French Rococo Ébénisterie in the J. Paul Getty Museum


Book Description

The first comprehensive catalogue of the Getty Museum’s significant collection of French Rococo ébénisterie furniture. This catalogue focuses on French ébénisterie furniture in the Rococo style dating from 1735 to 1760. These splendid objects directly reflect the tastes of the Museum’s founder, J. Paul Getty, who started collecting in this area in 1938 and continued until his death in 1976. The Museum’s collection is particularly rich in examples created by the most talented cabinet masters then active in Paris, including Bernard van Risenburgh II (after 1696–ca. 1766), Jacques Dubois (1694–1763), and Jean-François Oeben (1721–1763). Working for members of the French royal family and aristocracy, these craftsmen excelled at producing veneered and marquetried pieces of furniture (tables, cabinets, and chests of drawers) fashionable for their lavish surfaces, refined gilt-bronze mounts, and elaborate design. These objects were renowned throughout Europe at a time when Paris was considered the capital of good taste. The entry on each work comprises both a curatorial section, with description and commentary, and a conservation report, with construction diagrams. An introduction by Anne-Lise Desmas traces the collection’s acquisition history, and two technical essays by Arlen Heginbotham present methodologies and findings on the analysis of gilt-bronze mounts and lacquer. The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at www.getty.edu/publications/rococo/ and includes zoomable, high-resolution photography. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book, and JPG downloads of the main catalogue images.




Decorative Furnishings and Objets D'art in the Louvre


Book Description

"Over two hundred and fifty masterpieces from one of the most magnificent eras in the decorative arts are featured in this book, ranging from the splendors of courtly art under Louis XIV to the dazzling creations inspired first by Madame de Pompadour under Louis XV and then by Queen Marie-Antoinette under Louis XVI. A broad perspective on interior decoration, luxury goods, and the art market is offered through lavish furniture by the likes of André-Charles Boulle and Charles Cressent durine, the Régence, through extravagant dinner services, and through the magnificent porcelain and tapestries produced by the royal manufactories, constituting a 'moment of perfection in French art' that lasted until the Revolution. The Louvre's new rooms devoted to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century decorative arts opened in May 2014. Some two thousand items are displayed in nearly twenty thousand square feet of exhibition space, representing one of the world's finest collections of furnishings and objets d'art from the reign of Louis XIV, through that of Louis XVI. The new galleries are organized chronologically and are punctuated by spectacular period rooms that recreate the magnificent wood-paneled interiors of lavish residences and princely palaces in eighteenth-century Paris. These reconstitutions of a bygone period provide the setting for truly remarkable objets d'art from the Louvre's Department or Decorative Arts--now placed in their original intellectual and material context, these items recreate a vanished atmosphere and reveal their full meaning as well as their full beauty."--Page [4] of cover.




The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal


Book Description

The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 13 is a compendium of articles and notes pertaining to the Museum's permanent collections of antiquities, decorative arts, drawings, paintings, and photographs. This volume includes a supplement introduced by John Walsh with a fully illustrated checklist of the Getty’s recent acquisitions. Volume 13 includes articles written by Helayna I. Thickpenny, Michael Pfrommer, Klaus Parlasca, Heidemaire Koch, Jean-Dominique Augarde, Colin Streeter, Gillian Wilson, Charissa Bremer-David, C. Gay Nieda, Adrian Sassoon, Selma Holo, Marcel Roethlisberger, Louise Lippincott, Mark Leonard, Burton B. Fredericksen, Nigel Glendinning, Eleanor Sayre, and William Innes Homer.




French Art Nouveau Ceramics


Book Description

"L'art nouveau, an artistic movement of a highly eclectic nature that developed in the late 19th century, took its lead from such diverse sources as Japanese art or the medieval revivalism of the Arts and Crafts. Perhaps in no medium was it better represented than in pottery, whose technical possibilities allowed for great freedom of expression. This richly illustrated dictionary, with glossary and select signatures, lists over 1,100 artists, ceramists and firms that participated in the creation of Art Nouveau ceramics in France, the melting pot of die new aesthetic."--Page 4 of cover.







"Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris "


Book Description

Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines a history of contact between modern Europe and East Asia through three collectors: Henri Cernuschi, Emile Guimet, and Edmond de Goncourt. Drawing on a wealth of material including European travelogues of the East and Asian reports of the West, Ting Chang explores the politics of mobility and cross-cultural encounter in the nineteenth century. This book takes a new approach to museum studies and institutional critique by highlighting what is missing from the existing scholarship -- the foreign labors, social relations, and somatic experiences of travel that are constitutive of museums yet left out of their histories. The author explores how global trade and monetary theory shaped Cernuschi's collection of archaic Chinese bronze. Exchange systems, both material and immaterial, determined Guimet's museum of religious objects and Goncourt's private collection of Asian art. Bronze, porcelain, and prints articulated the shifting relations and frameworks of understanding between France, Japan, and China in a time of profound transformation. Travel, Collecting, and Museums of Asian Art in Nineteenth-Century Paris thus looks at what Asian art was imagined to do for Europe. This book will be of interest to scholars and students interested in art history, travel imagery, museum studies, cross-cultural encounters, and modern transnational histories.




The J. Paul Getty Museum Guidebook


Book Description

This is the second edition of the original guidebook to the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection. The book introduces the collection, as divided into Greek and Roman antiquities, European paintings, and French decorative arts.




Art Crossing Borders


Book Description

Art Crossing Bordersoffers a thought-provoking analysis of the internationalisation of the art market during the long nineteenth century. Twelve experts, dealing with a wide variety of geographical, temporal, and commercial contexts, explore how the gradual integration of art markets structurally depended on the simultaneous rise of nationalist modes of thinking, in unexpected and ambiguous ways. By presenting a radically international research perspective Art Crossing Bordersoffers a crucial contribution to the field of art market studies.







Explaining Monetary and Financial Innovation


Book Description

This book discusses theories of monetary and financial innovation and applies them to key monetary and financial innovations in history – starting with the use of silver bars in Mesopotamia and ending with the emergence of the Eurodollar market in London. The key monetary innovations are coinage (Asia minor, China, India), the payment of interest on loans, the bill of exchange and deposit banking (Venice, Antwerp, Amsterdam, London). The main financial innovation is the emergence of bond markets (also starting in Venice). Episodes of innovation are contrasted with relatively stagnant environments (the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire). The comparisons suggest that small, open and competing jurisdictions have been more innovative than large empires – as has been suggested by David Hume in 1742.