Private Collectors of Islamic Art in Late Nineteenth-Century London
Private Collectors of Islamic Art in Late Nineteenth-Century London

Author: Isabelle Gadoin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-09

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1000437000

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book examines British collectors of so-called Persian art (a broad umbrella term then covering a large portion of Islamic art) in the late 19th century, including ceramics, metalwork, carpets, textiles and woodwork. Based on a foundational event, the very first exhibition of “Persian and Arab Art” held by a London Gentlemen’s Club in 1885, this book follows one generation of men, retracing the subtle shades of difference among “amateurs,” “connoisseurs,” “experts” and “collectors,” and exploring all the mechanisms of the construction of a collective fascination for the Orient. Isabelle Gadoin uncovers some of the first “scientific” analyses of Islamic objects and of the first private notebooks or exhibition catalogues, to provide an in-depth study of the way Westerners talked about Islamic objects and began to define what would become Islamic art history. All the while, Gadoin unravels the skein of Western prejudice, Romantic fancy, sincere admiration and ruthless appropriation, in art collecting, to write a new chapter of Orientalist history. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of collecting, colonialism and postcolonialism, and Orientalism.

À l’orientale: Collecting, Displaying and Appropriating Islamic Art and Architecture in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
À l’orientale: Collecting, Displaying and Appropriating Islamic Art and Architecture in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Author: Francine Giese

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-11-04

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9004412646

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The present volume offers a collection of essays that examines the mechanisms and strategies of collecting, displaying and appropriating Islamic art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many studies in this book concentrate on lesser known collections of Islamic art, situated in Central and Eastern Europe that until now have received little attention from scholars. Special attention is given to the figure of the Swiss collector Henri Moser Charlottenfels, whose important, still largely unstudied collection of Islamic art is now preserved in the Bernisches Historisches Museum, Switzerland. Contributors to the volume include young researchers and established scholars from Western and Eastern Europe and beyond: Roger Nicholas Balsiger, Moya Carey, Valentina Colonna, Francine Giese, Hélène Guérin, Barbara Karl, Katrin Kaufmann, Sarah Keller, Agnieszka Kluczewska Wójcik, Inessa Kouteinikova, Axel Langer, Maria Medvedeva, Ágnes Sebestyén, Alban von Stockhausen, Ariane Varela Braga, Mercedes Volait. Les contributions de l’ouvrage examinent le mécanisme et les stratégies relatifs à la collection, la présentation et l’appropriation des arts de l’Islam au XIXe siècle et début du XXe siècle. Elles mettent l’accent sur des collections situées en Europe centrale et orientale, lesquelles ont été peu étudiées jusqu’à présent. Une attention particulière est dédiée à la figure du collectionneur Suisse Henri Moser Charlottenfels, dont les objets se trouvent aujourd’hui au Bernisches Historisches Museum (Suisse) et qui ont été de même peu étudiés. Les textes émanent de jeunes chercheurs comme de chercheurs confirmés, basés en Europe occidentale et orientale, et au-delà.

A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture
A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture

Author: Finbarr Barry Flood

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2017-06-16

Total Pages: 1442

ISBN-13: 1119068576

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London
Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London

Author: Stacey J. Pierson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-01-12

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1315311917

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Burlington Fine Arts Club was founded in London in 1866 as a gentlemen’s club with a singular remit – to exhibit members’ art collections. Exhibitions were proposed, organized, and furnished by a group of prominent members of British society who included aristocrats, artists, bankers, politicians, and museum curators. Exhibitions at their grand house in Mayfair brought many private collections and collectors to light, using members’ social connections to draw upon the finest and most diverse objects available. Through their unique mode of presentation, which brought museum-style display and interpretation to a grand domestic-style gallery space, they also brought two forms of curatorial and art historical practice together in one unusual setting, enabling an unrestricted form of connoisseurship, where new categories of art were defined and old ones expanded. The history of this remarkable group of people has yet to be presented and is explored here for the first time. Through a framework of exhibition themes ranging from Florentine painting to Ancient Egyptian art, a study of lenders, objects, and their interpretation paints a picture of private collecting activities, connoisseurship, and art world practice that is surprisingly diverse and interconnected.

The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies
The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies

Author: Clinton Bennett

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 1472586891

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies is a comprehensive one volume reference guide to Islam and study in this area. A team of leading international scholars - Muslim and non-Muslim - cover important aspects of study in the field, providing readers with a complete and accessible source of information to the wide range of methodologies and theoretical principles involved. Presenting Islam as a variegated tradition, key essays from the contributors demonstrate how it is subject to different interpretations, with no single version privileged. In this volume, Islam is treated as a lived experience, not only as theoretical ideal or textual tradition. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including a substantial A-Z of key terms and concepts, chronology and a detailed list of resources, this is the essential reference guide for anyone working in Islamic Studies.

Chinese Art Objects, Collecting, and Interior Design in Twentieth-Century Britain
Chinese Art Objects, Collecting, and Interior Design in Twentieth-Century Britain

Author: Helen Glaister

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-26

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1000644278

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the relationship between collecting Chinese ceramics, interior design and display in Britain through the eyes of collectors, designers and tastemakers during the years leading to, during and following the Second World War. The Ionides Collection of European style Chinese export porcelain forms the nucleus of this study – defined by its design hybridity – offering insights into the agency of Chinese porcelain in diverse contexts, from seventeenth-century Batavia to twentieth-century Britain, raising questions about notions of Chineseness, Britishness, and identity politics across time and space. Through the biographies of the collectors, this book highlights the role of collecting Chinese art objects, particularly porcelain, in the construction of individual and group identities. Social networks linking the Ionides to agents and dealers, auctioneers, and museum specialists bring into focus the dynamics of collecting during this period, the taste of the Ionides and their self-fashioning as collectors. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of art history, history of collections, interior design, Chinese studies, and material culture studies.

François Boucher and the Art of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century France
François Boucher and the Art of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century France

Author: Jessica Priebe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1000470385

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

While earlier studies have focused predominantly on artist François Boucher’s artistic style and identity, this book presents the first full-length interdisciplinary study of Boucher’s prolific collection of around 13,500 objects including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, porcelain, shells, minerals, and other imported curios. It discusses the types of objects he collected, the networks through which he acquired them, and their spectacular display in his custom-designed studio at the Louvre, where he lived and worked for nearly two decades. This book explores the role his collection played in the development of his art, his studio, his friendships, and the burgeoning market for luxury goods in mid-eighteenth-century France. In doing so, it sheds new light on the relationship between Boucher’s artistic and collecting practices, which attracted both praise and criticism from period observers. The book will appeal to scholars working in art history, museum studies, and French history.

Islamic Arms and Armor in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Islamic Arms and Armor in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Author: David G. Alexander

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 2015-12-31

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1588395707

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Armor and weaponry were central to Islamic culture not only as a means of conquest and the spread of the faith, but also as symbols of status, wealth, and power. The finest arms were made by master craftsmen working with the leading designers, goldsmiths, and jewelers, whose work transformed utilitarian military equipment into courtly works of art. This book reveals the diversity and artistic quality of one of the most important and encyclopedic collections of its kind in the West. The Metropolitan Museum's holdings span ten centuries and include representative pieces from almost every Islamic culture from Spain to the Caucasus. The collection includes rare early works, among them the oldest documented Islamic sword, and is rich in helmets and body armor, decorated with calligraphy and arabesques, that were worn in Iran and Anatolia in the late fifteenth century. Other masterpieces include a jeweled short sword (yatagan) with a blade of "watered" steel that comes from the court of Süleyman the Magnificent, a seventeenth-century gold-inlaid armor associated with Shah Jahan, and two gold-inlaid flintlock firearms belonging to the guard of Tipu Sultan of Mysore. Presenting 126 objects, each handsomely photographed and richly documented with a detailed description and discussion of its technical, historical, and artistic importance, this overview of the Met's holdings is supplemented by an introductory essay on the formation of the collection, and appendixes on iconography and on Turkman-style armor.

Divine Pleasures
Divine Pleasures

Author: Terence McInerney

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 2016-06-14

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1588395901

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As one of the finest holdings of Indian art in the West, the Kronos Collections are particularly distinguished for paintings made between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries for the Indian royal courts in Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills. These outstanding works, many of which are published and illustrated here for the first time, are characterized by their brilliant colors and vivid, powerful depictions of scenes from Hindu epics, mystical legends, and courtly life. They also present a new way of seeking the divine through a form of personal devotion—known as bhakti—that had permeated India’s Hindu community. While explaining the gods, demons, lovers, fantastical creatures, and mystical symbols that are central to literature and worship, this publication celebrates the diverse styles and traditions of Indian painting. Divine Pleasures features an informative entry for each work and two essays by scholar Terence McInerney that together outline the history of Indian painting and the Rajput courts, providing fresh insights and interpretations. Also included are a personal essay by expert and collector Steven M. Kossak and an examination of Hindu epic and myth in Mughal painting, which lays important foundations for Rajput painting, by curator Navina Najat Haidar. Through their research and observations, the authors deepen our understanding and underscore the significance of Indian painting. Divine Pleasures presents a nuanced view of a way of life intimately tied to the seasons, the arts, and the divine.

Albert Houtum Schindler: A Remarkable Polymath in Late-Qajar Iran
Albert Houtum Schindler: A Remarkable Polymath in Late-Qajar Iran

Author: D.T. Potts

Publisher: Mage Publishers

Published: 2023-08-09

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 1949445682

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Widely regarded in his lifetime as the greatest living authority on all things Iranian, across an enormous range of disciplines, Albert Houtum Schindler lived and worked in Iran from 1868 to 1911. All who either met or corresponded with him came away praising his encyclopaedic knowledge and remarkable insight. A member of numerous learned societies in Europe, he sustained a wide web of intellectual contacts and was insatiably curious. As an employee of the Indo-European Telegraph Department, the Imperial Bank of Persia and the Persian Bank Mining Rights Corporation, he experienced firsthand the ups and downs of Iran’s slow but inexorable movement towards modernity. Yet when he died in 1916 his obituaries were frustratingly brief. Private when it came to the details of his personal life, Albert Houtum Schindler gave little away. This book is the first full-scale examination of the life and legacy of an extraordinary witness to the late-Qajar period and the land, people and history of Iran.