CONTEMPORARY ART

Untouched condition

Contemporary artists who design but do not actually make their own work have a long and honourable ancestry.

ARCHITECTURE

The second greatest Briton?

The celebrations of Brunel’s bicentenary ignore his dark side, but he has much to teach today’s architects.

Translating Modernism

In the early part of her career, Mainie Jellett provoked hostility in Ireland, thanks to her espousal of abstraction and her Anglo-Irish Protestant identity. RÍann Coulter describes how she responded, by introducing Celtic and Catholic imagery into her work, to create a popular form of Irish modernism.

Boulle at Blenheim

Among the great treasures in the state rooms at Blenheim Palace is a collection of furniture by André-Charles Boulle, or in his manner, acquired by the Duke of Marlborough in the 1890s. In the second article on these unpublished pieces, Peter Hughes unravels their often complex history.

Philippe de Champaigne & the image of the artist

A self-portrait of Philippe de Champaigne in the Fogg Museum of Art has long been dismissed as a copy of the engraving of the artist’s famous lost Self Portrait of 1688.
Lorenzo Pericolo argues that it is in fact an autograph work of high quality that reveals how Champaigne drew on renaissance art in creating a new approach to portraiture.

Japanese art on a plate

Gabriel P. Weisberg unveils a major discovery: a dinner service commissioned by the jeweller Frédéric Boucheron from Eugène Rousseau in 1873. Painted by Henri Lambert, this extraordinary work vividly demonstrates the impact of Japanese art on French designers.

Reynolds’s Mona Lisa

Part of Mona Lisa’s mystique lies in the difficulty artists over the centuries have had in reproducing her. Michael Burrell discusses the fine copy once owned by Joshua Reynolds, which goes on show at Dulwich Picture Gallery next month. He compares it with the best of the other early copies, revealing details no longer visible in the original.