Hilary Wilson on… Unexpected Egypt
Visitors to stately homes and minor museums will frequently come across isolated ancient Egyptian artefacts with little or no explanation of their provenance.
grand tour
Paper worlds and hidden masterpieces
A small selection of the thousands of drawings compiled by Regency architect Sir John Soane have gone on display in London, among them exquisite works that bring us visions of ancient monuments abroad and of unrealised splendour in England. Lucia Marchini takes a look.
The Romance of Ruins: curator Louise Stewart of Sir John Soane’s Museum discusses the art of the 1764 Ionian expedition
In a recent issue of Minerva magazine, Louise Stewart, Curator of Exhibitions at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, discussed the young artist William Pars’ poetic images of the ruins he encountered on an expedition to Ionia (in modern-day Turkey)…
In search of ancient Ionia
William Pars’s poetic images of the ruins he encountered on an expedition to Ionia and Athens helped shape the taste for Greek styles in 18th-century Britain. Louise Stewart takes us on a journey to Ionia through the eyes of this young artist.
James ‘Athenian’ Stuart
The first volume of The Antiquities of Athens and Other Monuments of Greece (1762) had an impressive 500 subscribers, but its influence was most strongly felt only in the early 19th century, when Greek Revival became the dominant style of British architecture.