Time to say Goodbye

All good things must come to an end, and this project is sadly closing down. The project editors, Barbara Pezzini, with Alison Bennett, Nicola Kennedy, Madeleine Pearce and Giulia della Rosa, would like to thank all the readers of the Burlington Index Blog. The Index Blog stemmed from the Burlington Magazine Index, a digital and …

A European Journal: The Burlington Magazine in February 1949

Priced at 3 shillings and 6 pence – the equivalent of £5 in 2017 – with a grey-azure, 'broken blue', cover and only black and white photography, The Burlington Magazine of February 1949, appears at first glance as belonging to another time (illustrated left). Its austere look and few advertising pages remind the reader of …

‘Caravaggiomania’ in The Burlington Magazine, part II: 1903-1951

by Noti Klagka  This blog focuses on articles published on Caravaggio in The Burlington Magazine before the 1951 Milan exhibition organized by Roberto Longhi, which transformed Caravaggio studies. As illustrated in the previous blog, during the second half of the twentieth century, the Burlington contributed much to the shaping of Caravaggio’s oeuvre by paying close …

Herbert Read, ‘Pope of Modern Art’ and Editor of The Burlington Magazine (1933-1939)

In 2007 Benedict (Ben) Read, esteemed art historian and son of Herbert Read, wrote an essay about his father’s editorship of The Burlington Magazine.[1] More recently, he kindly gave the Index Blog permission to re-publish some excerpts from it. Sadly Ben Read died on 20 October 2016 and was unable to edit personally this abridged …

‘The Labours of the Months’ (1923): Herbert Read’s first article for The Burlington Magazine

Surrealist poet, war hero, militant anarchist, art critic and Editor of The Burlington Magazine from 1933 to 1938. Herbert Read, the son of a Yorkshire farmer who became one of the country’s most influential writers, is an intellectual figure who looms large in British history and about whom much has been written. Recently, art historian …

Margaret Jourdain and The Burlington Magazine

In June 1903, when the Burlington Magazine was only 3 months old, it published a detailed article on the lace collection of Mabel Chermside, ‘Mrs. Alfred Morrison’. This was a detailed and richly illustrated account, which distinguished different kinds of laces, stiches and points. The article was a perfect example of the new art historical …

Working for Benedict Nicolson at The Burlington Magazine in the 1950s

We were able to gain insights on the working practices of the Burlington thanks to a former Burlington staff member. Patricia Heatley (illustrated right, in a 1956 photograph), a professional secretary who studied typing and shorthand at Hornsey College of Art in London, worked as assistant to Fred Hipkin for six years in the 1950s. In this …

Anarchy and art dealing in Paris: Robert Dell (1865-1940), first Editor of The Burlington Magazine.

Roger Fry is famously associated with the inception of The Burlington Magazine, but credit must also be given to its first Editor, Robert Dell [photographed here]. A Christian socialist writer in London, then Anarchist art dealer in Paris, and finally exiled political journalist in America, Dell’s life was lived outside a conventional professional path and …

A fascination for the archive: Herbert Horne, Aby Warburg and The Burlington Magazine in the early 20th century

Aby Warburg (1866-1929) was a German-Jewish scholar whose research was focused on iconography, on the legacy of the classical world and on the transmission of classical representation through to the Renaissance. Warburg left a relatively small corpus of writings in German and he did not write anything for the Burlington. He may, therefore, appear to …

The Burlington Magazine and the National Gallery Cleaning Controversy (1947-1963)

Between 1940 and 1965 The Burlington Magazine published in its pages one of the most complex and long lasting controversies in its history. The controversy regarded the conservation of oil paintings, and especially the different methodologies, practical and theoretical, on how to approach the cleaning of pictures. The characters involved were of the highest calibre: …