Editors' Welcome
 
Garval | Cleo de Merode's Postcard Stardom Cléo de Mérode's Postcard Stardom
by Michael Garval

At the height of her renown, Belle Époque dancer Cléo de Mérode was arguably the most photographed woman in the world. Reproduced on postcards, her portraits traveled around the globe. Through this postcard stardom, Mérode pioneered a brand of celebrity that prefigured that of Hollywood stars in the decades ahead.
 
 
 
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Rehs Galleries

Schiller and Bodo

  Nicholson | Lochaber No More
Sterckx on Helene Schjerfbeck Dorsch reviews Georges Seurat: The Drawings Mainardi reviews Deja Vu?
  Lochaber No More: Landscape, Emigration and the Scottish Artist, 1849-1895
by Robin Nicholson
Widespread emigration from the Scottish Highlands in the nineteenth century offered subject matter not only to genre painters but also to landscapists, who found inspiration in the desolate depopulated landscape. This article examines the works of four artists who engaged with this subject and, in so doing, became part of a larger phenomenon of cultural self-invention that characterized Scotland in the Victorian age.
   
 
Elegant // Expressiv: Von Houdon bis Rodin, Französische Plastik des 19. Jahrhunderts
Reviewed by Caterina Pierre
 
Jean-Jacques Henner, Le dernier des romantiques
Reviewed by Gabriel P. Weisberg
 
Hiram Powers: Genius in Marble
Reviewed by Theresa Leininger-Miller
 
Helene Schjerfbeck: Het geheim van Finland
Reviewed by Marjan Sterckx
 
Georges Seurat: The Drawings
Reviewed by Michael Dorsch
 
Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces
Reviewed by Patricia Mainardi
 
The Painted Face: Portraits of Women in France, 1814-1914, by Tamar Garb
Reviewed by Amy Freund
 
Model and Supermodel: The Artist's Model in British Art and Culture, Jane Desmarais, Martin Postle, and William Vaughan, eds.
Reviewed by Susan Waller
 
Odalisques and Arabesques: Orientalist Photography, 1839-1925 by Ken Jacobson
Reviewed by Radha Dalal
 
Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance, John E. Law and Lene Østermark-Johansen, eds.
Reviewed by Joel Hollander
 
     
 
Allan | Interrogating Gustave Moreau's SphinxInterrogating Gustave Moreau's Sphinx: Myth as Artistic Metaphor at the 1864 Salon
by Scott C. Allan
This essay offers a close reading of Gustave Moreau's Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), informed by the artist’s statements and contemporary criticism. While traditionally the painting has been read as an allegory of spirit vs. matter, the author demonstrates that its significance may be more complex and that the sphinx may be seen as an archetypal figure for the very poetic and pictorial ideals that held the artist in thrall.
 
Webster |The Iconography of IndependencePierre-Charles L'Enfant and the Iconography of Independence
by Sally Webster
The French architect Pierre-Charles L'Enfant, best known for his plan for Washington, D.C., also produced several important decorative works in the 1780s. Focusing on these works, the author explores L'Enfant's invention of an iconography that signified the establishment of a new nation and its revolutionary claim of independence.
 
Greene | Reflections of DesireReflections of Desire: Masculinity and Fantasy in the Fin-de-Siècle Luxury Brothel
by Gina Greene
This article examines the iconography of eroticism that informed the design of Parisian brothel interiors in the late nineteenth century.
 
Rousseau, Forest of Fontainebleau
Théodore Rousseau's Forest of Fontainebleau
by Mary G. Morton