Making a Compleat Gentleman

West Wycombe Manor was set in a beautiful Park and the perfect setting for a man of means who also enjoyed the good life. Its colonaded west front is highly unusual, for a climate like England recalling perhaps many happy times spent lazing in the loggia of an Italian Palazzo. While smaller than most of his friends country houses today it is a perfect film set for eighteenth century period films because it encapsulates and reflects in architecture the society of a time when young men of privilege went in passionate pursuit of civilised life. Is it the perfect Temple to Taste of a Compleat Gentleman?

Sydney’s Hidden Jewel – 150 Year Celebration of The Nicholson Museum

In 2010, The Nicholson Museum, Sydney’s and perhaps Australia’s best kept secret, will celebrate its 150th year with a special exhibition Charles Nicholson: Man & Museum

Evolution of Art, Design and Style – Antiquity to Avatar

‘Just as a palate can be educated to appreciate fine wine so too can both the eye and the ear be educated to distinguish the rare from the ordinary, the exquisite from the mundane’. Pare Keiha, Associate Professor, Dean – Tumuaki AUT, Auckland NZ

THE EVOLUTION ART, DESIGN & STYLE
ARTISTIC TASTE – ANTIQUITY – AVATAR
[...]

Portraiture – Egypt to Enlightenment

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever…Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
author Carolyn McDowall
What is a portrait? Is it an actual likeness of someone? If we know the person portrayed is a General, King or Queen will it change our viewpoint? What is a portrait’s function?  Is it meant to show the sitter at their most characteristic ?
The [...]

An affair of state…wise men needed now!

Perhaps the getting of wisdom is when we realize, despite eons of learning, that in the grand scheme of things we really know very little at all.  Carolyn McDowall

January 6 is the climax of the twelve days of Christmas known as The Epiphany.
For early ‘followers of the way’ gathering in the catacombs, the underground burial [...]

Women of Influence – Angelica Kauffmann

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none…Benjamin Franklin 1706 – 1790

author Carolyn McDowall
As far as women are concerned the Age of Reason in the eighteenth century was inappropriately named. This was a period when the role of women, especially in a professional sphere, took a retrograde [...]

The Quest for Nature – William Kent

…’reflecting on ‘nature has done little or nothing; man a great deal, and time has improved his labours’ John Claudius Loudon
Author Carolyn McDowall
Alexander Pope was just one influential English poet contributing to the debate and climate of opinion that had an effect on societies mores and concerns, as well as the art of garden design [...]

Bunny in Sydney – Art or Artifice…

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) The Critic as Artist, 1891
This exhibition many would say is long overdue. In the landscape of Australian painting history Rupert Bunny is a significant figure who inserted himself effortlessly into French Parisian life during the so-called ‘Belle Epoque’ or beautiful era, demonstrating through [...]

Women of Influence – Marquise de Pompadour, pleasure is a serious business

The pleasure of love is in loving.  Francois de la Rochefoucauld (1613-80)
Author Carolyn McDowall
French painter François Boucher (1703-1770) produced many of the images that we have of the enigmatic Jeanne Antoinette, Marquise de Pompadour, Maîtresse-en-titre, or the official Mistress of Louis XV of France.
The daughter of a local beauty, Louise-Madeleine de la Motte and [...]

Love Jewellery – Regency to Revival

England’s Prince Regent George, Prince of Wales, later George IV (1762 – 1830) scandalised the nation with his reckless and lavish living habits. He gave an impressive love gift a diamond riviére (a necklace of precious stones, generally set in one strand) to his mistress Elizabeth, Lady Conyngham, who reputedly received gifts of jewels valued at the time in the region of 80,000 pounds.