Cathy's Art Diary

Plenary lecture to mark the end of the first week of the Courtauld Summer School . This was given by John House who had recently retired from the Courtauld and looked at the work on Van Gogh focusing on his time at the Yellow House and comparing his outlook on art to Gauguin’s. Van Gogh had invited Gauguin to Arles thinking they thought the same way about art but this lecture pointed out the differences and the almost inevitable conflicts which emerged.

A nice exhibition at the National Gallery examining the Acts of Mercy pictures by Frederick Cayley Robinson which were rescued by the Wellcome Trust from the Middlesex Hospital when it was demolished. It was lovely to see these pictures again as I’d last known them at the Middlesex when I visited a friend having an operation. The exhibition put them into context with examples for the sort of work Cayley Robinson had seen in Italy and based these on alongside other works by him.

The week has gone so fast! You just get a rhythm and routine and it’s over! The morning’s lectures begin with looking at the landscape tradition in the Italian and German Renaissance. It looked at how the practice of landscape came from the Netherlands to Italy and then fed into Germany. We saw how in Germany there was a culture of representing the forest and discussed the allegory of this. The second lecture took the same area and period and looked at portraits. Again the Netherlands led the way but we looked in detail at how Venice developed this tradition. We discussed the social changes which were reflected by the growth in portrait painting. The afternoon trip was the National Gallery where we looked at the wonderful set of Cranachs there moving on to the Holbeins and the Altdorfers what may be the first landscape study in art. We then looked at the Italian side concentrating on the Titians. So what have I learn this week? Sadly that I’m not sure I like German art! I now understan...

Fantastic exhibition at the British Museum bringing together the Italian Renaissance drawings from its own collection at that of the Uffizi. Where do you start?! Possibly by saying I was there for 2 1/2/ hours! It was very good at looking at why artists drew and the different techniques used while still letting the pictures speak as works of art. It was well paced and never felt too crowded. Every artist you’d want to see was there and actually I loved seeing the Titian, Carpaccio’s, Signorelli’s etc more than the big hitters like Leonardo! It was great to see the Bellini sketchbook from the British Museum as it’s such an iconic Renaissance object. Reviews Times Daily Telegraph Evening Standard

Today was a bit different as we did the gallery bit in the morning by going to the Strang Print Room at UCL. This was fascinating as I’d never come across it before. Open to the public it givens access to UCL’s art collection including the archive of the Slade. On this course we were looking at prints by Durer and his contemporaries. It was a great chance to compare the different techniques he used wood cut, engraving and etching. I loved getting up really close to the Madonna and the monkey and seeing all the subtlety in it. The afternoons’ lectures began with Lucas Cranach taking him as a comparison to Durer and looking at why he painted I the style he did when there is evidence that he could use a finer approach. After tea we looked at the work of Grunewald, in particular the Grunewald altar piece, again as comparison to Durer.

Exhibition at the V&A in which the museum invited architects to submit proposals for structures that examine notions of refuge and retreat and selected seven submissions to construct at full-scale. I must admit I wasn’t too sure about this exhibition. I didn't really understand what it was trying to do but I must admit I only had time to see 4 of the works. I did love the work in the gardens which was meant to be a climbing structure but did remind me from a distance of a big elephant. Also the big book tower at the bottom of the stairs to the library. I want one! Reviews Times

Gosh this enjoying yourself is really tiring! Today’s lectures merged into each other either side of the coffee break. First was a talk on Gothic sculpture in Germany which was fascinating as I knew nothing about it before. It focused on the big altar pieces and looked at the difference between the polychrome and monochrome ones and why each was used. After coffee we looked at why this style continued so long in Germany and how the Renaissance style began to creep in and why. The afternoon was a trip to the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries to look at the German sculpture there and the little bit of Venetian. We then went upstairs to look at how Durer prints had influenced design and other forms of carving.

Another really stimulating day at the Courtauld Summer school. Today’s lectures look at art in Venice when Durer arrived. It focused on the use of colour in the pictures and in particular how they used colour to create light effects. The second lecture looked particularly at Durer in Venice. It examined what the Venetian’s knew of him before he arrived. They knew his woodcuts which by this time were circulating throughout Europe. We then looked at the work he did while he was there focusing on the “Madonna of the Rose Garlands” painted for the German church. Finally we looked at what he took away from the trip. The afternoon was a visit to the National Gallery. We began with the small picture of St Jerome by Durer which I’d never really looked at before and moved onto the Venetian pictures. Although I’d looked at many of these works on the course last year this put them in a new context.

An insightful small exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery which examines the role of works created from a stand point of faith in a more secular world. The exhibition is curated by students on the Courtaulds’s MA in Curating the Art Museum. I liked a small room with a small devotional picture and ivory which put them back in their original context of an object to be examined at close quarters and in detail.

Small exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery looking at works they have acquired since moving to their Somerset House site 20 years ago. It included a Joshua Reynolds of Cupid and Psyche which I last saw on a trip to the Courtauld conservation section when it was on an easel being cleaned! There were some pretty water colours and a focus on pictures of the building when it was used by the Royal Academy. There was an interesting room of20th acquisitions and gifts which included works by most major contemporary artists. It is lovely to see that it is a growing collection.

It’s so nice to be back at the Courtauld Summer School and to see old friends from previous years. This year is the Durer and Venice course lead by Dr Richard Williams. I chose it as a friend has joined me this year. He wanted to do Italian art, I wanted to do Northern so this seemed a good compromise. It’s proving to be fascinating as we bring enough visual knowledge of Venice to it but the Durer side is new and exciting. The first day’s lectures set the scene. The first looked at the background of Germany and Italy at this time and the relationship between the two. The second looked at how Durer related to the Italian renaissance before he went to Venice, what he knew about it and where he was in his career. As ever there was a gallery talk given by one of the research students. This year I opted for early medieval sculpture which was fascinating. The student (whose name I failed to get) had worked on a large Madonna and child in room 1 of the Courtauld Gallery and managed to ascerta...

Lecture at the National Gallery on the collection of Charles I. The lecture was in the ‘Wine and Nibbles’ series and was given by Norman Coady, a free lance art historian. It was a hot night which slightly threw the speaker but things improved as the air conditioning kicked in. It was a fascinating insight into the works acquired by Charles I either inherited, purchased or given to him as gifts. It was amazing how many great works of art were in England in the early 17th century. Despite the fact that I’ve always seen myself on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, maybe if it hadn’t happened we would have an art gallery bigger than the Prado and Louvre put together! I would like to have heard a bit more about the disposal of the works and reacquisition of some of them.

Lecture at the National Gallery given by Betsy Wieseman on the current exhibition ‘ Close Examination’ . Betsy is curator of the exhibition and of Dutch painting at the gallery. The lecture focused on a few of the pictures in their exhibition and their stories. I was particularly interested in why the gallery bought some of the pictures which were later proved quite easily to not be by the old master they were assumed to be by such at the ‘Holbein’ they bought because that were so desperate to have a good Holbein. The lecture made me want to revisit the exhibition even though I had only just been!

Interesting exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the scientific work done there and how it has shed light on some of the gallery’s works. It covers works which were bought as the work of an old master and have since been found not to be such as a rather odd pictures believed to be a Botticelli. Some of these are fakes others were just misinterpreted. Another gallery focuses more on success stories such as Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks which have been identified by scientific work. The exhibition provides an interesting way of relooking at pictures and I want to read more about some of the works. Reviews Times Guardian Daily Telegraph Independent Evening Standard