ABSTRACTS Another Horizon
Session 1
Asher E. Miller, Assistant Curator, Department of European Paintings The Metropolitan Museum of Art Northerners in Italy: Interaction, Transmission, Collaboration The point of departure for this talk is the Metropolitan Museum’s holdings of early nineteenth-century paintings and oil sketches by northern European artists working in Rome and Naples. Featuring works by figures ranging from Eckersberg and Koch to Catel and Granet, as well as their younger contemporaries, the Met’s collection was formed in recent years through a combination of curatorial initiative and the passion of local private collectors: it is, therefore, still in its youth. This presentation addresses questions of interaction, transmission, and collaboration between northern artists stemming from the research and display of these pictures. Specific areas of focus include artists of various national origins looking closely at the same iconic motifs, artists learning from one another’s methods and works, and artistic partnerships, notably between Heinrich Reinhold and Johann Joachim Faber, who sketched together at Olevano Romano in the early 1820s.
Jens Peter Munk, MA (History of Art) Copenhagen Life among foreign artists in Rome as seen from a Danish perspective In my monograph on Danish Golden Age painter Jørgen Roed (2013) I dedicated a chapter to the life of Danish artists in Rome at that time. I focused in detail on their living and working conditions and their interaction with the local artistic environment as well as with other foreign artists staying in the city for an extended period of time. In this paper I wish to touch on some aspects of this vast theme. Being abroad gave the artists great freedom, but there were also a number of practical and theoretical issues they had to deal with. Where would they find suitable board and lodging? How were they to fit into the various factions and trends on the art scene? And how could they navigate under the prevailing political and religious conditions and discourses? As well as being inspired by the art treasures of Italy the principal reason for the artists’ sojourn was to make oil sketches and drawings for later use once they were back home. Time and money were rapidly consumed, to the artists’ great frustration, but youthful exuberance and good fellowship enabled them to make the most of whatever opportunities they had.
Sine Krogh, mag.art., Copenhagen Friendships in the age of Romanticism. The Portrait Painter C.A. Jensen in Rome The most remarkable output of the portrait painter C.A. Jensen’s Italian sojourn 1818-1821 was not the copying of Old Masters in the galleries of Rome or Florence, nor the study of Antiquity, which were the main reasons for artists travelling to Italy in the nineteenth century. The significant result was eight small portraits of the painter’s circle of friends reflecting the importance of fellowship, of what Rome also meant socially for artists, that is finding a place among the like-minded in communities less conventional that the ones they left at home. In this regard Rome was the perfect incubator for forming friendships, for making the transition from having recently trained to become an artist, to finding a way of expressing one’s new artistic identity and for visualising the impulses that the Romantic culture of friendship gave rise to. Taking Jensen’s portraits as its starting point, this paper addresses the artistic and sociological aspects of friendships among artists in Rome where exchanges of portraits was a way of networking and where emotional communities played an important role.
Dr. Jan D. Cox, University of Leeds Thomas Fearnley in Italy: Industry, sociability, liminality. The Norwegian painter Thomas Fearnley set off for Rome in September 1832 in the company of two other artists, the Dane Wilhelm Bendz and the German Joseph Petzl. However, of the trio who set out from Munich, only Fearnley was to spend time painting in Southern Italy; the unfortunate Bendz was to die in Vicenza soon after parting company with his friends, while Petzl was swiftly lured away by the rival attractions of Greece and Constantinople. Fearnley spent two-and-a-half years in Italy, based in Rome, but visiting Sorrento, Capri and Sicily. He was a likeable man, described as being ‘strong as a lion…good-tempered as a lamb’. Although his time in Italy was highly industrious, he still found time for wine, food, socialising and romance. This paper places an emphasis on Fearnley’s substantial production of oil sketches, exemplified by those that feature the English heiress Frances Worthington. I examine Fearnley’s response to the contrast in cultural values between Norway and Italy, and the dynamic role that Fearnley’s Italian works played in later depictions of his homeland.
PD. Dr. Golo Maurer, Kunsthistorisches Institut, Universität Wien/Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome Failing in Rome I have been working since many years on the perception of Italian landscape by German artists and travelers as part of the formation of national identity in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of my results I recently published as Habilitation theses (Golo Maurer, Italien als Erlebnis und Vorstellung. Landschaftswahrnehmung deutscher Künstler und Reisender 1760-1870, Regesburg 2015, 428 pgs.). I would be interested in holding a paper about Rome and Italy as place of failure. Rome has since the 17th century been generally regarded as a centre for artistic inspiration, rivalled only periodically by Paris. Thousands of northern artists followed this myth hoping for inspiration and success. For many however Rome turned out to be a delusion, if not a trap. Collective expectations and stiff artistic conventions often blocked every individual approach. I would concentrate on the aspect of failure and creative crisis connected to the Italian sojourn, a widespread but rarely analyzed phenomenon especially within the hermetic structures of artistic colonies in Rome and Olevano. It is therefore not surprising, that the most innovative contributions came from artists who kept away from these communities.
Session 2
Torsten Gunnarsson, Stockholm Nordic Open-Air Oil Sketching in Italy c. 1810-1850. Origins, practice, technique and contemporary evaluation Although occasionally mentioned during the 17th century open-air oil sketching became more common during the later part of the 18th. It was promoted by the enlightenment´s rising interest in nature as well as by a new demand for a realistic representation of nature in art. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg became the Nordic open-air pioneer followed by, among others, the Norwegian Johan Christian Dahl, his compatriot Thomas Fearnley and the Swedes Gustaf Söderberg and Gustaf Wilhelm Palm. In this paper I will discuss questions like: • From where did Nordic artists get their inspiration to paint oil sketches outdoors? • What kind of equipment was used? • Were all studies painted in just one session? • How were oil studies used in the studio and how do they correspond to the studio works? • Did oil sketching create a special style? • Can the oil sketching practice be regarded as the beginning of Nordic open-air painting during the 1870´s and 80´s?
Carl-Johan Olsson, Stockholm Expectation, experience and memory- oil sketches in the light of studio works and vice versa My intention with this paper is to study the relation between oil sketches by Scandinavian artists executed en plein air in Italy and paintings executed in the artist’s studio. Over the last decades, focus primarily has been on sketches and studio works have attracted less attention. What conclusions about relations between these two can be drawn interpreting works of the respective category in terms of expectation, experience and memory? And in terms of Romantic aesthetics? In relation to studio works, I will also reflect on what can be considered the core of the sketches. Are they merely registrations or are there dimensions of deeper significance later “transcribed” into the studio works? I will use works by Johan Christian Dahl, Gustaf Wilhelm Palm, Thomas Fearnley and Constantin Hansen as examples.
Alexander Kaczmarczyk M.A., Frankfurt/Main “New” classical fragments ‒ Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg’s landscape and genre paintings Before Eckersberg came to Rome in 1813 he had been working under the aegis of Jacques-Louis David for almost two years. While in Paris he had produced innovative works with epic issues from the antiquity involving a dialectical formal pattern. As a contradictory principle it derived its meaning from the philosophical context of dialectics. Through the medium of art it came to be considered as an endless interplay between fundamental opposites, something which is evident in Eckersberg’s paintings. He thus reflected upon contemporary theories linked both to “romantic speculative physics” and to the leading questions of how to create a novel epic work through the use of modern reflective methods. By analogy to the polar principles in physical nature the “old” (Classical) and the “young” (Romantic) were conceptualised as polar opposites e.g. as “solid” and “fluid” in terms of “rectangular contoured order” and “chaotic event”, which appeared then in turn to be a dialectic unity in modern artwork. His paintings, following this concept structurally, constitute an infinite progression of polar change as fragments. In Rome, Eckersberg transferred that pattern to his views of the urban area in order to argue for a new epic work, through which the universal spirit, i.e. the “truth”, would reveal itself.
Karina Lykke Grand, Ass. Professor, Art History, Aarhus University Tourists in Rome? – Travel images and writings by Danish painters 1830-1855 Danish painters travelling to Italy in the middle of the nineteenth century longed to experience the untouched Arcadia of ancient Rome, which they had only heard of from earlier travellers and read about in travel writings back in Denmark. The artists’ mission was thus clear: to depict the unspoiled paradise on earth in its historical prominence and with its enchanting locals. Many of the paintings, completed during and after their grand tours south, confirmed the assumptions of many that Rome was, at the time, an authentic city, where the grandeur of the antiquity stood unaffected and vividly alive. However, when one examines the letters and diaries of these painters, it is clear that they actually experienced throngs of tourists in Rome, even then. These experiences turned their interpretations of the Grand Tour upside down as they had anticipated meeting an unspoiled city. As a result, the alignment between word and image was really challenged, and it made some of the artists change the course of their artistic production. Some continued depicting the well-polished sunny Italy, as it was a best seller in the Danish art market, while others depicted the well-known sites of historical and architectural interest from new visual angles. Some even depicted the other tourists present. As a positive consequence, these new pictorial strategies gradually changed and reformed the slightly conservative genre of classical travel pictures into something quite modern.
Session 3
Giovanna Capitelli, The Roman People: a new genre of painting in cosmopolitan Rome
Ilenia Falbo (Università della Calabria) Carl Jacob Lindström vs Bartolomeo Pinelli: illustratori del popolo di Roma di primo Ottocento Le caricature realizzate da Carl Jacob Lindström (Linköpings, 1800 - Napoli, 1841) nella serie napoletana di acquarelli I Stranieri in Italia (1830), in cui l’artista rappresenta gli stereotipi e deride i tratti caratteristici dei quattro pittori (un francese, un tedesco, un inglese e un italiano) raffigurati mentre dipingono un paesaggio nella campagna romana, costituiscono la testimonianza più nota dell’opera dell’incisore svedese. Sono epitomi che raccontano l’isolamento artistico e intellettuale dai cenacoli nazionali di diversi artisti operanti a Roma durante il lungo Ottocento. L’identificazione di Bartolomeo Pinelli (Roma, 1781-1835) nella figura che dipinge sulla carrozza in corsa, inoltre, mette in relazione l’immaginario visivo popolare costruito dal pittore trasteverino con l’esperienza artistica di Lindström, favorendo un confronto che l’intervento vuole esaminare. L’assimilazione della cultura visiva dell’Urbe permette a Lindström di acquisire un’identità “romana” percepibile anche dai contemporanei. Attraverso il vaglio sistematico della produzione grafica dello svedese s’intende ricostruirne la vicenda artistica – tuttora poco indagata – individuando le possibili relazioni sviluppatesi all’interno del microcosmo capitolino popolato dai colleghi nordeuropei, nonché le frequentazioni dell’atelier di Thorvaldsen e di Villa Malta.
Dr. des. Sarah Timme Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main Institut für Skandinavistik Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1 60629 Frankfurt am Main Germany [email protected], art historian. Research on Norse mythology in the visual arts in the research project »Edda reception« (www.eddarezeption.de). Norse myths in Rome During the second half of the 18th century, not only the interest in Classical arts and mythology grew but artists were also stimulated by Norse mythology. The starting point for my paper is the observation that many of the artists concerned with these stories were staying in Rome. This holds true not only for the ›first generation‹ (Henry Fuseli, Nicolai Abildgaard) but also for 19th century’s artists, when subjects from Norse mythology were spreading (e.g. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckerberg, Constantin Hansen). It seems that contacts between Scandinavian and German artist in Rome have been crucial for the involvement with these subjects – the very few German artists that visualised Norse myth during the first half of the century (e.g. Dietrich Wilhelm Lindau, Franz Nadorp) have been animated to this by Rome contacts. I would therefore challenge the hypothesis that the interest in Norse mythology is meant as an alternative and contradiction to Classicism, and rather consider the phenomenon as an integral part of Classicism. In my paper, I would develop this by investigating and contextualising some works by Northern painters in Rome during the 19th century.
Session 4
Kira Kofoed, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen. Research fellow A Collection of Paintings with a Significant Lack The Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen was, as he grew wealthier, a dedicated collector of paintings, and presumably he supported artist-colleagues in need by buying their works of arts. The collection of paintings at Thorvaldsens Museum contains nearly 400 paintings, of which at least 300 were collected by the sculptor himself. The scope of this paper is to investigate, briefly, the general motives of the collection in order to show which motives by Northern painters seem to have been dearest to Thorvaldsen. A special focus is given to the absolute lack of paintings with motives drawn from the Norse Mythology, which in the Northern countries were an increasingly beloved theme in the years after the turn of the century. Thorvaldsen’s collection is thus used as an example and as a mirror of the Northern painters in Italy and the documents in the Thorvaldsen Museum Archives are used as sources where relevant and possible.
Laila Skjøthaug, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen
Facing the artist in Rome. Portraits of Bertel Thorvaldsen Thorvaldsen is among the most frequently portrayed sculptors ever. This is also the overall impression when the focus is limited to painted portraits from his Roman years. C. W. Eckersberg’s portrait from 1814 is among the most well-known, while it above all was German painters who contributed to the vast number. A subject that attracts particular attention is the limited number of portraits that was painted by the Danish artists who associated with Thorvaldsen in Rome.
National ideologies gained importance in Denmark in the 1830s and urged the construction of models for danishness. This paper will look at portraits of Thorvaldsen who, despite his long absence in Copenhagen, was praised for an innate Danish character. Yet, it will be suggested that he also personified a link between European history and a peculiar Danish culture, and that the portraits address such narratives. Stressing this point of view, equal importance will be given to the executed portraits, and to the Danish painters’ sparing contribution to the number of portraits seen as leaving blanks in terms of interpretation.
Karen Benedicte Busk-Jepsen, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen A Home in Rome: Louise Seidler’s portrait of Franziska Caspers A portrait-painting from 1819 of the German actress and lady’s companion Franziska Caspers (1787- 1835) standing on a balcony overlooking Rome in a black, gold-embroidered Renaissance dress, by the German painter Louise Seidler (1986-1866), is included in the formal representation of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen’s private circles at Thorvaldsens Museum. It is hung in a staged living room, complete with Empire furniture and a grandfather clock, which could hardly be any further from the sculptor’s humble abode in Rome, but is quite telling of the outside framing of his life after his return to Denmark in 1838. Here, the portrait’s function is simply to represent a respectable love of Thorvaldsen. This paper takes a different look at the portrait, focusing on Seidler’s identification of Caspers with the landscape behind her through color and composition, exploring Thorvaldsen’s influence on its design, comparing it to similar compositions by the French painter Henriette Lorimier (1775-1854) and the German painter Wilhelm Tischbein (1751-1829), and pointing to ideas of belonging and identity in the painting that go beyond nation and sex. The concept of home conveyed in the portrait is indeed at odds with that at work in the living room.
Lejla Mrgan, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen San Paolo fuori le Mura as a ruin With broken columns, still glowing timber in piles and smoke ascending from the walls of the nave, two monks are rushing through the ruin of the late antique church of S. Paolo fuori le mura. Burdened with the weight of the crucifix they are carrying, one is looking into the ground and the other up at the building with an almost frightened expression. Such is the scene depicted by the swiss painter Léopold Robert, who visited the church in the days after a fire had destroyed large parts of it in July 1823. He made a painting which Thorvaldsen saw and ordered a replica of in 1824. The ruined church attracted artists and writers alike, and this paper wishes to examine the attitudes and sentiments of these “ruin-tourists” as expressed through visual descriptions such as Robert’s painting and the written accounts of Goethe, Stendhal, Frederike Brun and numerous others. The aim is to examine the intersections and discords between neo-classicism and romanticism, which also played a large role in the discussions regarding the rebuilding of the church and other antique ruins in Rome.
Ernst Jonas Bencard, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen Does art need to be so heavy? Bertel Thorvaldsen’s collection of paintings includes a genre piece by the German painter Friedrich Nerly (1807-1878) showing a pack of oxen struggling hard to drag a huge block of marble marked with the sculptor’s name through the Campagna. The painting seems to state, humorously, that the lofty apparitions of neoclassical sculpture are founded on strenuous work – and ox-power. This paper proposes that Nerly’s piece of 1831 is a meta-work claiming that the neoclassical tradition has literally become a burden, i.e. the burden of antique marble sculpture. As such Nerly’s painting uses profanity and satire to criticise the absence of labour and physical matter – and perhaps also humour – in what had already then become exhausted dogmas of academic classicism in Rome. By the 1830s the idyllic Arcadia of – for instance – Thorvaldsen’s unenergetic, ideal figures was gradually being replaced by a scene of work, satire and realism. Nerly’s work then seems to be opening a paragone debate, with painting claiming for modernity, and (neoclassical) sculpture being left behind as nothing more than dead weight.
Session 5
Mikael Ahlund, Uppsala North vs. South. Italy, landscape painting and national identity This paper deals with different conflicts imbedded in the relation between landscape painting and national identity in the early nineteenth century. Focusing on Nordic artists traveling to Italy, the aim is to discuss how a clash between the admiration for the Italianate landscape and the new national interest in Northern nature took place in the first half of the century. Nordic travel writing around the turn of the century 1800 had started to phrase a conflict between Northern and Southern landscape ideals. Highlighting the specific qualities of Scandinavian nature, this comparison developed into a tension which was to affect the politics and the ideologies surrounding the systems for artistic training and scholarships in Scandinavia. This resulted in an ambivalent situation where artists tried to balance the admiration for Italy and a growing Nordic nationalism. In this context the search for national identities came to affect Nordic painters in Italy in various ways. Different strategies to overcome this tension will be illuminated through mainly Swedish and Norwegian examples.
Dr. des. Anja Gerdemann, Darmstadt The Construction of the North in Adolph Tidemand’s Genre Paintings Having studied at the Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen and at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Adolph Tidemand (1814-1876), became one of the most famous Norwegian painters in art history. He created a visual image of Norway by choosing the life of the Norwegian peasant as his main topic. Offering "typical" Norwegian motives and subjects for his fellow countrymen he contributes substantially to the young nation's quest for self-perception in the course of the Norwegian nationbuilding-process of the 19th century. Tidemand is one of the last artists of his generation, who considered a journey to Italy as a chance to refine his skills. Motivated by his teachers Joh. L. Geb. Lund and Wilhelm Schadow, who sympathized with the Nazarenes, he travelled to Italy in 1841. In Rome he stayed with his friend, the Swedish artist Gustaf Palm, and was in touch with the Scandinavian-German circle of artists. The paper aims to show which studies Tidemand carried out in Italy and to ask about his intensions. Furthermore it aims to outline their impact on his paintings after his return to Norway resp. Germany.
Matthias Matz Holbeinstr, Berlin [email protected] A Finn in Rome. Robert Wilhelm Ekman´s (1808-1873) journey to Rome 1840 The goal of this study is to determine the role of the Rome journey for the painter Robert Wilhelm Ekman (1808-1873). As one of the most important finish artist of his time, the question arises, which part did his attendance in Italy play in the formation of an national art for a country, that still did not have an art life and did not exist independently at the time. For Ekman and other early finnish artists the first step of an artistic educations were the Art Academy’s in Stockholm as well as St. Petersburg. So it might seem, that Italy was only of secondary importance. On the basis of letters, paintings and writings of fellow landsmen will be shown, how important Italian culture and Rome stays were for shaping of early art of the newborn country. On the basis of the results it can be concluded that Italy as a backbone for European culture had also great effect on the formation of a national Finnish art.
Dr Andreas Dehmer, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden Evelina Stading. a female painter from Sweden, Dresden Romanticism, and Italian landscapes My interest focuses on Evelina Stading, a Swedish landscape painter, who was born in Stockholm (1797 or 1803) and died at a rather young age in Rome (1829). Little is known about her today. She started her education as a student of Carl Johan Fahlcrantz in Stockholm, but soon – and this is still remarkable for a female artist in this time – left for Germany and Italy. She came to Dresden, where she continued her studies and also contributed to art exhibitions from 1824 to 1827. Traveling via Prague and Florence, Stading arrived in Rome in 1827 and died just two years later. In my paper, I would like to trace some of her works she made in Dresden and Rome as well as her contacts to contemporary artists, e.g. the Norwegian landscape painter Johan Christian Dahl, who lived in Dresden and also had traveled to Italy. The research is connected to my preparation of the exhibition “Italian Landscape of the Romantic Era. Painting and Literature”, held at the castle in Bad Muskau/Saxony in summer 2016.
Tiziano Antognozzi, IMT Lucca Facing Rupture: Swedish Painters and the Roman Revolution (1846–1849)
Asker Pelgrom, Utrecht University Dutch artists in Rome (1840-1870) and the Risorgimento (please provide title) A common complaint among Italian patriots during the Risorgimento was the lack of interest by foreign writers and artists for the concerns of modern Italy, supposedly considered a ‘terre des morts’. But was this really the case? The experience of Dutch artists in Rome (1840-1870) and the reflection of their Italian adventures in both their work and in Dutch contemporary (art) journals suggests otherwise. Behind a seemingly ‘detached’ attitude, some of them demonstrated a strong social and political engagement and turned into fervent advocates of the Italian case. The painter brothers Jan Hendrik (1820-1887) and Jan Philip Koelman (1818-1893) are a case in point, as can be shown by extensive new research. But their example does not stand alone: to many other Dutch artists and critics both Italy’s heritage and its modern society, culture and politics proved highly relevant, not in the least because they were intertwined with their views on the Dutch national past, art, religion and politics. To speak of Italy’s ‘present insignificance’ (conference call) might have upset them almost as much as Lamartine’s famous saying had upset Italian patriots.