Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
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Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
THE REMARKABLE STORY told by Richard Spear in his article in this issue (pp.520–27) illuminates the vicious controversies that explode from time to time in the London art world. Over the centuries, quarrels and disagreements have riddled relations between artists and their patrons; and fallings-out between artists and critics have provided, at the least, some retrospective colour to the social history of more recent art, Whistler versus Ruskin being the most celebrated case. But, as the reader soon discovers, the story of the luckless Antoine Dubost and the importunate Thomas Hope went beyond a one-to-one disagreement and embroiled several leading figures in London’s competitive and tight-knit world of artists, writers and journalists. Dubost’s initial success as a French artist in the English capital eventually worked against him and Hope had no scruples in putting it abroad that Dubost was a French spy. Nor was Dubost helped by rousing the jealous enmity of Benjamin West. The attentions of a press that had little respect for discretion or the rights of privacy, and the rapid distribution of printed caricatures that hit hard, threw such personal quarrels into the public domain.
IN THIS ISSUE of 13th May 1807, The Times informed its readers: ‘Among the Exhibitions which excite the curiosity of the town at present moment is that of Mr. Dubost, in Pall-mall, whom Mr. West, no common judge, has denominated first painter of the age. It consists of only six Pictures, but they possess a rare variety of powers combined in one man. The Damocles is one of the richest pictures we ever beheld’. Of course on that Wednesday morning the paper had no idea that the French painter and his painting would soon rile the London art world and then as surprisingly vanish from sight. The rediscovery of Antoine Dubost’s Sword of Damocles (Fig.2) in Mumbai (Bombay) prompts re-examination of an unusually well-documented, bizarre affair that involved some of London’s leading personalities, not only the past president of the Royal Academy, Benjamin West, but also Henry Fuseli, Thomas Lawrence and Lord Byron, as well as prominent journalists and the ambitious Dutch merchant, patron, collector, designer, author and promoter of the Greek Revival, Thomas Hope, who had settled in London in 1795 as a refugee from the French invasion of Holland.
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION of Chinese Art held by the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House, London, from 28th November 1935 to 7th March 1936 was the largest exhibition of Chinese art ever mounted. Of the over 240 lenders from throughout the world – museums and institutions, scholars, collectors and dealers – most, if not all, were sponsored or promoted by their government institutions. Even against recent large-scale exhibitions at the Royal Academy and elsewhere, the International Exhibition of Chinese Art was extraordinarily well received and attended, attracting a total of 401,768 visitors. Student groups and industrial organisations were enticed to the exhibition by discounts on train fares and admission tickets. A total of 108,914 exhibition catalogues were sold, as well as 3,486 illustrated supplements, 2,196 exhibition handbooks and 336 copies of the Royal Society of Arts Journal. With one in four visitors buying publications, knowledge of the exhibition soon spread, both at home and abroad.
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