Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting online exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery for this year’s annual photographic portrait award. The show was laid out in a navigable online version of the usual galleries the exhibition is shown in so you could get an idea of how pictures looked from a distance as well as close up and of their relative sizes. It was fairly easy to move around and benefited from being quite a small show at 54 pictures by 37 artists. There were some lovely classic works including Nikki Toole’s picture of Tilman Ruff AO: Nobel Peace Laureate which had a feeling of a Flemish portrait, with side pose and nice contrast of his red jumper against a dark background. I loved Dirk Rees’s picture of Arek who he found exercising on a beach on Senegal. He catches the sand flecking his skin and a classical head. Many of the pictures had been taken during the Covid pandemic, despite the limitations and the strangeness of life in 2020. Chiaira Gambuto’s picture of her friend Bianca bleaching...

Fascinating online lecture from the Wallace Collection discussing Renaissance armour. Toby Capwell argued that armour was another art form of the courts of the time and that armourers were considered to be artists, sharing ideas with artists in other mediums. He proposed that in some senses armour is body sculpture and in quoted Vasari saying of one armourer he was “the greatest sculptor in iron”. He took us through the main styles using examples from the Wallace Collection. I was fascinated to hear the names of the armourers and to realise how much we know about them. It is also interesting to consider the art of the time in the various courts and how it is reflected in the armour or how it shows that armour. It have me a lot to think about in future viewing.

Colourful three week course from the London Art History Society on Fauvism. Led by Jacqueline Cockburn week one of these hour long sessions looked at the precursors to the movement Seurat and Signac and their philosophy of colour. Week 2 focused on the 1905 exhibition which coined the term Fauvism as well as looking at all the main artists and the reasons who the movement only ran till 1907. Sadly I missed the third week which focused on Matisse as I had to head back to stay with my bubble as tier 3 was announced for London. Unfortunately London Art History Society don’t record their courses so I was unable to catch up. These talks were illustrated by beautiful pictures. I hadn’t realised how short a period this movement covered and how many of their pictures were some of my favourites from the Courtauld Gallery. As ever I want to know more!

Festive online lecture from the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Victorian Christmases. Francis Willis, Caroline Penn and Victoria Worsfold looked at how three characters central to the museum had shaped ideas about Christmas in this era. They started with Prince Albert and talked about how he popularised the idea of the Christmas tree via prints of himself, Queen Victoria and the family enjoying one at Buckingham Palace. I hadn’t realised Dicken’s links to the National Art Library as his literary executor, John Forster, bequeathed 12 manuscripts and various first editions of his books to them. This included a first edition of “A Christmas Carol” and the speakers told us about how Dicken’s paid for its publication himself taking great care over its appearance and illustrations. Finally they talked about how the first director for the museum, Henry Cole, invented the idea of the Christmas card, partly as an means of dealing with unanswered mail. They show...

Interesting exhibition in London Bridge Station of the finalists in this years Landscape Photographer of the Year competition.   The photographs are on show in a public display on the lower level of the station and this was a welcome chance to look at some art work as I fled London to re-join my bubble for Christmas.   There were some stunning images.   I loved John Hayward’s dramatic shot of cooling towers being demolished which won the “Changing Landscapes” category and the inclusion of city scenes as well as rural such as Linda Wride’s picture of a red metal staircase from the old Olympic Park. The picture shown here is Aleks Gijka’s “Drama at the Lighthouse, Wales” which won the “Your View” category. I love the way it captures a second in time.

Fun seasonal online lecture from Art History in Focus looking at Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity. I usually like to go and look at The Mystic Nativity in the National Gallery in the run up to Christmas and was missing the chance to do that this year, so this was a welcome opportunity to spend time with it online instead and to learn a but more about it. Sian Walters took us though the history of the picture and its symbolism to the time it was painted, 1500. She talk us about how it fitted with the teachings of Savonarola, the charismatic preacher in Florence shortly before this, and how it was quite a radical picture, even if it is quite old fashioned in style. She also talked briefly about other angels in art and about the pictures later history from disappearing for centuries to its re-emergence in the mid-19th century. A fun and festive morning.

Dense but fascinating two day online conference from the Courtauld Research Forum on how art and artistic ideas moved between Spain and Portugal, the rest of Europe and into the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. The conference took the form of a keynote lecture and five panels of three talks on a shared theme. The keynote looked at the prevalence of Flemish art for the period in Madeira, brought by the trade routes. The speaker, Fernando Antonio Baptista Pereira, had some wonderful pictures of works in the Museum of Scared Art of Funchal. The panels looked at how objects and ideas moved around the Mediterranean and introduced me to the idea of an image chain through the spread of and popularity of prints by Martin Schongauer of the Passion. They also looked at Italian and Flemish artists working in Spain and Spanish artists in Italy, partly moving there in the wake of the Spanish Pope Alexander IV. There were interesting sessions looking at architecture but I think my fav...

Intriguing online talk from London Art Week looking at the role armour and weapons play in Old Master portraits. This was well chaired by Charlie Mackay from the Weiss Gallery who currently has an exhibition of the same title showing portraits with examples of armour borrowed from one of the other speakers. He brought together Toby Capwell, from the Wallace Collection, and Red Finer, from Peter Finer, a dealer specialising in fine art and armour, to discuss the armour being worn in some of pictures in the show. Unfortunately I had a bad connection at the start of this zoom talk so I missed some of it while I logged out and back in again. I’m hoping a recorded version appears sometime as I came in at the end of them talking about Gerard Reynst, the 2nd Governor General of the Dutch East India Company from 1613. I would love to have known more about the symbolism in this work. Other pictures included Lord Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk by John Michael Wright which they used to ta...

Interesting online lecture from the London Art History Society on the life and work of John Singer Sargent. Patrick Bade took us though a selection of work by the portraitist Sargent to illustrate why he was one of the great artists of the Belle Epoque, the period leading up the First World War. He compared him to artists who had preceded him and talked about how he was influenced by the Impressionists. We looked at some well-known images such as Dr Prozzi, shown here, and Madam X but also some pictures I didn’t known including the lanky W Graham Robertson and Lady Agnew.  

Interesting online lecture by Stella Grace Lyons on the life and work of John William Waterhouse. Using a selection of his pictures she talked us though how his style changed in the late 1880s from a refined classical approach like Alma Tadema and Lord Leighton to a more Pre-Raphaelite love of nature and the medieval. I like the way Stella uses a limited number of pictures to make her points but talks through them in detail and, in a couple of cases in this talk, looking at who bought them and what their effect was on the art world. “The Lady of Shallot” was of course the star of the show but I was introduced to a number of works I didn’t know and will look out for Waterhouse’s work more in galleries.

Excellent three online talks from London Art Week over three days to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael.   These were engaging and intelligent talks with high quality speakers from many of the planned celebrations and from ongoing projects and research work. They had left you feeling that you had been listening to three fascinating conversations and wanting to follow up lost of the leads and discussions.   Day one looked at how the celebration had been affected by Covid-19. Touchingly the main three speakers were asked to show a handful of slides which encapsulated what the event had meant to them. Matteo Lanfranconi, curator of the main exhibition in Rome, showed photos of the pictures draped in black when the country went into lockdown and a picture of the front of the Pantheon where Raphael is buried on the actual anniversary and it’s deserted square again due to lockdown. Day two focused on the tapestry cartoons in the Victoria and Albert Museum brin...

Interesting online talk from the National Portrait Gallery outlining how they have moved over 400,000 objects out of the building for its refurbishment as part of their Inspiring People Project. I have done smaller scale but similar projects and realise the planning needed before you even start so was fascinated to hear Ed Purvis, Head of Collection Services, talk about the stages of the project. The depth of the planning was impressive including making sure that all the pieces were in a condition to be moved back and hung so any conservation work was done at the time of moving them. They did 330 hours of conservation checks. He spoke about how Covid-19 meant they had to work out new ways of doing thing to minimise handling but he said he felt in many cases they had found better ways of doing things. He went on the speak about the delivery stage and how the pictures were taken down, checked and then packed by room. I loved a photo of the 18th century room with the pictures off the ...

Fantastic three week online course from Paula Nuttall on the six pictures by Titian in his Poesie series. This was a new venture by Paula to run online courses and I thought it worked really well so bring on more! In the first week we looked at mythological painting before these works both by Titian and others. We concentrated on the works for brother and sister Isabella and Alfonso D’Este and for Isabella’s son, Federico Gonzaga in Mantua. Titian worked on the pictures for Alfonso but would certainly have also known the work going on at Palazzo Te in Mantua. The second weekly session was spent looking in detail at the pictures themselves, currently together for the first time in centuries at the National Gallery. We discussed how Titian used Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a source for the story but thought about when he picked the particular moment in each tale. Finally we looked at the commissioning process between Philip II of Spain and Titian and the free hand the artists was given ...

Fabulous three week online course from a new online course provided ARTscapes looking at the history and iconography of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua by Giotto. Richard Stemp lead this course bringing his dry wit to it but backed up with a deep and scholarly knowledge of the subject. In week one we looked at the construction of the chapel and it’s possible use followed by looking at the Great Last Judgement and the pictures of the virtues and vices in the lower register of the church. He had lovely illustrations showing interesting and quirky details. Week 2 we went through the frescos of the life of the Virgin and her parents up to the Massacre of the Innocents. I love the attention to detail in telling the stories. Week 3 was the Mission, Passion and afterlife of Christ followed by a discussion of the added depth of meaning when you look at how the pictures are paired up both above and below each other and across the church as well as the how the Old Testament vignettes betwe...

Engaging online conversation as part of London Art Week between two dealers. Jorge Coll of Colnaghi and Andreas Pampoulides of Lulla Pampoulides, who had previously worked together, discussed their careers as dealers, gave advise to people entering the profession and told fascinating stories from the market place. The event was chaired by Frans Ihm of Hedors Insurance Brokers, however the conversation needed little guidance and it felt like eavesdropping on catch up between friends. They both emphasised the importance of collaboration to galleries and of good contacts and relationships with other dealers as well as the museums and galleries. A diverting hour and I wish I’d poured myself a drink to listen!