Cathy's Art Diary

Fun and informative online lecture by Stella Grace Lyons looking at the role of the nude in Victorian art.  This was the first of Stella’s online lectures I had done, and I was impressed by the quality of it. It was delivered via Zoom which worked well. She had good slides and I loved the fact that they were all labelled which helped when taking notes. She started by talking about William Etty who specialised in nudes in the early Victorian period, an artist I know well as he was based in York where I studies and the gallery there has lots of work by him. He was heavily criticised the time as he painted realistic very human figures. Later in the century the fashion was for nudes in classical settings with pale skin, so they looked like statues. They tended be blemish free and perfect. These were seen as more acceptable. There were some great illustrations of work by Lord Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema. She also looked at the genres of fairy pictures and paintings of femme ...

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at pendant pictures by Claude Joseph Vernet in their collection.   Francesa Whitlum-Cooper, Myojin Nada Associate Curator for Painting 1600-1800, took us through Vernet’s career and introduced us to the two pictures from 1773, A Landscape at Sunset with Fishermen Returning with their Catch and A Shipwreck in Stormy Seas. She described the detail in them and their place in that career. S he also explained how they had been saved for the nation in 2003 but why it took till last year for them to be displayed in the gallery. An interesting story of how the export licence scheme can work and the agreements that came be come to.

Fascinating series of online videos from the Courtauld Gallery looking at the hidden detail in some of the most famous works in their collection. Each episode reveals elements in the artwork that may not be immediately obvious to the viewer – smudges of paint, fingernail marks and hidden details that can only be viewed close-up or under a microscope. Episode 1 : Still Life with Plaster Cupid by Cezanne Coralie Malissard discusses the role an onion plays in the bottom left of this picture. Infrared analysis shows that Cezanne reworked this feature and Malissard sees is as a way of blurring the bridge between the ‘real’ space of the table with the fruit on it and the illusionary space of the picture of fruit   propped up behind. Episode 2: TheDream by Michelangelo Buonarroti Ketty Gottardo (Martin Halusa Curator of Drawings) focuses on a detail from this drawing of two hands holding a bag or pouch and what that may mean for the overall meaning of the picture. Episode 3: On ...

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery discussing the Renaissance in the North of Europe. Ed Dickenson lead us through the examples of Northern Renaissance art in the gallery putting it into context in comparison to Italy, He explained the role of painting in oil in this and some of the philosophical differences. It was a lovely chance to ‘walk’ round some of my favourite images in the galley, many of which I had revisited on my recent return.   

Enlightening online discussion from the Wallace Collection looking at their current exhibition of work by Indian artists working for the East India Company. I loved this show which has now been extended to 30 September so it was fascinating to hear the curator, the author William Darlymple, talk about the show with the director of the collection, Xavier Bray. It was like eavesdropping on a conversation as they told us how the idea for the show came from Darlymple showing Bray some of the images on his phone over coffee and also what it was like showing David Attenborough around the show which includes some amazing natural history pictures. They also talked us through some of the pictures in the order   they are seen in the show offering insights into the work of the artists and the people who commissioned the work plus drawing some parallels with Western art. It’s the first talk I’ve watched which has been photo bombed by a parrot!

More of this enjoyable series of short videos from the Metropolitan Museum filmed during lockdown highlighting recent exhibitions and specific works of art. These are emailed to members and patrons once a week, so I hope it is OK to share the links. Most take the form of a talk from the curator’s home with a powerpoint presentation. A number of the curators have picked works which are particularly poignant at this time. Episode 13 :American Wing Period Rooms Moira Gallagher, Research Associate, shares a behind-the-scenes look at the American Wing's collection of period rooms and a new online resource that shares the rich stories behind these immersive, curated interiors. Episode 14 : A Temple Singer from Ancient Thebes Janice Kamrin examines the 2,500 year-old burial equipment of Ankhshepenwepet, a Singer in the Temple of the god Amun exploring the symbolism of her coffin, along with the other objects found in her tomb, including a mummified gazelle.   Episode 15 : Aquama...

Charming exhibition at the vineyard Domaine Saint Hilaire by watercolourist Nicholas Poullis. These were lovely pictures of the Languedoc area including the vineyard itself shown here. I loved the pictures of views across towns often from a rooftop or high vantage point. There were also some lovely black and white pictures of fishing boats. Closes 29 August 2020

Nice small display at Tate Britain of work in their collection by Gwen John. A small selection of work was used to talk about the change in John’s technique over her career from a smooth to a rough finish on her work. It also talked about how she often painted series of works. The show included her lovely self-portrait in a red dress, three of her cat drawings, this lovely picture of Chloe Broughton Leigh and a couple of her delicate portraits of nuns which she sold to raise money for the orphans in their care. It was nice to see her brother Augusts downplayed however I’m sure they could have mentioned him once, particular in the context of a portrait of his wife Dorelia! Close 3 January 2021

Excellent exhibition at Tate Britain looking at the life and work of Aubrey Beardsley. This was a clearly laid out show going through Beardsley’s life chronologically. It struck me how rare it is to have a show of the work of an illustrator and print maker in a main stream gallery and realised it was a good follow up show to last year’s William Blake. The show was hung well for these new days of social distancing and I did wonder if it had been rearranged during lockdown. I was fascinated to learn that his style of having large areas of black in his work was due to a new print technique which he exploited. It was a nice touch to have copies of all the issues of the illustrated journals, The Yellow Book and The Savoy, with which he was associated. Unlike other shows on him I’ve seen, this covered the period after the Oscar Wilde trial well. I’d always assumed he ran away but actually a lot of his most radical and erotic work was from this period. It was fun to see a section with ...

Clear online lecture organised by the London Art History Society on German Expressionism. The lecturer, Nicola Shearman, made it clear that this was a condensed introduction to the topic but she made presented it well and it was good to get emailed a handout of names and further reading later.   She concentrated on the two main groups, The Bridge and the Blue Rider, outlining the main artists and styles in each and the philosophy that drove them.   She had excellent slides using particular pictures to illustrate her points rather than swamping us with too many images. I certainly came away understanding a bit more about the   topic and keen to find out more.

Interesting online talk from the National Gallery on their current exhibition of the Dutch Golden Age painter Nicolaes Maes. I had enjoyed this show and was interested to hear more about it from it’s curator Bart Cornelius. Using pictures from the show he took us through Maes career from his time as a pupil of Rembrandt, to his return to his home town of Dordrecht where he became a genre painter though to his later career as a portraitist in Amsterdam. He explained how and why Maes’s style had changed throughout his career, giving an idea of how artists had to adapt to new markets if they wished to remain successful. It made me want to go back and look at the show again now that it has reopened.

Excellent three week course from the London Art History Society looking in detail at the Ghent Altarpiece. Led by Paula Nuttall, this was a clear look at the topic over three hour long, online lectures. Each week she tackled a different question, who painted it, what does it mean and what happened to it. In week one, who painted it, we looked the physicality of the work, it’s format and how it was viewed and used. We also examined the inscription on the reverse and discussed how much was by Jan Van Eyck, who is remembered for painting it, and how much by his brother Hugo who is also credited on the inscription. We also discussed that the date, 1432, at the end of the quote means. We also took this opportunity to look at the life and work of the two artists. Week two, what does is mean, was a wonderfully detailed look at the iconography and symbolism of the work. We discussed the various biblical works involved as well as biblical commentaries of the time and a few classical, secu...

Fascinating exhibition at the Foundling Museum looking at how pregnancy has been portrayed in art. The show starts by pointing out that until recently pregnancy bumps have tended to be edited out of art however there are a few exceptions and the show highlighted these as well as how pregnancy was described and illustrated in scientific texts. The show worked chronologically starting with Medieval depictions usually when illustrating the Biblical story of the Visitation where the pregnant Mary meets her kinswoman, Elizabeth, also with child with John the Baptist. This was nicely shown by a lovely embroidery and some books of hours. The Tudor and Stuart sections were lovely with some good loans including Holbein’s beautiful drawing of Cecily Heron with her stomacher adjusted to accommodate her bulge and a family picture and self portrait of the female artist Mary Beale, probably the first self-portrait of a pregnant woman. It was a nice touch to include a set of pregnancy stays a...