Private Collectors of Islamic Art in Late Nineteenth-Century London

Private Collectors of Islamic Art in Late Nineteenth-Century London
Author: Isabelle Gadoin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000437000

This book examines British collectors of so-called Persian art (a broad umbrella term then covering a large portion of Islamic art) in the late 19th century, including ceramics, metalwork, carpets, textiles and woodwork. Based on a foundational event, the very first exhibition of “Persian and Arab Art” held by a London Gentlemen’s Club in 1885, this book follows one generation of men, retracing the subtle shades of difference among “amateurs,” “connoisseurs,” “experts” and “collectors,” and exploring all the mechanisms of the construction of a collective fascination for the Orient. Isabelle Gadoin uncovers some of the first “scientific” analyses of Islamic objects and of the first private notebooks or exhibition catalogues, to provide an in-depth study of the way Westerners talked about Islamic objects and began to define what would become Islamic art history. All the while, Gadoin unravels the skein of Western prejudice, Romantic fancy, sincere admiration and ruthless appropriation, in art collecting, to write a new chapter of Orientalist history. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of collecting, colonialism and postcolonialism, and Orientalism.

A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture

A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture
Author: Finbarr Barry Flood
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1442
Release: 2017-06-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1119068576

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

À l’orientale: Collecting, Displaying and Appropriating Islamic Art and Architecture in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

À l’orientale: Collecting, Displaying and Appropriating Islamic Art and Architecture in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
Author: Francine Giese
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004412646

The present volume offers a collection of essays that examines the mechanisms and strategies of collecting, displaying and appropriating Islamic art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many studies in this book concentrate on lesser known collections of Islamic art, situated in Central and Eastern Europe that until now have received little attention from scholars. Special attention is given to the figure of the Swiss collector Henri Moser Charlottenfels, whose important, still largely unstudied collection of Islamic art is now preserved in the Bernisches Historisches Museum, Switzerland. Contributors to the volume include young researchers and established scholars from Western and Eastern Europe and beyond: Roger Nicholas Balsiger, Moya Carey, Valentina Colonna, Francine Giese, Hélène Guérin, Barbara Karl, Katrin Kaufmann, Sarah Keller, Agnieszka Kluczewska Wójcik, Inessa Kouteinikova, Axel Langer, Maria Medvedeva, Ágnes Sebestyén, Alban von Stockhausen, Ariane Varela Braga, Mercedes Volait. Les contributions de l’ouvrage examinent le mécanisme et les stratégies relatifs à la collection, la présentation et l’appropriation des arts de l’Islam au XIXe siècle et début du XXe siècle. Elles mettent l’accent sur des collections situées en Europe centrale et orientale, lesquelles ont été peu étudiées jusqu’à présent. Une attention particulière est dédiée à la figure du collectionneur Suisse Henri Moser Charlottenfels, dont les objets se trouvent aujourd’hui au Bernisches Historisches Museum (Suisse) et qui ont été de même peu étudiés. Les textes émanent de jeunes chercheurs comme de chercheurs confirmés, basés en Europe occidentale et orientale, et au-delà.

Chinese Art Objects, Collecting, and Interior Design in Twentieth-Century Britain

Chinese Art Objects, Collecting, and Interior Design in Twentieth-Century Britain
Author: Helen Glaister
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2022-08-26
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000644278

This book explores the relationship between collecting Chinese ceramics, interior design and display in Britain through the eyes of collectors, designers and tastemakers during the years leading to, during and following the Second World War. The Ionides Collection of European style Chinese export porcelain forms the nucleus of this study – defined by its design hybridity – offering insights into the agency of Chinese porcelain in diverse contexts, from seventeenth-century Batavia to twentieth-century Britain, raising questions about notions of Chineseness, Britishness, and identity politics across time and space. Through the biographies of the collectors, this book highlights the role of collecting Chinese art objects, particularly porcelain, in the construction of individual and group identities. Social networks linking the Ionides to agents and dealers, auctioneers, and museum specialists bring into focus the dynamics of collecting during this period, the taste of the Ionides and their self-fashioning as collectors. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of art history, history of collections, interior design, Chinese studies, and material culture studies.

François Boucher and the Art of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century France

François Boucher and the Art of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century France
Author: Jessica Priebe
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000470385

While earlier studies have focused predominantly on artist François Boucher’s artistic style and identity, this book presents the first full-length interdisciplinary study of Boucher’s prolific collection of around 13,500 objects including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, porcelain, shells, minerals, and other imported curios. It discusses the types of objects he collected, the networks through which he acquired them, and their spectacular display in his custom-designed studio at the Louvre, where he lived and worked for nearly two decades. This book explores the role his collection played in the development of his art, his studio, his friendships, and the burgeoning market for luxury goods in mid-eighteenth-century France. In doing so, it sheds new light on the relationship between Boucher’s artistic and collecting practices, which attracted both praise and criticism from period observers. The book will appeal to scholars working in art history, museum studies, and French history.

British Representations of the Middle East in the Exhibition Space, 1850–1932

British Representations of the Middle East in the Exhibition Space, 1850–1932
Author: Holly O'Farrell
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000988899

This volume analyses British exhibitions of Middle Eastern (particularly ancient Egyptian and Persian) artefacts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – examining how these exhibitions defined British self image in response to the Middle Eastern ‘other’. This study is an original interpretation of the exhibition space along intersectional constructionist lines, revealing how forces such as gender, race, morality and space come together to provide an argument for British supremacy. The position of museums as instruments of representation of display made them important points of contact between the British national imperialist scheme and the public. Displays in the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Burlington House provide a focus for analysis. Through the employment of a constructionist lens, the research outlines a complex relationship between British society and the Middle Eastern artefacts presented in museums during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This allows a dialogue to emerge which has consequences for both societies which is achieved through intersections of gender, race and morality in space. This book will be of value to students and scholars alike interested in museology, cultural studies, history and art history.

Albert Houtum Schindler: A Remarkable Polymath in Late-Qajar Iran

Albert Houtum Schindler: A Remarkable Polymath in Late-Qajar Iran
Author: D.T. Potts
Publisher: Mage Publishers
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2023-08-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1949445682

Widely regarded in his lifetime as the greatest living authority on all things Iranian, across an enormous range of disciplines, Albert Houtum Schindler lived and worked in Iran from 1868 to 1911. All who either met or corresponded with him came away praising his encyclopaedic knowledge and remarkable insight. A member of numerous learned societies in Europe, he sustained a wide web of intellectual contacts and was insatiably curious. As an employee of the Indo-European Telegraph Department, the Imperial Bank of Persia and the Persian Bank Mining Rights Corporation, he experienced firsthand the ups and downs of Iran’s slow but inexorable movement towards modernity. Yet when he died in 1916 his obituaries were frustratingly brief. Private when it came to the details of his personal life, Albert Houtum Schindler gave little away. This book is the first full-scale examination of the life and legacy of an extraordinary witness to the late-Qajar period and the land, people and history of Iran.

Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London

Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London
Author: Stacey J. Pierson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2017-01-12
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1315311917

The Burlington Fine Arts Club was founded in London in 1866 as a gentlemen’s club with a singular remit – to exhibit members’ art collections. Exhibitions were proposed, organized, and furnished by a group of prominent members of British society who included aristocrats, artists, bankers, politicians, and museum curators. Exhibitions at their grand house in Mayfair brought many private collections and collectors to light, using members’ social connections to draw upon the finest and most diverse objects available. Through their unique mode of presentation, which brought museum-style display and interpretation to a grand domestic-style gallery space, they also brought two forms of curatorial and art historical practice together in one unusual setting, enabling an unrestricted form of connoisseurship, where new categories of art were defined and old ones expanded. The history of this remarkable group of people has yet to be presented and is explored here for the first time. Through a framework of exhibition themes ranging from Florentine painting to Ancient Egyptian art, a study of lenders, objects, and their interpretation paints a picture of private collecting activities, connoisseurship, and art world practice that is surprisingly diverse and interconnected.

Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century?

Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century?
Author: Hollis Clayson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351562029

"Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century?" The question that guides this volume stems from Walter Benjamin's studies of nineteenth-century Parisian culture as the apex of capitalist aesthetics. Thirteen scholars test Benjamin's ideas about the centrality of Paris, formulated in the 1930s, from a variety of methodological perspectives. Many investigate the underpinnings of the French capital's reputation and mythic force, which was based largely upon the city's capacity to put itself on display. Some of the authors reassess the famed centrality of Paris from the vantage point of our globalized twenty-first century by acknowledging its entanglements with South Africa, Turkey, Japan, and the United States. The volume equally studies a broader range of media than Benjamin did himself: from modernist painting and printmaking, photography, and illustration to urban planning. The essays conclude that Paris did in many ways function as the epicenter of modernity's international reach, especially in the years from 1850 to 1900, but did so only as a consequence of the idiosyncratic force of its mythic image. Above all, the essays affirm that the study of late nineteenth-century Paris still requires nimble and innovative approaches commensurate with its legend and global aura.

Antique Dealing and Creative Reuse in Cairo and Damascus 1850-1890

Antique Dealing and Creative Reuse in Cairo and Damascus 1850-1890
Author: Mercedes Volait
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004449884

The commodification of Islamic antiques intensified in the late Ottoman Empire, an age of domestic reform and increased European interference following the Tanzimat (reorganisation) of 1839. Mercedes Volait examines the social life of typical objects moving from Cairo and Damascus to Paris, London, and beyond, uncovers the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in the trade of architectural salvage and historic handicraft, and traces impacts on private interiors, through creative reuse and Revival design, in Egypt, Europe and America. By devoting attention to both local and global engagements with Middle Eastern tangible heritage, the present volume invites to look anew at Orientalism in art and interior design, the canon of Islamic architecture and the translocation of historic works of art.