Cathy's Art Diary

Nice small exhibition of the work of Oxfordshire artists at the Cornerstone in Didcot . The artists involved are Dawn Benson, Lendon Scantlebury and Stuart Roper. Having been born and brought up in Didcot I am stunned that work of this quality and price is being displayed in the town and very impressed at the super new venue in town. I liked Lendon Scantlebury’s work best. He was born on Barbados and he brings the light of that island to the Oxfordshire landscape. If I had £600-£1000 and space on the wall I’d have bought one!

Small exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of Twiggy to mark her 60th birthday last year. It included works by all the main fashion photographers of the late 20th century including Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson. The nicest aspect of this exhibition was that all the labels were written by Twiggy and told you something about the sitting and her relationship with the photographer.

Small exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of portrait drawings bought by the gallery in the last ten years. The centre of the display is formed by a substantial group of portraits by William Rothenstein which include wonderful pictures of Vita Sackville West and her husband Harold Nicolson. I was particularly impressed by the self portrait of Carrington and her sketched for the Lytton Stratchey portrait which hangs in the same room.

Small exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at images of Lady Jane Grey, both possible contemporary ones and Victorian images which moulded her into an image of an idealised woman. This will be a nice companion to the forthcoming National Gallery exhibition on Delacroix’s picture of her execution.

Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of the work of photographer, Jane Bown. These were nice journalistic portraits and included a wonderful one of the Queen actually smiling. With my Bloomsbury leanings I loved the one of Angelica Garnett sitting in the studio at Charleston.

Exhibition for this competition which shows very best in contemporary portrait photography at the National Portrait Gallery . I found it was a bit heavy on Eastern European works and photographers which gave it quite a stolid feeling. However there were some wonderful images. My favourite was “Tiger, Rag, Johnny and Emma” by Martin Usbourne which shows two dog walkers and their clients! As you may realise from this blog I am a sucker for a dog in art! This is from a series on dogs and their owners in Hoxton which I am going to have to Google! Reviews Times Guardian Evening Standard

New portrait at the National Portrait Gallery of Prince William and Prince Harry currently displayed alongside other portraits of the royal family. This is a beautiful picture showing the two young men in uniform but very much as brothers and friends. I think it works better from a distance but you are forced to view it close up due to how popular the gallery is.

Talk by Neil MacGregpr, Director of the British Museum, at the British Museum in the first of a series of winter lectures for the London Review of Books. This was a very amusing event but I did find it wandered around quite a bit. He seemed to spend a lot of time telling us what he was not going to tell us. However once he got onto the politics of objects and how countries use objects to redefine themselves it became fascinating. The funniest story is how the Scots are claiming back the Lewis chess men when they were made in Scandinavia and were en-route to Ireland when they were washed up on shore in Scotland. He also talked about the reworking of museum island in Berlin and the plans for a new museum there to reflect Germany’s new unified and peaceful state.