Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Artworks

Saco’s Panorama Also Comes To Light

After decades of obscurity….Panoramas are back in vogue, it seems. Late last month, the Saco Museum in Maine unveiled its Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress, which like The Panorama Of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley at the St. Louis Art Museum (which I wrote about here and here), has been conserved and is now ready for prime time.

The Maine panorama, unlike the St. Louis one, was thought to be lost. As you’ll read below, it had disappeared from view for 100 years and was rediscovered only in 1996. It’s quite beautiful, judging by pictures, and was created by Edward Harrison May (1824-1887) and Joseph Kyle (1815-1863) and designed by some notable artists (see below).

Now, “For the first time since the 1860s, the entire historic panorama—800 feet of vibrantly painted muslin canvas, in four sections—will be on view in two downtown locations, the Saco Museum and the historic Pepperell Mills.”  That comes after 15 years of research and restoration, partly funded with a Save America’s Treasures grant.

Here is its backstory, from the museum:

The Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress illustrates, in a way that no other work of art has done before or since, a moment when ideas about faith, art, and landscape all traveled along the same narrow highway in the course of American life. Also known as Bunyan’s Tableau, it was created in 1851 and presented to audiences nationwide throughout the second half of the 19th century. … Panoramas were presented by scrolling the massive canvas paintings across a stage, accompanied by narration and music. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, on which this panorama is based, was also a sensation in its time and beyond. Written in 1678 England, it achieved a peak of popularity in 19th-century America, where it became a huge influence upon literature and religion. The Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress was one of the most important moving panoramas in the United States, an exceptional example of this genre of painting that bridged high art and popular culture.

It was conceived by members of the National Academy of Design in New York, with designs contributed by Hudson River School masters Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, Daniel Huntington, and others.

In this way, it relates directly to the developing national school of landscape painting. After its final performance in York County, Maine, the Moving Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress spent many years in a Biddeford barn and was ultimately given to the York Institute (now the Saco Museum) in 1896.  The panorama was forgotten as the museum’s location moved from building to building, and was periodically closed for wartime uses, throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was not until 1996…that the panorama was rediscovered in the museum’s storage vault.  It was this discovery that prompted the panorama’s partial conservation—approximately one fourth was treated—and exhibition tour in 1999. This current project completes the conservation work begun two decades ago, treating and exhibiting the panorama in its entirety and exploring innovative new strategies to make this immense masterpiece of 19th century American art accessible to audiences and scholars worldwide.

There’s much more here about the restoration in the press release, and the Saco Museum has also created a website for the panorama, where it has posted a film about the project, and a blog. The museum has also scheduled a day-long public symposium on September 21-22, 2012.

I’m hoping the piece, which is on view through Nov. 12, creates a lot of excitement in Maine. Saco is a small town, with fewer than 20,000 people, though it gets a lot of summer tourists.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Saco Museum

 

“Inductive Optimism” Or A Real Discovery? — UPDATED

Could there possibly be a trove of 100 unknown Caravaggio drawings and maybe a painting or two? Some Italian researchers say so. That caused an immediate storm of incredulity.

Here’s the story: Last week, art historians Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz,  artistic director of the Brescia Museum Foundation, and Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli, his colleagure, announced their find and said they were publishing their work in a two-volume, 477-page e-book entitled Young Caravaggio – One hundred rediscovered works, supposedly available on Amazon, but I couldn’t find it either here or on the UK site. (True, one story I read said “will publish,” so maybe it’s forthcoming.)

They said they discovered the sketches in a collection of paintings and drawings from the workshop of Simone Peterzano which has been held in a castle in Milan, Castello Sforzesco, since 1924, after they were transferred there from a nearby church. Caravaggio was an apprentice to Peterzano in his youth, as were other Italian painters. The Peterzano archive contains 1,378 paintings and drawings by the master and his students, and Curuz and Fedrigolli say it’s unlikely than some are not by Caravaggio. So they set to work to find them.

However, doubt was cast when other art historians said the pair had not studied the sketches in person, but rather used photographs to make identifications. It surely didn’t help that someone in the early articles had already placed a value on them — some 700 million euros.  

But while, according to the Daily Telegraph, “Their research was praised as “intelligent” by Claudio Strinati, a prominent expert in 16th-century art and an authority on Caravaggio,” others disagreed. For example:

Dr John T. Spike, a Caravaggio expert at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, said the quality of the sketches was better than Caravaggio’s earliest known work, Boy Peeling Fruit, painted in 1592.

“The sketches from the collection show robust, competent drawing, yet in Caravaggio’s earliest painting he was struggling to draw competently,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “How could he have gone backwards in terms of his artistic skill?”

The American press hasn’t given much coverage to the claims, but I’d venture that’s partly because they show so little interest in art (as opposed to the art market). Reuters picked it up and published something yesterday, dousing the claim with cold water. The AP, too, showed restraint and disbelief, writing:

Among the prominent skeptics was Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums and one of Italy’s most esteemed art historians and restoration experts, who pointed out that many experts have seen the drawing and “not one of those experts had come up with the name of Caravaggio.”

Paolucci described the claim as “pure inductive optimism” in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on Friday, though he acknowledged it was always possible that “researchers with lesser credentials but with an especially gifted eye, sensitivity and also luck” had pinpointed something new.

Sounds right to me.

UPDATE, 7/11: No wonder I couldn’t find the book mentioned above on Amazon’s website: The Telegraph is now reporting that the book has been withdrawn. It said:

…Stefano Boeri, a cultural official with Milan city council, announced the launching of an investigation to ascertain “the correctness of the procedures regarding the publication” of the e-book.

A panel of heritage experts from Castello Sforzesco, the castle where the archive of sketches and drawings is kept, would scrutinise “with rigour the ideas advanced by the authors of the e-book,” he said….

Uh-oh.

Photo: Supper at Emmaus, from the National Gallery collection in London

July Fourth: The Statue of Liberty As Subject

 Happy Fourth! Have a look at this painting, in the collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art:

The Statue of Liberty in Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi’s Studio, Paris, 1884

Paul Joseph Victor Dargaud’s painting the Statue of Liberty in Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi’s Studio, Paris (1884) commemorates the construction of Bartholdi’s colossus Liberty Enlightening the World better known to Americans as the Statue of Liberty. Dargaud began exhibiting at the Paris salon in 1873, and until his death in 1921 he specialized in topographical scenes of belle epoque Paris. Like Manet and the Impressionists he was fascinated by the city and painted views of Paris that combine a topographer’s eye for realist detail with an impressionist’s sensitivity to the fleeting quality of modern life. A series of his Parisian views are in the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, one of which shows the Statue of Liberty fully assembled outside Bartholdi’s studio.

Inspired on a trip to Egypt by the grandeur of the Pyramids and the Sphinx, Bartholdi imagined a monumental statue of Liberty that would be twice the size of the Sphinx. Liberty was fabricated in Paris at the workshop of Gaget, Gauthier-and Company at 25 rue Chazelles. Work began in 1875. Because of its size the statue was modeled in sections. The right arm bearing the torch was the first portion competed; it was shipped to the United States in 1876 in time for the nation’s centennial. It was not until 1883 that the statue was completed, and on June 15, 1885, the Statue of Liberty-in 214 packing crates–arrived in New York harbor.

A contemporary photograph shows the wooden lattice armature over which a full-scale plaster model of Liberty was formed.’,` Gaget, Gauthier and Company were experts in the art of  repousse; a sculptural technique of hammering sheet metal inside molds 11 7 The copper sheets of the statue were hammered onto carved wooden templates. A sturdy intricate internal iron skeleton designed by the celebrated engineer, Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, supported the statue’s thin copper cladding. Darguad’s view of the workshop represents the stage at which the plaster model for the statue’s left hand and arm had been completed.

 Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

 

Help Stop Berlin’s Plan To Store Its Old Masters

Last week here, I wrote about the shocking situation in Berlin, where the city’s current plan to accommodate the gift of the the Pietzsch collection of modern art involves the emptying of the Gemaeldegalerie, which houses the State Museums’ world-class old master paintings collection, and moving in the 20th century works.

Some Old Master paintings — perhaps including the Durer at right and the Vermeer below — would be sent to the Bode museum and the rest would go into storage for at least six years,  possibly longer, depending on whether or not the state can find and finance a new home for the Old Masters (more selections from the collection are here). 

Many Real Clear Arts readers were as appalled as I was, and remain.

Over the weekend, Jeffrey Hamburger, the Harvard art historian who has been calling attention to this plan, posted a petition to the powers that be at Change.org.

It asks for:

  • true disclosure of what would happen to the Old Master collection under the current plan – it’s very unclear how much would go into storage and how much would be stuffed into the Bode.
  •  concrete plans to display the Old Master collection that is currently on view in its entirety concurrently — whether in a new or adapted building.
  •  an adequate strategy that will do justice to the whole of Berlin’s extraordinary collections, including a home for Berlin’s growing collections of modern art.

Who could be opposed to that?

Please join others who care about art in signing the petition here.

As I post this, more than 2,100 have signed on — including James Marrow, emeritus professor at Princeton; Robert Darnton, University Professor and University Librarian at Harvard; Frederick Ilchman, curator of paintings at the MFA-Boston; Yve-Alain Bois, of the Institute for Advanced Study; many curators, art historians, art dealers, and people who just love art. Many come from Germany itself, and as far away as Australia. It’s heartening to see people sign on from all over the world.

Photo Credits: © SMB, Gemäldegalerie; Fotos: Jörg P. Anders

 

The Panoramic Star In St. Louis, Now Undergoing Work

The iffy economic environment, as we all know, is causing many museums to be creative, and one good result from that is the recent trend toward turning conservation work into an exhibition. In one way, at least, the St. Louis Art Museum has the biggest example — “Restoring an American Treasure: The Panorama Of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley.” Last summer and again now, since June 8, it has been restoring the work in its special exhibition galleries.

The panorama is a huge thing — 90 inches tall and 348 feet long; that is nearly the same length as the great Gettysburg Cyclorama and more than double the length of the Metropolitan Museum’s “Panoramic View of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles,” by John Vanderlyn, which occupies its own gallery in the American wing.

I explain more about the St. Louis panorama’s history, how it was damaged, and the nature of the conservation work in an article in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Sadly, many of these relics of 19th century visual culture — once extremely popular – have been lost. The St. Louis’s museum’s in the only survivor of six known Mississippi River valley panoramas, for example. And it might have been lost, too.

Its owner was the eccentric amateur archaeologist. Montroville W. Dickeson, who commissioned it and who, starting in 1851, took it on the road as a prop to accompany his speeches, charging 25 cents. He gave it to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, which gave it to the University of Pennsylvania’s University Museum around 1899, along with his archaeological finds and notes. The museum didn’t want it, though, and deaccessioned it in 1953 – fortunately to the St. Louis museum, which had shown it in 1949.

The museum exhibition website has more details and images for each of the scenes.

These artifacts are often fascinating things, and those who’d like to learn more can take a look at a book called The Painted Panorama, or even just check out the Wikipedia page on panoramas, which has some good references and links — e.g. to something  called International Panorama Council. It holds an annual meeting, this year in Pleven, Bulgaria from Sept. 9 to 13th.

The things one learns as a reporter, happily.

Photo credit: Scene 2, Courtesy of the St. Louis Art Museum