Artists – Page 6 – Number One London

Kenwood House: Traveling Treasures

Early Spring at Kenwood House

Victoria here, recalling several visits to Kenwood House, a beautiful white mansion sitting atop Hampstead Heath just outside of central London. Originally built in the early 17th century, it was remodeled by Robert Adam 1764-1779 in the neoclassic style with Adam’s distinctive and oft-copied interiors.

1st Earl of Mansfield (1705-1793)

At the time, it was owned by William Murray, who was named Baron Mansfield, later 1st Earl of Mansfield. He was the Lord Chief Justice from 1756 to 1788 and is credited with major contributions to the development of English law as well as measures to end slavery in the British Isles.

Elevations of Kenwood House, 1764

The famous Library

In 1925, Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh (1847-1927) and heir to a brewery fortune, bought the house from the Mansfield heirs as the home for his magnificent collection of art. At Iveagh’s death in 1927, he left both the house and the art collection to the nation. It is also known as the Iveagh Bequest.

Now managed by English Heritage, Kenwood House is undergoing extensive renovations and improvements, returning many rooms to their appearance after Robert Adam decorated them, probably to match the library, which has been long admired by visitors.

In 2012-13 an exhibition of works from the collection Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London is touring museums in the United States while Kenwood House is closed. Many of the works have never before been outside Britain. The treasured Rembrandt Self-Portrait was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art briefly in spring before the whole exhibition opened at the Fine Arts Museum of Houston, Texas, where it can been seen until September 3, 2012.

Self Portrait, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1661

I am particularly excited because the collection will next travel to the Milwaukee Art Museum (practically in my front yard) from October 12, 2012 through January 13, 2013. After Milwaukee, the collection will be shown in Seattle and later yet at the Arkansas Art Center.

The other artists celebrated in the title of this traveling exhibition include Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) who painted numerous portraits of English royalty and aristocrats.

Princess Henrietta of Lorraine attended by a Page, 1634

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) is renowned for his exquisite portraits, and this one is among his best.

Mary, Countess of Howe, c. 1764

Many other masterworks are included in the nearly fifty paintings in the exhibition by artists such as Canaletto, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Edwin Landseer, and…

Portrait of Pieter van der Broecke, by Frans Hals, 1633

Joseph Mallord William Turner, A Coast Scene

with Fisherman Hauling a Boat Ashore, c. 1803-04

George Romney, Emma Hart as The Spinstress, c. 1783-84

The exhibition Rembrandt, van Dyck and Gainsborough: Treasures from Kenwood House is organized by The American Federation of Art and English Heritage.

You Animal, You!

Charlotte Cory – artist, playwright and Bronte afficianado – is the subject of You Animal, You!, an in-depth look at the world of Charlotte Cory’s art, featuring essays placing Cory’s art in context. Highly illustrated, great fun and at the same time oddly serious.

Cory’s photographic collages skillfully rework Victorian photographic visiting cards and invite viewers to speculate on the events behind the picture. Cory combines these poignant cartes-de-visite images with portraits taken of stuffed animals from museums and her own collection. By recycling these dispossessed images and long-dead creatures, she gives them all a new lease of life. Brighter, more colourful, more interesting and more disturbing than before.

Cory’s images are accompanied by featured essays, including an introduction to the world of the Visitorians by distinguished author and historian AN Wilson. The curator of the Royal Photograph Collection, Sophie Gordon, discusses Cory’s reinterpretation of Victorian photographic ideas and innovations for our age. You Animal, You! is an in-depth look at the world of this unusual artist that will delight her fans and interest newcomers to her work in equal measure.

Cory’s work can also currently be viewed at The Green Parrot Gallery, London SE10.

Another 'Look of Love"

Victoria here, having recently toured the exhibit “The Look of Love” at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama (on my way home from a winter in Florida near Kristine and Jo).

This was my first ever visit to Birmingham and thus my first taste of the delicious museum of art, which we began with luncheon at Oscar’s Restaurant (delicious, indeed!) before approaching our target: The Look of Love: Eye Miniatures from the Skier Collection.

The museum was filled with children. probably school tours, and they seemed particularly attracted to the museum shop, like all kids everywhere, seeking a memento of their visit.

I had read about the exhibition on line in articles published all over (see Jo Manning’s piece here), and in the catalogue, which absorbed my attention cover to cover. Even if you are not fortunate enough to make your way to Birmingham before June 10, this catalogue will give you an excellent view of all the pieces accompanied by several scholarly articles and Jo Manning’s delightful fictional vignettes.

Nan Skier and Victoria at the exhibition

I was fortunate to be introduced on-line (by Jo Manning) to Nan Skier, and we met in person at the exhibition. We had an enlightening chat about the unique collection she and her husband, Dr. David Skier, have amassed. To hear her tell how they got started, listen to this interview via Skype with Polish television.

The very tiny objects, from as small as less than half a square inch to a wallet containing both a lover’s eye and miniature of a hand, and a tea cup decorated with an eye, are exhibited in a darkened room in handsome cases and vitrines under pinpoints of light. Thus my pictures are both dark and a little blurry since they are enlarged quite a bit. The better pictures here are the official pictures by the professional photographer Sean Pathashema.

Above is one of the cases on which the Lover’s Eyes are displayed with descriptions below. Though it might be hard to photograph, the layout is very effective in presenting the delicate objects in the best possible manner.

Gold oval pendant surrounded by seed pearls, ca. 1830. Brown right eye with clouds

1 7/8 (with hanger) x 1 3/8 x 1/4 in.

gold teardrop-shaped brooch surrounded by split pearls, ca. 1790; Blue right eye.
3/4 x 1 1/4 x 1/4 in.

The Lover’s Eyes in the Skier Collection are all similar — yet no two are alike. Most of them are worn as jewelry — rings, pendants, bracelets, e.g.

Bracelet surmounted with miniature in gold surround with drop pearl;

Plaited hairwork on reverse;

Restrung with four strands of cultured pearls; Gray right eye.

1 5/8 x 2 x 1/4 in. (surround only)

Many are set with precious stones: there are examples of pearls, diamonds, garnets, coral and turquoise, among others.

Yellow gold brooch with border of thirty-two natural oriental half pearls in a floral motif

with eight small turquoise stones;

oval locket back with woven brown hair under glass, c. 1820

brown right eye; 1 x 1 1/8 x 1/4 in.

Rose gold oval brooch surrounded by double asymmetrical rows of seed pearls;

suggestion of cloud border; convex backing with Prince of Wales hair plumes;

brown right eye; 1 x 1 1/4 x 1/4 in.

Heart shaped gold ring with Hessonite garnet surround

crowned with a flower and ribbon motif, c. 1790. Blue right eye.

on reverse of ivory lozenge is a sepia and embroidered hairwork image depicting interlocking hearts

in front of an oak. 15/16 x 5/8 x 7/8 in.

Every one of these objects must have a story — of love or of loss. But few can be identified by either sitter or artist. History has made them unknown, and this gives a particularly poignant and mysterious twist to the exhibition. In a brilliant move, however, the catalogue contains several fictional stories — what MIGHT have been. Jo Manning is the author and her imagination took wing. Highly recommended.

So-called “Memory Box” made of embossed and painted paper

containing eye miniature, c. 1830. Brown left eye.

1 1/8 x 1 1/4 x 5/8 in.

A patch box, a stick pin, the wallet, and the teacup — what many uses have been found for the lover’s eyes. Nan and I discussed the fact that many of the eyes portrayed are from the left side, and we speculated on how such a choice could be made — by the artist, the sitter or the person who made the commission?

Rose gold pendant surrounded by blue enamel with half pearls.

Brown left eye. 1 x 11/16 x 1.8 in.

Richard Cosway, self-portrait (1742-1821) c. 1790

National Portrait Gallery, London

It amused me to note that one of the few lover’s eyes that an be identified by its artist is by Richard Cosway (1742-1821) greatly celebrated in his day as a painter and a close friend of the Prince Regent, later George IV. And yet, this particular piece is one of very few that is not bejeweled, but instead decorated with paste (fake) red stones. Rather ironic, I thought.

Gold oval brooch surrounded by foil-backed red pastes, c. 1790. Blue left eye surrounded by curls

Attributed to Richard Cosway

Many thanks to Nan Skier for gracious hospitality and fascinating discussion.

The Look of Love is a most interesting and beautiful exhibition. You have a month, until June 10, 2012, to make it to Birmingham. Hurry!

I will report on other treasures in the Birmingham Museum of Art shortly.

Tom Sully, Artist Extraordinaire

On March 11, 2012, Jo Manning wrote here of her experiences associated with the current exhibition The Look of Love at the Birmingham (AL) Museum of Art, for which she wrote selections in the catalogue. She rhapsodized about the talent and charm of Tom Sully, a contemporary artist who has painted several types of miniatures: portraits, eyes, and pets, as well as accomplishments in many other formats. We wanted to know more about him; what follows is our interview with artist Tom Sully.

Tom Sully: Self Portrait, 2010, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 x 2 3/8 in.

Number One London: You have a very famous great-great-great-grandfather, renowned portraitist Thomas Alfred Sully (1783-1872), who painted Queen Victoria and Thomas Jefferson, among others. How did it affect you having the same name as your grandfather and being an artist as well?

Thomas A. Sully (1783-1872), Lady with a Harp: Eliza Ridgely, 1818

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

Tom Sully: As a young man I found Victorian art cloying. I decided to go to art school in California where few had ever heard of Thomas Sully. When I arrived in New York afterwards, theories of deconstruction held sway in the art world. While all my peers were making conceptual art, I turned to illustration for my living, since you still needed to know how to draw for that. My first portrait commission was from The New Yorker, who hired me to paint a singer performing at The Rainbow Room. It was then that I took Sully’s Hints To Young Painters down from the shelf and got to work.

Tom Sully: Garland, 2012, oil on linen, 24 x 20

NOL: Have there been other people in the arts in your family?

TS: Sully’s parents were actors and all his siblings were actors and musicians. His children painted – the most promising, another Thomas, unfortunately died young. I’m descended from Sully’s son Alfred, an army general who painted Native American scenes while serving in the Dakotas. The most recent artist family member of note is Thomas O. Sully, a celebrated New Orleans architect who bridged the 19th and 20th centuries. His grandfather, the portraitist’s brother, had moved to Louisiana in the early 1800s. When he wasn’t designing Queen Anne-style Garden District mansions, the architect loved to hunt and fish in the Louisiana countryside. I feel a connection to him when I go into the bayous and swamps to find subjects for landscapes.

Tom Sully: After Henry Inman, 2011, oil on linen, 15 x 12 in.

NOL: You have painted portraits, landscapes, and other relatively large-scale oil paintings for years. What inspired you to paint portrait miniatures?

TS: In 2001 I saw an amazing traveling exhibition. Love and Loss, American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures, organized by Robin Jaffee Frank at Yale University Art Gallery. What intrigued me was that these are intimate portraits, full of heartfelt, personal associations. These charged images sustained a current between people otherwise separated by the vagaries of life and geography, the daily routine, or even death. An image of a family member or loved one, small enough to be held in the hand and carried on your person, can take on the properties of a talisman. When worn, they become a public emblem of affection. The
y were and can still be used today as a catalyst in courtship. To me, this is portraiture at its best and about as far away from the institutional boardroom portrait as you can get! The show included a miniature Sully had painted to mourn the death of his mother. Of course, the technique and sheer artistry of these paintings is incredible. It took me awhile to track down the materials and get up the nerve to work so small.

NOL: Do you paint in the traditional technique with tiny stippled dots of watercolor on ivory?

TS: Yes, I use a combination of stippling and hatching, applying small amounts of paint and waiting for each layer to dry before adding the next, gradually and patiently building up richness and depth while achieving a likeness. A little like the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, this small space becomes your world.

Tom Sully: Susan Tying Her Necklace, 2011, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 x 2 3/8 in.

NOL: Do you work from photographs or do your miniature subjects pose while you sketch or paint?

TS: I like to work from photographs that I take myself. I find photography a useful conceptual tool – we can try out different angles on the face, different hairstyles, clothing, jewelry and lighting until we are happy with the composition in one or more of them. The photos do not then become “the be all and end all” but what Degas called an “aide de memoire.” While I paint, I improve on the photos. Sentiment, emotion and empathy continually inform my hand. My ancestor said, “from long experience I know that resemblance in a portrait is essential; but no fault shall be found with the artist, at least by the sitter, if he improve the appearance”.

NOL: How did you learn about the availability of woolly mammoth ivory?

TS: My first efforts were on Ivorine, a 20th century ivory substitute, and then vellum mounted on card. One supplier led me to another until I found someone in Dorset who could obtain mammoth ivory from Siberia where research crews have been finding whole woolly mammoths preserved in the permafrost. He has since sold his business but fortunately I have a pretty good stockpile.

Tom Sully: Eric, His Eye, 2011, watercolor on ivory, 3/4 x 5/8 in.

NOL: What led you to painting eye portraits?

TS: My interest was piqued by an article about eye portraits that I found in a 1904 issue of The Connoisseur. When a portrait commission took me to Philadelphia, I was spellbound by the collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They are surely the most startling and, as portraits exchanged between lovers, the most romantic form of the art. There is a mystery to eye portraits that I’m unable to explain. It may come in part from seeing such an arresting image in so small a format – they are usually no bigger than one-half to three-quarters of an inch. In the Look of Love show currently at the Birmingham Museum of Art, there are stick pins and rings with images even smaller! In my experience of painting these, people that know the portrait subject immediately recognize them from this one fragment. I also find that they resonate well with a contemporary art audience. As I said to my wife one day, “eye portraits are so damn strange that they may as well be cutting-edge contemporary art!”

Tom Sully: Lucy, watercolor on ivory, 2/2 x 2 1/8 in.

NOL: We noticed on your website that you also paint dogs.

TS: I love painting dog portraits. One need only look at the work of Sir Edwin Landseer to see that dog painting is serious business. Dogs are great to w
ork with since they are less self-conscious than we are. A British client hired me to paint miniatures of his two bulldogs. When one of them died about six months later, we realized we had been unknowingly prescient. I painted a West Highland Terrier in Palm Beach who was so poised that she must have been a fashion model in a previous life.

Tom Sully: Solomon, 2006, watercolor on ivory, 2 1/2 x 2 1/16 in.

NOL: What do you charge for a portrait miniature?

TS: I charge $3,000 for a head and shoulders to half-length portrait miniature and $2,500 for an eye portrait. These prices include the cost of a locket in rose gold, yellow gold or sterling silver.

NOL: Tell us about your current work?

TS: I’m currently painting an eye portrait commission for a client in Birmingham, Alabama. I’m also working on a body of Louisiana inspired landscapes for a show in New Orleans this fall. I used to live there and began exploring the countryside for landscape subjects during the evacuation from Hurricane Katrina. The bayou country and especially the swamps, which seem to exist outside of time and civilization, are a great subject for a painter with a Romantic bent.

Tom Sully: Grand Coteau Oak, 2012, oil on linen 22 x 27 in.

NOL: What are your upcoming exhibitions?

TS: Louisiana Reveries: Landscapes by Thomas Sully, October 6 – 31, 2012;

Jean Bragg Gallery of Southern Art, 600 Julia Street, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Tom Sully: Nocturne in Blue and Gold, 2011, oil on linen 24 x 18 in.

NOL: Many thanks to you, Tom Sully. Your life and work are fascinating.

Visit Tom Sully’s website here to see more of his work.

Tom Sully: Night Flight, 2012, oil on linen, 17 x 24 in.

A Look at The Look of Love

A guest blog by Jo Manning

Jo Manning (with Lily)

The LOOK OF LOVE exhibit has opened in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Birmingham Museum of Art. I was fortunate enough to be there for the opening and the first couple of days of the show, which runs until the end of June. For museum information, click here.

Dr David and Nan Skier

Before discussing this spectacular exhibit – the first of its kind in the world – and one that, with its accompanying catalog, sets the standard for research on this unique portrait miniature-cum-jewelry that has been, up until now, so little known in either the art or jewelry worlds, some backstory…

I often tell people that one never knows, after one’s book is published and sent out into the marketplace, who will see it, who will be affected by it, and what repercussions it will generate. My biography of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, a notorious courtesan of the late 18^th-early 19^th centuries, was sold in bookstores and museum gift shops.

At one of the latter, the Bass Museum of Art’s gift shop in Miami Beach, Florida, it was seen by Dr David Skier, an eye surgeon from Birmingham, who thought his wife would enjoy it. One of the things he noticed in the book was a sidebar on Lover’s Eyes — eye miniatures – with a photo of a ring in the “collection of the author”.

This was of great interest to Dr Skier because he and his wife Nan had quietly been collecting these beautiful objects for many years and had accumulated some 70+ of them. (They now own 100+ of these miniatures.) Assuming that I had a collection of these objects, they wrote to my publisher Simon & Schuster, asking for my contact information. The publisher referred them to my agent, Jenny Bent of the Bent Agency, and she contacted me. I responded promptly with the news that, no, I owned just the one ring, and that I’d become interested in them after seeing the eye miniatures in the collection of my writing colleague Candice Hern, who owned several lovely brooches. I was also entranced by the story of how they came about and their subsequent history.

The Skiers became friends, and when I was asked to contribute to the catalog for an exhibition of their collection called The Look of Love, I said I would be happy to do so, but that I did not in any way consider myself an expert on the subject. No, they said, we’d like you to write some stories, vignettes, inspired by the eyes in their collection. I thought this was a brilliant idea, frankly, because each of the eyes had a story – an unknown story for the most part, to be sure, as sitters and artists were mostly unidentified – and the eyes do speak to the viewer. I gave my imagination full rein and wrote five stories for their consideration. To my knowledge, this is another first; I know of no fiction in the catalogs of art shows. Essays on the art and history, yes, those are standard, but bits of fiction…nope!

I have to confess that the stories came very easily, which does not always happen to a writer. But the eyes drew me in, and I chose the most eloquent, in my opinion, and wrote away. My goal was to illuminate how these objects of love and affection came about, what they meant in a society with mores quite unlike our own, who the artists might be and why they painted them, what the symbolism involved meant to people in that era, and, yes, the aura they held of clandestine love tokens was very appealing to me, as a writer of historical romance.

The stories are: “Pippa and William”; “Ursula Engleheart Prepares Tea For Her Artist Husband George…”; “I Mourn Your Loss, My Beloved…”; “My Mother, Mariah Norcross”; and “The Grey Eye in Great-Aunt Lavinia’s Jewelry Box”.

Pippa and William are star-crossed lovers (not to be confused with Pippa Middleton and Prince William J) who meet as children, fall in love, but cannot marry because of dynastic “rules” governing marriage; Ursula Engleheart is the story of a prolific painter of miniatures (an estimated 5,000 of them in his lifetime) who paints eyes for clandestine lovers but doesn’t sign them to avoid trouble with his patrons, their parents; I Mourn Your Loss tells a sad tale of two of the many young men who perished in the Napoleonic Wars and how all that remains of one of them is the lover’s eye he gave to his fiancée; My Mother, Mariah Norcross is another bereavement story that also illustrates the perils of epidemics in that Georgian era and its horrific costs to families; and, finally, the last story, of what was found in Great-Aunt Lavinia’s Jewelry Box by careless heirs, speculates on the possible unfortunate fate of many an eye miniature.

The exhibition, and the beautifully illustrated 208 page catalog – a proper coffee-table book! – have each garnered wonderful publicity. The catalog will probably become a collector’s item as well as an important research source on the subject of eye miniatures; the essays by Dr. Graham Boettcher, the curator, and Elle Shushan, a dealer in portrait miniatures, are outstanding, detailed, and most readable.

Graham Boettcher

Elle Shushan

The exhibit is exquisite, mounted with extreme delicacy and care by the professionals at the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the oohs and ahhs of those visiting the jewel of a room in which it is housed brings joy to everyone who’s been involved in its creation and implementation, but most of all to Nan and Dr David Skier, who collected these gorgeous pieces that combine art/history/and jewelry in such a unique manner. Plans are underway to bring the exhibit to other cities; the catalog can be ordered through Amazon, where it has been Number One in its category – Art and Antiques – for weeks. It can also be ordered from the English publisher

D Giles Ltd here.

Nan Skier talks about the collection here. Scroll down half a page for the presentation.

There are special events surrounding the Look of Love which can be found on the museum’s web site here.

The coverage has been overwhelming: Take a look at the Vanity Fair web article, for example, here.

A beautiful article appears in Antiques & Fine Arts which requires an online FREE registration. Here is the online site: http://www.antiquesandfineart.com/

Many other articles area available on the internet and through the museum’s website.

A postscript: One of the several delightful people I met – including dealers/art consultants/appraisers Reagan Upshaw, Michael Quick, and Sonja Weber (the book is dedicated to her late husband Barry Weber, who often appeared on Antiques Roadshow) — was Thomas Sully, a painter and direct descendant of the English-born American painter of the same name.

Tom Sully self-portrait miniature

Tom Sully paints portrait miniatures, amongst other painting genres and has lately begun to do eye miniatures. I asked him, “How do you do this? Isn’t elephant ivory [which was used for most Georgian eye miniatures] endangered?” He replied that the Russians are selling woolly mammoth – yes! woolly mammoth! – ivory and that is what he is using. Not endangered. Extinct. But not endangered.&
nbsp; I saw some samples of his work and it is very fine, indeed. Check him out here.