Gallery Stroll

GALLERY ? IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM, London ************************ The Wartime Kitchen and Garden • 28 October 1993 - 2 May 1994 · Although not 'Victorian' I cannot resist including a notice of this exhibition which will coincide with the BBC series The Wartime Kitchen and Garden. Elements of the garden and kitchen sets featured in the series will be shown, along with posters, paintings, documents, film and ephemera from the Museum's extensive collections. The exhibition will illustrate how the nation converted its flower beds, back gardens, window boxes and even the tops of Anderson shelters into growing space for vegetables. There will be displays on the expansion of the allotment movement; changes 'down on the farm'; and the work of the Women's Land Army. The 'Kitchen Front' section will include tips on healthy eating and recipes for carrot flan, mock goose, air raid soup, Woolton Pie and other wartime dishes. The Western Front Revisited: Photographs by Jean Cartier • from 12 November 1993 · A display of evocative photographs taken seventy-five years after the end of the First World War along the former front lines and battlefields of France and Flanders. NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, Washington *************************** First Major Traveling Exhibition ofAudubon Watercolors • 3 October 1993 - 2 January 1994 · An exhibition featuring almost ninety of John James Audubon's original watercolors for his famous print scries The Birds ofAmerica begins a nationwide tour at the National Gallery this October. Organized by The New York Historical Society, John James Audubon: The Watercolorsfor "The Birds ofAmerica" is the first traveling exhibiton of these landmark works of art since they were acquired by the Historical Society from the artist's widow in 1863. Bom in 1785 in Santo Domingo, now Haiti, Audubon was raised in France before emigrating to America at age eighteen. By the end of his life in 1851 he had become the nation's leading naturalist, identified in Europe as the archetypal American woodsman and an original, dynamic chronicler of America's birds. 102Victorian Review Watercolors on view illustrate the range of Audubon's techniques and his development as an artist, from the early single profiles to his later animated portrayals of birds in their natural settings. The artist's most familiar works will be shown, including American White Pelican (1831-1832), Carolina Parakeet (c. 1825), and Gyrfalcon (1835-1836). Also displayed will be previously unpublished watercolors such as Anhinga (1822) and Great Egret (1831). Following its opening at the National Gallery, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (9 February - 10 April 1994); the Art Institute of Chicago (7 May - 17 July, 1994); the Detroit Institute of Arts (13 August - 23 October 1994); the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (17 November 1994 - 29 January 1995); Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (19 February - 17 April 1995); the New York Historical Society (3 May - 6 August 1995); Seattle Art Museum (12 October 1995 - 7 January 1996); and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (4 February - 14 April 1996). SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, Edinburgh *********************************** The Art ofthe Daguerreotype • 9 November 1993 - 29 January 1994 · 'From today, painting is dead.' So said the French painter Paul Delaroche upon the announcement of the invention of photography. This took place at the Académie des Sciences, Paris, in January 1839, and the process revealed to the world on that day had been perfected by a Frenchman called Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. Unlike the photographic process announced shortly afterwards by William Henry Fox Talbot, which involved making positive images from a negative, the daguerreotype was a unique image, made in the camera. It was, effectively, a permanent mirror image. A copper plate with a polished silver surface was sensitized by fumes from iodine, exposed in a camera, then developed and fixed by the action of mercury vapour. The result was a miniature 'reflection' of the sitter. This exhibition shows examples of early portraits by some of the finest British, European and American exponents of the art of the daguerreotype. A rare example of Daguerre's own work — a portrait of his wife taken in 1845 — will also be on view. VICTORIA AND ALBERT, London ********************* Beatrix Potter and the Tailor of Gloucester • 3 October 1993 - 9 January 1994...