This gilded brass mirror is reflective of the designs of the Aesthetic Movement, which traveled from Britain to America in the last third of the 19th century, and supported aesthetic values above sociopolitical themes in literature, music an the arts.
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This portrait of a boy and his horse, signed and dated 1646, is the work of the Dutch Golden Age painter Herman Mijnerts Doncker (c. 1620-1656). He was active in Haarlem from circa 1633-1640, where he entered the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1634. Afterward, Doncker resided in the small, but wealthy, port town of Enkhuisen where he made a living painting portraits, for which he is most well-known, and experimented with Acadian scenes for paintings of biblical or mythological subjects.
Figure 1
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The art of wax modeling can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when it was used for effigies, death masks and portrait miniatures. In Renaissance Italy, Florence, Venice and Naples were among the first centers to recognize the possibilities of using wax to imitate human flesh, arguably one of the earliest instances of hyper-realism in art. Some of these studies were portrayed with terrifying realism such as a Cadaver in Decomposition by the Neapolitan Gaetano Guilio Zummo, circa 1695. In later centuries, busts or life-size portraits were created from this pliable material, as were anatomical models, a practice known as moulage.
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This cockerel is rendered with striking naturalism and elaborate attention to detail. Its feathers are highly refined and arranged in sections at intervals with subtly worked spaces in between, which gives the subject a strong sense of movement. The tension of the arched body, with its feathers seeming to have been inflated from within, conveys the excitement of the bird, who has just subdued its cunning prey. Even the various surface textures, such as the calloused feet, the flaccid comb and wattle, the scaly skin of the snakes and the covering of grass on the base, are intricately worked. The extraordinary technical skill of the sculptor is evidenced by the use of a single block of marble, a considerable achievement, particularly where the subtleties like the feathers, the complexly coiling bodies of the snakes, and the positioning of the feet of the bird are concerned.
This interesting French petit-point needlework in the Carlton Hobbs collection depicts a voyage of Henri II of France (1519-1559). Henri, holding a crown and scepter, stands on the bow of a galley as it heads towards the sun and away from night. Two flags fly on the central mast, a tricolor flag of red, white and blue (colors associated with France since the Middle Ages), and above this a flag decorated with a crescent moon. The crescent was a symbol of Henri’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, borrowed from the Goddess Diana, which he also adopted as his device.
Over the summer we brought you preliminary details on an important Aubusson carpet made to a design by Eugene Viollet-le-Duc for the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame de Paris in our collection. We are now very pleased to present the complete research for the carpet, which is currently on show in our booth at TEFAF Maastricht, Booth #271:
The design of the present carpet was the work of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) for the sanctuary of Notre Dame de Paris in the 1860s.
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While watching the season finale of PBS Masterpiece’s “Downton Abbey” last weekend, Carlton Hobbs staff member Dana noticed something curiously familiar in the background of one scene:
Scene from "Downton Abbey"
A porcelain-mounted torchère very much like the pair by Louis-François Bellangé in the Carlton Hobbs collection!
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For those not familiar, Downton Abbey is a British period drama about a fictional aristocratic family and their country house in England in the early 1900s. The house used for Downton Abbey on the show is actually Highclere Castle in Hampshire. Various other filming locations are used, and in this particular episode the family visits relatives at a Scottish hunting lodge, with many of the interior and exterior scenes shot at Inveraray Castle in Scotland.
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This rare pair of tables is a striking example of Pontypool lacquered tôle, one the eighteenth century’s most innovative decorative techniques. A closely comparable table in the collection at Colonial Williamsburg, dated to 1765 and with a rectangular top (figure 1), shares the same hand-punched pierced edging and eared corners of the present pair and is decorated with fruit and flowers in a style and composition closely related to that of these pieces. In addition, both the present pair and the Williamsburg table are raised on a lacquered baluster stem with three cabriole legs with pad feet.
The rococo style appeared in Italy later than in its neighboring European countries, and was highly influenced by French Louis XV design. In Venice, the republic had faded politically and commercially, however, it “excelled as the capital of taste, fashion and luxury, rivaling the reputation of Paris.” The rooms of the grand palazzi on the canals were outfitted with colorful frescoes, marble floors and sumptuous textiles. The interior architecture, of a sculptural quality, was reflected in the furnishings, which were brightly painted and elaborately carved.
The first known examples of carved depictions of vagabonds and beggars date back to the second half of the 18th century and are specific to Val Gardena, also referred to by its German name, Gröden, a valley in the Dolomite mountain range of northern Italy. This town was well known for it’s cottage industry of wooden carving in which toys, utility articles and sculpture were made since the 17th century, and the present set of figures are most likely attributable to this region.
