Find that missing portrait!

Colin Cohen was frustrated that so many portraits of his family have gone walkabout. He knows they are out there, but where? And so he has created a site to hunt down 'orphaned' portraits:
http://www.missingportraits.info/
Colin introduces his website:

'MissingPortraits.info is a site devoted to so-called ‘orphan’ portraits. Starting with my own family, of whom a surprising number of portraits have been painted which then vanished from sight, my aim is to open the site to all who have lost touch with, or found, portraits.'

Portraiture is peculiar. At the time a portrait is made, the most important thing, at least to sitter, family and friends, is how good a likeness it is. In no time at all, however, Colonel Blimp of the Bluffshires has been demoted to the ranks of  'A gentleman in a red coat'. Then it is all a matter merely of how good the painting is, even supposing that the name of the artist had been retained. And so let's hope that Colin's initiative will develop, with contributions and links, so that hidden knowledge can be shared, names returned to gentlemen in red coats, and artists reunited with their sitters.

Talking of which…

A major Hogarth discovery will feature in the next British Art Journal, in Gwen Yarker's introduction to her exhibition 'Georgian Faces: portrait of a County' at the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, 15 January-30 April 2011

Patrick Heron? Which Patrick Heron?

The Patrick Heron written about by Adrian Clark in his new book (British and Irish Art 1945-1951: From War to Festival, Hogarth Arts, 2010) was the highly regarded British artist who lived 1920-99. He looked like this, in a 1954 photograph by Ida Kar in possession of his daughters Katharine and Susanna Heron.

Patrick Heron was also a very well-known critic who wrote regularly for such journals as the New Statesman.
It turns out there is another Patrick Heron, also a writer, but never an artist. Unfortunately, his photograph crept into Clark's book (page 117) in place of the painter's. This Patrick Heron writes about the imminent ending of the world and the return of the Antichrist. Hey! it's not that bad, Patrick, just a mistake with a photograph…

The William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2009

The William MB Berger Prize for British Art History 2009 of £5000 was awarded to Diana  Donald and Jane Munro for Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts at a reception at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London on Wednesday 7 July 2010, and was presented by The Hon Lady Roberts, Royal Librarian.

SHORT LIST

Mark Girouard Elizabethan Architecture

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 9780300093865 £50 pp 280 150 col

Paul O’Keeffe A Genius for Failure. The Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon

Bodley Head

ISBN number 9780224062473 £25 568 pp 13 col 20 bw

Patrick Noon Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Paintings

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 9780300134216 £85 450 illustrations 360 pp

Diana Donald and Jane Munro, ed, Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge/Yale Center for British Art in association with Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300148268 £40 288 pp 100 bw 150 col

David Solkin Turner and the Masters

Tate Publishing

hb ISBN 978 1 85437 865 1 £35 pb ISBN 978 1 85437 798 2 £25 240 pp 170 col

Edward Impey, ed., The White Tower

Yale University Press in association with Historic Royal Palaces

ISBN 9780300112931 £45 256 pp 120 bw 40 col


Assessors
Dr Timothy Standring, Denver Art Museum; Dr Robin Simon, Editor, The British Art Journal; Dr Ann Bermingham, University of California at Santa Barbara; Katharine Eustace, Editor, The Sculpture Journal; Rosemary Hill, All Souls College, Oxford; Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Survey of The Queen's Pictures; Angus Trumble, Yale Center for British Art

LONG LIST

Mikael Ahlund, ed, including an essay by Martin Barnes, The Pre-Raphaelites

Nationalmuseum Stockholm

ISBN 978917100 809 1

Sam Smiles Richard Stephens, et al. Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Acquisition of Genius

Sansom & Co. with The University of Plymouth and Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, 2009

ISBN 9781906593407 £24.99 200 pp 43 bw 105 col

Roger Baynton-Williams Art of the Printmaker 1500-1860

A&C Black

ISBN 9781408112663 £30 192 pp 140 illus

Cinzia Maria Sicca, ed, John Talman: An Early Eighteenth Century Connoisseur

YaleUniversity Press/Yale Center for British Art/The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (Studies in British Art 19)

ISBN 9780300123357 £45 304 pp 108 col

David Boyd Haycok A Crisis of Brilliance. Five Young British Artists and the Great War

Old Street Publishing

ISBN 978-1905847846 £20 320 pp ill

John Ingamells, Dulwich Picture Gallery – British Catalogue

Unicorn Press

9781906509019 £24.95 287 pp ill

Katharine Lochnan and Carol Jacobi, ed, Holman Hunt and The Pre-Raphaelite Vision

Art Gallery of Ontario in association with Manchester Art Gallery

ISBN 978 0 300 14832 9

James Knox, Cartoons & Coronets. The Genius of Osbert Lancaster

ISBN 9780711229389 £15 pb 224 pp over 200 col

Stephen Lloyd and Kim Sloan The Intimate Portrait. Drawings, Miniatures and Pastels from Ramsay to Lawrence

National Galleries of Scotland

ISBN number 978 1 906270 14 8 £25 272 pp 225 col

Peter Trippi, Elizabeth Prettejohn, Robert Usptone, Patty Wageman, J.W. Waterhouse, The Modern Pre-Raphaelite

Royal Academy of Arts London

ISBN 978 1 905711 36 9 (hb) 978-90-8586-489-9 (pb) hb £35 pb £18.95 242 pp 180 ills

Susan E James, The Feminine Dynamic in English Art 1485-1603. Women as Consumers, Patrons and Painters

Ashgate

ISBN 978-0-7546-6381-2 £65 pp 376 ills 52 bw January 2009

Magdalen Evans Utmost Fidelity: The Painting Lives of Marianne and Adrian Stokes

Sansom & Co

hb ISBN 978-1-904537-01-8 pb ISBN 978-1-904537-85-4 hb £35 pb £24.95 pp 72 bw 17 col 98

Iain Mackintosh and Marcus Risdell The Face & Figure of Shakespeare

ISBN number ISBN 1 902643 10 0 £7 64 pp 67 col

Rachel Stewart The Town House in Georgian London

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 9780300152777 £30 pp 272 ill

Sarah Cash and Richard Ormond Sargent and the Sea

Yale University Press/Yale Center for British Art

ISBN 9780300143607 £30 pp 192 30 bw 100 col

Mark Laird and Alicia Weisberg-Roberts Mrs Delany and Her Circle

Yale University Press/Yale Center for British Art

ISBN 9780300142792 £40 10 pp 416 ills 10 bw 300 col

Michael Snodin Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill

Yale University Press/Yale Center for British Art

ISBN 9780300125740 £40 356 pp 300 col

Caroline Arscott, William Morris and Edward Burne Jones: Interlacings

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 978-0300140934 £40 260 pp

Diana Donald and Jane Munro, ed, Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge/Yale Center for British Art in association with Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300148268 £40 288 pp 100 bw 150 col

Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray John Singer Sargent Venetian Figures and Landscapes, 1898-1913

[vol 6 in catalogue raisonné]

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 9780300141405 £50 18 bw 256 col 272 pp

Shena Mason Matthew Boulton. Selling What All the World Desires

Yale University Press 9780300143584 £40 304 pp 50 bw 300 col

Mark Girouard Elizabethan Architecture

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 9780300093865 £50 pp 280 150 col

Edward Impey, ed., The White Tower

Yale University Press in association with Historic Royal Palaces

ISBN 9780300112931 £45 256 pp 120 bw 40 col

Anthony Gerbino and Stephen Johnston Compass and Rule: Architecture as Mathematical Practice in England 1500-1750

Yale University Press/Yale Center for British Art ISBN 9780300150933 £30 192pp 120 col

Scott Wilcox Sun, Wind and Rain: The Art of David Cox

Yale University Press/Yale Center for British Art in association with Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery ISBN 9780300117448 £40 272 pp 220 col

Susan Bennett, ed, Cultivating the Human Faculties James Barry (1741-1806) and the Society of Arts

Lehigh University Press 162 pp HB

Tessa Murdoch The French Hospital in England: Its Huguenot History and Collections

Adamson

ISBN 978-0-09524322-7-2 £30 pp 128 42 col 8 bw

Brian Keeble Cecil Collins

Golgonooza Press

Christopher Newall et al, Frederic, Lord Leighton

Prestel

ISBN: 978 3 7913 43839 £25 192 pp 130 col

Christopher Baker, David Howarth and Paul Stirton The Discovery of Spain: British arttists and Collectors Goya to Picasso

National Galleries of Scotland

ISBN number 978 1 906270 18 6 £14.95 160 pp 135 col 5 bw

Silvano Levy and Tanja Pirsig Marshall, ed British Surrealism in Context, A Collector’s Eye

Leeds Museums & Galleries

ISBN 9780901981820 £34.99 pp 224 227 ills 9 July 2009

Peter Lord, The Meaning of Pictures. Images of personal, social and political identity

University of Wales Press

ISBN 978-0708322215 £40 256 pp illus

Veronica Franklin Gould Tennyson at Farringford

Tennyson House Publications ISBN 978 0 9563223 0 2 £15.50 96 pp; ills 69

Patrick Noon Richard Parkes Bonington: The Complete Paintings

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 9780300134216 £85 450 illustrations 360 pp

Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant G.F. Watts: Victorian Visionary

Yale University Press ISBN 9780300142570 £40 224 pp 220 col

Helen Pierce Unseemly Pictures. Graphic Satire and Politics in Early Modern England

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 9780300142549 £35 224 pp 100 bw

David Hill Turner and Leeds

Jeremy Mills Publishing

ISBN 9781906600310 £34.99 208 pp 145 ill

Judith A. Neiswander The Cosmopolitan Interior. Liberalism and the British Home, 1870-1914

Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

ISBN 9780300124903 £35 256 pp 70 bw

Paul O’Keeffe A Genius for Failure. The Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon

Bodley Head ISBN number 9780224062473 £25 568 pp 13 col 20 bw

The Duchess of Rutland with Jane Pruden Belvoir Castle

Frances Lincoln

ISBN 9780711230521 £30 224 pp 200 col

Karen Hearn, ed, Van Dyck and Britain

Tate Publishing ISBN 978-1854377951 £40 240 pp ill

Malcolm Millais Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture

Frances Lincoln

ISBN 9780711229747 £18.99 296 pp 405 bw

Emma Rutherford Silhouette

Rizzoli 9780847830770 £40.00 256 pp 300 ills

David Solkin Turner and the Masters

Tate Publishing

hb ISBN 978 1 85437 865 1 £35 pb ISBN 978 1 85437 798 2 £25 240 pp 170 col

William Feaver Frank Auerbach

Rizzoli

ISBN 9780847830589 £100 360 pp 900 col 200 bw

Christopher Frayling Horace Walpole’s Cat

ISBN 9780500514917 14.95 80pp 15 col 7  bw

The British Art Journal Ten Glorious Years

Ten years of The British Art Journal
[Editorial]
This special double issue of The British Art Journal [Vol. X, NO. 3, Winter 2009/2010] celebrates ten years of the journal’s existence. Our first numbers were supported by a few private individuals but also by advertisers, most of whom have remained with us ever since. One of those with us from the start is the Mark Weiss Gallery, which itself celebrates twenty-five years in 2010. The intriguing and in some ways still mysterious portrtait on the cover has been researched in depth by the Weiss Gallery, the fruits of which have been published in a book (available from the gallery) with contributions from art historians (including Sir Roy Strong, Michael Wilson, Jeremy Wood, Duncan Thomson and Tim Wilks) but also music historians (including Benjamin Hebbert) and the conservators who restored it. The painting was the subject of an absorbing one-day seminar at the gallery on 25 February 2010. It is an appropriate image for our cover because it exemplifies the theme of this special issue, which is British art in an international context. The artist was probably Flemish; the sitter was of French Huguenot stock, active in the court of the Scottish Stuart on the throne of England; the small oval painting on the back wall is signed (and dated 1613) by its own painter, Hendrick van Steenwyck the Younger (c1580-1649), either Dutch or, more probably, Flemish, who was resident in London from 1617. On the table beside the sitter is a statuette of Antinous and a piece of paper bearing a Latin epigram which contrives to include the notes of the six-note scale (precursor of ‘do, re, mi’) devised or discovered by Guido of Arezzo in the eleventh century: ‘VT RElevet MIserum FAtum SOLitosque LAbores.’
All in all, the painting is a fine international puzzle, and it provided ample material for a remarkably fruitful and amiable discussion among experts assembled from Britain and abroad, from museums, academe, the dealing world, and the musical word (both academic and performing). The seminar is also significant because it draws attention to the ways in which scholarship and the commercial art world, far from being mutually incompatible, can benefit from co-operation. Many suspect, indeed, that the possession of expertise in the examination of paintings is no longer the norm in the academic world. Rather, it is to be found within museums (in some, alas, to a decreasing extent) and with dealers. It would be a great thing if this remarkable seminar was the precursor of many more such collaborations, always provided, of course, that they are conducted in the same refreshing spirit of mutual respect and enjoyment as this was. An exquisite recital of Lanier’s music was shrewdly scheduled to occupy the period immediately following – another international note – an outstanding lunch of Italian food and French wine.


The William MB Berger Prize for British Art History
New arrangements for the 2009 award are in place in order to simplify the procedure. The qualifying period has been changed. Books for the 2009 award would have been considered if published in the period 1 September 2008-31 August 2009. Books will now be considered if published during the period 1 September 2008-31 December 2009, for this occasion only. In future, however, the qualifiying period will be the calendar year 1 January-31 December, the first time that applies being 2010.

For much of its existence the BAJ has also been aided by the support of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, of Denver, which together with the BAJ instituted the Berger Prize. This special issue, with its international theme, has also been supported by a grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, for which we are grateful. And finally, we offer out heartfelt thanks to our subscribers and readers all over the world, without whom…

How former Director Charles Saumarez Smith left the National Gallery, London, with something to remember

Robin Simon's review in the current BAJ of Charles Saumarez Smith's short history of the National Gallery, which is interesting not least for what it does not make explicit: the uncomfortable circumstances of Smith's own relationship with his chairman of trustees. Nor does he mention how the National Gallery attempted to prevent his publishing the book…

The National Gallery: A Short History
by Charles Saumarez Smith
Frances Lincoln 2009 £14.99 isbn 978 0711230439

Revenge may be a dish best eaten cold, but the dust had hardly settled on Charles Saumarez Smith’s controversial departure from the directorship of the National Gallery than this elegant Parthian shot appeared. The National Gallery did its best to prevent the book’s appearance, fortunately without success, and readers will delight in the suavity and poise of this beautifully judged account. Dr Smith fingers the often poisonous trustees who have interfered with the running of the institution throughout its history. The snobbery and obstructiveness of Alfred de Rothschild especially (Manet’s paintings were ‘unnecessary rubbish’) prevented Charles Holroyd from a perceptive and inspired attempt at buying modern French paintings as early as 1906. The episode and many others offer a nightmare insight into the ways in which trustees could make a director’s job impossible. This is a situation that Dr Smith understands at first-hand, in his case, through having to put up with his chairman, someone called Peter Scott. Not that you will find Dr Smith saying such things: the reader is left to infer as much from the author’s ingenious prose. Dr Smith does not spare the shortcomings of some of his predecessors, although these, such as they were, were usually failings of timidity or dullness. Given the slightly unpleasant side, inevitably so, to much of the story, the history is perhaps mercifully brief, but it is none the less both authoritative and, best of all, delightful to read.