The Pinkney Near Memorial Lecture in Art History
Dr. Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the Department of European Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, will speak on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 8 p.m. Dr. Merling's subject will be Théodore Géricault and the museum's recent acquisition of works by that artist.
The Pinkney Near Memorial Lecture in Art History was initiated in 2004 by art6 gallery to honor the memory of the first chief curator of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and features noted art historians. This is the seventh speaker in the series.
The lecture is open to the public, with a suggested donation of $5 to help support art6 gallery.
Gericault’s Horses:
Between Nature and Man
While Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) is best known for his Raft of the Medusa, an immense canvas representing the gruesome aftermath of a shipwreck, he left an enormous output of paintings, drawings and prints of horses. While other equestrian artists such as Stubbs concentrated on anatomy, Géricault sought to understand the psychology and living conditions of the animal.
This lecture will consider these often-moving and sympathetic images of man's relationship to the horse within the larger context of Géricault's career by using examples from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts collections.
Above: Théodore Géricault, Mare and Foal (La Jument et son poulain), 1822,
Lithograph
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The George Corbin Harwell and Kathleen Leigh Williams Harwell Fund.
Photo: Katherine Wetzel © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
About Dr. Merling
Dr. Mitchell Merling is the Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the European Art Department at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He received his B.A. from Vassar College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University. His dissertation concerned the art theory and social milieu of the Venetian 17th century critic Marco Boschini.
He has held numerous fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, and he was a contributor to that institution's Systematic Catalogue of Italian Baroque Painting. He was also an author of the Guardi sections of the NGA/ Royal Academy exhibition catalogue, The Glory of Venice.
He has been a curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, where he authored the handbook to the collection.