative trend: curators making claims about the dusty old masters in their basements; claims subsequently endorsed by a leading authority. Some attributions hold water, but I can’t help feeling a little jaded and cynical at the rediscovery phenomenon, particularly with such headline attracting names like Rembrandt and Velasquez. And for every authenticated old master, there is one that simply doesn’t pass the test. I’m looking at that so-called “Caravaggio” St John in Amsterdam, which doesn’t convince me in the least.

Refurbishment, Refurbishment, Refurbishment!.

  If there was one word that caused my blood to boil it was the dreaded word refurbishment. It reminded me of Baudelaire’s complaint about Paris being full of road works and construction; or Ruskin’s rants about restoration and dropping cement on classical figures in Venice, all in the name of progress. In much the same curmudgeonly mode, I cry “Excuse me, but do we have to close whole museums, or deprive the public of their permanent collections for such as long time, purely so we can have a 21^st museum experience”? Particularly reprehensible is Tate Britain (pictured) which is about to embark on a 45m makeover, necessitating the storing of most of the pre 1900 collection. After writing this post, I got comments and messages from lots of readers who have seen this modern construction imposed on their own museums. And there’s another dimension to refurbishment:, it seems to have replaced loan exhibitions as a way of unintentionally hiding the permanent collection from the people.

Art History and Cyberspace.

What have Facebook, Twitter et al have to do with art history? On the face of it nothing, but look again and you might change your mind. I’ve used Facebook to discuss the iconography, style etc of old master paintings; the messaging system seems to be ideal for that. I’m not exactly a Twitterholic, but the software obviously has its attraction for art enthusiasts who have found my blog through it, and as a communication device, it’s awesome.  It’s not yet clear what social networking and the rise of cyberspace can do for art history, but we’d be fools to ignore its potential, especially as education is likely to become more open-source and accessible in the future. As I said here, I think it’s inevitable that web technology will be absorbed into our discipline, especially as the paradigms of publishing change, as they must, due to the mass amateurization of publishing caused by the rise in weblogs, wikis and other on-line resources. That can only mean that we’ll learn more about the benefits of sharing information and ideas on line.   

Art and the Age of Austerity.

If there is one word that needs to be re-defined to make it reflect a specific historical moment, it’s austerity and the programme of momentous and callous measures associated with it. From now on we won’t be able to hear that word without thinking of effigies of Nick Clegg burned by furious students, or David Cameron reassuring pensioners their winter fuel allowance was safe, whilst planning to take it away from them, as we learned over the festive season. The austerity programme glanced off the major museums- no admission charge, only a 15% cut, and financial reserves to be accessed, up to 50% in the NG’s case- but the axe hacked mercilessly away at the Arts Council and other arts organisations. Timber! Down they went, the funding for a broad swath of arts ventures, not to mention provincial museums, libraries, and other targets which are deemed too much of a luxury for the incoming Age of Austerity. If we took austerity to its logical conclusion, I would be sitting on the floor of my study with my net book powered by my own battery; and when that packed up, I’d be reading books by the light of the candle, desperately trying to block out the noise of the anti-culture police bulldozing the libraries and universities outside. Still, I guess we should give thanks to the ConDems for not imposing admission charges on the major museum, but can we really believe it’s going to last? Can you really trust a government on culture that is so mean that it gleefully deprives young children of the delight of discovering reading? And what chance has culture and the arts got in this country when it’s represented by people like this?

Art and Protest

Situationist fun or serious engagement with an administration that seems to have abandoned the young to their economic fate? I don’t know, but the outbreak of sit-ins, art school occupations and tactics (as reported on here) that fused the aesthetic and the political certainly caught the attention and imagination of those who had been, hitherto, politically quiescent, myself included. Who can forget the book block as a spirited response to kettling, a word that has huge resonance for the protest movement. I think it’s copyrighted, otherwise I would have shown you an image of a kettle cop laying into Derrida’s Spectres of Marx. Away from the physical fray, the most symbolic expression of young artist rage appeared at the Turner Prize, shaming the glitterati inside who should have opened the door for free education, but settled for business as usual instead. Forget about Susan Phillipsz, the students should have won, since 2010 protest could be the new modern art! Pictured are the Arts Against Cuts movement who briefly occupied the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, whilst enroute to a demonstration.

AHT wishes all its readers a happy new year! I’ll be back in Jan with an overview of exhibitions to look out for in 2011.

2013 is a Long Way Off. The Rijksmuseum Effect.

 When I visited the Rijksmuseum May last year, it looked like this. 

 

 

 

When I visited the Accademia in Venice this April, it looked like this. Note the developing theme: refurbishment indicated by cranes, trucks, scaffolding etc. 

 Now refurbishment is fine in itself. After all, museums need more space so that they can show more of their collection that is subterranean, hidden in store rooms or languishing far from the public gaze. I'm sure that once the cranes and lorries have rolled away, and we have entered the new spacious Rijksmuseum, all will deem, public and curators alike, that the long wait was worth it. However, the massive downside to refurbishments is that most of the permanent collection disappears for years. This is what has happened with the Rijksmuseum; this is what will happen to Tate Britain, which from next year undergoes a wholesale makeover of £45 million. Not only that, but as its new director and overseer of the project, Penelope Curtis says, there will be fewer exhibitions over the next few years. This will be a shame since the last few years under the stewardship of Stephen Deuchar saw some excellent shows like the Turner and the Masters which I visited last autumn.

I don't really care about the re-hang- you get used to them- but putting most of the collection's holdings into storage for 3 years- or more if the project doesn't finish on schedule- seems deplorable to me. At a time when the arts are threatened, we need to be reassured they're still there by seeing them and engaging with them face to canvas. To be fair to Penelope Curtis, there will be art on show during the refurbishment, but from what I can glean on the web, it's mainly going to be more modern art and less historical art. This is the re-surfacing of a problem that has bedeviled the Tate Empire for decades: is it a gallery of modern art or a gallery of English art? Tate Modern seemed to have solved the problem, but modern English art still has a claim on Tate Britain.

Perhaps the post- refurbishment re-hang will solve this problem of integrating English modernism and the traditional stuff- but you're going to have to wait a long time to see. But you see, these days you have to wait for things; you have to endure deprivation and suffer austerity because it will be worth it in the end, when the pictures are released from their dark captivity and emerge into the sunlight like the prisoners in Beethoven's Fidelio.  Well, I don't buy that wait and see argument, and anyway, as one commentator says on Jonathan Jones thread about this topic, why not tour the traditional paintings round the regions? Or as Jones says himself, give the traditional art to other galleries the like the National Gallery, the V&A and Dulwich that would welcome historic art more. The Pre-Raphaelites, 18^th century history painting et al would make sense in the display culture of the NG, V&A, and Dulwich.

I wonder if Tate Britain will put one of these renovation timelines on its website? It seems to stretch and stretch and stretch into the distance. 2013 seems a long way off, but it'll be worth the wait in the end. You'll see…in three years or more.

Museum Cuts

On the day of the mad axe man, Museums Journal on the cuts in the cultural sector.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced cuts of 15% for all national museums.

Renaissance in the Regions

It will also cut the Renaissance in the Regions programme by 15% over the same period, to £45.567m in 2011, £44.725m in 2012, £44.050m in 2013 and £43.914m in 2014.

Arts Council England

Arts Council England (ACE) will receive an overall cut of 29.6%, from £387.728m in 2011 to £349.392m 2014, a total, in real terms, of nearly £350m. The DCMS has asked that ACE does not cut funding to its regularly funded organisations by more than 15%. Arts minister Ed Vaizey said the DCMS would also ask that ACE reduce its administration costs by 50%.

It is widely expected that ACE will inherit many of the functions of the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), including Renaissance, when the MLA is wound up in April 2012. Vaizey said a decision on this had not yet been made, but the body that inherits the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's functions would receive a separate administration budget.

Local authorities

The chancellor George Osborne announced that local authority budgets would be reduced by 7.1% each year for the next four years. Museums are discretionary services for local authorities.

National museums

The government will maintain free entry to national museums, and capital projects at the British Museum, Tate Modern and British Library will go ahead.

The government will also allow national museums to access their reserves to a total of £143m over four years.

English Heritage

Funding to English Heritage is to be cut by 32% over four years, from £114.742m in 2011 to £96.962m in 2014.

Do the words cultural vandalism come to mind?

Comment here and here from the Guardian.

Connoisseurship and the Public Eye

This is the second in a series of posts that considers different aspects of connoisseurship. Previously, the relationship between connoisseurship and science was looked at; this time I want to think about connoisseurship in the context of public museology- that branch of museum studies that examines the role of the public in the construction of display spaces. The question of connoisseurship and the public wasn't far from my mind on my recent visits to the stunning British Museum Italian Renaissance Drawings exhibition, and the so-so Close Examinations show at the NG. During moments of looking at the drawings and paintings, not to mention dodging the leakage of information from audio-guides, my mind turned to the origins of the public in the museum: how certain cultural and factors brought about changes in the way the public saw art; the appearance of the public eye.

There's no doubt looking at the crowds delighting in close study of old Master drawings at the British Museum, V& A and those closely inspecting the art works in the NG that connoisseurship is becoming a public experience. Where did this phenomenon originate? According to Jonathan Conlin in his comprehensive history of the NG, a bid to wrest control from connoisseurs on behalf of the public can be traced back to 1749 when the architect John Gwynn urged a creation of "a public art academy". Later in the 19^th century, the transition from art in private galleries to art in a building purpose built to admit the public begins in earnest. Specifically, in this period we're looking at a struggle between connoisseurs, principally members of the British Institution, who wanted to keep art in private galleries and who believed that the public did not have the expertise to make value judgments about art. They were right, but certain connoisseurs like the future director of the NG, Charles Lock Eastlake, considered it their duty to acquire art from private galleries in order to educate the public in art history, so that they could gain the skills needed to judge and value works of art. Eastlake, the subject of a forthcoming 2011 show at the NG, acquired 139 paintings for the gallery, most of them Italian renaissance paintings. Despite his intellectual vision and his unwavering conviction in the NG, he did drop horrendous clangers. For example, in 1845, he allowed the "bad Holbein" to be purchased for £630. This painting- in the Close Examinations show- has now been re-attributed to Michael Coxcie.

To give Eastlake his due though, when he became embroiled in disputes about so- called Raphaels, he made the correct decision- to reject. Had he not, there would have been even more "Raphaels" to accompany the dubious Madonna of the Pinks in the Sainsbury Wing. There were other misses by Eastlake, but one of the reasons why Eastlake is such an important figure is that he recognized the role of connoisseurship in the building up of a gallery for the public. With his trusty lieutenant Otto Mündler, the NG's travel-agent, Eastlake hunted pictures on the continent, assessing their artistic merit, while keeping a sharp eye on the budget that dogged his footsteps. Despite financial constraints, Eastlake and Mündler, combined with the formidable connoisseurial fire power of German art connoisseur Gustav Friedrich Waagen, broadened out the renaissance holdings of the NG. To this curatorial team, we owe the purchase of gems like Giovanni Bellini's Madonna of the Meadow, Veronese's mammoth The Family of Darius and Alexander and Uccello's 'Battle of San Romano', not to mention a brace of neglected paintings from the school of Brescia.

Eventually, Parliament would cancel Mündler's salary- and hence his job- shades of conflicts between NG personnel and the government that continue to this day. Another dispute between politicians and curators concerned the proposed merging of the collections of the British Museum with that of the N.G. which held implications for educating the public in the arcane ways of connoisseurship. One of the participants to this debate was the Pre-Raphaelite supporter John Ruskin who believed that the "sister arts" should be shown under one roof, all the better to instruct the public. Ruskin had a good point. Painting is merely part of the artistic process and in order to appreciate and understand an artist, you need to be familiar with his or her drawings. There is another angle on this. If the drawings of artists are in one location and their paintings in another, it requires great visual memory to recall the drawings in the journey from one location to another. This point about connoisseurship, the public and memory was made by C.T. Newton, an officer of the B.M:

"..the comparison of objects in contiguous compartments or galleries is a very different thing from the strain on the mind which takes place when we attempt to transport, in our memories, through the thoroughfares of a crowded city, those fine shades of distinction on which classification mainly depends. The trained student of art can with difficulty do this, even with the help of elaborate drawings and notes; the general public would doubtless, in passing from one museum to another, endeavour to institute comparisons ; but these comparisons, appealing to recollections half obliterated, would be partial and inexact; the public would cease to observe resemblances no longer forced upon their attention; their minds would no longer be in a state to receive those ennobling impressions which are suggested, even to the most careful observer, when, by the felicitous combination of the monuments of many races, a vast scheme of historical relations is suddenly disclosed and demonstrated."

The final part of Newton's statement is interesting. When moving from one museum to another, members of the public become fatigued which affects their memories, which in turn impairs their ability to make comparative judgements between works of art in different locations, when they are only in one museum. The publics' memory of what they saw in the museum becomes crowded out by the sights and sounds of the city; so, in order for the public to function as efficient connoisseurs in a modern urban setting, they must develop strong powers of mental concentration, or have the image before them so that they are less liable to make mistakes unlike the trained connoisseur who can work from memory despite the many distractions around them.  

Newton was mainly concerned with antiquities and he says nothing about the drawings in the British Museum, which if reformers like Ruskin had had their way would have been in the NG, alongside the paintings. In retrospect, the decision not to house the BM drawings- and the Raphael cartoons in the V& A for that matter- in the N.G. or to at least to have had a building containing the drawings/prints next to the paintings in the NG was misguided. Why? Because exposure to paintings in the vicinity of drawings would have sharpened the public's powers of visual analysis and probably accelerated the science of public museology. These days, the public don't need a visual memory; they can buy catalogues of exhibitions – when they are not too expensive- or guide books containing images of paintings in galleries, but in the mid 19^th century, catalogues were in their infancy and highly specialized at that. Like today, some visitors could not afford them. This led William Ewart to suggest to Parliament "that there should be affixed or appended to the paintings, statues and other works of art, to specimens or illustrations of science, antiquities, public monuments, and historical memorials in our public institutions, explanatory inscriptions, giving a brief account of the subject, date, history and author of the work so as to afford some general instruction to the public, and to spare them the expense of purchasing a catalogue." This meant that where the public were concerned, connoisseurship disappeared. As Christopher Whitehead points out, labels were a declaration that the individual did not need to know the work on sight when visiting the gallery- they were aimed at non-connoisseurs, in other words. Labels evolved parallel to catalogues, both building on scientific connoisseurship, and by introducing labeling, the museum was turned into a monumental catalogue; its paintings were its "book" illustrations and its corridors and halls were its "pages."

How comfortable do connoisseurs and art history professionals feel in these living catalogues? The answer would seem to be not very, due to the number of visitors who attend and break the concentration of the connoisseur.  

Is that a viable view these days? I used to believe that the only place you can really practice true connoisseurship was in the secluded print rooms of museums, or in provincial galleries undisturbed by the tread of the madding crowd, or in the study in your own home with the world at bay. With loupe or magnifying glass in hand, or you'd pour over the lines and shadings of renaissance drawings, oblivious of the teeming hordes outside. Now, I don't feel the need to rise above the crowd like the contortionist connoisseurs in the Punch cartoon. Instead, I rejoice in the numbers of people coming to scrutinize Raphael, Parmigianino, Michelangelo, Verrocchio et al and practice my art history rituals in the midst of the crowd. In these days of mass marketing, the insatiable thirst for exhibitions and art and the explosion of the image across cyberspace, the loupe of the connoisseur has turned into a large public eye.

Leading on from that last sentence, I'll probably do a third installment- on connoisseurship and technology, in the not too distant future. It's a popular topic on the blog.  

Images

Richard Wiatrek, The Connoisseur, date unknown.

Attributed to Michael Coxcie, Portrait of a Man with a Skull, about 1560 or later. ("The Bad Holbein")

Photograph of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake.

Giovanni Bellini, Madonna of the Meadow, 1500, bt 1858.

The British Museum

'The Advantages of the Practice of 'Athletic Exercises' by Young Painters, as recommended by a Great Critic', Punch cartoon, 25^th May, 1861.

Sources consulted

Jonathan Conlin, The Nation's Mantelpiece: A History of the National Gallery, London, 2006.

David Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World, Princeton, 1978.

Christopher Whitehead, The Public Art Museum in 19^th Century Britain: The Development of the National Gallery, London, 2005.