The Burlington Magazine

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‘Housing Atlas: Europe Twentieth Century’, survey of some of the most significant European housing schemes of the twenti...
16/08/2025

‘Housing Atlas: Europe Twentieth Century’, survey of some of the most significant European housing schemes of the twentieth century, is a beautiful book, graceful and consistent in its presentation but also austere and in some respects old-fashioned. Both the elaborate drawings and the economical, sometimes hermetic texts that accompany them hint that it is aimed chiefly at architects or, rather, architectural schools and students. ⁠
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Read Andrew Saint’s review of this publication in our August issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202508?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo

Image: Terni, Villaggio Matteotti, by Gabriele Basilico. 1976. Photograph. (© Gabriele Basilico; Archivio Gabriele Basilico, Milan).

When the subject is festivity and its representation in Early Modern art, one’s thoughts tend to turn to peasants. Somew...
14/08/2025

When the subject is festivity and its representation in Early Modern art, one’s thoughts tend to turn to peasants. Somewhere in a village, far away from civilised society, they gather to dance wildly, play games, fo**le a partner, drink heavily and vomit. Such festive peasants are not time-bound or even place-bound; they exist, pictorially, in a perpetually joyous state apart, free from the political and economic woes suffered by others.

‘Fêtes et célébrations flamandes: Brueghel, Rubens, Jordaens’ at the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille, jointly organised with the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris, questions to what extent this image represents a stereotype and aims to reframe it on a more historical basis.

Read Elizabeth Alice Honig’s review of the exhibition, showing until the 1st of September 2025, in our August issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202508?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo

Image: ‘Kermis with theatre and procession’, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Oil on canvas, 111 by 162 cm. (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels).

In May 2025, as the final part of its bicentenary celebrations, the National Gallery, London, unveiled extensive new dis...
12/08/2025

In May 2025, as the final part of its bicentenary celebrations, the National Gallery, London, unveiled extensive new displays of its paintings. Juxtaposing the familiar and the unexpected, they provide fresh perspectives on its outstanding and expanding collection.

Read our Editor Christopher Baker’s article review ‘New collection displays at the National Gallery, London’ in our August issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202508?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo

Image: San Pier Maggiore Altarpiece in its new frame, by Jacopo di Cione and workshop. 1370–71. Egg tempera on wood. (Photograph Peter Schade; National Gallery, London).

For nearly fifty years Arthena, the publishing house of the Association pour la Diffusion de l’Histoire de l’Art, has pr...
10/08/2025

For nearly fifty years Arthena, the publishing house of the Association pour la Diffusion de l’Histoire de l’Art, has produced catalogues raisonné devoted to French or francophone artists. Underpinned by exemplary scholarship, the catalogues have set a high standard. In more recent volumes, the illustrations have been integrated into the text, making them easier to read but also bulkier. Crucially, they have also gone beyond cataloguing individual works to explore the artists’ relationships to contemporary art institutions. ⁠
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‘Pierre Subleyras (1699–1749)’ adopts the same format and approach. Building upon the work of Olivier Michel and Pierre Rosenberg, Nicolas Lesur provides a comprehensive and broadly chronological account of Pierre Subleyras’s life and work including, for example, the daily activities at the Palazzo Mancini, Rome, where he stayed as a member of the Académie de France à Rome, between 1728 and 1735. ⁠
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Read Humphrey Wine’s review of the publication in our August issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202508?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo
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Image: ‘St Camille de Lellis saving patients from the flooding of the Tiber in 1598’, by Pierre Subleyras. 1746. Oil on canvas, 172 by 248 cm. (Palazzo Braschi, Rome).

The French fringe and lacemaker Peter Dufresnoy excelled at his craft and trade in Restoration London. A close study of ...
08/08/2025

The French fringe and lacemaker Peter Dufresnoy excelled at his craft and trade in Restoration London. A close study of written sources and surviving works by him facilitates a reconstruction of his brilliant career. His patrons included the Duke of Lauderdale (Ham House), Mary Howard, Duchess of Norfolk and 7th Baroness Mordaunt (Drayton House), the Earl of Exeter (Burghley House) and the Dowager Queen Catherine of Braganza. ⁠
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Read Annabel Westman’s article ‘Peter Dufresnoy, fringe and lacemaker extraordinaire’ in our August issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202508?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo
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Image: Detail of finial from the ‘Black and yellow bed’, probably by Peter Dufresnoy. c.1685–88. Silk-covered parchment and wire. (© Paul Highnam; Burghley House Collection).

Paris figures prominently in the art-historical imagination. Beginning in the 1850s, the transformation of the city into...
06/08/2025

Paris figures prominently in the art-historical imagination. Beginning in the 1850s, the transformation of the city into a model urban environment laid the stage for an affinity with modernist and avant-garde art that was to continue into the mid-twentieth century. ‘City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s–1940s’ at National Gallery, Singapore, examines its artistic life in the interwar years from an alternative perspective: that of outsiders and recent arrivals. ‘A point of contact for migrants and visitors from around the world’, the exhibition’s accompanying booklet states, Paris was ‘simultaneously a site of opportunity, connection, creative exuberance and cultural diversity; and also one of exploitation, appropriation, racism and resistance’.

The exhibition is a behemoth. Comprising nearly two hundred objects, many on loan from institutions and private collections around the world, as well as extensive archival material, it is divided into six thematic sections, which encompass the decorative arts and design (‘Workshop to the World’), colonial and anticolonial representation (‘Theatre of the Colonies’) and the impact of the Second World War (‘Aftermaths’), among other themes.

Read Louis Ho’s review of this exhibition, showing until the 17th of August, for free in our August issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/exhibition-review/city-of-others-asian-artistsin-paris-1920s1940s?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo+free+rev

Image: ‘Self-portrait with cat’, by Foujita Tsuguharu. 1926. Oil on canvas, 80.4 by 60.2 cm. (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon; exh. National Gallery, Singapore).

Organising auctions has always been a creative act. Harry Phillips (1766–1839) – the founder of the auction house Philli...
01/08/2025

Organising auctions has always been a creative act. Harry Phillips (1766–1839) – the founder of the auction house Phillips – was a wily entrepreneur in the art world of Regency London. New research on his career published this month, based on annotated auction catalogues, demonstrates how he especially promoted the market for decorative arts and secured such prestigious clients as the Prince of Wales and William Beckford. Magnificent examples of ceramics and furniture that Phillips sold are now in the Royal Collection and the Wallace Collection, London.

In the late seventeenth century the grandest of all households would have their furnishings and upholstery enriched thanks to the skills of a fringemaker. The most accomplished of all such craftsmen working in Restoration Britain was the Frenchman Peter Dufresnoy (1646–1715). A careful reassessment of his life and rare surviving works, presented here for the first time, clarifies our understanding of his extraordinary skills and the patronage he enjoyed. He worked for the Duke of Lauderdale (Ham House), the Earl of Exeter (Burghley House) and Dowager Queen Catherine of Braganza.

Reviews this month cover catalogues of French silver acquired by the richest men in the world of their day – John Paul Getty and Calouste Gulbenkian. Other books include a catalogue of the pre-1700 stained glass in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, as well as new studies of Gothic ivories, the Ponte Vecchio, Pierre Subleyras, Asian books and twentieth-century housing. Among the rich array of exhibitions discussed are shows on Foggini, Marisol and Paula Rego. We also present assessments of new and very different and ambitious museum building projects – the redevelopment of the Frick Collection, New York, and the opening of the V&A East Storehouse, London.

Discover the full list of content: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202508?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo
August's Editorial: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/front-matter/studying-the-decorative-arts?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo+editorial
This month's free review: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/exhibition-review/city-of-others-asian-artistsin-paris-1920s1940s?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=August+25+issue+promo+free+rev

In inviting visitors to consider historic decorative arts through the lens of contemporary art and popular culture, this...
30/07/2025

In inviting visitors to consider historic decorative arts through the lens of contemporary art and popular culture, this exhibition is similar in intent to ‘Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of the French Decorative Arts’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2021. Yet beyond the celebration of aesthetic resonances between objects of different periods, ‘Monstrous Beauty’ aims to look beneath the superficial allure of materials imported from Asia in the Early Modern period, such as porcelain, lacquer and mirrored glass, and to question whether European engagement with them – here labelled chinoiserie – instigated and perpetuated negative stereotypes of Asian women.

‘Monstrous Beauty’ is set in the Robert Lehman Pavilion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, a legendarily challenging space for exhibitions because its centralised plan does not lend itself to creating distinct sections; hence the need for lucid signage, especially in an exhibition such as this one, which encompasses over two hundred objects and a range of complex themes. An exceptional array of decorative arts, paintings, drawings and prints from the Met’s permanent collection are on display, together with impressive loans and equally remarkable examples of Asian contemporary art.

Read Kee Il Choi Jr.’s review of the show, exhibiting until the 17th of August 2025, in our July issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202507?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=July+25+issue+promo

Image: ‘Woman with a pipe’. c.1760–80. Reverse-painted crown glass, 52.1 by 39.7 cm. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

The suggestion by Elise Effmann Clifford that a portrait of a lady at Parham House, Sussex, depicts Frances Walsingham i...
28/07/2025

The suggestion by Elise Effmann Clifford that a portrait of a lady at Parham House, Sussex, depicts Frances Walsingham is here confirmed by technical examination and comparison with a related portrait of Walsingham in San Francisco. The Parham portrait appears to have been reworked twice: first, by its original artist, who might be tentatively identified as Robert Peake the Elder, and later by another hand, perhaps that of William Segar, whose changes may have been prompted by the death of Walsingham’s first husband, Sir Philip Sidney.

Read Bianca Arthur-Hull, Elise Effmann Clifford, Elizabeth Goldring and Sakeenah Teal Montanaro’s article ‘Putting a name to a face: “Portrait of a lady” at Parham House’ in our July issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202507?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=July+25+issue+promo

Images:

‘Portrait of a lady’, here identified as Frances Walsingham, Lady Sidney, and here attributed to Robert Peake the Elder, with a slightly later campaign by another artist (William Segar?). c.1584–85?. Oil on panel, 92.5 by 75.6 cm. (Parham House, West Sussex; photograph Courtauld Institute of Art, London).

‘Frances Walsingham, Lady Sidney’, attributed to Robert Peake the Elder. c.1586–90. Oil on panel, 85 by 73.9 cm. (Fine Arts Museum San Francisco).

Since 1949 the Musée Goya in Castres has maintained a close and fruitful relationship with the Musée du Louvre, Paris, w...
26/07/2025

Since 1949 the Musée Goya in Castres has maintained a close and fruitful relationship with the Musée du Louvre, Paris, which regularly enriches the smaller museum’s collection with long-term loans. ⁠
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Following the Musée Goya’s reopening on 15th April 2023, this institutional partnership took on renewed strength under the direction of Joëlle Arches. For the period of the ongoing refurbishment of the Spanish and Portuguese galleries at the Louvre, four exceptional works have been lent to the Musée Goya: including Juan de Espinosa’s ‘Still life with grapes, flowers and shells’ (before 1645) and Baltazar Gomes Figueira’s ‘Still life with fish, crab, shrimp, onions and oranges’ (1645). Rather than presenting these works in a separate temporary exhibition, Arches, together with Cécile Berthiaume, the Musée Goya’s head of collections and documentation, decided to integrate them into the permanent galleries, in a small room dedicated to still lifes, an area of the collection that previously lacked representation by major Spanish painters. ⁠
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Read Elsa Espin’s review of the display, showing until the 21st of September 2025, in our July issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202507?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=July+25+issue+promo
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Image: ‘Still life with Figs’, by Luis Egidio Meléndez. c.1760. Oil on canvas, 37 by 49 cm. (Musée du Louvre, Paris; exh. Musée Goya, Castres; Bridgeman Images).

In the autumn of 2023 an early Netherlandish ‘Salvator Mundi’ was reassessed at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, having ...
25/07/2025

In the autumn of 2023 an early Netherlandish ‘Salvator Mundi’ was reassessed at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, having lain for decades in storage. Conservation treatment and technical analysis confirmed that it was made by a member of the workshop of the renowned Antwerp based painter Joos van Cleve (1485–1540/41) and therefore an important example of the studio’s output of small devotional works. The painting can now be identified with certainty as the oldest Northern European work in the gallery’s collection.

Read Lucy West and Nicole Ryder’s shorter notice ‘A “Salvator Mundi” at Dulwich reconsidered’ in our July issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202507?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=July+25+issue+promo

Image: IRR of ‘Salvator Mundi’, by the workshop of Joos van Cleve. c.1512–40/41. Oil on oak panel, 27 by 21 cm. (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London).

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), vanquisher of Napoleon and twice Prime Minister of the United King...
23/07/2025

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), vanquisher of Napoleon and twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is a renowned figure in British military and political history, famous also for associations culinary and sartorial. The collection of paintings at his London residence, Apsley House, which has been open to the public since 1853, has similarly long been celebrated, especially since the property and much of its contents were gifted to the nation in 1947. The story of how the ‘iron duke’ captured the baggage train of Joseph Bonaparte, with its dozens of old-master paintings looted from the Spanish royal collection, after the Battle of Vitoria in 1813, and the subsequent gift of these paintings to Wellington by the restored king of Spain, will be familiar to many. It is the tale of his Dutch seventeenth-century paintings, which formed the majority of his acquisitions, that is told in this small exhibition and its accompanying catalogue.

Read Robert Wenley’s review of the show, exhibiting until the 21st of December 2025, in our July issue: https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/back-issues/202507?utm_source=FB&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=July+25+issue+promo

Image: ‘Dissolute Household’, by Jan Steen. c.1663. Oil on canvas, 80.5 by 89 cm. (Apsley House, London).

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