At auction last week in New York was a bound volume containing two early nineteenth-century ship’s logbooks, “Journal of a Voyage, from Bristol to the Mediterranean, Anno Domini 1819” and “Log-Book Kept on board the Astraea On a Voyage from London to the Mediterranean, Anno-Domini 1821.” Unlike many logbooks of their kind, these two displayed exceptional artistic merit, containing 28 leaves of ink calligraphy (page headers) and 35 fine watercolor drawings.
Art News
Ever feel like your home is overwhelmed with books? (No? Really?) Well, Spanish artist Alicia Martin has taken inspiration from book sprawl and created massive outdoor sculptures that suggest the aftermath of a book-eating cyclone.
Since the late 1990s, Martin’s book sculptures have tumbled from windows or cascaded over archways throughout Europe, with three located in the heart of Madrid.
Earlier this week, the Concord Museum in Massachusetts received a daguerreotype of Sophia Thoreau (1819-1876), younger sister of American essayist and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). The timing is fortuitous; July 12 marks the bicentennial of the birth of the author of Walden and Civil Disobedience.
A man who says he is a distant cousin of Jesse James has come forward with a never-before-seen ambrotype of the notorious outlaw, young and handsome with piercing light eyes.
Patrick Meguiar of Tennessee first heard about the antique photo from his grandfather, Maynard Meguiar, who would tell stories about their ancestral connection to James, …
On Saturday, July 24, at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Boston-based RR Auction held a robst sale of memorabilia relating to notorious mobsters and outlaws like Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger.
Coming to auction later this month at Christie’s in London is an early nineteenth-century walking stick that belonged to the Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott. Made of malacca, or East Indian rattan palm, this walking stick was given by Scott to the Scottish painter, William Allan in 1831, just a year before the author’s death.
Photographer Mathew Brady (1822-1896) is mostly remembered today for his Civil War images—wounded soldiers resting under trees, prisoners awaiting transportation, scores of dead combatants lying in bloody fields—and is considered one of the pioneers of photojournalism.
This past Tuesday, May 18, the London rare booksellers Maggs Bros. Ltd.—"antiquarian booksellers by appointment to the Queen"—launched its second exhibition to mark the opening of a new store after its recent relocation to 48 Bedford Square from its 80-year-long home 50 Berkeley Square.
LOS ANGELES – The J. Paul Getty Museum announced today the most important acquisition in the history of the Museum’s Department of Drawings. Acquired as a group from a British private collection, the 16 drawings are by many of the greatest artists of western art history, including Michelangelo, Lorenzo di Credi, Andrea del Sarto, Parmigianino, Rubens, Barocci, Goya, Degas, and others. From the same collection, the Museum has acquired a celebrated painting by the great eighteenth-century French artist Jean Antoine Watteau.
Opening this fall on October 7, The Phillips Collection presents an exceptional exhibition inspired by the museum’s celebrated Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880–81) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Comprised of more than 40 carefully chosen works from private and public collections around the world, Renoir and Friends: Luncheon of the Boating Party explores the process by which the artist created his masterwork, while also recounting and illustrating stories of the diverse circle of friends who inspired it. The exhibition is Eliza Rathbone’s first as Chief Curator Emerita.
