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 …

‘Caravaggiomania’ in The Burlington Magazine – Part I: the late 20th century

by Noti Klagka This post explores the scholarship on Michelangelo da Caravaggio in the pages of The Burlington Magazine and reveals the crucial role played by the Magazine in the critical reception of this artist. Caravaggio has definitely been the most popular 17th century Italian artist published in the Burlington: 59 main articles and 210 …

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 …

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: …

A lithograph by Charles Shannon for The Burlington Magazine (1906)

Every now and then, The Burlington Magazine reproduced works of art of which the originals were for sale to the subscribers. In December 1906 Charles Shannon contributed an original lithograph, called 'The Morning Visit'. The Lithographs of Charles Shannon, a catalogue compiled by Paul Delaney in 1978, lists this lithograph, which was issued separately, as …

Lucia Moholy. Photographer, art critic and reviewer for The Burlington Magazine (1962-1979)

Photographer Lucia Moholy was born Lucia Schulz on 18 January 1894 in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Moholy’s background and first career was as art historian and writer: she studied philosophy, philology and art history, and she worked as an editor and lecturer in Prague. In 1920 she met the Hungarian artist László …

The soul thief: John Singer Sargent and the Burlington Magazine

This year is the 90th anniversary of John Singer Sargent’s death and the National Portrait Gallery of London commemorated him with an exhibition, Sargent. Portraits of artists and friends, curated by Richard Ormond. This show is a journey across Sargent’s personal and artistic life, through which the intense rapport between the painter and his sitters …