Volume 21, Issue 3 | Autumn 2022

Editors’ Welcome

At Once “Ancient” and “Modern”: The Art-Journal’s Illustrated Catalogues and the Notion of Adaptation in Nineteenth-Century Historicism

by Lieske Huits

This article examines the notion of adaptation in relation to historicist manufactures as put forward by the illustrated catalogues to international exhibitions in England and France published by The Art-Journal between 1851 and 1881. Through both illustrations and language, the catalogues put particular emphasis on the visual quality of wares. Using the example of the archaeological-style jewelry produced by London goldsmith John Brogden, this essay analyzes the language used around revival and adaptation of style in The Art-Journal’s illustrated catalogues to argue that adaptation rather than imitation was central to the logic of appropriation in nineteenth-century historicist manufactures.

In the Picture: The Emergence of the Female Amateur in Fin-de-Siècle Exhibition Posters in Brussels

by Ulrike Müller and Marjan Sterckx

Belgian art nouveau posters, created around 1900 to advertise modern art exhibitions, reveal a new iconography that represents modern women intensely engaged with works of fine and decorative art. In addressing how these posters picture this new type of female amateur as a fashionable, discerning, highly involved, and at times even provocative femme nouvelle (new woman), this article discusses how the posters not only advertised certain avant-garde art exhibitions as sites of aesthetic experience and distinction but also reflected, foregrounded, and encouraged women’s increased participation in the vibrant cultural scene of fin-de-siècle Brussels.

Work of Art, Museum Trophy, Memorial Monument: The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek’s Gloria Victis by Antonin Mercié

by Nick Parkinson

When museum director Carl Jacobsen installed Antonin Mercié’s sculptural group Gloria Victis (Glory to the Vanquished) in Copenhagen’s Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in 1906, he made it the centerpiece of the museum’s Winter Garden. This essay examines Jacobsen’s long and difficult journey to obtain Gloria Victis, along with his motivation for acquiring a sculpture that, until World War I, was closely tied to France’s memory of the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). It argues that Jacobsen saw Gloria Victis not only as a major work of art and a signature piece in his museum but also as a monument in which French and Danish memories of recent military defeats were intertwined.

Salem, the Prince of Tombouctou: A North African Model in Nineteenth-Century Paris

by Susan Waller

This essay reconstructs the history of Salem, “le prince de Tombouctou,” an artist’s model from North Africa working in Parisian studios in the later nineteenth century. It traces his trajectory from Algeria, where he served among Indigenous troops recruited by the French to facilitate the subjugation of the colony, to Paris, where he cannily asserted his exotic origins to promote himself within the community of models. Examining intersections between institutional structures of French colonialism and traditions of Parisian studio practice, the essay suggests that tensions between French and Islamic cultural norms may have inflected the representations for which African models posed.

New Discoveries

Anthon van Rappard, Three Brushmakers and a Bookkeeper in the Institute for the Blind in Utrecht, 1891

by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu

DOI

Practicing Art History New

Farewell to Russian Art: On Resistance, Complicity, and Decolonization in a Time of War

by Allison Leigh

DOI

Supported by:

Terra Foundation Fellowships in American Art
at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Gerome Marble Work