Venus Africaine

A very fine cast of Charles Cordier's celebrated sculpture of  'the African Venus' is offered for sale at Sotheby's on 11 April lot 51

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/the-orientalist-sale-l19100/lot.51.html

it's a very similar cast to that in the photo, with differently-coloured patination for skin and fabric, and gilding on earring.  But plain bronze socle on that now at Sotheby's.  Estimate  £40-60K 

Sheffield at Temple Place

Actually, it's called 'RUSKIN' at 2 Temple Place

and this was an unexpected exhibit.
It portrays two young workers in the cutlery industry: Jane Gill and Maggie Herrick, painted in 1909 by Will Rothenstein.  Their job was to polish knives after manufacture, and they were called 'buffer girls',  so I'm guessing this was employment commonly taken after leaving school at 13 and before marrying, in a trade that was originally a family affair, with sons apprenticed to cutler fathers and daughters doing less skilled tasks.  

According to the label, wages for Jane and Maggie were five shillings a week  - not very much in 1919 - and they received the same posing for half a day to Rothenstein, so a neat albeit brief addition to  their earnings.

The painting is at Temple Place because most of the exhibits  come from Sheffield Museums, where  Ruskin's 'teaching items' are now, mainly through his 'museum' or collection assembled for the benefit of working people [for which read working men].   Arguably Jane and Maggie, or their families. might have had  access to the Ruskin collection,  and they represent the traditional workers whose cutural experience concerned him in his essays and speeches.

Cutlery is also on display, amid an extremely disparate exhibition,  with very many watercolour records of medieval architectural details from Venice, Lucca and  elsewhere, this being Ruskin's specialism as a lecturer and popular educator.  

For example, this large drawing of pointed arches.

Geology was another interest, dating from Ruskin's boyhood, and he had mineral collections of rocks, crystals and  suchlike.  

Then there are samples of his observational studies of nature - more rocks, plants, birds like this dead duck.

Ruskin's pedagogic impulse was part philanthropic and part parsonical.  He was raised to be a bishop  and took the preaching and teaching  role seriously, if idiosyncratically.   Hence the 'museum' for Sheffield, the lectures and endless stream of publications, and the creation of his personal 'church' called The Guild of St George, for followers who were willing to join him in philanthropy.  

There's no end to Ruskin's interests and endeavours, so for those in London the Temple Place show is a good way to sample them.  It's free, but very popular.  i regret there isn't a section on Ruskin's relationship with women artists,  which although fully entwined with gender bias was also very positive in many ways and would have contributed a significant addition to the Sheffield/Temple Place show. 

Fanny Eaton as a Sibyl with better image

In early summer 1857, Joanna Boyce arrived in Rome, joining her art school friend Margaret Daniell, who was now married to Dr Piotti.  With a pair of opera glasses, she lay on the floor of the Sistine Chapel studying Michelangelo's figures, as every European artist was wont to do when in the city.

They include the Sibyls, whose gnomic prophecies offered a classical complement to the Hebrew prophets.  One is the Sibyl at Cumae, famous from the Aeneid Book Six, whose grotto near Naples Joanna may have visited some months later.  Another is the Libyan Sibyl, based in the Siwa Oasis, who was with others anciently said to have foretold Christ's coming (hence the propriety of pagan figures in a Christian chapel).

Sibyls are customarily shown with their prophetic books, and the Vatican's Sibilla Libica - who does not herself look African - is looking away as she opens a giant volume, perhaps to signify its oracular, enigmatic contents.  Her naked upper back is wonderfully muscled in its twisting pose, and the artist's studies show several attempts at the toes of tensed left foot, which conveys the momentary nature of the vigorously depicted pose.

The Libyan Sibyl on the mosaic floor of the Duomo in Siena, drawn by Guidoccio Cazzarelli, is more conventionally static, and manifestly African, from her braided dreadlocks to her sandalled toes.

  Burne-Jones's Sibylla Libyssa in Jesus College Cambridge is perhaps more Egyptian - and has in place of her book a hand-mirror and jar, or is it a crystal sphere?  (EBJ's other Sibyls here have diverse accessories, presumably alluded to in classical sources).

Joanna Boyce Wells's sibyl was never completed, owing to her untimely death.  It's in  a  list of forthcoming projects and subjects that she left behind.   Other traces are the profile head painted from Fanny Eton,  

and a  compositional study for which Fanny must also have posed.  Certainly it's her figure and head.  The figure is shown consulting  her Sibylline book, like the Vatican version but from a standing position.  Alas, it is a tiny sketch, but a clear indication of the much larger painting that Joanna planned..

African artists' model 1862

This splendid portrait of a man of African ancestry  now in the collection of the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art in Conwy  has recently been identified as a painting from around or just before 1862 by an artist named George Harrison ( 1840-1910)    that was mentioned in a newspaper report as 'Portrait of an African'.     
 It was painted when Harrison was a student so the  sitter is most likely a model, probably at the RA Schools in London, and the canvas was used by the artist as an example of his skill when pitching for portrait commissions - though he later moved to Wales and painted landscapes. 
All this from a long discussion  on the Art Fund Art detective site, and a big credit to E.Jones who found the press report.
There are probably other pictures from this period featuring the same sitter, most likely in genre scenes, though maybe in similar head-and-shoulder studies.

Yinka S in Hereford

Hereford Cathedral has linked up with Yinka Shonibare for a textile installation inspired by Herefod's Mappa Mundi  with its strange creatures and alien races that in medieval times were thought to people the far reaches of the world, beyond christendom with its centre in Jerusalem.

The ten panels, displayed in the cloister and the chained library, are made from irregular pieces of fabric like an amateur patchwork, and were stitched by three teams of people from the city - students, seniors and the learning disabled.  Videos show the participants, the  process and the artists explaining the project.   It is, he says,inspired by the ability of the Mappa Mundi to still reflect our contemporary concerns of fear of the stranger or 'other' which often leads to xenophobia.  The depiction of  creatures of legend is a reminder that we may ye become extinct if we don't take care of the environment.

 on right: mandragora, the fabled forked root that was supposed to shriek when pulled from the ground.     

Below, some other fanciful beings from an illuminated manuscript in the Library,  where the books are shelved with spines inward on account of the chains, and have to have handwritten notes with titles stuck on the fore-edges..  Also, a visit costs £6.00 pp.  for what is probably a maximum of 30 minutes.  There is a useful cafe hard by also in cloisters.  

.