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In a Nutshell: Box of Brothers
Toy soldiers have been around for millennia—tiny warrior figurines were found in the tombs of the Pharaohs, and the ancient Greeks and Romans enjoyed them as well—but it was the Britons of the Victorian era who made them a Christmas-morning must for generations of would-be generals. Toy soldiers fired the imagination of Robert Louis Stevenson, who romanticized their power to enliven a childhood sick day in his poem The Land of Counterpane, and that of H.G. Wells, who wrote an entire book,Little Wars, on war-gaming with toy soldiers.
Collecting: Neo-Colonialism
In 1851, feeling very good about itself and its place among the nations, England threw its wealth and commercial muscle behind an idea conceived by Prince Albert, the German-born husband of its beloved Queen Victoria. Under the prince’s leadership, The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations opened on May 1 of that year beneath the vaulting glass and iron of Sir Joseph Paxton’s immense Crystal Palace.
Talking Pictures: Christmas Present and Christmas Past
By: Jonathan Lopez In the spring of 1894, when James Tissot exhibited 270 paintings from his series The Life of Christ at the Salon de Champ-de-Mars in Paris, one critic declared that the artist could have been “the reporter for an illustrated paper in Rome under Tiberius,” so vivid were these seemingly eyewitness accounts of…
Victorian Vanguard
By: Sallie Brady Not unless you’ve sought them out in Britain’s museums or have been a dinner guest at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s London home are you likely to have been face-to-face with many Pre-Raphaelite pictures. The Victorian school of painting began when the Young British Artists of their day rebelled against the Renaissance methods of…
In Perspective
By: A&A Staff EXHIBITIONS A Stitch in Time: Alighiero e Boetti: “Mappa,” a show devoted to the late Italian conceptual artist’s series of embroidered world maps, continues at Gladstone Gallery in New York through Jan. 23. UPCOMING AUCTIONS Before the Puritans: A 1613 first edition of Samuel de Champlain’s Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain,…
Market: Florentine Time Capsule
By: Sallie Brady Is Italy really the place to buy Italian art and antiques? That’s what many collectors were left wondering earlier this fall when Florence did a flashback to its 1920s glory days, staging one of postwar Italy’s most anticipated auctions. Shuttered like a time capsule for decades, Palazzo Magnani Feroni was the warehouse…
Market: Miami Madness
By: A&A Staff It’s a sign of the season: As the cold weather sets in up north and the snowbirds head south, art invades Miami. This year Art Basel Miami Beach, the flagship event of December’s contemporary art week, is back for its eighth edition, along with—count them—17 satellite fairs and associated events. That’s a…
Market: Smart Sets
By: Sheila Gibson Stoodley Last September at Bonhams’ Knightsbridge location in London, an old television set with a 15-inch screen that no longer works sold for almost $30,000. While it comes with some spiffy extras (its oak-veneered cabinet also contains a record player, a radio and a minibar), it commanded £18,000 ($29,400) on an estimate…
Talking Pictures: The Scholar-Dealer
He is America’s preeminent dealer in Dutch Old Master paintings. But with his soft-spoken manner, gray-flecked beard and disarmingly rumpled suit, Otto Naumann looks more like a college professor than a businessman.
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