Displaying items by tag: william hogarth

The SCAD Museum of Art has opened a new exhibition that displays the highlights of Vivienne Westwood's fashion designs against a backdrop of old master paintings from the museum's collection, including works by William Hogarth, Anthony Van Dyck, and Thomas Gainsborough.

The exhibition “Vivienne Westwood, Dress Up Story – 1990 Until Now" offers a glimpse into the creative process of Westwood, famous for her provocative and irreverent designs which take inspiration from a range of historical periods, citing everything from the French Revolution to anti-Thatcherism punk.

If you are a fan of “Downton Abbey,” you won’t want to miss “Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House” at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor before it closes Jan. 18.

Built in Norfolk in the 1720s for England’s first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall features grand rooms designed by architect William Kent to house Walpole’s Old Master paintings, elegant furniture (some designed by Kent to go with the rooms), elaborate tapestries and Roman antiquities. Many of these rooms are recreated at the Legion as settings for luxurious furniture, silver and china, and paintings by English artists Thomas Gainsborough and William Hogarth.

Massachusetts’s Worcester Art Museum (WAM) is unveiling two newly restored William Hogarth (1697–1764) pendant portraits, the first paintings by the artist owned by an American museum, in the latest exhibition in the Jeppson Idea Lab series, which goes behind the scenes in the institution’s conservation lab.

The companion paintings, titled William James and Elizabeth James, were painted in 1744. Purchased by the museum way back in 1910 from a London art dealer, the pair was on display for nearly 100 years before they were taken down to make way for gallery renovations in 2008. When curators realized the paintings, thought to be in good condition, had never been examined by conservation experts, they seized the chance to take a closer look at the beloved canvases.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Director Gary Tinterow announced an unprecedented exhibition: Houghton Hall: Portrait of an English Country House, which will be on view at the Museum from June 22 to September 21, 2014. The exhibition marks the first time the renowned collection of the marquesses of Cholmondeley, housed at Houghton Hall, the family estate in Norfolk, will travel outside of England.

The house and much of its collection were built in the early 1700s by Sir Robert Walpole—England's first prime minister and the ancestor of the current marquess. Renowned as one of the finest Palladian houses and one of the most extensive art collections in Britain, Houghton became notorious when Sir Robert's collection of Old Master paintings was sold by his grandson to Catherine the Great, in 1779. But the house and all of its furnishings, considered to comprise William Kent's Georgian masterpiece, remained intact; Walpole's descendants added considerably to the collection of paintings. From great family portraits by William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds and John Singer Sargent, to exquisite examples of Sèvres porcelain, rare pieces of R. J. & S. Garrard silver and unique furniture by William Kent, the exhibition vividly evokes the fascinating story of art, history and politics through the collections of this aristocratic English family over three centuries.