18th century blog

Everyone and their grandmother have already blogged abut this, but the National Trust has a new online archive.

So far the information is often scarce, the photos are often small or of bad quality, and the clothes are often badly mounted or not mounted at all. Still there’s lots and lots of great stuff to see, and the search function is great, except for the fact the session times out if you leave it too long.

Portrait of V.E. Novosiltsova, 1780.

Fedor Stepanovich Rokotov was a Russian portrait painter.

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Johann Friedrich August Tischbein, Johanna Constantia, 1780s.

The Tischbein family was a German family of painters of who the most well known appear to be Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder, Johann Friedrich August Tischbein and Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein.

Due to all these artists sharing the same name there seems to be total confusion on the internet regarding who has made which painting (Wikipedia attributes one painting from 1796 to a Tischbein who died in1789…). I haven’t managed to figure it out myself and therefore will show all the Tischbein paintings I have found in this post, but will only state the artists of the ones I’m fairly sure of. If you can shed any light on the subject (perhaps you know in which museums some of these are kept?), do tell!

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Anton von Maron was an Austrian portrait painter.

Three more paintings »

This is probably old news to most of you, but LACMA has a new image library where you can see high resolution images of many of their objects, including many 18th century clothes.

There is currently a small but very nice exhibition at Åmells fine art dealer in Stockholm, Pehr Hilleström and Swedish 18th century paintings.

Most of the paintings are by Pehr Hilleström, but there are some other artists represented as well, such as Roslin. They also sell a great and very inexpensive little exhibition catalog with information about Hilleström.

Admission is free and the exhibition is open until July 8.

Lady Mary Fox, 1767.

Some paintings from Italian painter Pompeo Batoni.

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Self portrait with wife, 1791.

Jens Juel was a Danish artist who painted many portraits of the Danish royal family.

Jens Juel on Wikipedia.

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John Singleton Copley - The complete works is a website where you yourself can upload missing paintings and drawings to complete the collection. I think it’s a great idea.

Self portrait, 1785.

Gilbert Stuart was an American portrait painter who lived between 1755 and 1828.

Gilbert Stuart on Wikipedia.

Gilbert Stuart (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series) at Amazon.

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Mrs. Alexander Hamilton, 1787.

I discovered American portrait painter Ralph Earl through the great blog 18th century American women which I’ve featured here earlier. I love his slightly naive paintings with great attention to costume and detail, and depicting one of my favourite fashion periods, the late 1780s and early 1790s.

Ralph Earl on Wikipedia.

A short Ralph Earl article at Bolton Community News.

An extensive biography of Ralph Earl at Worcester Art Museum.

Ralph Earl: The Face of the Young Republic on Amazon.

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John Guilford Russell, 1790

Check out the Louvre databases! Not exactly tons of 18th century stuff and not very big pictures, but still a lot of great stuff.

Portrait of a lady said to be Lady Bessborough.

John Downman was an English portrait painter and he’s one of my favourite 18th century artists. He made lots of beautiful little portrait drawings.

As always, let me know if you know where to find more or bigger pictures or perhaps know of a book featuring his work.

John Downman on Wikipedia.

John Downman on Answers.com.

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Empress Maria Feodorovna by Voille, 1792.

I’ve been fascinated by Russian dresses of the late 18th century for a while. They have a pretty unusual style and are very beautiful. A lot of them seem pretty similar to the robe à la turque to me, with the “t-shirt” arms, but some seem to have a kind of vest, and the court dress I saw at the Fastes de cour exhibition had yet another vest-like style that I realised looks a bit different to all of these portraits when I looked at the pictures together.

Does anyone know if there are any books on 18th century Russian dress? Though preferably not in Russian :)

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