Here's my something new - bit of a cheat because it's not particularly new, having been published a couple of years ago, but it's new to the library: The Anatomy of Riches : Sir Robert Paston's Treasure by Spike Bucklow.
Spike is one of the staff at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, the part of the museum which deals with easel painting conservation. Recently he put together a rather wonderful exhibition called Sharpening Perceptions : How to copy a masterpiece, which takes works which had been conserved at the HKI and puts them alongside the copies that the first year students did of them as they cleaned and restored them. One of the paintings included is Spike's copy of Flowers and Fruit by Jan Van Os which he himself did as a student at HKI many years ago!
The Paston Treasure is a painting that Spike conserved, of the treasured possessions of Sir Robert Paston. Included are some exquisite works of art, nautilus cups, jewellery, vases and so on. It was the subject of a big exhibition too, for which we have the catalogue (classmark: New Haven.2018).
I've picked it because it has a little more meaning for me at the moment, as I'm part of the conference working party of ARLIS's Cambridge 2020 conference - which has been postponed to 2021 now, but so much of the planning had been done already. Spike was going to talk about this for us (and will hopefully do so next year when the conference finally happens) from his conservation perspective.
However, it's also a very uncomfortable painting. We don't actually know much about the people in it - it's thought that the girl might be Paston's granddaughter, and in place of the clock there was for a while a silver platter, and before that a mystery woman, but never mind how lavishly the boy is dressed, in his brocade and gold chains, it's very likely that he was a slave.
I think it's curious though that we don't have a name for the artist either. So much discussion goes on about the artist's gaze and looking at the models (there's an interesting exhibition which looks at the relationship between Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent at the moment at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), that it's really interesting that we lack both sides of this communication, not just one.
Spike is one of the staff at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, the part of the museum which deals with easel painting conservation. Recently he put together a rather wonderful exhibition called Sharpening Perceptions : How to copy a masterpiece, which takes works which had been conserved at the HKI and puts them alongside the copies that the first year students did of them as they cleaned and restored them. One of the paintings included is Spike's copy of Flowers and Fruit by Jan Van Os which he himself did as a student at HKI many years ago!
The Paston Treasure is a painting that Spike conserved, of the treasured possessions of Sir Robert Paston. Included are some exquisite works of art, nautilus cups, jewellery, vases and so on. It was the subject of a big exhibition too, for which we have the catalogue (classmark: New Haven.2018).
I've picked it because it has a little more meaning for me at the moment, as I'm part of the conference working party of ARLIS's Cambridge 2020 conference - which has been postponed to 2021 now, but so much of the planning had been done already. Spike was going to talk about this for us (and will hopefully do so next year when the conference finally happens) from his conservation perspective.
However, it's also a very uncomfortable painting. We don't actually know much about the people in it - it's thought that the girl might be Paston's granddaughter, and in place of the clock there was for a while a silver platter, and before that a mystery woman, but never mind how lavishly the boy is dressed, in his brocade and gold chains, it's very likely that he was a slave.
I think it's curious though that we don't have a name for the artist either. So much discussion goes on about the artist's gaze and looking at the models (there's an interesting exhibition which looks at the relationship between Thomas McKeller and John Singer Sargent at the moment at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), that it's really interesting that we lack both sides of this communication, not just one.
No comments:
Post a Comment