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A Room of Its Own
November/December 2005
photograph ©Mark Morosse
With the help of upholsterers' bills, real estate agent reports, and newspaper accounts, the Center for British Art has recreated Sir John Leicester's 1818 exhibition of Gainsborough's celebrated Cottage Door. Visitors can see the work as it was first displayed to the public: in a round room with red upholstered walls, dim Argand lamps, large mirrors, and a blue-and-white tented ceiling. The room, which Leicester created in his London townhouse, gives the viewer a "quiet, meditative encounter with the work of art," says Ann Bermingham, guest curator of the exhibit. The painting is on loan to the center through December 31.
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