English Liberator: William Miller and the Independence of Spanish South America, by John Hemming (Haus): William Miller (1795–1861) is the most important Kentish man you’ve never heard of. The son of a humble baker, Miller served with distinction as a teenager in the British Army in the Peninsular War, before letting us down somewhat by taking part in the Burning of Washington during the War of 1812. Still, he more than made up for his youthful erring when he joined José de San Martín’s Army of the Andes in 1817 and quickly became the trusted right hand of just about every hero of South American independence, including the intrepid admiral Thomas Cochrane, the Chilean independence leader Bernardo O’Higgins, and the Venezuelan statesman Simón Bolívar. Earning the rank of general at the age of twenty-seven, “Guillermo” played a pivotal role in the Battle of Ayacucho (1824), which ended Spanish rule in South America. Miller’s life, now related for the first time in full by the distinguished historian of Latin America John Hemming, reads more like an adventure novel than a biography and reminds us that great men can come from the unlikeliest of places. —AG
“Raphael: Sublime Poetry,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through June 28): “How generous and kind Heaven sometimes proves to be when it brings together in a single person the boundless riches of its treasures.” So begins Vasari in his chapter on the life of Raphael. Now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, these boundless riches are on full display in “Raphael: Sublime Poetry.” Sure to be the blockbuster of the season, the exhibition curated by Carmen Bambach follows up on the revelations of her 2017 “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer” and her 2019 study Leonardo Da Vinci Rediscovered with more than 170 of Raphael’s masterpieces and studies. For centuries, Raphael was the most prized artist among the tre grandi maestri who, alongside Leonardo and Michelangelo, form the trinità del Rinascimento. Now this artist with an “innately gentle humanity” again takes pride of place in an exhibition that reveals how “nature created him as a gift to the world.” Look for a full review by Karen Wilkin in our June issue. —JP
Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov, directed by Michael DeFilippis, at the West End Theater (through April 12):There’s a lot of Vanya about these days, so it’s good to see Chekhov’s rarer Ivanov hit the off-Broadway stage courtesy of the New American Ensemble in Michael DeFilippis’s electric, gimmick-less production in a small church-theater space on the Upper West Side. Mike Labbadia’s wiseguy turn as the parasitic estate-manager Borkin is a comic highlight, counterbalancing Zachary Desmond in the title role as a depressed, liberal landowner who resents his consumptive wife, Anna (Quinn Jackson), a convert from Judaism. Premiered in 1887, Chekhov’s first major play is rough around the edges but contains many of the raw ingredients of his later, more successful dramas: family dysfunction, downward mobility, the ennui of country life—and the proverbial loaded gun. —IS
The Enchanting Interiors of Bunny Mellon: Paintings by Snowy Campell (Rizzoli): It was in New York that Paul and Bunny Mellon could most indulge in “looking at pictures” for potential purchase—said to be their favorite pastime (rather a claim, as the two were not short on pastimes). But who can doubt the truth of the assertion when one considers the bequests made by the Mellons to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Yale (Paul Mellon founded the Yale Center for British Art), and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts? Take a few items at random—Mary Cassatt’s Little Girl in a Blue Armchair (National Gallery of Art), George Stubbs’s Lion Attacking a Horse (Yale Center for British Art), or Raoul Dufy’s Artist’s Studio, Perpignan (VMFA)—and you get a sense of the breadth and depth of the couple’s collecting interests. Their numerous houses were the original sites where these great works hung, in sumptuous but livable rooms that owed their allure to Bunny Mellon’s keen taste and ability to collaborate with dealers, decorators, and architects. The Enchanting Interiors of Bunny Mellon, new from Rizzoli,brings these rooms and objects to life through photographs, essays, and most of all watercolors by the late Snowy Campbell, who between 1970 and 1976 documented the Mellons’ world in winsome pictures that are themselves worthy of collection and study. —BR
TNC Events:
Poetry party with David Lehman
Thursday, April 9
If you have not already, become a member of the Friends and Young Friends of The New Criterion here.
Dispatch:
“A class act,” by Robert Steven Mack. On “Balanchine: Twin Masterpieces” at American Contemporary Ballet, Los Angeles.
From the Archives:
“A toga for Washington,” by Fred Baumann (April 1984). On Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment, by Garry Wills.
