Seminar on Collecting & Display
Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St London, WC1 E
Alice Ottazzi, “Les derniers venus sont aujourd’hui les premiers”: English print collections in 18th-century Paris
16 April 2018 at 6pm Pollard Seminar Room, N301, Third Floor
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This paper aims to investigate the (re)discovery of English art in 18th-century Paris. The English artistic tradition was not greatly admired in the previous centuries and it was just around the middle of the 18th century that an interest developed towards this art. In a comparative approach that will involve both literature and philosophy, the principal promoters of Anglomania will be discussed, highlighting the interaction between general culture and artistic outcomes. The examination of Parisian sales catalogues and some French public archives will allow the identification of the presence of English works of art offering further reasons for reflecting the origin of a specific taste in connection to the concept of an English school, which will represent the discriminating factor in the analysis of the dynamics of the reception of the English school in 18th-century France.
Reconstructing a panorama which has been since underestimated, she will examine the presence of English works of art, predominantly prints that dominated the Parisian scene during the 70s and 80s. Undertaking this investigation allows the outlining of English artists who were collected in France, bringing to light names nowadays almost unknown. Studying private (Marquis de Beringhen, Marquis de Paulmy, Duc de Richelieu, Princesse de Lamballe) and royal collections (Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette) it will be possible to understand the reasons behind this practice of collecting and its evolution during the 18th century. At the beginning of the century, English prints were collected because of their specific technique, mezzotint or, later, crayon manner, and in the second half of the 18th century for the name of the artist himself or the subject they represent. Finally, some post-mortem inventories hold information on the display of these prints, enabling to deepen and complete the analysis of the collection of English prints in Paris.
Alice Ottazzi is currently a Teaching Assistant in History of Art Criticism and Museum Studies, Università degli Studi di Torino, Department of Humanities. Her PhD is in progress, jointly supervised by Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. She is also responsible for the section “Drawing” of the handbook Il Cricco Di Teodoro Itinerario nell’arte (Zanichelli Editore S.p.a., Bologna). She was a contributor to the catalogue of the exhibition L’Europe et les mythes Grècs : Dessins du Musée du Louvre XVIème – XIXème siècles, exhibition curated by C. Loisel, Fondation Teloglion, Thessalonica, 2012 as well as Témoignages d’une condicio sine qua non. La réception des procédés de fixage des pastels dans la littérature artistique du XVIII siècle, in B. Jouves & A. Delaporte (Eds.), Réception critique de la restauration. XVIIIe-XXe siècles, Éditions du GRHAM, 2017.