Unknown artist, "Arch of Titus," 1770s. (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Museo)
Unknown artist, "Portrait of an Unknown Man," ca. 1777.
(Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Museo)
The story of the “Westmorland” — a British merchant ship laden with
works of art that was captured by French warships in 1779 — is
chronicled in a new exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art.
Traveling
from Livorno, Italy, the “Westmorland” was captured by two French
warships and escorted to Málaga in southern Spain, where the ship was
declared a prize of war. The contents of the ship — art purchased by
young British travelers on the Grand Tour of Italy — were acquired by a
Spanish trading company, which in turn sold most of the works of art to
King Carlos III of Spain.
“The English Prize: The Capture of the ‘Westmorland’, an Episode of the Grand Tour” brings
together many of the works aboard the “Westmorland,” including about
140 paintings, watercolors, architectural drawings, sculptures, rare
books, maps, and souvenirs. The exhibition forms “a complete cross
section of Grand Tour collecting at the height of this cultural
phenomenon,” note to the organizers.
Much of the material aboard
the “Westmorland” was subsequently presented by the king to the Real
Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, and many of the
objects remain in the Real Academia today.
“The English Prize” has
been co-organized by the Yale Center for British Art and the Paul
Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, in association with
the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, and the
Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford. Scott
Wilcox, chief curator of art collections and senior curator of prints
and drawings at the center, and María Dolores Sánchez-Jáuregui Alpañés,
senior research fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British
Art and affiliate of the Real Academia, curated the exhibition.
The
exhibition will be on view to the public Oct. 4-Jan. 13 at the Yale
Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St. For museum hours and directions,
visit the
Yale Center for British Art or call 203-432-2800.
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