On View

The Met is honoring one of the bonafide greats of American decorative arts. A new exhibition is dedicated to Edward C. Moore, the influential collector, celebrated silversmith, and creative leader of Tiffany & Co. in the late 19th century.
“Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co.” opened on June 9 and features 70 precious silver creations produced during Moore’s tenure as chief designer at Tiffany & Co. These are paired with an impressive 180 items from Moore’s personal collection, which spans ancient Greece to Japan and the Islamic world.
So, who was this distinguished doyen of silversmithing? Born in New York City in 1827, Moore apprenticed under his father before inheriting the business in 1851. His artistry soon caught the eye of the very best in the business at Tiffany & Co., where he was offered an exclusive contract before being appointed chief silver designer in 1868. Only a year prior, Moore had been awarded the gold medal at the world’s pre-eminent Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867.
Installation view of “Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co.” at The Met in New York City, opening June 9, 2024. Photo courtesy of The Met.
Over the following two decades until his death in 1891, Moore would leave his mark on one of the most iconic American luxury design houses. Highlights from this era on show at the Met include the Bryant Vase of 1876, the first piece of American silver to enter The Met’s collection, and an ornate 1874 pitcher bearing an elephant head.
Vase, Tiffany & Co. (1878), Private Collection, New York and Vase, Tiffany & Co. (1877), Brooklyn Museum. Courtesy of The Met.
By pairing these exquisite 19th century archival pieces alongside the trove of historic treasures to which Moore found himself drawn, the exhibition initiates fascinating lines of inquiry into the possible influences at play in his work. Some particularly magnificent pieces from across centuries and continents include a Roman perfume bottle from the 1st century C.E., a 13th-century Syrian enameled glass bowl, an 18th-century Murano glass cup from Venice, and a 19th-century Japanese lacquered box.
An installation image of an intricate swan. Photo: Eileen Travell, courtesy of The Met.
Moore’s dedication to learning from the past and natural beneficence is perhaps best exemplified by his decision to found a school for apprentices at Tiffany & Co. and to supply the students with cherished items from his private collection to use as models and stylistic inspiration, according to a 1891 report in The Studio. The paper also noted how Moore had been motivated not by vanity but by a deep appreciation of beauty, or “the definite purpose of supplying standards, as perfect as could be obtained, in the several industrial arts.”
Moore bequeathed more than 2,000 objects from his expansive holding of glass, ceramics, and metalwork to The Met. These exceptional items formed the basis of the museum’s collection of decorative arts.
“Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co.” runs at the Met from June 9 through October 20, 2024. It was made possible by Tiffany & Co. 
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The London art scene has been busy installing its final batch of exhibitions before collectors flee en masse to some far-flung villa or yacht this summer. To mark the occasion, the fourth edition of London Gallery Weekend (May 31–June 2) has partnered with 130 galleries to offer its usual program of free events, talks, public performances, and parties.
Among the highlights this year will be curated walking routes by the likes of artist Lubaina Himid, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, and editor Edward Enninful. The filmmaker John Akomfrah, who is currently representing Great Britain at the Venice Biennale, is also unveiling new work as part of the Cork Street Banner Commission.
Despite ongoing concerns about London’s health as a global art capital post-Brexit, this weekend offers a chance for the U.K.’s sprawling capital to flaunt its lively and diverse gallery scene. From NW to SE, here are the shows that have caught our eye.
Atta Kwami at Goodman Gallery
Atta Kwami, Yibor Square (2018). Photo courtesy of Goodman Gallery.
In 2021, the Ghanaian artist and scholar Atta Kwami received a long overdue boost in global attention after winning the prestigious Maria Lassnig prize, which honors overlooked late-career artists. His award, a large-scale public mural commission at Serpentine North in London’s Kensington Gardens, remains on view until September 30. That same year, however, Kwami sadly died at the age of just 65, leaving behind a trove of bold abstract canvases composed from interlocking planes of color. Some highlights from his estate made between 1999 and 2021 are now on view at Goodman Gallery on Cork Street, including Money Can’t Buy It (2019), a large, walkthrough structure conceived as a “three-dimensional painting.”
With a career spanning four decades, Kwami’s work is held in the collections of the Met, the British Museum, the V&A, and the national museums of Ghana and Kenya. This spring, the Serpentine is publishing a landmark monograph dedicated to Kwami and its editor, Melissa Blanchflower, will give a talk at Goodman Gallery on May 31 at 11 a.m.
Cara Benedetto’s “White Girl Wasted” at Rose Easton
Cara Benedetto, Barbie Does Tina (2024). Photo: Jack Elliot Edwards, of the artist, Rose Easton London, and Chapter NY.
Sometimes thought-provoking art can lean a little dry, but Rose Easton’s East London gallery has a reputation for shaking things up. For those hoping for an injection of humor, look no further than Cara Benedetto’s irreverent exploration of the term “white girl wasted,” which originated online to describe a liberated, messy woman who doesn’t wish to be aware of the real privilege she wields. The works are filled with fun pop cultural references, from the bland corporate feminism of Barbie (2023) to the accidentally camp biopic Spencer (2021), in which Kristen Stewart makes an unlikely appearance as a woefully forlorn Princess Diana. The works ask: Where sits the line between victimhood and complicity?
Adam Rouhana’s “Before Freedom Pt.2” at T.J. Boulting
Adam Rouhana, Under the Olive Trees (تحت الزیتون). Photo courtesy of the artist.
Fresh off the back of “Before Freedom” at Frieze No. 9 Cork Street comes Palestinian-American activist and photographer Adam Rouhana’s next chapter, “Before Freedom Pt. 2,” celebrating the beauty and small joys of everyday life in his homeland. While our TVs and social media channels are flooded with urgent footage of terrible suffering in Gaza, Rouhana’s poignant photographs, which have also touched a wide audience on Instagram, offer subtly defiant scenes of resilience, community, and hope.
In a recent essay for the New York Times, Rouhana described annual trips to Palestine as a child that he began documenting with a camera. “In the news media, Palestinians were often portrayed as masked and violent or as disposable and lifeless: a faceless, miserable people,” he wrote, noting that these images make it “easier for the viewer to see Palestinians as silhouettes who have always been this way instead of as people with entire lives, histories, and dreams.”
He added: “Instead, what I photograph is unconditional communal love, a rootedness and sense of historical belonging in the land, and a daily generosity and collective spirit that I rarely experience in America.”
“Intension” at Copperfield More

The name of Chu Teh-Chun (1920–2014) should be no stranger to art market watchers. The late Franco-Chinese painter is best known for his poignant abstract paintings that marry the techniques of traditional Chinese painting and that of Western art. Over the last several years, his work has been commanding ever-higher prices at auction. There are more than 3,200 entries of auction transactions on Artnet’s Price Database, with an auction record of $29.5 million set in 2021 at a Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale.
Although one might catch a few individual works by the 20th-century master on view at an auction preview, a thorough survey of Chu’s work has been hard to come by despite the fact that his paintings have been widely exhibited in and collected by more than 50 museums worldwide.
The opportunity for a comprehensive review of his artistic practice is here now. Coinciding with the Venice Biennale, retrospective of Chu titled “In Nebula” is currently on show at Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore through June 30.
Chu Teh-Chun, La grace de l’aurore (2001). Courtesy of Chu Teh-Chun Foundation.
Organized with the support of the Chu Teh-Chun Foundation and thoughtfully curated by art historian Matthieu Poirier, this beautifully mounted exhibition in a vast space that was once a large swimming pool showcases some 50 exceptional works by the artist, including one on loan from the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, from across the different periods in his expansive career.
Installation view of “Chu Teh-Chun: In Nebula.” Courtesy of Chu Teh-Chun Foundation.
Poirier takes the audience on a time-travel journey to discover Chu’s past and the evolution of his oeuvre, which is presented in a reverse chronological timeline that blends seamlessly with the architecture of the space. Viewers’ downward, winding movement along the three levels of boardwalk to the base of the pool reflect a journey into the heart of Chu’s mystic paintings.
“Those paintings never let your eyes rest,” said Poirier during an introduction of the exhibition, noting that the artist was an abstract landscapist. “When Chu arrived in France, he carried his memories of the landscapes with him.”
Chu Teh-Chun, Nature Hivernal A (1985). Courtesy of Chu Teh-Chun Foundation.
Born in Baitu Zhen, Xiao district, Jiangsu province (now Anhui) in China into a family of art connoisseurs, Chu began learning calligraphy and Chinese poetry at a very young age. He then started painting under his father’s encouragement and in 1935, at the age of 15, he enrolled the Hangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, where he was first exposed to modern Western art from the teaching of artist-professors such as Lin Fengmian and Wu Dayu, both were educated in France. Around this time, he also met Wu Guanzhong, who went on to become one of the greatest painters of his time.
Installation view of “Chu Teh-Chun: In Nebula.” Courtesy of Chu Teh-Chun Foundation.
But Chu had to deal with hardships during the subsequent turbulent years of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese civil war between the Communists and the Kuomintang. He left the country to Taiwan in 1949 and eventually settled in Paris in 1955. He lost nearly all of his early works amid the turmoil. Following his settlement in Paris, despite continuing to create, Chu remained as a marginal figure.
Chu Teh-Chun, Composition n°228 (1966). Courtesy of Chu Teh-Chun Foundation.
“He was a quiet person, an introvert,” said Poirier, explaining why the artist was not very good at making himself the center of the spotlight, and hence a late boomer in his career. “He didn’t get his first retrospective until 1978. He was already 58,” noted the curator.
Chu Teh-Chun, Le 8 juillet (1976). Courtesy of Chu Teh-Chun Foundation.
The exhibition puts Chu’s works in context and as one walks further down to the bottom of what used to be a swimming pool, one can catch a glimpse of Chu’s evolution from the earliest figurative works available to the monumental paintings depicting not just an abstraction of landscape, but the depth of space conjured by light, time, colors, and brushstrokes.
“Chu Teh-Chun: In Nebula” is on view until June 30 at Fondazione Giorgio Cini, San Giorgio Maggiore Island, Venice.
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Sotheby’s has partnered with Art UK, a charity that provides online access to every public art collection in the United Kingdom, and 12 public museums to stage an exhibition that showcases the multicultural history and diversity of the nation’s art scene throughout the centuries.
“London: An Artistic Crossroads” is a free exhibition running until July 5, held at Sotheby’s New Bond Street location in the heart of the capital. It promises to bring together an incredible selection of artists who found inspiration, refuge, patronage, and influence within the U.K., including Piet Mondrian, Francis Bacon, Frank Bowling, and Magdalene Odundo.
Francis Bacon, Pope I (Study after Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez), (1951).Aberdeen City Council (Aberdeen Archives, Gallery & Museums collections). Presented in 1956 by the Contemporary Art Society. © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved. DACS 2024.
The exhibition has been designed as a counterpart to the National Gallery’s new National Treasures program, launched to celebrate its bicentenary this year. The initiative sees 12 masterpieces from the museum travel to institutions across the country, including Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus (1601) and Diego Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus (1647–51).
In mounting this new show, Sotheby’s has effectively done the reverse, by celebrating works of art that are to be found elsewhere across the nation (although there are two notable inclusions from London), as something of an advert for the strength of collections based far from the capital. It is the inaugural event in an ongoing partnership with Art UK.
“This exhibition brings together a dozen stunning artworks primarily from museums outside London, highlighting the treasures to be found in our regional collections,” Andrew Ellis, chief executive of Art UK, said. “It powerfully illustrates how the U.K.’s rich cultural heritage draws on creators and influences emanating from well beyond our shores.”
Showcasing the important contributions of immigrants and refugees is a key component of the show, which feels particularly pertinent in the wake of Brexit and the government’s implementation of “hostile environment” policies.
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Frances Howard, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (ca. 1621). © Compton Verney, photo by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.
The oldest work on display is a portrait of Frances Howard, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (ca.1621) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. The artist was among thousands of Flemish protestants who fled persecution in the Netherlands in the late 1560s. While he arrived in London as a child, he developed a distinctly Dutch style of painting that revolutionized English portraiture. The work is traveling from Compton Verney in Warwickshire.
Johann Zoffany was a neoclassical painter who completed his training in Germany and Italy before making his home in the U.K., where he found patronage among the aristocracy. He declared, “I am an Englishman, because in that country I found protection and encouragement.” His elaborate depiction of the collector Charles Towney, surrounded by friends and his considerable collection of books and antiquities, has been loaned by Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum in Burnley, Lancashire.
Johann Zoffany, Charles Townley and Friends in His Library at Park Street, Westminster (1782). © Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum, Burnley Borough Council / Bridgeman Images
More contemporary examples include Big Bird (1864) by abstractionist Frank Bowling, on loan from the Victoria Gallery and Museum in Liverpool. The artist moved to London from Guyana (then British Guiana) as a teenager and recalled his first visit to the National Gallery: “I was very struck by the British painters like John Constable, J.M.W. Turner and William Gainsborough, whose marvelous touch I was engaged by,” he said.
Bowling’s career is a prime example of the rich networks of influences that inform and enrich an arts ecosystem. He was deeply inspired by two other artists included in the show, Francis Bacon and Piet Mondrian, and was also a peer of Peter Blake, David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj (another featured artist). He has also influenced and supported subsequent generations of creative talent through his work as an educator.
“We are honored to be able to contribute to this important exhibition at Sotheby’s celebrating the major contribution that artists of African diaspora heritage have made to the British cultural landscape, and recognizing how London has had such a pivotal role in that process,” said Dr. Amanda Draper, the curator of art and exhibitions at the Victoria Gallery and Museum.
Magdalene Odundo, Tall Bottle (2010). School of Art, Museum and Galleries, Aberystwyth University.
Beyond painting, two examples of ceramics are included in the show. A bowl and a vase by Lucie Rie, who fled Nazi persecution in Vienna, has come from the Crafts Study Centre at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. Rie is widely considered to be a trailblazer of British modernist ceramics.
Meanwhile, Tall Bottle (2010) by Magdalene Odundo has travelled from Aberystwyth University Art Museum. Odundo was brought up in Nairobi and Mombasa before studying in the U.K. and honing her craft in Nigeria and Kenya. She was celebrated with an O.B.E. in 2008.
“London: An Artistic Crossroads” runs through July 5 at Sotheby’s New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA.
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Just in time for the summer crowds to descend on the Eastern End of Long Island, Guild Hall in East Hampton has opened an intriguing show of textile art, organized by collector and art historian Estrellita Brodsky and Raul Martinez. The artists in it are all handpicked, mostly from her own collection.
“Spin A Yarn,” had its debut at Brodsky’s own nonprofit art space in Chelsea, the appointment-only “Another Space,” where she welcomed visitors and numerous student groups from nearby schools for educational tours during its four-month run (November 10, 2023-March 15, 2024). At Guild Hall, the show is open to the public with free admission and related workshops, through July 14.
“Spin A Yarn” examines artists’ interest in textile-making “as both subject and medium to reflect on social, political and environmental concerns,” according to a statement. Brodsky notes that while Western cultures have historically prioritized the written word, many societies, and particularly those in Latin America, have rich traditions of using threads, knots, and woven materials, as markers of identity and as a means of passing down information from one generation to another. The mostly fiber artwork on view is by more than two-dozen artists from different regions and periods.
In conversation, Brodsky noted that textiles have played an important role in preserving memories and traditions. “We explore the ways in which artists have built on rich textile traditions from pre-Hispanic cultures as precursors of geometric abstraction to present day contemporary artists who use embroidery and weaving techniques as a means of advocating for the protection of the environment as well as of indigenous communities,” she said.
Front: Dubreus Lherisson Blue Princess, (2018) Left: Mulyana Betty 10, (2022) Right: Chonon Bensho Wai (Farm), (2023) as part of “Spin A Yarn” at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York.
The show includes work by Claudia Alarcón, Olga de Amaral, Tony Bechara, Chonon Bensho, Feliciano Centurión, DETEXT, Jorge Eielson, Mónica Giron, Sonia Gomes, Sheila Hicks, Huari Culture, Jessie Homer French, Randolpho Lamonier, Julio Le Parc, Dubreus Lherisson, Mulyana, Anna Perach, Alejandro Puente, Mónica Millán, Manfred Mohr, Sandra Monterroso, Societé Réaliste, Susan Spangenberg, Pedro Tineo, Georges Valris, Cecilia Vicuña, and Yvonne Wells.
One fascinating and unexpected aspect that Brodsky highlighted to me, during a walkthrough of the show in Chelsea, is the connection between computers and textiles as ways to store and code information. As the show’s statement explains, “the punch cards used in some looms to control the weaving process are the basis of computers’ binary logic.”
For example, Manfred Mohr’s P-159-B from 1974 shows a sequence of intricately stitched geometric forms that evoke “an unknown arcane language,” generated by algorithms. Mohr, a leader in the concept of “rational aesthetics,” underscores the “ancient relationship between textiles and mathematical computer programming,” Brodsky told me.
Front: DETEXT (Raul Martinez) Manstopper, (2015). Left to right: Mónica Millán, Inventar la piel (To invent skin), (2023); Claudia Alarcón, Tewok Tes P’ante (The Origin of the River), (2023), as part of “Spin A Yarn” at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York.
Many of the works here show modern and contemporary artists using indigenous textile techniques to reflect on environmental, political, or social issues. For instance, Alejandro Puente and Sheila Hicks reference the feather works and weavings of ancient pre-Hispanic cultures to convey a newly imagined language of abstraction. Argentine artist Mónica Millán has worked with Guaraní communities in the town of Yataity del Guairá in Paraguay, and advocates for the preservation of Ao Po’i textile traditions.
Artists Jessie Homer French and Mónica Giron draw attention to the environmental crisis through their use of embroidery and knitting techniques that confront climate change and the loss of biodiversity. Cecilia Vicuña warns of the devastating effects of droughts while also bringing attention to ancient Mayan creation myths.
Feliciano Centurión, Untitled, from the series Familia (Family), (1990) as part of “Spin A Yarn” at Guild Hall in East Hampton, New York.
Other artists in the show use textiles as a way to explore issues ranging from gender discrimination and racial injustice to gun violence. For instance, Feliciano Centurión, an openly gay man, originally from Paraguay but working in Argentina, began producing embroidered and crocheted works on everyday household fabrics, placed alongside toy dinosaurs, to reference illness, sexuality, and death. (The toy dinosaurs reference extinction.)
Meanwhile, social justice is the focus of Yvonne Wells’s large quilt titled A Shadow Over Justice (2004). Both a utilitarian object and a means of memory keeping, the quilt confronts bias in America’s criminal justice system. And DETEXT’s Widowmaker (2020-2022) is a woven rug that upon closer examination is made with nearly 30,000 bullet casings, referencing both policing and the gun industry in the US.
Alejandro Puente Quipu “nudos,” (1971) as part of “Spin A Yarn” at Another Space in Chelsea, New York.
Another Space in Chelsea, where I saw this show, is a nonprofit established by Estrellita and her husband Daniel, dedicated to building recognition and international awareness to artists from Latin America and its diaspora within a global context.
Jessie Homer French, Westside Fault Zones Mapestry, (2018) as part of of “Spin A Yarn” at Another Space in Chelsea, New York.
Said Estrellita: “I am particularly excited to be partnering with Guild Hall in East Hampton, a museum in an area where the Latino community plays an important role and that is free to the public.”
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Protest artworks chronicling Hong Kong’s recent political trajectory and the ensuing wave of migration to the U.K. are currently on display at a museum in Leeds. Organizers hoped that, through art, the story of the former British colony and its political struggle can be better articulated to a wider audience.
Titled “HongKongers in the UK—A Journey of Hope and Resilience,” the exhibition at Leeds City Museum features over a dozen work by five artists originally from Hong Kong in the museum’s public area. The exhibition, supported by a non-profit called Ngo Dei and the museum has been well-received since its opening at the end of April, organizers said.
“The response is much better than what we expected. Visitors told us that they were touched by the artworks, the wall-texts, and understood better the connection between Hong Kong and the U.K,” said Chloe Cheung, founder of a group called Hongkongers in Leeds, which helped organize the show. “That’s the special thing about art. [It] is a great medium for people to understand our story and feel the emotions from looking at the works—more impactful than chanting the slogans in the streets.”
Installation view of “HongKongers in the UK—A Journey of Hope and Resilience” at Leeds City Museum, U.K. Courtesy of Hongkongers in Leeds.
Divided into five chapters, the exhibition follows a chronological timeline looking at the historical connections between Hong Kong and the U.K. starting from the British colonial times and 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.
“We want to explain to people why Hong Kongers moved to the U.K.,” Cheung said. “The U.K. is our roots because of this history, and it was because of the British colonization [that] Hong Kong became an international city, rather an ordinary Chinese city.”
The show then covers major political events and the 2019 protests. Ricker Choi’s 721—Scream of Hong Kong (2019) depicts the horror of masked men in white T-shirts attacking pro-democracy protesters and commuters at a train station on July 21, 2019, in the form of a parody of Edvard Munch’s iconic The Scream.
Beijing’s subsequent implementation of the national security law in 2020 to curb the protests led to the suppression of press freedom and the closure of pro-democracy news outlets, such as Apple Daily, as well as the persecution of news media operators and journalists, many of whom are still remanded after nearly three years. Cheung pointed out that, so far, there are 1,800 political prisoners in Hong Kong as a result. Among the works on show include those by political artist duo Lumli Lumlong depicting Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, who is facing national security charges.
Bowie, Moon We Share (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Hongkongers in Leeds.
These political events led to the U.K.’s introduction of a visa scheme in 2021 that allows people from the city who meet the criteria to live, work, and study in the country. More than 190,997 have applied for the visa as of September 2023, according to government data. Works by artists Justin Wong and Bowie explore the life of this new Hong Kong diaspora.
Despite the positive response, the exhibition also drew criticism from pro-China students studying in Leeds, noted Cheung. Some left derogatory remarks, ranging from anti-democracy comments such as “Hong Kong should not be free,” to others claiming that Hong Kongers were “kneeling to their U.K. colonial masters.” The comments were written in simplified Chinese on Post-It notes and put on the exhibition’s version of Lennon Wall, which echoes one of the key elements of the 2019 protests that allowed people to leave their remarks and wishes on sticky-notes.
“But we did not take these sticky-notes down because this is a free country,” Cheung said.
Organizers noted that they wanted to continue to speak up for Hong Kongers, especially those remaining in Hong Kong and unable to do so. There are plans to make the show a traveling exhibition but details are yet to be ironed out, according to Cheung.
“HongKongers in the UK—A Journey of Hope and Resilience” is on view at the Leeds City Museum through June 10.
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So many aspects of childhood feel universal, from school-yard games like hopscotch and hide-and-seek to getting in trouble with rule-obsessed adults. But how did children’s experiences differ between the Renaissance or the Georgian era? One of the best records we have is the presentation of young people in art, so what insights can we glean from their poses, expressions, or roles within an image?
These are some of the questions addressed by “Picturing Childhood,” a new exhibition at Chatsworth, a historic country house in the U.K.’s Peak District that has belonged to the Devonshire family for generations. Works spanning from the Tudor times to the present day by artists like Raphael, Anthony van Dyck, and Lucian Feud have been paired with precious archival objects, like an 18th century baby carriage and a Victorian silver christening set.
According to curator Gill Hart, members of the public visiting the show have marveled out loud at the differences in representations of childhood across the centuries.
“We’ve been really able to tell visually this story of childhood,” she said. “When we look at old paintings through a specific lens or in terms of our own human experiences, it can make make people who would otherwise walk past these pictures really stop in their tracks. That has been a source of surprise for people.”
Raphael, A woman seated on a chair reading, with a child standing by her side (1512-14). Courtesy of Chatsworth House Trust.
Among some of the highlights in the show is this scene by Raphael of an infant being read a book by a woman. Though it was made over 500 years ago, it still feels startlingly recognizable today. We can probably instinctively imagine the warm embrace from both the child and the adults’ perspective. It is believed that the Renaissance Old Master included children in his sketches to introduce a human playfulness. The young boy appears distracted and stares out as the viewer with endearing innocence, suggesting a tenderness towards the young even though we know that children at this time were often harshly punished or put to work.
The Master of the Countess of Warwick, William Brooke, 10th Lord Cobham, and family (1567–1580). Courtesy of Chatsworth House Trust.
This large group portrait of William Brook, 10th Lord Cobham, his wife Frances Newton, and her sister Jane contains seven children with their ages inscribed in gold over their heads. In such formal dress with perfect posture and the same placid expressions as their elders, the kids look like miniature adults. The very youngest infant, however, sat on the far left, slightly interrupts the cordial atmosphere by reaching out to perhaps snatch an object from a nearby child.
“The Tudor and Stuart children are very well behaved,” said Hart. “Contrary to what I think has historically been said about childhood, they are like children. They’re dressed in adult clothes but they’re often doing things that betray an element of playfulness.”
Cornelis de Vos, The artist’s daughter Magdalena de Vos (c. 1623–24) installed at “Picturing Childhood” at Chatsworth. Photo: © Chatsworth House Trust.
The inspiration for “Picturing Childhood,” this painting usually hangs high up on a wall and can easily be missed by visitors. It has been brought down to ground level, so that the subject, the artist Cornelis de Vos’s daughter Magdalena, can be seen eye to eye. She is shown gathering flowers in her apron, and this charming and sensitive painting shows off the Flemish artist’s gift for portraying children.
“When you walk into the state room, she is one of the first things that captures your eye. She holds your stare,” said Hart, who added that most of us are familiar with the experience of “a child, whether you know them or not, locking eyes with you on a train or in a shop queue.”
She compared the look to the boy in the Raphael drawing. “These are gazes that completely transcend time. It hasn’t changed as a stage in the development of a very young child. This little girl has been staring out at us for 400 years.”
Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire with her daughter Lady Georgiana Cavendish, later Countess of Carlisle Sir. (1784). Courtesy of Chatsworth House Trust.
This painting captures a lively interaction between Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and her daughter, in which mother and child communicate in the preverbal stage through eye contact and imitating the same action. Compared to some of the more rigid paintings of the past, the child exhibits easy and lifelike spontaneity.
Of works like these and others by Johann Zoffany, Hart said: “There is a more free and expressive visual representation of childhood. There are [in the show] two wonderful Zoffany loans from Tate Britain where the children are interacting with each other, smiling, they look mischievous and cheeky in a way that isn’t communicated quite so emphatically in the Tudor period.”
The 18th century’s age of the Enlightenment saw the emergence of new, more modern ideas about childhood, such as the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s radical suggestion that children are essentially innocent rather than being born with sin. Natural childlike qualities could therefore be safely encouraged rather than being suppressed.
“Don’t force a child to sit still when it wants to walk or to walk when it wants to sit still,” Rousseau wrote in the novel Émile (1762). “They need to be allowed to jump, run, and yell as much as they want.”
Jean-Baptiste van Loo, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork, and His Wife Lady Dorothy Boyle with Three Children (1739). Courtesy of Chatsworth House Trust.
In this painting, the architect and renowned patron of the arts Richard Boyle takes a backseat while the female members of his family are shown to enjoy their own cultural pursuits. The youngest daughter Charlotte looks over to him while reading sheet music and the eldest, Dorothy, stares out pensively, her fingers holding open her place in a book. Their mother, an artist, is holding up a painting palette.
This portrait also brings an entirely new perspective to an exhibition that is otherwise predominantly focused on the lives of white aristocratic children. Little is known about the identity of the young Black boy on the right but, in 2004, an independent scholar identified him as James Cambridge, who was still working for the family in the 1750s. A researcher from the Yale Center for British Art has now been commissioned to find out more about this man’s life and his findings will be presented later this year.
“We have three children whose experiences of childhood will have been very different from each other,” said Hart. “Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking there is nothing new to be said about historical artworks but that is very far from the truth.”
Helen Bradley, The Whitsun Walk Through Lees, 1907 (1968). Courtesy of Chatsworth House Trust.
This painting was made by Helen Bradley based on a childhood memory of the Whitsun Walk, an annual procession of churchgoers wearing their Sunday best through the Whitsun Field in Wales. Being a scene of everyday, working class life sets it apart from many of the works on show
“When selecting it for the exhibition, I’m not sure I realized just how popular it would be,” said Hart. “Helen Bradley didn’t take up painting until she was in her 60s and one of the reasons was that she wanted to show her granddaughter what life was like when she was a little girl. It’s a lovely coda to the exhibition that this intergenerational desire to share histories of childhood between family members and wider audiences is such a strong force in our lives.”
Installation view of “Picturing Childhood” at Chatsworth. Photo: © Chatsworth House Trust.

“Picturing Childhood” is on view through October 6 at Chatsworth House, Bakewell, England.
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The work of photographer Francesca Woodman is having a moment, being the subject of both an exhibition at Gagosian in New York and a must-see museum show at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Though her name is reaching new heights of world renown, the young New York photographer has been a critical darling for decades and her works, produced before her tragically early death in 1981 at the age of just 22, have an enduring sense of style and experimental daring.
This timeless appeal is inevitably foregrounded throughout the impressively original London exhibition, which weaves her works with those of another celebrated historical photographer active a whole century earlier, Julia Margaret Cameron. A careful curatorial eye brings to the fore striking comparisons in which a similar subject matter is approached with mastery, mystery, and invention by the artist, while still very much bearing the essence of their respective eras. Each of these unique talents could, of course, have easily merited an exhibition of their own, yet this pairing does not constrain them.
Born in Calcutta in 1815, Cameron enjoyed a privileged Victorian upbringing due to her father’s involvement with the colonial East India Company. She and her sisters were known to be outspoken and unconventional, but it wasn’t until Cameron moved to London with her husband in 1845 that she became a member of artistic circles.
From left to right: Julia Margaret Cameron, The Dream (Mary Hillier) (1869). Courtesy of the Wilson Centre for Photography. Francesca Woodman, Untitled (1979). Courtesy of the Woodman Family Foundation, © Woodman Family Foundation/DACS London.
Cameron learned about the invention of photography in 1839, while still in her twenties, and first saw a daguerreotype in 1842. Yet she didn’t take up the practice herself until the age of 48, having been given a camera as a present by her daughter. In the last 12 years of Cameron’s life, until her death in 1879, she produced some 900 photographs that evince a highly exploratory approach to the fledgling art form.
Fast forward 100 years and photography had exploded in popularity, replacing writing as the most ubiquitous means of documenting of daily life. Like Cameron, Woodman received her first camera as a gift from her father. She trained formally at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) with stints spent in Rome before moving to New York in 1979 to make it as a photographer. Woodman was highly ambitious and quickly became devastated by what she perceived as a lack of immediate success.
From left to right: Julia Margaret Cameron, The South West Wind (1864). © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Francesca Woodman, House #3 (1976).Courtesy of the Woodman Family Foundation, © Woodman Family Foundation/DACS London.
The works of both photographers are roughly grouped according to themes of portraiture, otherworldly or dreamlike states, classical references, mythology, and the natural world, all of which reveal interesting affinities and departures in terms of staging, costume, focus, and style. Each artist has such clarity of vision that any differences in what could be achieved technically in their respective centuries feel mostly irrelevant.
Illusionistic effects that push photography beyond the status of a mere record are employed by both, as in the ghostly apparitions that haunt Cameron’s The South West Wind (1864) and Woodman’s House #3 (1976). Both artists seemed to have an instinct for capturing a partial truth and letting ambiguity and the viewer’s imagination fill in the bigger picture.
From left to right: Julia Margaret Cameron, I Wait (Rachel Gurney) (1872). Photo: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Francesca Woodman, Untitled from the “Angels” series (1977). Courtesy of the Woodman Family Foundation, © Woodman Family Foundation/DACS London.
Cameron often photographed close friends and family while Woodman, with a more modern notion of the artist available to her, usually made art using her own body. Either way, each took as a subject what was immediately available to her but imbued it with greater resonance, playing with fantastical elements or mythological allegories. In one nearly supernatural Untitled work from Woodman’s “Angel” series, the artist could almost be said to levitate.
As the National Portrait Gallery’s wall texts point out, angels have long been seen as able “to move between spiritual and earthly realms, the conscious and unconscious, and are often encountered in dreams or visions.”
Cameron’s great-niece Rachel was once instructed to adopt poses inspired by the putti from Renaissance paintings. She later called having “a pair of heavy swan’s wings fastened to her narrow shoulders[…] No wonder those old photographs of us, leaning over imaginary ramparts of heaven, look anxious and wistful. This is how we felt, for we never knew what Aunt Julia was going to do next.”
From left to right: Julia Margaret Cameron, The Astronomer (Sir John Frederick William Herschel) (1867). Courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, R.I. Francesca Woodman, These People Live in That Door (1976-77). Courtesy of the Woodman Family Foundation, © Woodman Family Foundation/DACS London.
Sometimes, both Cameron and Woodman made straightforward portraits of the people in their lives. Woodman’s close friend Sloan Rankin and a one-time boyfriend, Benjamin Moore, appear in many photographs from the late 1970s. Alongside fond Pre-Raphaelite studies of muses and friends like Julia Jackson, Cameron turned her lens on some of the most important luminaries of her age like the scientist Charles Darwin, astronomer John Frederick William Herschel, the poet Alfred Tennyson, and the writer William Michael Rossetti. These animated character studies feel astonishingly ahead of their time.
Thinking back on the many double-act shows that had more ambition than bite, rarely does this curatorial conceit deserve to be as self-satisfied as here. How can a kinship be found in the oeuvres of two artists who evolved from such starkly different contexts? Rather than getting too caught up in a specific time or place—Victorian-era London or 1970s New York—the comparison pushes us instead towards more expansive interpretations that show already well-defined practices in a new light.
“Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In” is on view at the National Portrait Gallery in London until June 16, 2024. 
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