World of Antiques & Art

a biannual magazine

art

for collectors of material culture

world

Antiques & of

GOLD In all its glorious manifestations celebrated in London

FROM CANADA TO AUSTRALIA Tying up the loose ends in early colonial art

World class destinations for sculpture The new Hepworth Wakefield in West Yorkshire Henry Moore at Perry Green

American artists in Italy A rich exchange between cultures

FEBRUARY – AUGUST 2012 ISSUE 82 AUSTRALIA $16.95 NZ $20.95 SINGAPORE $20.00 UK £7.00 US $13.00 €10.50

Contents 136

AROUND THE AUCTIONS

4

EDITORIAL

Auction highlights from the major houses

HERITAGE ART 30

14

The Governor, the Ensign and the Convict Terry Ingram

Russell Drysdale (1912-1981): a centenary evaluation Helen Musa 54

48

84

world of the unmade

Ross Searle

Matilda Bathurst

Caustic images of Weimar Germany

60

Claude Lorrain in a new light

78

Americans in Florence

102

Re-evaluating Henry Moore’s plasters

116

CONTRIBUTORS

144

INDEX OF ADVERTISERS

8

André Roosevelt’s Bali, the ‘Last Paradise’

PHOTOGRAPHY

DECORATIVE ARTS AND DESIGN 36

Indian ivories

Annabelle Lacour

Francesca Galloway 42

The power and allure of gold

20

Transported to the Colonies: Thomas Tompion’s clock

124

PROFILE

A Worcester chalice Andrew Morris

Out of the darkroom: Kim Kauffman Dr Margaret McNiven

John Hawkins 74

Polixeni Papapetrou: transforming a pastoral scene Gael Newton

Dr Helen Clifford 66

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery transformed James Holloway

Anita Feldman 151

The Hepworth Wakefield Matilda Bathurst

James Bradburne 128

Restoration and renewal in Dresden Dr Jana Vytrhlik

Dr Jon Whiteley 96

A Han imperial burial Dr James Lin

Penny Fisher 92

What remains? Paper architecture and the

Narimboo: an Aboriginal portrait

120

Celebrating a medium and a collector Helen Watson

88

Fashion, patriotism and propaganda Alexandra Huff

106

Malaysian Songtik Helen Musa

COVER Polixeni Papapetrou, The Harvesters from

110

Balinese wood carvings Geraldine Slattery

2 World of Antiques & Art

Between Worlds, 2009, colour photograph, pigment print, 105 x 105 cm.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

photomedia

Polixeni Papapetrou

transforming a pastoral scene The not so gentle relationship between fantasy and reality Gael Newton Early naturalists described the

Polixeni Papapetrou, The Harvesters from Between Worlds, 2009, colour photograph, pigment print, 105 x 105 cm.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Australian colonies as an upside-down world where instead of the leaves the bark fell off the trees in winter. In her enigmatic 2009 photo-tableaux Between worlds, Australian artist Polixeni Papapetrou also seems to want to craft some sense out of the mix of native and introduced species and tales in the antipodes.

Australian-born, of Greek background and a lawyer by first vocation, Papapetrou has been in thrall to masqueraders of various persuasions from the real Elvis fans and impersonators and bodybuilders she photographed in Melbourne in the 1980s through a succession of series of studio tableaux from 2003 in which her young daughter and son are the costumed models but also masqueraders in their own right who journey through scenarios derived from European fairy tales and the fantasies of the British Victorian era writer/ photographer the Reverend Dodgson, author of Alice in Wonderland.

Followers of Papapetrou’s works have watched as her children have grown their way out of literary fables and into masked roles in a series of works based on well-known European and Australian paintings and colonial myths. Papapetrou’s interest in her own landscape was heightened after overseas travels in 2004 and her increasingly expanded and more enigmatic cast of anthropomorphic ‘watchers’ are now located outdoors in evocative and spacious Australian landscapes and settings.

20 World of Antiques & Art

The Harvesters mixes metaphors and motifs.

It draws first on French painter J F Millet’s The Gleaners of 1857, a work which has long intrigued the artist for its ‘aestheticisation of the other’ in this case the grinding poverty of the gleaners contrasted with the lush harvest of the landowner. The Millet was seen as controversial and dangerously sympathetic to the working class; the Aussie ‘gleaners’ of 2009 however are girly young pigs in pretty pink nylon flounces recalling stories and Disney films of The Three Little Pigs, a Victorian era moral tale about being productive and sensible.

The new Harvesters are genetic and genderbending pretenders whose immaculate frocks show they glean their grub only for amusement. Their bucolic setting in this fractured fairy tale is recognisably Australian only from the brilliant depth of the blue sky and a strip of rocky untamed land in the middle ground. Perhaps a wider metaphor also wants to break in to the scene. As a settler society of relatively short history, Australians of European descent must perforce domesticate the immigrant cultural narratives just as the bush land is turned to pastoral haymaking.

It is said that all versions of a myth are true, but maybe the disquiet underlying Papapetrou’s images is how they suggest Australians have not quite yet domesticated their inherited and transported narratives. Or are these now unforgettable creatures of Papapetou’s creation Darwinian adaptations to a new land. So what if the gleaners have cross-bred with cartoon pigs and are even a little monstrous. But they are Our Monsters, and rather friendly at that.

decorative arts

Indian ivories for the luxury market With the expansion of foreign trade in the sixteenth century India developed an important market in the production of high quality ivories for the export market. The strong demand for these beautifully crafted items among collectors and museums continues today

Francesca Galloway The trade in Indian ivory objects

Ceylon cabinet, late 16th-17th century, ivory and tortoiseshell veneered, made for the Portuguese market, h: 16.75 x w: 51 x depth: 32.5 cm. This cabinet is decorated with small panels of ivory finely carved with Ceylonese zoological imagery, including hamsa and winged beasts amidst exotic scrolling foliage, serrated leaves, stylised flowers and pearled stems.

Image courtesy of Francesca Galloway

has a long history. Described as one of the noblest crafts in Vedic literature ivory was already in considerable demand during the Achaemenid Empire in Iran (650-330 BCE) and later, during the Roman Empire in Italy where Indian ivory was found amongst the ruins of Pompeii (79 CE).

The most famous group are the Begram ivories, excavated in modern times from the ruins of a building in Begram, in present-day Afghanistan, which had been destroyed during the Sassanian invasions of around 241 CE. These Indic ivories, dating from 1st century BCE to the 3rd century CE, were luxury goods of a secular nature. They were

found together with Syrian glass, Roman and Alexandrian sculpture and Chinese lacquer ware, revealing the cosmopolitan and sophisticated lifestyle of the wealthy elite living along the Silk Route.

It was in the sixteenth century that trade in such objects really flowered with the arrival of the first Europeans in India, intent on establishing trade.

Most surviving examples of ivories before the sixteenth century tend to be small-scale such as Buddhist votive objects from Kashmir, medieval erotic ivories from Orissa and elaborate carved throne legs also from Orissa and south India, which were made for domestic palace and temple use.

An unusual and beautiful example of sixteenth century south Indian figurative ivory carving is a

couple from Madurai in Tamil Nadu now in the British Museum in London. The Musée Guimet in Paris and the Cleveland Museum of Art in the USA all have famous collections of early Indian ivory.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to secure trading settlements at Cochin in 1503 and then at Goa in 1510 and their arrival marks the start of the export trade to Europe. By the seventeenth century the Dutch and the English had established major trading posts or factories in different parts of the Indian subcontinent, expelling the Portuguese by the middle of the century.

The number of pieces that survive from this period is relatively large although the condition and quality of such pieces vary hugely. The best examples are generally held in museums such as the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Precious and exotic objects such as intricately carved ivory caskets from India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), sometimes inlaid with precious jewels and exquisitely carved fans, fly whisks and combs were exported to Portugal and Spain, many commissioned by or given to members of the royal courts of Europe at the time they were made.

These luxurious objects were highly fashionable in Europe and were displayed in royal collections (Kunstkammes) in Florence, Naples, Madrid and Munich.

Ceylonese ivory workshops, famed for the high quality of their workmanship, created a hybrid style that blended traditional Sinhalese forms and motifs with those derived from European iconography. The Ceylonese style of this period included zoological imagery; hamsa (goose) and winged beasts amidst exotic scrolling foliage, serrated leaves, stylised flowers and pearled stems and geometric designs.

African ivory was preferred to indigenous Asian (Indian) ivory because the material was less porous and had a closer texture. It took a better polish and had a mellow, warm, transparent tint. Unlike Asian

ivory, it did not yellow with age but retained its attractive colour.

The ivory and tortoiseshell-veneered cabinet was created in Ceylon for the Portuguese market in the first half of the seventeenth century, and is a magnificent example of its type. The exterior the inner face of the doors and the surface of the internal drawers are all mounted with panels of openwork ivory over plaques of tortoiseshell backed with gold leaf. The cabinet is decorated with small panels of ivory finely carved with Ceylonese zoological imagery including hamsa and winged beasts amidst exotic scrolling foliage, serrated leaves, stylised flowers and pearled stems.

The sixteenth century witnessed dramatic change in India with the establishment of the Mughal Empire in 1526 and the emergence of an art style created for the Mughal emperors in the mid to late sixteenth century. The Mughals were great patrons of the arts, and the Mughal emperor Jahangir mentions in his autobiography that he had a number of ivory craftsmen in his permanent employ.

After the influx of European traders in India around the middle of sixteenth and seventeenth century, ivory craftsmanship was also influenced by western patronage. Work produced during this Sri Lanka, Pipe case, c. 1700, carved ivory, wood carcass, brass fittings, l: 50 cm © Image courtesy Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Sri Lanka, Casket, c. 1660-1670, carved ivory, wood carcass, hinged saddle roofed shape cover, silver fittings, l: 23.4 cm © Image courtesy Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

decorative art

Nugget found at Cromm Altt, Stirling © National Museums of Scotland

The power and

allure of gold The confluence of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games in London in 2012 offers an opportunity to celebrate the story of Britain’s largely unsung relationship with gold

Helen Clifford It is remarkable that any ancient

Above: Amesbury Archer basket ornaments, the oldest gold objects found in Britain to date © Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum Right: Anatolian gold ewer, c. 2500-2400 BCE, technique of embossing sheet gold © The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum London

42 World of Antiques & Art

or historic pieces of gold have survived at all, since so often the bullion value outweighed the value of the workmanship. The majority which do survive from prehistoric times were discovered in graves. In some cases, gold might have been treasured as a sacrifice to the Earth, perhaps in periods of economic, social and political crisis.

Worked gold makes its first appearance in Britain in the form of sheets formed into crescent discs, called lunulae and basket rings, such as the celebrated ‘basket-rings’ found in a grave near Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in 2002.

The Amesbury Archer and his companion were both buried some 4,300 years ago with great ceremony, each with a pair of gold ‘basket rings’ placed close to the side of their heads. Their precise function is still unclear but they may have been worn round locks of hair. Analysis of the archer’s tooth enamel reveal that he originated from the Alps region. Perhaps he was one of the early migrants who first brought Britain into contact with the continent of Europe and with it the trade that brought goldworking to Britain.

The technique of embossing sheet gold was known across Europe and a gold ewer from Anatolia, dated to c. 2500-2000 BCE, shows how ancient civilisations shared this technique of decorating. It is one of the earliest gold vessels known in the world.

Lunulae, the term used to describe a distinctive type of early Bronze Age collar, shaped like a

crescent moon, are found most commonly in Ireland, but also in Portugal and Great Britain. A spectacular group of torcs and bracelets reveal how new gold working techniques were developed and new styles began to appear in the Middle Bronze Age, culminating in elaborately worked examples made between the third and first centuries BCE. Ornaments made from sheet gold continued to be made, but the use of gold bars, either plain or with hammered flanges began to appear, heralding a new sophistication.

The gold bracelets found as part of a hoard at Capel Isaf near Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, and made between 1,600 and 1,300 BCE, may well have been made from Welsh gold. These can be compared with a new form of body ornament, the torc, which appears in Britain in the Middle Bronze Age. By the Iron Age this form had reached the height of technical skill and many of these later torcs seem to have originated from Norfolk.

The Newark torc, like other Iron Age examples, is constructed of rolled and twisted wire ropes fixed to ring-shaped terminals. These torcs tend to be made of gold alloys, typically an alloy of 80-85 percent gold and 10-15 percent silver. A particularly splendid example of Anglo-Saxon jewellery is an early seventh century pendant made of beaded and twisted gold wires of complex design and incorporating a central garnet. The pendant was retrieved from an Anglo-Saxon burial site at Kingston Barrow near Canterbury.

Inlaid with over 830 chips of blue glass, white shell and flat-cut garnets, it is still the finest and largest (at 8.5 cm diameter) Anglo-Saxon brooch ever to have been found.

A wealth of material has since been discovered by metal detectorists. The Middleham Jewel found in North Yorkshire in 1985, sold for £1.3 million at Sotheby’s in London. The

fifteenth century gold lozenge shaped pendant is intricately and intimately engraved with biblical scenes and set with a large sapphire.

Goldsmithing retains an extraordinary continuity over time. The basic constructional techniques of casting and raising date back to the third millennia BCE. The analysis of archaeological finds by modern goldsmiths, such as Jack Stapley’s investigation of Iron Age torc making, create a dialogue across the centuries.

Some pieces are difficult to date precisely because the techniques of making and decorating have changed so little. A gold bowl said to have been found at Palestrina near Rome, dating back to 700-650 BCE and embellished with fine granulation, has caused debate among experts as to whether it is original or dates to the nineteenth century when a fascination with ancient techniques led Victorian goldsmiths and jewellers to learn by imitation, resurrecting lost arts and skills.

Top left: Pair of gold bracelets, c. 1,600-1,300 BCE from the Capel Isaf Hoard, may have been made from Welsh gold © National Museum of Wales Top right: The Irish Lunula, c. 2000-1500 BCE, Bronze Age collar, made from gold sheet © The Drapers’ Company Bottom left: The Middleham Jewel, mid-15th century, gold pendant adorned with an oblong sapphire © Yorkshire Museum Bottom right: The Canterbury pendant, early 7th century, beaded and twisted gold wires incorporating a central garnet.

An exquisite example of AngloSaxon craftsmanship © Canterbury Museum Service

World of Antiques & Art 43

heritage

Balthasar Permoser (German 1651-1732), Moor, probably 1724, pear wood, lacquered, silver-gilt, large emerald cluster, precious stones, tortoiseshell, h: 63.8 cm. Grünes Gewölbe. Photo: Jürgen Karpinski

Restoration and renewal

in Dresden The city famed for its magnificent buildings and art collections amassed by Augustus the Strong faces the delicate issue of balancing its historical importance with the needs of a dynamic and growing modern city

Jana Vytrhlik Since the German reunification in

1993, Dresden, the capital of Saxony in former East Germany, has been gradually returning to its pre-war architectural glory and restoring its rich museum collections. The historical centre of the city was destroyed in the final days of World War II and many of the public buildings remained in ruins under the East German government.

Pre-war Dresden still lived in people’s memories so the colossal task of rebuilding and recovery was highly emotive. Architects and the city authorities were faced with two opposing views about the new development. On the one hand advocates of meticulous reconstruction, on the other, those who believed in the creation of a modern day city of the twenty-first century.

Within the historic city centre the conservationists prevailed. The baroque palaces and churches have been restored exactly as they were before the bombing. One of the most influential supporters of the rebuilding of the famous Frauenkirche church was Günter Blobel, a German-born US scientist who donated his Nobel Prize award money to this project in 1999.

Blobel embraced the modernist’s approach by supporting the building of the ‘New’ Synagogue in Dresden (completed 2001), whose cubic design references the geometry of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.

Top: Photograph of rebuilt square, 2011 Bottom: Frauenkirche reconstruction of its 1726 style completed in 2005, 2011

Preserving the balance between conserving the historical centre while rising to the demands of a flourishing modern city has been a difficult task. In 2004 the restored Dresden won the coveted UNESCO World Heritage List status, only to lose it five years later following the construction of a highly controversial four-lane bridge near the heart of the historic centre.

Outside the city centre, architect Daniel Libeskind, achieved a powerful fusion of modernity with the existing nineteenth-century classicist building. Libeskind’s extension to the Bundeswehr Military History Museum re-opened to acclaim last year after seven years of building and refurbishment work. The futuristic thirty-metre tall glass, steel and concrete structure signifies a museum which deals with and interprets Germany’s difficult past. As Dresden is rebuilt so its national and international standing has grown. The city is now a regular host to international conferences, festivals and trade fairs and a centre for German federal and foreign government cultural programs.

Historically, the city is still most strongly identified with the era of Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Augustus transformed Dresden, building extravagant baroque palaces and museums to house his incredible art collections. Like Rudolph II a century earlier in Prague, his court attracted the best architects, artists, goldsmiths, jewellers and inventors. His enthusiasm for porcelain resulted not only in his world famous collection but the European discovery of the making of porcelain and the foundation of the first ever European porcelain factory at Meissen.

Augustus made major additions to the already outstanding collections of his predecessors. In the 1720s, his still growing collections of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts were displayed in a series of purpose-built ‘museum’ rooms. This collection formed the basis of the

State Art Collections, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, or SKD today.

The precious works of art survived the bombing because they were evacuated two years earlier and hidden in caves and quarries east of the city, only to be seized at the end of the war by the Red Army troops. By an irony of fate, Dresden became part of the Eastern Block and in a political and ideological gesture of communist solidarity the Soviet government returned a proportion of the treasures to Dresden in 1958. The collections are now housed in a group of historical buildings which include the Zwinger, Royal Palace and Albertinum as well as the nearby hunting lodge Jägerhag and castles of Pillnitz and Moritzbur. The buildings are gradually being restored to incorporate twentieth-first century museum technology and visitor facilities.

The collections incorporate twelve museums in all. They include the Cabinet of Prints and Drawings, one of the oldest and most important collections of drawings, prints and photographs in Europe. It holds over half a million items by more than 20,000 artists, spanning 800 years.

The Old Masters Picture Gallery in the Zwinger is world renowned. The Italian Renaissance rooms include Rafael’s Sistine Madonna and works by Giorgione and Titian. Dutch and Flemish masterworks are represented by the best of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens and Van Dyck. The collection of old German masters includes many works by Dürer, Cranach and Holbein.

Left: Synagogue rebuilt, 2011 Right: The controversial bridge over Elbe River viewed from the river, only a few kilometres from the old city centre, 2011

Jacob Zeller (German 1581-1620), Table centrepiece designed as a frigate borne by Neptune, 1620, ivory, gold, iron, h. 116.7 cm. Grünes Gewölbe.

Photo: Jürgen Karpinski Below right: Castle Pillnitz housing rich decorative arts collection in original surroundings, 2011

art

Claude Lorrain in a new light New research by curators at the Ashmoleon Musum in Oxford and the Städel Museum, Frankfurt shows Claude as the revolutionary artist he was

Claude Lorrain (French c.1600-1682), Landscape with the Judgement of Paris, oil on canvas, 97 x 122 cm © Trustees of the 9th Duke of Buccleuch’s Chattels Fund

92 World of Antiques & Art

Jon Whiteley Claude Lorrain is an artist who has

become so familiar that it is difficult to look at him with fresh eyes. In England, especially, where landowners once laid out vast expanses of parkland in the manner of his paintings and artists, from Richard Wilson to Samuel Palmer, recreated the English landscape in the Claudian style, it is now hard to recognise his great originality.

It is harder still to respond to his Romantic imagination without thinking of the centuries of imitators who separate him from us. His contemporaries however were not so hampered in their admiration. They saw him as a great naturalist who brought a new sense of light and atmosphere into the art of landscape painting and infused it with a poetic emotion which has enchanted writers and painters ever since.

Claude, as his name suggests, was born in the duchy of Lorrain on the eastern border of France, possibly in 1600 (as his tombstone states) or else in 1604-5 (as the early documents imply). At an early age, he went to Rome and entered the household of an Italian landscapist, Agostino

Tassi. His first biographer, Joachim von Sandrart, recalled Claude’s habit of going out into the countryside at morning and evening to take colour samples of the light before returning to his studio to replicate them in his paintings.

Although Sandrart thought this was an odd manner of studying nature, it was a perfectly reasonable way of capturing the ephemeral effects of light at sunrise and sunset which do not last long enough to allow the painter to do much more. Claude was the first artist to paint the sun’s disk in his pictures, usually close to the horizon above a rippling sea. Sometimes, he places a great mass of dark foliage against the sunlit sky so that the distant landscape is suffused with soft light while the foreground is in shadow and his figures, placed in the shade, are picked out in the darkness by slender shafts of light which slant through the undergrowth from one side or the other.

Claude’s naturalism was based on the many studies which he made in pen, brush and chalk on excursions along the valley of the Tiber or further afield, sometimes in the company of Poussin. His earliest drawings of this type owed

Claude Lorrain (French c.1600-1682), Dido and Aeneas at Carthage, 1676, oil on canvas, 120 x 149.2 cm © Kunsthalle, Hamburg

World of Antiques & Art 93

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