San Francisco Fall Antiques Show

Jacques Charton
Hippopotame d'Afrique
From Collection de plantes etrangeres en
fleurs, fruits, corail et coquillages
Paris: 1784
Hand-colored copperplate engravings

Arader Galleries in San Francisco is proud to be exhibiting at the upcoming 2010 San Francisco Fall Antiques Show, the oldest continually operating fine antiques show on the West coast, with exceptional dealers from across the world. Each year a special theme is selected highlighting a particular design influence. The 2010 San Francisco Fall Antiques show theme is “Chinoiserie”, a French term meaning “Chinese-esque”, and focuses on Western art that features or imitates the elements, techniques and designs that have been used in Eastern art for centuries.

With the influx of trade between Europe and China beginning in the 17th century, a new style of art, design and decoration was realized. Interests in whimsical Asian imagery and ornamentation, furniture, porcelain and design were abundant in European homes and in the art produced throughout the 17th to mid-18th century, when it further translated into the French Rococo style.

The San Francisco Fall Antiques Shows runs from October 28th to the 31st, 2010 at the Festival Pavilion in Fort Mason. Numerous guest speakers will be presenting throughout the show on a multitude of topics relating to Chinoiserie history, design and fashion. Please feel free to contact Arader Galleries in San Francisco for more details. Tickets to the San Francisco Fall Antiques show may be purchased at http://www.sffas.org.

Filoli Estate and Gardens

Images:

View of Filoli house

View of Sunken Garden

Mural of Muckross House and Abbey

in Filoli ballroom

“Fight for a just cause; Love your fellow man; Live a good life”

Filoli is a magnificent estate located on the Peninsula in Woodside. The estate, still remaining on all of its 654 acres, was built by Mr. and Mrs. William Bowers Bourn II who lived on the estate from 1919 to 1936. The Bourn family owned the Empire Gold Mine, the Spring Valley Water Company and the Crystal Springs Reservoir and like many families during the early 20^th century, prospered during America’s “Gilded Age”.

San Francisco architect Willis Polk designed this amazing estate using elements from different architectural eras and styles. The house, styled mainly in a modified-Georgian tradition has French and Spanish influenced architecture, with outstanding works of art from throughout the world. In the ballroom, Ernest Peixottoe, a San Francisco artist, was hired by the Bourn family to paint wall sized murals of their family estate, Muckross House and Abbey, with the surrounding Irish countryside, gifted to their daughter Maude on her wedding day.

The formal gardens at Filoli were designed by San Francisco artist and designer Bruce Porter and built between 1917 and 1921. The sixteen-acre garden is a true complement to the refinement of the estate and to the natural California countryside surrounding the home. The expansive gardens are divided into two parallel north-south walks, yet within each, walkways wrapping through gardens, doors and terraces give each division of the garden a feeling of total immersion and intimacy.

In 1937, Filoli was sold to Mr. and Mrs. William P. Roth, owners of the Matson Navigation Company. Mrs. Roth, a horticultural enthusiast, brought worldwide recognition to the Filoli gardens and to Isabella Worn, whom assisted with plant selection and design. Worn’s detail in selection and plating design brought remarkable color and life to the gardens.

Mrs. Roth donated the estate to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1975 in order to ensure the estate would be available for all to enjoy years later. Filoli is open Tuesday through Sunday, mid-February to late October and is a true pleasure for architectural, design and garden enthusiasts alike.

Dynamic Botanical Photographs

Photo courtesy of the SF Botanical Gardens

Now being exhibited at the San Francisco Botanical Garden's Library are brilliant photographic images of plants and flowers bursting with color, texture and geometry. The title of the show, by photographer Julie Jaycox, "Nature's Geometry: Surprises of Botanical Design," perfectly describes these beautiful and detailed images and the symmetry they present.

Many of the pieces are composed of two pictures to show the similarity and differences between the plants and the elements that make them unique. Julie's images showcase the beauty, elegance and often unseen details of plants that surround us daily, as many of these photographs were taken while she walked through parks and found the plants in different stages of growth and flowering.

"Nature's Geometry: Surprises of Botanical Design" will be on display at the Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture in the San Francisco Botanical Garden until December 30, 2010 and are a must see for any botanical or photograph enthusiast.

The Exquisite Manuscript Florilegia of Jacques le Moyne

One of the rare Jewels to be found in the collections of both the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London are sixteenth manuscript florilegium of wildflowers and fruits painted by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues. Only five compendiums to date have been identified as original works by le Moyne, the finest of which can be found at Arader Galleries.

Le Moyne, a French Huguenot, best known for his vivid account of the ill fated 1564 transatlantic voyage to Florida which he accompanied as official artist and cartographer to the French King Charles IX, ended his career in Elizabethan London as a highly regarded botanical artist whose patrons included Sir Walter Raleigh and Lady Mary Sidney. Le Moyne was among a rare and exclusive group of 16th century botanical artists who specialized in the creation of florilegia, most of which were printed, however a small number of such works commissioned by wealthy aristocrats, were painted by hand. Le Moyne was among the first artists to revive the practice of drawing from nature and working from real plants instead of following the tradition of copying from earlier botanical illustrations. A shining example is Le Moyne’s watercolor of the wild strawberry, exhibiting delicately upturned and curling leaves, subtle gradations in stem color and exquisitely imperfect strawberries shown in varying stages of ripeness, all of which strongly suggest that he was in fact working from a live plant specimen. Versions of Le Moyne’s magnificent Wild Strawberry are included in the compendiums held at the Victoria and Albert Museum,

the British Museum, and the collection at Arader Galleries.

Image from the Victoria and Albert Museum

The Wild Strawberry watercolor at the Victoria and Albert Museum is most likely the earliest of the albums, probably painted in Paris after he returned from his expedition to Florida in 1566 and before he fled to London in 1572. This album is thought to have been intended to serve as a design reference for jewelry, embroidery and other crafts. Le Moyne has included a magnificent female emperor moth which he edited from the composition in later works. This is the largest format of the three albums, and generally the watercolors are of entire plants, and sometimes contain incomplete sketches. It seems Le Moyne was less concerned with overall composition and more focused on realistically portraying the natural details of the various specimens.

Image from the British Museum

The Le Moyne Album at the British Museum, completed in London in 1585, is probably the latest of the three works. The Wild Strawberry watercolor in this album considerably more stylized than the version at the Victoria and Albert museum and has been lined with a red ink border, consistent with the accompanying watercolors in this compendium. Le Moyne has altered and tightened the composition by editing the least visually interesting components of the plant to fit within the border.

The Le Moyne Album at Arader Galleries is by far the most lavish and deluxe version when compared to the collections at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The paper has been prepared as vellum to give a subtle sheen and the exquisitely illustrated flowering and fruiting plants are composed with in a distinctively sumptuous gold leaf border. Le Moyne retains the fine and delicate detail found in the collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum while employing his elegant understanding of composition to frame the illustrations within the border to create a more compact and arresting overall image.

If you would like more information, or the chance to view this magnificent 16^th century manuscript by one of the most exceptional botanical artists of the 16^th century, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Rare Books and Magnificent Maps

Arader Galleries has, for the fourth year in a row, participated in the London Rare Books School (http://ies.sas.ac.uk/cmps/events/courses/LRBS/index.htm) , a series of intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects taught by internationally renowned scholars, with privileged access to the treasured collections of London’s finest libraries and museums, including the British Library, the British Museum, the National Archives, and the Royal Geographic Society, to name a few.

Catherine DeLano-Smith, the editor of Imago Mundi, and Sarah Tyack, former chief Executive of the National Archives (UK), lead The History of Maps and Map Making and Mapping Land and Sea before 1900 seminars respectively. Highlights included a private tour and lecture of the British Library’s current exhibition Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art with curator and director Peter Barber. (http://www.bl.uk/magnificentmaps/)

Featuring over 80 of the most impressive wall maps ever created, this exhibit tells the cumulative story of how maps, and the underlying agendas of their creators and commissioners, have been used to wield power and control throughout history, from 200AD to the present day.

The exhibition beautifully exemplifies one of the main themes of modern cartographic study; that maps are subjective images that convey much more than geographic information. This rich world of nuanced yet complex purposes comes to light as one begins to see each map through the eyes of its originally intended audience.

The magnificent Maps exhibition at the British Library will be on display until September 19, 2010.

Oakland Museum of California

Albert Bierstadt

Yosemite Valley

1868

Oil on canvas

Photo courtesy of the

Oakland Museum

Discreetly located in downtown Oakland is a gem of California culture and art, the Oakland Museum of California. The museum, divided into three levels, tells the history of California and the Bay Area through numerous forms of media and allows for visitors to interact with the displays and leave their own images, writings and experiences along the way.

The history gallery is based around the theme “Coming to California.” Vividly illustrated and extremely detailed, this exhibition gives a broad view of the development California over time: from Native American life in the west, the impact of Spanish colonization, construction of major cities and railways and the impact of the ever changing political climates in California, with a special focus on the Bay Area. The interactive exhibition is fun and interesting for children and adults alike and gives a unique insight into the evolution of California.

Interactive display at the Oakland Museum

Photo courtesy of www.curatedmag.com

The art gallery at the Oakland Museum includes over 70,000 works by California artists, ranging in disciplines and topics with subject matters significant to the California region and ideologies. Large-scale landscape paintings by Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill and William Keith, also in the Arader Galleries collection, show the great skill of the artists and refined beauty of the Sierras in the late 1900’s.

The photography collection includes Dorothea Lange’s documentation of the Great Depression across the US and a dynamic book of Carleton Watkins photographs of Yosemite. Figurative and abstract paintings by local and California artists bring life and color to this diverse collection.

The Oakland Museum is filled with fascinating information about California history, beautifully translated and displayed with an inviting and aesthetic approach, appealing to all of the senses.

A Maps Lecture by Margaret Pritchard

Thomas Conder, Map of the Interior Travels Through America
London, c. 1789

Margaret Pritchard made the journey from Williamsburg, VA to deliver an incredibly insightful presentation and lecture for The American Decorative Arts Forum at San Francisco’s De Young Museum. The Arader Galleries San Francisco team was in attendance and hosted Margaret for a private reception in the San Francisco Gallery. Margaret received a bachelor’s degree from Hollins College. After working with Winterthur’s needlework collection for a year, she received a fellowship at Colonial Williamsburg to assist with the refurnishing of the Governor’s Palace.Margaret subsequently became the curator of Colonial Williamsburg’s collections of prints, maps and wallpaper. Her responsibilities include acquisition of new objects for the collections and research in the medium of paper. She selects appropriate prints, maps, and wallpaper to hang on the walls of buildings in the historic district, such as the Brush-Everard House, the George Wythe House and the recently recreated Richard Charlton Coffeehouse. Margaret Prichard’s publications include William Byrd II and His Lost History: Engravings of the Americaswith Virginia Sites (1993); Empire’s Nature: Mark Catesby’s New World Vision with Amy Meyers (1998); andDegrees of Latitude: Mapping Colonial America with Henry Taliaferro (2002). She combined her study of geography with living nature for “A Protracted View: The Relationship between Mapmakers and Naturalists in Recording the Land,” her contribution to Curious in our Way: The Culture of Nature in Philadelphia, 1740-1840 (2009).

Margaret’s lecture focused on maps in the 17th and 18th centuries and their importance for documenting new discoveries and promoting settlement in the New World. These documents — created by empirical observation and scientific equipment — authoritatively documented claims of boundaries between colonies and empires. Land titles and rents, and trade — aided by nautical atlases, hung in the balance. As the struggle between France and Britain for control of North America intensified in the 18th century, the need for reliable maps for military use also increased.

Maps also embodied intellectual attainment and social aspiration. Prominently displayed maps, charts, atlases and globes became status symbols for the enlightened, genteel 18th century gentleman whose library might well have included works on commerce, navigation, geography, mathematics, physics, natural history and travel. Maps were ordinarily displayed in the hall (not today’s passageway but the name for the primary room for welcoming guests to the home) or dining room, literally and figuratively demonstrating the host’s expanded world view to guests.

Margaret explained the role of maps as powerful visual symbols during the 17th and 18th centuries. They were useful devices for mapmakers and colonial expansionists to convey a host of attitudes and values. She dissected the meaning behind many of the elements in the maps’ cartouches, adding engaging insight into these stunning antique maps. Examples of many of the maps discussed can be found in the Arader Galleries collection. See our section on Maps on the home page of our website (www.aradersf.com).