Hardly a week goes by without the announcement of an archive either being made accessible online or, on the other hand, one that is at risk. The former points to new horizons for research as well as providing a refreshment of archives hitherto only available in paper form; the latter results in much hand-wringing at a possible dispersal by sale. Technically, of course, the latter is not usually ‘an archive’; it is an accumulation of papers and documents, maybe already nicely tidied, but which has not yet been the subject of rigorous archival categorisation.
The exhibition Dalí, recently at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (to 25th March), where this reviewer saw it, is now at the Reina Sofía, Madrid (to 25th September). It is not the first show to include, alongside the paintings, the ephemeral, commercial, self-promotional and innovative activities which brought Dalí universal fame in the post-War era, when he was, as he put it himself, the fifth most famous person in the world.
The genesis of Antoine Pesne’s Samson and Delilah (c.1719) at the Gemaldegälerie, Berlin.
An oval painting of the Little pilgrim (c.1754) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, long considered lost, has been acquired by the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Gavin Hamilton’s previously unpublished Venus presenting Helen to Paris (c.1777–80) has been acquired by the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
A discussion of the recently discovered pendants The Day of the Wheelbarrows and The Federation Festival (both 1790) by Hubert Robert.
A recently discovered drawing by Eugène Fromentin of a North African scene.
Renoir’s previously undocumented visit to London is here dated and described using unpublished letters written by Jacques-Emile Blanche to his parents during his own visit to the city.