The Marly Horses

October 7, 2013 in Fine Art by hdavis

“Marly Horses,” paired sculptures also sometimes known as “horse tamers,” or just “horses restrained by grooms,” have their origins in France, probably by way of ancient Rome. Since the early days of Rome, a pair of sculptures, each of a man with a horse, have been on Quirinal Hill in the city. The spirited horses and the men seeking to control them are a discourse on power that has appealed to various political figures throughout history, and the theme has been replicated frequently.

A pair of 19th century Continental bronze figures of the "Chevaux de Marly" or Marly horses, (sometimes incorrectly spelled Marley), after Guillaume Coustou (French, 1677 to 1746).

A pair of bronze Marly horses. (p4A item # D9812387)

After Louis XIV decided to convert the royal hunting lodge into what is now Versailles, there was a need for a new location for the Royal Hunt. Louis opted for an area on the edge of the royal lands where he set about constructing the Chateau de Marly. (The neighboring community that sprang up to serve the needs of the royal family, Marly-le-Roi, is today a suburban community of Paris.) Chateau de Marly remained a popular retreat for the royal family, a respite from the social formalities (and the constant construction and remodeling) of the palace at Versailles. Although Marly’s golden age was during the rule of Louis XIV, both Louis XIV and Louis XV made continual improvements and changes to the Chateau, especially to the grounds, which were well-watered and lent themselves to elaborate waterworks. (In fact, after the construction of a hydraulic machine, Marly supplied water to Versailles and its famous fountains.)

An oil on canvas painting by Ludwig Bemelmans (1898 to 1962). <b><i>Marly Le Roy</i></b>, signed "Bemelmans" lower right, titled and dated "...JUNE '57" on the reverse.

A Ludwig Bemelmans painting of the village of Marly-le-Roi from 1957. (p4A item # D9943544)

Louis XV commissioned Guillaume Coustou the Elder (November 29, 1677 to February 22, 1746), a sculptor who had already contributed several statues to the Marly grounds, to create a pair of sculptures to flank the horse trough or pond in Chateau de Marly’s park. The works, carved from a single block of marble, were completed in an astoundingly short period – just two years! They were installed in 1745.

Sadly, Marly’s fate was linked to the fate of the royal family. Damage was done during the French Revolution, and the property was sold around 1800. The chateau was completely demolished and sold off in pieces, but Napoleon later bought back the estate, so while the chateau is no longer there, the park still exists. The Chevaux de Marly (Horses of Marly) statues, completed in 1745, were moved in 1795 to Place de la Concorde, the square in Paris where the guillotine had been in operation during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, as part of a post-revolution makeover. (The Champs-Elysees runs between Place de la Concorde with the Chevaux de Marly and the Obelisk of Luxor in the east to the Place Charles de Gaulle with the Arc de Triomphe in the west.)

The Marly Horses remained in the Place de la Concorde for almost two centuries, until they were moved to the Musee de Louvre in 1984, where other Marly sculptures are now housed. There, they have been conserved, and cement copies have been placed both in the Place de la Concorde and in the grounds at Marly.

The motion and dramatic moment captured in Coustou’s works along with their prominent iconic placement in Paris made the sculptures immensely popular, and throughout the nineteenth century, numerous versions were replicated in bronze and smelter on a smaller scale for Victorian homes.

Collecting Company Stock Certificates: Stock in Trade

September 30, 2013 in Ephemera by hdavis

A Centennial Exhibition Stock Certificate for 50 shares issued to John S. Lippincott on October 7, 1875 by the Centennial Committee in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

One of my favorite things on Facebook is the Grandiloquent Word of the Day, although it tends to make me lament how dull language is these days. (Victorians in particular did lovely – and yes, sometimes torturous – things to language.) But every now and then, I do come across some relatively new colorful addition, like scripophily. This very modern word (1970s or so) means exactly what you’d think it means: a “phily” (love) of scrip, or tactlessly put, that paper that still isn’t worth anything. Except that sometimes it is!

Scripophily is a subset of numismatics and while factors like how the industry may have changed, the value of the stock, and, as always, the condition, may influence an auction estimate, scrip is typically desirable for three reasons: the historic context (like stock from the Portsmouth Whaling Company), the artwork – both subject and color (there are beautiful engravings on many stock certificates, especially those associated with the railroads), or the signatures (folks from Pat Garrett to Marcus Garvey to Harry Houdini put their autograph on scrip). Scripophily as a hobby has been growing since the 1970s, and while typically, the older the scrip, the greater the value, take heart – modern financial scandals and crises (think Enron) have given dollar value to stock certificates that might otherwise only be good for wallpapering the attic!

Pig Out on Pottery: Anna Pottery Stoneware

September 25, 2013 in Pottery & Porcelain by hdavis

Salt-glazed railroad engineer presentation pig flask [bottle] by Anna Pottery [Cornwall and Wallace Kirkpatrick, Anna, Illinois], dated 1882Perhaps one of the most iconic Midwestern objects is an Anna Pottery railroad pig flask.  Yep, just as strange and quirky as it sounds, and so were many of the things produced by the Kirkpatrick brothers, Cornwall and Wallace, from 1859 to 1896.  Both brothers apprenticed to their father, Andrew, a potter, before landing in Anna, Illinois, where they started their pottery.  While they’re mostly known today for their unusual objects like their “snake jugs” and the aforementioned pig flasks (one is pictured above), the pottery actually manufactured a great deal of utilitarian wares – crocks, jugs, flowerpots, pipes.  As early as 1860, the pottery’s eleven employees produced a total output capable of containing 800,000 gallons!

A little investigation of the brothers’ history indicates they were just as original.  Cornwall became Anna’s first mayor and supported the temperance movement, not necessarily out of any real aversion to alcohol, but because, as a business man, it was more profitable to cater to the prevailing local opinion, which was a conservative one.  Meanwhile, Wallace, who ventured to California for a time as part of the Gold Rush, was fascinated with snakes, collecting live ones and displaying them at fairs.  The pottery’s snake jugs were, obviously, one of his specialties.  Some of the brothers’ pieces are just whimsical, while others carry built-in commentary about temperance, the economy (railroad pig flask), and politics.  The story of their pottery captures the very essence of the Midwest: quirky newcomers creating prosperity for themselves in a booming economy driven by agriculture and railroads on a whole new scale!

Revolutionary Art: Objects from China’s Cultural Revolution

September 23, 2013 in Crafts & Folk Art by hdavis

A circa 1960 Chinese Cultural Revolution carved boxwood figure, depicting a Mongolian girl holding two peaches.It’s a rare thing when we say, “Wow!  I’ve never seen one of those before!”  We see nicer examples, more complete examples, more unusual examples of things we’ve seen before, but every now and then, we come across some objects with a context that’s completely new to us.  That’s how I felt when I encountered several groups of artwork from the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  After the push to rapidly industrialize China during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mao began to feel as though he had lost some authority specifically to Liu Shaoqi and other rivals in the Chinese Communist Party, and more generally to a visible and burgeoning middle class populated by engineers, factory managers, and other science- or technology-minded citizens.  (Ironically, it’s the rise of a new middle class in China today, along with the weaker value of the U.S. dollar, that is driving a rapidly growing market for Asian material, much of which is being repatriated.)  Mao’s vision of communism sought an idealized classless society, and he used that vision to spark the Cultural Revolution, a movement whose sophisticated and gentle name belies the violence and turmoil it inspired throughout China.  (Estimates of those killed range from 500,000 to 20 million and will likely never be accurately known.)  The Cultural Revolution resulted in huge, sweeping changes in China to attitudes, policies, and even artwork.

As part of the Cultural Revolution, anything bourgeois was violently rejected and that included art.  All artwork was to promote the worker, the individual without promoting individualism, and to depict well-fed, cheerful Chinese citizens (like the beaming young woman pictured above) working hard but happily at daily jobs, preferably those that were seen as the cornerstones of communism – the worker and the farmer.  Carvings and sculptures of farmers plowing the fields, fishermen pulling their nets, workers surveying their accomplishments, seem to project a peacefulness and contentment, rather reminiscent actually of the American Regionalist artistic movement headed by Grant Wood a few decades earlier, that makes one feel life is simple and pleasurable for those who work hard and contribute to the world in which they live.  At the same time, when placed in the murky context of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, these pieces seem to carry a darker, more sinister weight, contributing to the eternal discussion of how art changes with or without the historic, social, and artistic framework.

Op-Ed Pages of History: Political and Editorial Cartoons

September 18, 2013 in Ephemera by hdavis

A William Charles (Scottish/American, 1776 to 1820) political caricature, Johnny Bull and the AlexandriansOn the Fourth of July, we celebrate our political independence with fireworks and parades, cookouts and pool parties, but our true political independence gets celebrated every day in newspaper op-ed pages where we spout off about whatever’s bothering us and where one can find editorial or political cartoons lampooning every aspect of our political system in a daily, inexpensive, informative celebration of free speech, one of the freedoms we hold most dear.  The tradition of lampooning politics in cartoons is a rich one in Britain, and it traveled to America with the colonists.  (The detail pictured above is from an etching commenting on the farmers of Alexandria, Virginia buying their way out of occupation during the War of 1812 with rum and tobacco.)

Cartoons might seem silly or pointless decades later, but in reality, they’re very valuable resources to scholars.  As the old English proverb goes, many a true word has been spoken in jest, and as is the case with editorial cartoons today, these simple sketches and brief blurbs belie the wealth of information contained about some of the more difficult aspects of history to decipher: what our sense of humor as a culture is like, what we find funny or frustrating or just worthy of comment.  They also offer a subtle view of historical events that is sometimes otherwise lost to history.  For instance, many people who’ve just taken a history course or two have the sense that the Civil War was popular and that Abraham Lincoln was beloved by everyone north of the Mason-Dixon.  In reality, one could tell the entire history of the Civil War, including the political breakdown that preceded it and the frustrating muddle that followed it via editorial cartoons, many of which illustrate a deep disdain or hatred of Lincoln that might surprise people today.

Editorial cartoons were also, in the heightened political climate of the first century of the United States’ existence, a convenient way to convey one’s political viewpoint.  A printed, framed copy also offered plenty of opportunity for close scrutiny, something that was necessary with these cartoons that often contain complex symbolism, witty wordplay and intricate illustrations, so Currier & Ives, along with many other engravers and printers of the period, cranked out cartoons with commentary on trade acts, slavery debates, religion, American attitudes toward European conflicts and much more, all intended to be framed and hung in a library, office or study.  So the next time you find yourself chuckling or scratching your head after reading an editorial cartoon, remember that you’re participating in a long, rich history of questioning your government!

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