Cathy's Art Diary

Remarkable exhibition at the National Gallery bringing together the six mythological pictures Titian painted for Philip II of Spain. I had been so looking forward to this show but I ended up doing a rushed look round on the way back from collecting a last few things from work prior to starting to work from home for the Coronavirus so I must admit my heart wasn’t in it. I know all the paintings well from books but it was lovely to see the National Gallery’s work back alongside the companion pieces from Madrid, Boston and the Wallace Collection and a nice touch to include Apsley House’s Danae which is now thought to be the original painted for Philip. The paintings were described well, outlining the story as well as when and where they were delivered to Philip. At the time I wasn’t sure about the colour the gallery was painted but seeing it again on videos I realised it picks out the red he uses and there is a little bit of that colour on every picture. The curator of the e...

Interesting display at the Wallace Collection featuring superb Murgal sword to complement their Forgotten Masters exhibition. The sword was made by Muhammed Baqir Moshhadi known for a handful to top class blades. There are four known identical swords in this pattern which featured dragon headed guards. It was made for Safdar Jan, a Turco-Iranian First Minister of the Murgal Emperor. The design shows Indian and Iranian influences. It was hard to see the enamel design on the scabbard but there was useful enlargement of it next to the sword. The dragon head design had an almost Anglo-Saxon feel to it.

Delightful exhibition at the Wallace Collection looking at the art commissioned by the East India Company by local artists. I love Mughal painting and was fascinated to see the combination of that style of art with subject commissioned by the British in India. I like the meticulous detail and occasional quizzical take on a subject that is strange to the artist. The commentary pointed out that each region had its own style and gave a good outline of the main artists. The show also traced the changing relationship between the two countries with a real sense of assimilation in the early years including the wonderful “Portrait of Sir John Wombwell Smoking a Hookah” going through the tenser pre-mutiny period when the British tried to dominate more. There was a room dedicated to an album of natural history pictures commissioned by Sir Elijah Impey by Bhawani Daso Ram Das which took seven years to complete. I particularly liked the looming pictures of bats and the detailed ones of b...

Sumptuous exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery looking at the life and collecting of George IV. The show started with some wonderful portraits of George’s siblings including some on copper by Peter Edward Stroehing. These were gentle, intimate pictures and made you want to go and look up what had happened to them all. There were also some wonderful cartoons of the time many of them collected by George himself. In the large gallery there were recreated decorative scheme with over the top furniture and ceramics. These were show with some of the full length portraits from the Waterloo cycle celebrating the victorious generals and monarchs, these included a wonderful portrait of Pope Pious VII by Thomas Lawrence. The third room looked in detail at Carlton House, given to George for his 21 st birthday, which he renovated and filled with objects and paintings, many acquired in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It was all very ornate but it was fascinating to see which pictures ...

Interesting exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of new acquisitions in response to recent social, cultural and political events.  Curators had looked at gaps in the collection, particularly around diversity, and purchased and commissioned work to fill those gaps. Areas covering included women, BAME sitters and people from the LBGTQ community. I was fascinated by a series called 209 Women, an all-female initiative with female sitters and photographers. A lovely example from this was a picture of Seema Kennedy MP by Julia Fullerton-Batten in the House of Commons corridor standing on a box in a suit looking over her shoulder. There was a lovely contemplative picture of Stormzy by Olivia Rose and four by the same photographer of women in the art world including Maria Belshaw, head of the Tate. My favourite, shown here, was a lovely windswept photograph of Laura Kuenssberg by Richard Ansett in one of her characteristic brightly coloured coats. Closes 28 June ...

Poignant display at the National Portrait Gallery looking at pictures of Florence Nightingale to mark 200 years since her birth. In just a couple of display cases the pictures explored not only her work in the Crimean War but also her later life as a campaigner but invalid. It looked at how she was upheld as an exemplar of female virtue but had an aversion to the idea of celebrity and so did not sit for many portraits. This delightful sketch was by James Barrett, who was sent to the Crimea in 1856 to paint a portrait of Nightingale. She wouldn’t sit for him so instead he had to rely on sketches like this make of her while she worked. The resulting picture “The Mission of Mercy” was hanging in the room next door. As well as a medal there were also two photographs of her as a young woman and aged 71 looking Queen Victoria like. Nearby stood a lovely bust of her and the whole display was in a room of portraits of significant Victorian women which was a nice touch. Closes ...

Charming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looking at how David Hockney has used life drawing throughout his career. What made this charming was the show concentrated on just three people plus self-portraits. The self-portraits began and ended the show with rooms in-between devoted to Celia Birtwell, the designer and a life long friend, Gregory Evans, a x-lover and now a curator and Marcus Payne, a master printer Hockney has worked with for a number of years. There is also a small room devoted to vey touching drawings of his mother. I loved the pictures of Birtwell which incorporated her own designs and the commentary did talk about how the two artists influenced each other. It was beautiful to watch the sitters age and a lovely touch to end with a wall of drawings done them all less than a year ago. The drawings were beautiful, and it was clever to take one aspect of an artists work and use it to show the trajectory of their career however what I most took from it ...

Nice exhibition at the Mall Galleries of work by Welsh artists. This was an interesting selection of work of various subjects in various styles. I liked Anne Kear’s long seascapes, David Humprey’s grey townscapes and a beautiful still life of a glass vase by Mary Lace. Pictured thought is Aberaeron Harbour by Alice Tenant as it reminded me of happy family holidays and the wonderful honey ice cream you used to be able to buy there.   Closed 8 March 2020.

Delightful exhibition at the Mall galleries of 100 pictures by Bryan Senior. This was a lovely selection of pictures in different genres. My favourites some lovely Welsh landscapes in muted colours and his townscapes particularly those of the people in the Great Court at the British Museum. I love the way he cuts of people and scenes like a photograph. The pictures shown was a nostalgic one for me of rooftops in York. Closes 22 March 2020

Interesting exhibition at the Mall Galleries of portraits of theatre people by members of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.  The show covered a wide range of performers including actors, musicians, dancers, playwrights and burlesque performers. Some of the work had a rather old fashioned feel to it but there was a portfolio boards to help people who might be looking to commission a work. I loved Anthony William’s “Antonia Looking Up” done in egg tempura where you could see all the tiny brush stokes making up the image. I also liked June Medua’s picture of Max Wall, a full length portrait showing the serious side of the comedian and, the picture shown here, of drag artist Earl Grey as himself and his alter ego Pearl by Melissa Scott-Miller. Closes 29 March 2020

Excellent course at the National Gallery on painting in the Netherlands in the 17 th century. This course ran over three Saturday mornings and was led by Chantal Brotherton-Ratcliffe. She is a very engaging speaker and seemed delighted that a course which was due to be run for a small group in the seminar room had to be moved to the lecture hall because of numbers. Week one looked at portraits and went through the reasons people commissioned portraits and the different styles. She had wonderful photographs with lots of good details. In doing this she also went though the reasons why there was such a high demand for art in this period. Week 2 was genre painting and we had a romp through the various subjects with interesting insights into their symbolism. I often find these work’s quite a turn off in galleries as there are acres of them but now I know a bit more about them I will look more carefully and I’ve already had a walk round the Wallace Collection’s collection. ...

Joyous exhibition at Hasting Contemporary of new work by Anne Ryan. These were cut-outs or 3D paintings of what seemed to be dancing figures arranged on high tables throughout the room. They seemed to fill the space and you could walk between them giving as feeling of being at a fun noisy party. I loved their sense of movement and fun. Closes 29 March 2020

Charming exhibition at Hastings Contemporary of new work done specifically for the gallery by Quentin Blake. Blake is a patron of the gallery and this is evidently the latest in a series of shows for the space featuring flying people and creations. In two galleries either side of a window with a lovely view of the sea this show had a light whimsical feel. I loved the gentle pastel wash on the drawings and their sense of freedom. Closes 22 March 2020

Disjointed exhibition at Hastings Contemporary showcasing the work of eight contemporary artists. Curated by Anne Ryan, the artist of another show in the gallery, the works were selected for their sense of join and a practice of prolonged making and craft. The title refers to a ”metaphorical 4am of deep thinking that the artists attain in their thinking-thought-making approach to their work”. I must admit I’m not sure I got that from the work. This is the first time I’d been to Hastings Contemporary and for me it had a similar problem to Tate Modern, the art had to compete with the stunning views from the windows. In this case I’m afraid their windows won. I did however like Anna Brass’s “Dazzle Cathedral” a 3D effect flat church in carpet, honestly it was better than it sounds. I also loved Freya Guest’s small usually shaped paintings including the still life “Asparagus and Egg Linguine”.  Sorry I forgot who this picture was by but it was rather fun. Closes 22 Mar...

Thin exhibition at Hastings Contemporary Gallery looking at the effect of the Second World War on the work of three artists.  The show featured Edward Burra, Stanley Spencer and Graham Sutherland but I was disappointed that there was only one Spencer, although is was a good Resurrection picture I’d not seen before. There were some lovely Sutherland’s mainly on loan from Pallant House Gallery and interesting Burra’s.  I thought there could have been a bit more commentary on the effects of the war. What was there was good but again it seemed a bit thin. It seemed to lack an overriding narrative. Still as I said some great pictures. Closes 29 March 2020 Reviews   Times Telegraph

Tranquil exhibition at Pace of three new works by James Turrell. These works are presented in booths and feature elliptical and circular shapes with a glass surface animated by LED which change colour slowly and unperceptively, but you have moments in front of them when you realise they are different that they were a few minutes ago. I found this work very relaxing as it made you stop and take a moment to watch something change slowly and it emptied your mind of random thoughts. Closed 7 March 2020 Review   Times

Dour but lovely exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the life and work of the Belgium artist Léon Spilliaert. From the advertising for this show I feared it might be quite depressing, with quite a Munch like feel to a lot of the work, but a lot of the pictures were beautiful and insightful and more colourful than I had imagined. I loved the first room of self-portraits from the very realistic to the more impressionistic with hollow eyes and one a complete silhouette. I liked a picture in this section of his studio showing the glass roof, a work room as self-portrait. I also loved the intense seascapes, wonderful studies in blue and green which almost showed nothing and yet you knew what they were. Alongside these were pictures of women on the shoreline which he saw on insomniac walks around Ostend. There were some Modernist pictures of an airship from strange angles which he was commissioned to paint including this one of it in its hangar, and some beautiful, almost C...

Overwhelming exhibition at the Royal Academy of Picasso’s work on paper. I say overwhelming as it covered Picasso’s whole career and hence also became a show on the developments and changes in his style in general. Although I loved the show I felt it was too much to cover in one sitting. As ever with Picasso’s art, it lost me around about Guernica. I loved the early rooms and am always stunned at what a fantastic draftsman he was, I loved this self portrait sketch. I liked the way the show included a few paintings to illustrate the trajectory of his work and in the first room it was lovely to see La Vie and various studies for it. There was a room devoted to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon which was a such a visual shock as you entered it that you realised what a revolutionary picture it was in its time. Although the work itself had not travelled, there was a good full-sized reproduction and lots of wonderful studies for it so you got a really good idea of the creative process. A...

Interesting exhibition at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery of prints by Robert Motherwell. Motherwell made prints throughout his career as an abstract expressionist and this show covered from early experimental work to the sets he made with Ken Tyler. I must admit I’m not a great expressionist fan and I found gesture worked less well in prints as I felt distanced from the artist, however there I did like the collage effect ones including cigarette packets. Closed 7 March 2020

Colourful exhibition at White Cube Masons’ Yard of work by Bram Bogart, mainly from the 1960s and 70s. These were huge paintings with the thickest paint I’ve ever seen! Side on there were about 6 inches wide. They are painting as sculpture as he often seems to have ladler the paint onto the canvas then pushed an arm or an implement through it to create great gouges. I loved this colourful one shown which was about 6 x 4 foot so the dollops of paint were about a foot across.   It reminded me of plastercine. Closes 7 March 2020

Interesting exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the career of the 17th century Dutch artist Nicolaes Maes. Maes trained in Rembrandt’s studio and the show showed how this reflected in his early work but how he adapted his style throughout his career to reflect the fashion of the city he was working in. The first room looked at this Rembrandt influence including a large painting of Christ Blessing the Children and copies he made of picture of the Holy family by his master. My favourite section was the central one which looked at his time in Dordrecht when he painted genre pictures, mainly of women in interiors, which showed an innovative approach to portraying space and a remarkable clarity. I loved this picture of a girl threading a needle with its close observation of this action. In 1673 he returned to Amsterdam and started painting what to me were slightly overblown portraits often with sitters in fantasised clothes. I was fascinated though to see some of ...

Brilliant talk at the Courtauld for members of the Friends discussing the progress with their renovation project, Courtauld Connects. The talk was given by Stephanie Hall, the project director, who was very engaging and made the subject come alive. She grouped the talk around the materials used from stone to wood looking at how they have sourced new materials where older ones need replacing and things they have discovered by doing that replacing.   She got very excited about the different suppliers she had met. I was fascinated at the old, reused Palace stones they have found in the walls including the graffiti found on some pieces. Also the excavation work they have done when building the foundations fort a new staircase which have revealed rubbish pits from various era of the site including from whenit was a Saxon port. Most exciting to a Bloomsbury fan like me was the new Bloomsbury room planned to showcase the collection of Roger Fry of the art and Omega object...

Confused exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the design and influence of cars. I admit I don’t drive and can’t really tell one car from another except by colour so I suspected this might not be a show for me. It covered so many aspects of the subject from the design of cars themselves, to their effect on marketing, how they changed the landscape with more roads, their invention of mass production and their influence on design. If it had focused on just a few aspects it might have worked better. The design of the show itself was clever with the large cars around the edge and along the middle of the huge space and the display’s weaving their way around the rest of the space. I loved the way some of the displays were modeled on car bonnets and that any clothes were shown on crash test dummies. There were some lovely snippets in the show such as the handbag shown here which was designed for the Doge la Femme in 1955, aimed at women with a pale pink inter...

Fabulous exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum examining the history of the kimono and how it still influences fashion today. I admit I thought this show might take me about an hour but I staggered out after well over 2 hours having taken so many photos and learnt so much. The show started with the origins of the kimono in Japan but pointed that it has not been the unchanging garment we imagine and looked at the subtle changes over the centuries.   The idea of the garment was that the body wasn’t important but that it provided a large flat surface. There were some wonderful examples of Japanese kimono’s which were displayed beautifully to show off the amazing fabrics and embroidery. I also loved the prints showing kimono shops which showed you the marketing and economics of them. The middle section of the show looked at the kimono’s influence in the west starting with the arrival of the Dutch East India Company in Japan. As I’ve recently done a course in the ...

Strange but beautiful exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at the work of fashion photographer Tim Walker. I started thinking it was an interesting but slightly dull show as the first room was a standard white gallery room well described but fairly ordinary. It did set up the themes of the show and Walker’s technique of building elaborate sets for his work but you’re not sure how the show is going to maintain interest for more than one room. Then you turn a corner and you are entering the sets you have read about and into Walker’s fantasy worlds. If anything the installations overwhelm the photographs but it’s a rather wonderful experience. I liked the section looking at how the museum itself has influenced Walker over the years and included some lovely objects from the collection including a lovely strained glass window of a couple in bed. Later on there is a homage to the conservation department of the museum and to the Edith Sitwell items the museum h...

Sumptuous installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum by Darren Waterston reimagining a room designed by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. OK this one takes a lot of setting up, stick with me. Whistler was commissioned by Frederick Richard Leyland to design a room to display his ceramics collection however he over stepped the brief creating Harmony in Blue and Gold otherwise called the Peacock Room. Leyland refused to pay in full which led to a vitriolic feud and the painting, by Whistler, of “Filthy Lucre (The Creditor)” which shows Leyland as a peacock in a frilled shirt. In this installation Waterston presents “an unsettling re-interpretation” of the room which distorts the space and shows it in a state of decay. You enter the space where you see the ghost of the fine room, shelves have broken, ceramics have smashed, vases have glazes that look like water damage, the ceiling shows signs of buckling and gold decoration has melted across the floor and into stalactites ...

Review of the sumptuous exhibition at Tate Britain looking at Baroque art in Britain. This roughly covered the reigns of Charles II, James II, William and Mary and Queen Anne. I think I found the earliest work most fun with the later work getting too overblown. I liked the way it looked at the court and history as a starting point then moved on to themes including architecture, interior design, mansions and gardens and Trompe l’oeil. There were really impressive pieces in this show including a painting from the King’s bedchamber in Whitehall (shown here), one of the few pieces saved from the fire in 1698, the controversial catholic altarpiece from St James Palace and the altarpiece and pieces of the marble surround from James II redesign of the chapel in Whitehall. I loved the room of Trompe l’oeil work. I was quite thrown by the cut out man and loved the panel on a door showing a wonderfully realistic painting of a violin which looked like it was handing on the door. I...

Interesting workshop at the National Gallery looking at Bomberg’s art education and how in turn he educated other artists. This day was to compliment the current exhibition “Bomberg and the Old Masters” and we opened the day with a talk by Richard Cork, the curator of the show, telling us about David   Bomberg’s early practice of studying and copying works in the National Gallery. This was followed by David Boyd Haycock looking at the training Bomberg would have got at the Slade under Henry Tonks and how he rebelled against this. We then had two talks by Kate Aspinall and Leon Betsworth looking at Bomberg’s time as a teacher at the Borough Polytechnic, the artists he trained and the style of painting he inadvertently established. Most interesting was that the latter speaker’s office is on the room in which Bomberg taught and that the college, now South Bank University, have a collection of the artist’s work which it doesn’t have on show. We ended the day with a talk...

Disappointing exhibition in a temporary building in Coin Street looking at the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. There seem to be two exhibitions like this touring at the moment and I must admit I thought this was the other one which I’d seen advertised which projects Van Gogh’s pictures around spaces so you are immersed in them. This one told his story using installations, audio visual presentations and practical areas to try out art techniques. Because I was expecting immersion and an exciting space I was disappointed. I did like the installations like the one shown of Van Gogh’s room in the Yellow House and at the end of the asylum at Remy which includes a recreation of his window which was filled with the view from it which morphed into copies of his painting at the time. However the content of the show felt thin and I missed any real sense of how the art evolved. I had technology issues with the show which used the headsets that trigger as you reach certain p...

Colourful installation at the Now Gallery by Emmanuelle Moureaux. This consists of layers of repeated dates in a fine plastic, with a line for each year, from 2000 to 2120 arranged in large 3D oval. 2000-2019 are in white separated by a passage from the next 100 years in 100 shades of rainbow colours. The description said it looked at the flow of time on the Meridian line. I loved the way this filled the space, probably one of the best shows I’ve seen at this gallery, and the vistas though the work setting up different geometric patterns and mixes of colours. Closes 19 April 2020 Review Evening Standard

Fun day at Charleston Farmhouse exploring hidden aspects of LGBT+ history as part of the Outing the Past an international celebration of the subject. I went to three of the talks starting with Jane Traies, telling the story of a possible Lesbian love triangle in Sussex, and not part of the Bloomsbury Group. She was a super speaker leading us to conclusions and them subverting what she’d told us. It was an interesting study in how we often can’t always know people’s stories from the past and whether we should of draw conclusions with modern sensibilities. Next was Andrew Lumsden talking about how the Labouchere family both enable Forster to wrote and held him back. I found this a bit tenuous but still fascinating to learn more about Forster, a regular visitor at Charleston. Finally I went to hear Dan Vo talk about queer curating in museums and galleries. Vo leads queer tours of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the National Museum of Wales. He t...