Art History in Focus 16-31 March – talks on Dürer, Lawrence, and theatrical women at Strawberry Hill; new Board Member appointed; exhibitors at LAW Summer 2021

Karen Taylor Fine Art - John Tunnard ARA (1900-1971), Phoenix, 1955, watercolour and bodycolour over pencil, 20 x 29 cm

Anthony Crichton-Stuart, Director of Agnews, joins LAW Board

London Art Week is pleased to announce that Anthony Crichton-Stuart, Director of Agnews, has joined its Board. He spent much of his career at Christie's, working in the Old Master Paintings department in both London and New York, and was directly involved in many of Christie’s most successful Old Master sales at that time. Anthony returned to London in 2009 and joined the revamped Thos. Agnew & Sons in 2013 after the long-established international fine art dealership (founded in 1817) was acquired by a new American owner. He has worked closely with international collectors and museums in the USA, UK, Europe, Australia and Japan. He brings a wealth of experience from the international (pre-contemporary) art market to the LAW Board.

Anthony says: "I have always enjoyed participating in London Art Week as it is one of the most collegial art events in the world. Last year the LAW team adapted quickly to the restrictions the pandemic inflicted on the art market and I particularly enjoyed contributing to talks and articles, which helped engage with curators and collectors, old and new, around the world. Agnews are uniquely active participants in all areas of the market, from Renaissance and Baroque Old Masters through Romanticism and the 19th Century, and Modernism in the 20th Century. I will continue to acquire and present important, interesting and thought-provoking works of art, always with a view to attracting a new, younger and diverse clientele to the pleasures and satisfaction of collecting."

Anthony Crichton-Stuart, Director of Agnews

Art History in Focus, 16-31 March

Last October London Art Week introduced a new series of interim online events: Art History in Focus. Another impressive line-up of insightful and lively talks will be taking place this March.

Sam Fogg - 16 March – The Female Artists, Actresses, and Playwrights of Strawberry Hill Theatricals

This webinar will explore the role of female artists, actresses, and playwrights involved with theatre at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill. Judith Hawley (Professor of English, Royal Holloway, University of London) will discuss Walpole's activity as a playwright and the custom of private theatrical events of the period. Cynthia Roman (Curator, Prints, Drawings, and Paintings, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University) will present illustrations of Walpole’s scandalous gothic play The Mysterious Mother by the artist Diana Beauclerk and the closet built to house them at Strawberry Hill. Laura Engel (Professor of English, Duquesne University) will consider Walpole’s literary executor Mary Berry’s play Fashionable Friends, which was performed at Strawberry Hill with sets designed by her sister Agnes and starred herself and the sculptor Anne Damer in the leading roles. She will also discuss Damer’s close relationship with the famous actress Eliza Farren, re-imagined in Emma Donoghue’s historical novel Life Mask.

Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), Self-portrait, c. 1787, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 50.8 cm, Private Collection (credit: By kind permission of the owner)

25 March – Thomas Lawrence: Coming of Age
Amina Wright, author of a new book on Thomas Lawrence’s first twenty-five years, discusses the early works of this young prodigy with LAW dealers Lowell Libson (Lowell Libson & Jonny Yarker Ltd) and Ben Elwes of Ben Elwes Fine Art. Both galleries have recently handled early works by Lawrence that will feature in a forthcoming online exhibition at the website of the Holburne Museum in Bath entitled Thomas Lawrence: Coming of Age. Amina Wright has worked for three decades as a curator of historic art collections, exhibitions and interiors, specialising in eighteenth-century British art and Old Master paintings. She is currently Senior Curator of the Faith Museum in Bishop Auckland. Registrants to this talk can benefit from a discount on the book of the same title written by Amina Wright (Philip Wilson Publishers).

The studio of Hylton Nel, artist-potter, at The Fine Art Society (Photo Credit: Mario Todeschini)

29 March – Women Artists
Florrie Evans, director of The Fine Art Society London, in conversation with Jo Baring, Director of the Ingram Collection of Modern British & Contemporary Art.

More details on the talks will be announced on the website; they are all free to attend, just register online to take part. Written articles will spotlight individual works of art for sale from London Art Week dealers on a variety of subjects. A series on Women Artists continues a thread that LAW started in October 2020; and whilst we are still unable to travel in real life, London Art Week lets the artists do the travelling for us, presenting works on the theme of A Place in Time – views and locations captured by artists across the centuries that we might like to imagine ourselves in and the travels we could enjoy to reach them.

Georg Laue, Kunstkammer Ltd - Renaissance sun dial made and signed by the Amsterdam instrument maker Joost de Beer

London Art Week Summer 2021, 1-16 July

London Art Week will take place as a dual aspect event, online in a Digital format allowing participants from across the globe to take part, and as physical exhibitions in galleries as local guidelines allow.

A new introduction to LAW Digital Summer 2021 will be Revolution and Renewal, an online themed exhibition. London Art Week is delighted to welcome as guest curator the art historian, curator and academic scholar Dr. Arturo Galansino, Director General of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. Well-known among the London Art Week community, Arturo Galansino has been invited to curate this special exhibition by the LAW Board who have long admired his exceptional track record in curating and co-curating incredible shows spanning Old Masters to contemporary art: from Moroni, Giorgione and Rubens at the Royal Academy to Ai Weiwei, Bill Viola and Marina Abramović at the Palazzo Strozzi. “It will be interesting to see what thread, narrow or broad, he weaves from the submitted works to Revolution and Renewal,” comments Amelia Higgins, Director, London Art Week.

Karen Taylor Fine Art - Eliza Mayes (fl. mid-19th Century), Ruins of the Temple of Aphaia on the Island of Aegina, Greece, 1861, watercolour over pencil heightened with bodycolour, 38.5 x 56.3 cm

“The online exhibition will have its own section on the LAW website”, explains Luce Garrigues, Director, London Art Week Digital, “and all participants will be invited to submit a work on the theme for consideration by Dr. Galansino. As a collegial, curator-led exhibition, Arturo will select his highlights and write his own introduction on the theme. To give our dealers greater voice, we will be asking each participant to explain why they submit their chosen work.”

On opening night, Thursday 1 July, VIPs will preview a curatorial talk about Revolution and Renewal.

Among exhibitors at LAW Summer 2021 will be first-time participants The Fine Art Society and Elliott Fine Art (Director Will Elliott, formerly at Colnaghi), alongside returning galleries such as Didier Aaron, Benappi Fine Art, Ben Elwes Fine Art, Georg Laue Kunstkammer Ltd, Lullo•Pampoulides, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, Karen Taylor Fine Art, Tomasso Brothers Fine Art, Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, Trinity Fine Art, Sotheby’s and Christie’s. The LAW Board is delighted to welcome back Philip Mould & Company, Agnews and Sladmore Gallery all of whom re-joined the event in 2020. Eminent Old Master paintings dealer Johnny van Haeften also returns.

Confirmed exhibitions at London Art Week Summer 2021 include Portraiture 1800-1950 (Elliott Fine Art), an 80th birthday retrospective of renowned South African artist-potter Hylton Nel (The Fine Art Society), Italian Renaissance featuring museum quality sculpture and painting at Colnaghi and Medieval Treasury Objects (Sam Fogg).