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May 2010

Vol. 152 | No. 1286

Art in Britain

Editorial

The baroqueness of the www

The Editor discusses the recent conference ‘The baroqueness of the www’, held at Louvain University in March, and its examination of current art-historical online resources.

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Free review

Claude Blair (1922–2010)

By Ronald Lightbown
Free review

Reynolds

By Stephen Conrad

Letter:

In response to an exhibition review published in the March 2010 issue, Stephen Conrad discusses paintings by members of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s family.

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Free review

Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill

Previously at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, and showing now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (to 4th July), the exhibition Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill is examined by Simon Swynfen Jervis in this extended review of the exhibition and its substantial accompanying catalogue.

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  • Decorum and celebration of the family line: Robert Adam’s monuments to the 1st Duchess of Northumberland

    By Adriano Aymonino

    Adriano Aymonino writes on funerary monuments by Robert Adam and the sculptor Nicholas Read to the Duchess of Northumberland in Westminster Abbey, London, and at Alnwick Castle. The article includes a discussion of the complex imagery and symbolism of the monuments within their mid- to late eighteenth-century context.

  • Thomas Lawrence and the Royal Academy’s cartoon of ‘Leda and the swan’ after Michelangelo

    By Annette Wickham

    Two previously unpublished letters written by Sir Thomas Lawrence feature in the appendix to this article by Annette Wickham. The correspondence outlines Lawrence’s attempts to acquire the drawing Leda and the swan (after Michelangelo but given, at that time, to the master) from the Lock collection. These failed endeavours resulted in the drawing being given to the Royal Academy of Arts, London, where it remains today.

  • Charles Shannon in the house of Delia: a theme from Tibullus

    By William C. McKeown

    William McKeown’s article Charles Shannon in the house of Delia discusses Charles H. Shannon’s painting Tibullus in the house of Delia (1900-05; Nottingham Castle Museum). Although focusing on an analysis of the portraits of Shannon and his close associate Charles Ricketts in the painting, the article also examines the biographical implications of the poetic source in Tibullus.

  • Francis Bacon and the Lefevre Gallery

    By Martin Hammer

    Martin Hammer writes on Francis Bacon's early exhibition history, including his  participation in wartime group shows of modern European art at the Lefevre Gallery, London. Comprehensively referencing unpublished letters from the Lefevre Gallery Archive, now in the Tate Gallery Archive, sent between Bacon and the Lefevre's then director, Duncan Macdonald, the article tells of Bacon's early successes and later struggles to sell his ambitious, large-scale paintings in a rather sedate post-War Britain.

  • Autobiographical notes by Roger Hilton

    By Adrian Lewis

    Autobiographical notes by Roger Hilton c.1960 examines notes made by the artist in the 1960s, which list significant events from his life, including childhood, war, marriage, artistic development and art-world politics. Adrian Lewis examines these musings, expanding on their often complex meanings. An appendix to the article includes the original French text and an English translation.

  • Art History Reviewed IX: Kenneth Clark’s ‘The Nude. A Study of Ideal Art’, 1956

    By John-Paul Stonard
  • Claude Blair (1922–2010)

    By Ronald Lightbown