Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at Chichester Cathedral looking at Christianity in Sussex over 950 years. The show was mainly information boards but with excellent objects in display cases underneath. The show became a history of Christianity in Britain with references to Sussex where appropriate and was struggling in places to introduce themes they wanted to cover like multiculturalism. I’m all for addressing these but not shoehorning them into a historic narrative where the point is that these issues weren’t addressed at the time. I wonder if a section on the modern church might have addressed these better. Given the show was in a cathedral I thought the language could have been more active. Rather than saying ‘Christians believe’ how about saying ‘we believe’ Closed 19 November 2025 but I saw it on 23 December 2025

Excellent online lecture from the National Gallery looking at the life and work of Giovanni Bellini. Jo Walton, guided us through the career of this 15th century artist from Venice starting with his training in his father’s studio alongside his brother, Gentile and discusses the use of their father’s collection of drawings. She took us though his devotional works and his major altarpieces. We also looked at his amazing portraits. She analysed the main works with an emphasis on those held by the gallery itself. I am going to spend a couple of month’s in Venice later this year and suspect I will go into trainspotter mode to tick off all the Bellini’s there.

Comprehensive and entertaining online lecture from the National Gallery looking at various aspects of colour. Artist and art historian, Gayna Pelham, guided us through the psychology and science of colour looking at the emotions which are linked to colour and how our eye perceives it. She went on to outline the main art historical theories of colour before moving on to the difference between colour and pigments and the development of the latter. At times the talk felt a bit random but as I typed it up it took more form and I realised it had covered a lot of ground. I loved the touch that Pelham changed her jacket to new colours as the talk progressed as she filled the screen with a slide. It took me a while to notice but it told you how your brain is telling you something has changed but it takes a moment to realise what.

Charming exhibition at the Royal Watercolour Society of work by Tony Foster exploring ideas of time. The works, spanning a number of journey's and his home county of Cornwall,   look at four types of time, geological, biological and human as well as fleeting moments. The delicate paintings were often framed with samples of rock or flora or paintings of leaves. Closed 20 December 2025 Review Times

Interesting online lecture from the Foundling Museum discussing an image of John Blanke, a black trumpeter at the court of Henry VIII. Michael Ohajuru introduced us to Blanke who is the first person of black African descent for whom we have a historical record and an image. He explained how black trumpeters where not new but had been known in the Holy Roman Empire and took us through some images of them. He then led us though the “Great Roll of the Tournament at Westminster in February 1511” explaining what the event was and how it was depicted. In particular he pointed out the two images of Blanke. Finally he looked at the documentary evidence we have on Blanke including records of him playing at Henry VII’s funeral and Henry VIII’s coronation. The talk was a great example of using images and documents together to give a insight into history.

Complex online lecture from the National Gallery speculating on the influence of Darwin’s ideas on the artist Georges Seurat. Emmelyn Buttterfield, Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, talked us through this complex argument focusing on Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jette” of 1886. Noting that the ideas of Darwin were being widely discussed and that the anatomist at the Ecole de Beaux Artes was an advocate of them she outlined visual links in the picture. This argument mainly revolved around the figure of the monkey as Darwin was often depicted as a monkey in cartoons and in some examples had a similar serpentine tail to the one in the painting. She also discussed how the woman holding the monkey’s lead can be seen as a sexualised figure mirroring ideas of reproduction in Darwin. As you may have guessed from my tone I didn’t fully understand the argument and felt it may have been conflation of ideas around at the time which may not have been c...