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Egyptian Revival  

John Wilton-Ely

Neo-classical style of architectural and interior design; as Egyptomania or Egyptiennerie it reached its peak during the late 18th century and early 19th. Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt (1798) coincided with emerging tastes both for monumental and for richly ornamental forms, enhanced by the literary and associational concerns of Romanticism. Unlike its Greek and Gothic counterparts, the Egyptian Revival never constituted a coherent movement with ethical or social implications. Indeed, since its earliest manifestations occurred in the later Roman Empire, the Revival itself can be seen as one in a series of sporadic waves of European taste in art and design (often linked to archaeological inquiry), acting as an exotic foil to the Classical tradition with which this taste was and remains closely involved (see fig.). On a broader plane of inquiry, the study of Egyptian art and architecture has continued to promote a keen awareness of abstraction in design and a decorative vocabulary of great sophistication. These are among the most enduring contributions of ancient Egypt to Western art and design. ...

Article

Glaize, Auguste-Barthélemy  

Jon Whiteley

(b Montpellier, Dec 15, 1807; d Paris, Aug 8, 1893).

French painter. He was trained by Eugène Devéria and Achille Devéria and made his first appearance at the Salon, in 1836, with Luca Signorelli da Cortona (Avignon, Mus. Calvet) and Flight into Egypt (untraced), the first of a number of religious pictures painted in the 1840s in the pleasant, sentimental manner of Eugène Devéria’s religious work. The Humility of St Elizabeth of Hungary (exh. Salon, 1843; Montpellier, St Louis), Conversion of the Magdalene (1845; Nogent-sur-Seine, parish church) and Adoration of the Shepherds (1846; Quesnoy-sur-Airaine, parish church) belong to an idea of the Rococo common in the 1840s. Glaize’s interest in 18th-century French art is also evident in Blood of Venus (exh. 1846) and Picnic (both Montpellier, Mus. Fabre). This element was less obvious in the 1850s. In 1852 he exhibited a scene of the savage heroism of the Women of Gaul: Episode from the Roman Invasion (Autun, Mus. Rolin), one of the first pictures on a theme that appealed to a new interest in the history of Gaul in the Second Empire. Increasingly, he adopted subject-matter favoured by the ...

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Schmidt, Daniel Heinrich  

Stephan Welz

(b Strelitz, Prussia [now Germany], 1741; d Cape Town, Dec 29, 1811).

South African silversmith of German birth. In 1768 he arrived at Cape Town, where he worked as sword-cutler in the service of the Dutch East India Company until 1778. The following year he started his own business. He was the most accomplished of the Cape silversmiths and the first to introduce the Rococo style, although it was always used in a restrained Dutch manner. Towards the end of his career he also produced pieces in a Neo-classical style, probably inspired by silverware brought by English immigrants. His most exuberant designs are silver furniture mounts with a cast floral motif. He was one of the first Cape silversmiths to make such large domestic pieces as tea- and coffee-pots and covered sugar bowls, usually with cast floral finials and supports. The only recorded pair of Cape candlesticks (Cape Town, S. Afr. Cult. Hist. Mus.) is by Schmidt.

S. Welz: Cape Silver and Silversmiths...

Article

Thibault, L(ouis) M(ichel)  

Roger C. Fisher

(b Picquigny, nr Amiens, bapt Paris, Feb 29, 1750; d Cape Town, Nov 3, 1815).

French architect, teacher, engineer and surveyor, active in South Africa. He studied (1774–5) at the Académie Royale d’Architecture, Paris, under Ange-Jacques Gabriel, Richard Mique and Julien-David Le Roy. He then trained as an engineer officer, and in 1781, with the patronage of Colonel C. D. de Meuron, he studied military engineering. He was landed at the Cape of Good Hope in 1783, as a mercenary employed by the Dutch East India Company. Here he was privately commissioned to execute such projects as Papenboom (1786; destr.; see Lewcock, pls 43, 43A), a country house in Newlands, and Saasveldt (1791), a Cape Town residence demolished and rebuilt in 1966 as the Huguenot Memorial Museum at Franschhoek. From this period date the series of Cape Dutch houses conventionally attributed to Thibault and for which he is best known. These include the Groot Constantia reconstruction (1791–3), the Tokai Manor House (...