Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent exhibition at the National Gallery looking at how Durer’s travels influenced his work and the art of the artists he met on them. The show looked at his four journeys one around Germany from 1490-94, two to Venice in 1495 and 1505-07 and around the Low Countries from 1520-21. There were lots of stunning works by Durer and carefully selected works by artists he saw or met. I was pleased that I had done a short course on these journey’s as well as a curators talk so I was very excited to see the exhibition and already knew it’s narrative which helped. It was a lovely touch to include a print by Schongauer, who Durer aimed to visit on his first journey but he arrived after the artist had died, that was one of three prints by the artist that Durer himself owned. Also to see a book frontispiece of St Jerome by Durer which he was commissioned to produce to pay his way. From the two Venice trips there were some of the stunning watercolours of his journey across the Alps which ...

Beautiful exhibition at Courtauld Gallery of late 19th and 20th century drawings given to the gallery by the artist Linda Karshan in memory of her husband, Howard. The gift is of 24 works ranging from Cezanne to contemporary artists. The Cezanne was a beautiful still life of a jug. There was a brutal Otto Dix drawing   called “Lament” from 1915 of mourning women which was scored into the paper. The most interesting section was the contemporary and more modern artists including three Philiip Guston’s, a minimal Cy Twombly and this lovely Wayne Thebald of cake from 1963. I love the way the blank space is as important as the black. Closes 9 January 2022

Interesting exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery spotlighting a donation to their photographic collection of architectural images by Anthony Kersting. This show looks in particular at his pictures of Kurdistan from the 1940s many of them of architectural features which have been destroyed in recent conflicts. The commentaries on each work were his own notes which were written on the back of the pictures including the date it was taken. There were some insightful pictures of people but I picked this one of a Assyrian gateway as I love this style of art and architecture. Closes 20 May 2022  

Charming exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of British drawings and watercolours from the 17th century to the mid-20th century. The exhibition was showcasing the gallery’s own works on paper collection to mark the reopening of the gallery. The earliest work was a sheet of Isaac Oliver figure studies from about 1610. It was interesting to see James Thornhill’s design for the ceiling of the Painted Hall in Greenwich and I loved a Peter Lely drawing of two heralds. It was good to see works from the great British landscape artists, so there was a Gainsborough, a Constable and a Turner. It was a nice touch to include the Edward Dayes, shown here, of Somerset House before the Embankment was built because, of course, we were standing in part of the building. Of the later works there was a wonderfully detailed drawing of a chaffinch nest and May blossom by William Henry Hunt, a Henry Moore shelter drawings and a super Wyndham Lewis self-portrait from 1911. Closes 27 February 2022

Fabulous reopening of the refurbished Courtauld Gallery. Goodness I had missed it. T he galleries had gained some useful new spaces including a lovely new Bloomsbury Room shown here which brings together paintings, Omega workshop furniture and African masks collected by Roger Fry. It was painted in Charleston Farmhouse colours. There is also a new space which was currently showing photographs and a new shop in the basement which now feels more spacious and airy. They have also taken the opportunity to do a rehang of the collection, moving the oldest works upstairs and showing pieces in a better chronological order. They have also opened up the top gallery which had been the Great Room of the Royal Academy where the annual show used to be held. You get a much better sense of how the room would have looked. I liked the touch that all the room labels told you what the room had been used for in previous incarnations. Two other highlights include the newly commissioned work by Cecily...

Simple but effective installation at Somerset House by recent Central St Martin’s graduate, Rene Matic. The work consisted of large tubs of pin badges which you were encouraged to take away and wear and give to others. I duly did so and each one said “Conserve me”. The idea was to get people thinking about preservation and cultural property. I’m not sure the idea behind it came across that clearly, I would suggest simplifying the language in the explanations, but it was fun to take a badge and then watch people look quizzically at it. Closes 6 February 2022  

Disappointing online talk from The Times Plus on the current Hogarth and Europe exhibition at Tate Britain. I say disappointing as it as quite short and recorded rather than live. It was nice that it was filmed in the exhibition but it was aimed at people with little knowledge and didn’t really give a full overview. The curators, Alice Insley   and Martin Myrone, picked three pictures to talk about along with their European comparisons in the show, Hogarth’s self-portrait from 1745, Marriage A La Mode and the portrait of Mary Edwards shown here. They talked about how one of the aims of the show was to talk about Hogarth within the European tradition of the time and to show how he was influenced by continental and how they were influenced by him. I have visited the show since so watch out for my review of it coming soon!

Fascinating online lecture from the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at their new exhibition on Faberge in London. Hanne Faurby and Kieran McCarthy, the curators of the show, led us through its layout and talked about what they were trying to achieve with it. They explained why it was divided into sections on the Russian royal family, the craft process, the opening of the London shop and its clientele and why they chose to finish with 15 of the Imperial Easter eggs. I loved McCarthy’s quote “I want people surfing on waves of enamel as they leave” and, having been since, I can confirm that I did! I have to say watching this talk was a real help when I went as it was quite busy and hard to read the labels and commentary so I didn’t feel I needed to concentrate so much on them. It was nice to get insights into how the exhibition was put on and some of the issues they had faced including that they didn’t finish the install until an hour before the opening and the issues McCarthy had...

Enlightening online lecture from the Wallace Collection looking at the recent cleaning of Fragonard’s The Swing. Yuriko Jackall, a curator at the gallery talked us through what they already knew about the picture and what they discovered after the cleaning. The latter included realising the gentleman pushing the screen was older than they had assumed, finding a fountain with an embracing couple in the background at the top left-hand side and the fact that the man lying in the ground it pulling back the roses he is hiding in or had he fallen. She discussed who the mystery commissioner of the work may have been and the world for which it was created. I am not fond of Rococo work however from this, and a series of talks I have done since based on the painting I have a newfound appreciation of its depth even if I still find it a bit sugary. You can see a revolution coming!  

Majestic exhibition at the Imperial War Museum of photographs of Ground Zero by Wen Wenders. There were just five huge pictures taken a couple of months after the attack on the Twin Towers. There were displayed like paintings and it was moving to be able to walk up and look at the details. They reminded me of sublime landscapes and I loved the contrast of the wreckage with the skyscrapers that overlooked the site and how shafts of light cut through. They were shown with quotes from people who were there or who were affected by the attacks including one from Wenders himself “this was hell, where we were, nut heaven had opened up to shine the most stunning light into it”. I can’t believe 9/11 was 20 years ago and this was a lovely way of marking that. Closes 9 January 2021

Excellent refurbishment of two sets of galleries at the Imperial War Museum, the Second World War galleries and the Holocaust Galleries . Both galleries were beautifully designed leading you chronically through the period with sections on themes such as The Home Front. The narrative was told simply but was not dumbed down and used objects to help tell the story. The objects were often linked to people and there were no object labels as the narrative described them. I thought a change in the Second World War galleries was that they were now aimed at people born since the war. I think the previous version was as much a stimulator of memories and conversations and I remember going around with my own parents who were children of the Liverpool Blitz. The ARP uniform shown here is in honour of my grandfather who was a member. The Holocaust galleries were sympathetically described. They didn’t shy away from the horrors but did broaden the topic to look at its origins and effects. I lov...

Fun online award ceremony from Apollo Magazine. I’d not done an online awards before so thought I’d give it a go and enjoyed it. I poured myself a glass of wine and pretended I had dressed up! They were introduced by Fatema Ahmed, the acting editor of the magazine, with the usual listing of the short-listed entries and interviews with he winners. I was pleased how many of the short-listers I had heard speak recently or visited over the past year. So the winners were : Exhibition of the Year – Alice Neel: People Come First at the Metropolitan Museum. OK I’d not seen it but I had read a lot about it and would love to have gone. Museum Opening of the Year – Musee Carnavelet, Paris I’d not heard of this. It looks are the history of Paris and is in a refurbished Renaissance mansion so it’s now on my list of things to do. Book of the Year – Painting in Stone   by Fabio Barry. I listened to him in an online discussion the other week. Digital Innovation of the Year – NFTs ...

Eclectic fair at Woolwich Works of prints by contemporary artists. Pictures were shown in a mix of spaces for individual galleries and larger spaces for works curated from across the show. This gave you a chance to see an overview of work as well as delving into more pieces by particular artists. Sadly I didn’t manage to make notes and, as I am a bit behind with blogging, I don’t remember what I saw that well! Sorry! I do remember there being a lot of work based on maps, either reproducing them or printing on top like the one shown here. Annoyingly I can’t find it on the website so I don’t know who the artist is. Shout outs go to Rachel Clewlows for her imaginative alternative colour charts and Pag Morris’s exquisite pictures of deserted interiors. I also like the art historic approach of John Angus, reducing annunciation pictures to their basic forms, and Toby Holmes, with his reworking of Rococo portraits with sweet wrappers for their outfits. Closed 14 November 2022  ...

Lovely exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery of the greatest hits of the Royal Collection paintings. The works are at the Queen’s Gallery while Buckingham Palace is being refurbished, and although all the works were well known, it was a god opportunity to look at them up close to see the detail. They also become a good introductory walk through of art history. Name an artist, and they are probably here. I liked the fact the labels not only told you about the picture but also how they came into the Royal Collection. Highlights included Vermeer’s “The Music Lesson” which is always a joy to see, four wonderful portrait shaped Canaletto’s and the Artemesia Gentileschi self-Portrait. There was a wonderful room of works by Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt and their contemporaries which featured one of my favourite pictures, Agatha Bas by Rembrandt shown here. I love the detail of her clothes and fan and the way one hand breaks the frame. Closes 13 February 2022 Reviews Times Guardia...

Fascinating online lecture from ARTscapes looking at the later life and work of John Constable. Nicola Moorby, Former curator at Tate Britain, talked about the current   show at the Royal Academy which shines a light on a less familiar part of Constables career. She talked us through his earlier block buster works, the River Stour Six-Footers, which were seen as the pinnacle of work but then went to analyse the later works which have sometimes been seen as a falling off in his style. Alongside talking about the work she likened it to his life with the death of his wife, his election to the Royal Academy and his own ill health. She talked about how experimental his work was in this period not only working in oil but also returning to experiments in watercolour, prints and ink. We also looked at how Constable was trying to use his work to elevate landscape painting to the prestige of history painting at the time particularly looking at “Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Rey...

Engaging live streamed lecture from The Charterhouse with Philip Mould looking at his life in art. Mould took 5 or 6 pictures to take us through his art dealing life from his early work with a genealogist buying pictures of names people and tracing their descendants through to a recent discovery of a portrait of Winston Churchill painted during the Blitz when it had been said that he didn’t do this. He talked about how the internet has changed his business making research easier as more archives go online however also how buying has become easier but also more dangerous. He told a story against himself of buying an Elizabethan portrait online which he realised had been 75% overpainted in recent times. He described the picture underneath as a “glorified pub sign”. He answered a range of questions from the live audience with much mention of “Fake or Fortune” and touchingly he seemed genuinely moved when given a gift at the end of a bowl made of part of a cherry tree in the grounds...

Fascinating online lecture from the Foundling Museum looking at Georgian trade cards. Jon Stobart from Manchester Metropolitan University set out clearly what these cards can tell us about the retail trade in London in the 18th century and how they changed over the period. He had great illustrations mainly from the John Johnson Collection of Trade Cards. I was particularly interested in the cards which showed pictures of the shops and sometimes how the service worked. I loved one of a lady trying on shoes and another of a couple sitting at a counter being shown goods by the shop keeper. I was also interested to learn that in the 1770s London banned shop signs as they were a hazard to traffic so shop fronts became more important for marketing the goods. Also that in this period the numbering of buildings on street was introduced but before that the shops had to give quite detailed descriptions of where they were such as “St Paul’s churchyard opposite the tree”. Who would have t...

Interesting exhibition at Cromwell Place for the National Portrait Gallery of this year’s shortlisted pictures in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. The show was at Cromwell Place as the National Portrait Gallery is being refurbished and it made by a good alternative venue even if the space was more limited. I did however find the reflection off the pictures a problem as it made them hard to view without seeing yourself in the image. It might have been good to use more non-reflective glass. I went to a member’s preview event at which a speaker, sorry whose name I didn’t catch, talked us through the awards and photographs. She taught me different things to look for in photos plus learned that the works are judged without knowing the artist or the stories. There was inevitably concentration on Covid and quite local pictures to the photographers. There were a number where people had moved in together for lockdown with particularly tender pictures of older parents. Do...

Dense online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at an interview between the art critic Gene Swenson and Andy Warhol. Just occasionally I sign up to an online talk where I wish I knew a bit more about the subject before I’d joined in. The talk looked in depth at the art critical philosophy of Swenson but, I have to admit, I’d never heard of him so I was a little at sea. However I did look him afterwards and will look out for his work and ideas in future. The core of the talk looked at an interview with Andy Warhol which was used as the basis for a profile of the artist in the journal “Art News” and quoted in much of the later works on Warhol. However the speaker, Jennifer Sichel, from the Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville, has recently discovered the original tapes which show that substantial sections of the interview were left out or adapted particularly around questions of homosexuality. She also looked at how this interview later led to Swenson ...

Fascinating streaming of an interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with the Oscar winning costume designer Sandy Powell. Powell was interviewed by Bethan Holt, the fashion news and feature writer at the Telegraph, who started by asking how Powell began working in the industry and what got her to the top, the answer to the latter being “luck”! They discussed about how she researches her projects and I loved the quite of “there is always another way of doing something”. She talked about how she is driven to work on a film by the script and how she can’t start working on a costume until she knows who will be in the role.   The Q&A session was vibrant from questions about which actors were most involved in the design of their costumes, what it was like to see her outfits in exhibitions, about her work on Mary Poppins Returns and the difference between big and small budget films. I was fascinated to hear about her project to gather autographs on a white suit, a tuill...

Fascinating online lecture from the Wallace Collection looking at how Frans Hals depicted women. Marjorie E. Wiseman from the National Gallery of Art, Washington took us through the role of women at different stages of their lives in the 17th century and how Hals depictions of them reflected this. I loved the blend of social and art history in the talk and the clear structure of the talk. The lecture was in connection with the current Hals exhibition of male portraits so it was lovely to see some of the men in the show’s other halves in this lecture from their pendant pictures. Wiseman talked about how often the women’s portraits were painted in a smoother style as the convention of female beauty was for smooth complexions. This was despite the convention of the light coming into a pair of pictures from the upper right which leaves the man in flattering shadow and the woman in full light. Her last section on older women was particularly interesting and I liked how Wiseman used f...

Beautiful exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum contrasting the way women saw themselves through their art from the beginning of the twentieth century to today with their representation by male artists. The show drew on the galleries own collections one side looked at men using women as their muse and it was good to see one of the Stanley Spencer self-portraits with his second wife Patricia Preece in this context as the Epstein sculpture of Hélène Yellin. There was also a Glyn Philpott I didn’t know. The other side looked at female artists and included a nice Gwen John and a lovely picture by Marie Louis von Motesiczky “At the Dressmaker’s” from 1930 showing herself as the lady being fitted for a dress. It was good to see contemporary art represented with a Bridget Riley. Closes 1 March 2022

Creepy but effective pairing of two sculptures at the Fitzwilliam Museum. Both works were made of wood and show tortured and emasculated young men made 500 years apart. The hyper-real one shown here “Action 125” was made by Irian born artist Reza Aramesh in 2011 and shows an anonymous Iraqi prisoner of war who was subjugated by American forces in 2003 at the start of the Iraq War.   This was paired with a St Sebastian from about 1525 by Spanish artist Alonso Berruguete which uses takes a similar heightened naturalist approach. I love these 16th century Spanish sculptures. Bringing these figures together made interesting parallels about how times don’t change from the idea that young men still become victims of war to how artists influence each other over the centuries. It was a good example where just two pieces in a display enhance and inform each other. Closes 31 December 2021

Interesting display at the Fitzwilliam Museum highlighting the acquisition of a set of etchings by contemporary artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. This set of prints “First Flight” are delicate imagined portraits of black sitters which were displayed here with prints and drawings by Rembrandt and Van Dyck. I loved the exhibition of her work earlier in the year at Tate Britain which I believe is going to be repeated as it was disrupted by Covid. Her work stood up well to the two earlier iconic artists but in technique and composition. It was a good way for the museum to show some of their works on paper in a different context and to draw contemporary parallels. Closes 20 February 2022

Interesting display and trail at the V&A Wedgwood Collection at the World of Wedgwood examining Josiah Wedgwood’s anti-slavery medallion designed to promote and bring about the abolition of the Slave Trade. The display combined archive material from the collection with modern ceramic medallions by students from Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College reacting to the original. It’s a piece I fond of and I would love to own one. I am fascinating by how quickly the image spread and its impact. A trail round the main displays provided the context for the medallion and the wider history of the abolition and anti-racism. This trail was subtle giving insights without feeling too preaching. It led your eye from an object to a commentary which you might not have thought was relevant to the narrative. Closes January 2022  

Innovative exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery by Neil Brownswood exploring early ceramic industrialisation through contemporary art. Using a timeline of objects and archaeology Brownswood examined the early technologies and thirst for experimentation and reacts to them with a series of finished and on-going new works disrupting traditional ceramic skills with digital technology reflecting the fact we are in the midst of our own industrial revolution. Unfortunately when I was there no-one was working but I guess from the section in one corner that sometimes there were live demonstrations and the commentary said that the artist is working on projects with digital experts and former ceramic industry workers. A lot of the work investigated experimentation and failure. I loved a long installations of waste ceramic flowers in white piles and 3D printed objects the one shown here blending scans of ceramic objects and disrupting them in the print process, I think. I am...

Imaginative exhibition at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery using items from their collection to illuminate the story of Alice in Wonderland.   The show was beautifully designed and the objects displayed to illustrate specific sections of the narrative in a delightful way. Of course, being Stoke it was heavy on ceramics, but there is nothing wrong with that and the range of wares was fascinating. I loved the combination of pieces from stuffed animals, through playing cards, ceramic cakes and paintings. I could have lived with the creaking clock at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party which became quite irritating after a while. It didn’t help that it combined with building noise while we were there.   Closed 7 November 2021    

Interesting and beautiful exhibition at York Art Gallery looking at Japanese prints and how they influenced European artists. The show looked at how prints were produced cheaply in large numbers in Japan from the late 17th century making them affordable and popular in a time of peace when the economy prospered and the arts flourished. There were some good examples from all the major artists including some by Hiroshige and Hokusai and an early example by Suzuki Harunobu. There were some lovely examples of European works influenced by the prints but here I must confess I didn’t make notes and now I can’t remember who was featured. I loved the two pictures shown here but I have no idea who they are by. Answers on a postcard please! If only I lived closer and could go and have another look! Closes 29 Mar 2022

Charming exhibition at York Art examining at a set of drawings by Thomas Gainsborough and using them to discuss his early influences. The 25 newly attributed Thomas Gainsborough drawings were on loan from the Royal Collection are on public display for the first time. The show included a good video on how the drawings were found and attributed and analysed links to some of his completed paintings. One of Gainsborough's early jobs was for an art dealer in London for whom he added figures to fashionable Dutch landscapes. He was heavily influenced by those works particularly because of the similarities between the landscapes of the Dutch Republic and Suffolk. The show analysed this influence with lovely examples of Dutch work. He also worked in ‘plaister’ shops making models for decorating interiors and the show points out how he owned a model of a woodman carrying sticks which appears in a number of the drawings as well as Conrad Wood on loan from the National Gallery. The show...

Excellent three-part online course from Paula Nuttall looking at the main three Leonardo de Vinci portraits of women. Paula spent a session on each of the ladies, Ginevra de’Benci (shown here), Cecilia Gallerani, usually called The Lady with the Ermine and the Mona Lisa. In each case she placed the portrait within Leonardo’s career and explained how it showed artistic techniques he was exploring at the time. She also told us about the ladies themselves and discussed why the pictures were commissioned and by who. In each case she also talked about the condition of the works and recent scientific studies of them. We looked at what the Ginerva de’Benci might have looked like before it was cut down, how 19th century conservation work has damaged Cecilia Gallerani particulary adding the dark background and weird chin strap and finally what the Mona Lisa might look like without the layers of dark varnish and why is in unlikely anyone would dare to clean it.  

Excellent online lecture from the Wallace Collection looking at the reputation of Frans Hals. Marrigje Rikken, Head of the Collections at the Frans Hals Museum, was interviewed by Lelia Packer, curator of the current exhibition of the artists work at the Wallace Collection. They talked about how Hals had gained a reputation for drunkenness and profligate living shortly after his death which was partly based on the ruddy complexions of his genre figures and recorded incidences of him being in debt. However further research shows that he was supporting 13 children including two who seem to have been admitted to an asylum. The other side of his reputation is how his art was viewed and again his work fell out of fashion shortly after he died but was later ‘rediscovered’ by the Impressionists and gained notoriety with the purchase by Richard Wallace of “The Laughing Cavalier”. However in his own time he was obviously highly thought of by his clientele, despite his loose brushwork, as t...

Fourth show in a series of exhibitions at the Photographers’ Gallery to mark their 50th anniversary. I looked at this show thinking how interesting it was and how I would try to go to the subsequent shows only to look it up now and fins this was the last in the series and I’d missed the others as this was the first time I’d got to the gallery this year! Oh well you can’t do it all! This show looked at exhibitions at the gallery using posters and archive material. It focused on four shows including Martin Parr’s “The Cost of Living” from 1989. How I wish I’d discovered this gallery a bit earlier. I came to it about 10 years ago. Closes 1 February 2022

Insightful exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of work over six decades by street photographer Helen Levitt. I loved the early black and white pieces taken in East Harlem and the Bronx which often focused on the natural humour and uncanniness of the streets. I loved the monumental style of the picture shown and a lovely picture of a young boy with a bucket on his head. She was particularly interested in the strange things children do when they play. In the late 1940s Levitt moved into film and they were showing her work “In the Street” from 1953 which was like an animated version of the photographs. In the 1970s she moved into colour photography having tried in it 1959 only to have her work stolen, and of those I loved her pictures taken on the subway with a candid camera. Lovely glimpses of everyday life. Closes 13 February   2022 Review Telegraph

Interesting video and installation at the Photographers’ Gallery by Helen Cammock. Cammock worked with the people of Rochdale to explore ideas of community and the principles of the Cooperative Movement which were laid down in 1844. She used the collection at the Touchstones Museum in the city to talk people about these ideas and recorded them in a video in which she also showed the people around the city with he objects. As often the case with a video it was too long. I liked its slow pace but just didn’t have the time to watch the whole thing which I think from memory came in at well over an hour. Alongside the video the objects the people had chosen to talk about from the museum were shown in the adjoining room with stills from the video. Sadly I was more taken by this eclectic mix of objects than the video and loved this picture by Tristram Hillier from 1865. Closes 13 February 2022

Small exhibition for a landmark project at the Foundling Museum to commission portraits of some of the last children to pass though the hospital’s care. The Museum realised that they had not portraits of any of the 25,000 children to pass through their doors since 1739. To fill this gap they have commissioned five major artists to create portraits of five former pupils of the Foundling Hospital – to hang alongside the grand paintings of the Hospital’s Governors and benefactors, giving care-experienced children visibility and voice within the story of British art and culture. The prestigious artists chosen , Jillian Edelstein, Mahtab Hussain, David Moore, Ingrid Pollard and Wolfgang Tillmans, reflect the support of Hogarth one of the leading artists of the 18th century for the hospital when it was founded. These were lovely images hung up the main staircase and I hope the plans are to commission more. Wouldn’t it be lovely if they could record all the people still alive who the h...

Clever exhibition at the Foundling Museum by Ingrid Pollard in response to their current exhibition on George King, a foundling who fought at the Battle of Trafalgar. I would loved to have seen more of this work as it felt a bit sparce. There were nice ceramic models of paper boats which were originally created as part of “Trade Winds/Landfall”, a body of work investigating the importance of winds and sea currents in the historic commerce that crossed the Atlantic Ocean. It would have been nice to have a full flotilla of these. More moving were sections of King’s handwritten autobiography printed onto voile curtains and hung amongst the large portraits in the Picture Gallery. She had chosen sections where he mentions the names of friends or places that had meant a lot to him. Closes 27 February 2022

Fascinating exhibition at the Foundling Museum looking at the life of George King, a foundling at the hospital who fought at Trafalgar. I love the way the Foundling Museum approach exhibitions, they are rich in research without being heavy and use a few key loans to illustrate the story they are telling well. In this case it was exciting to find the figure head of King’s ship, the Polyphemus alongside a wonderful painting of the Battle of Trafalgar. Obviously, the research was helped by the fact King wrote an autobiography and it was lovely that the handwritten copy was in the show. The commentary told King’s story like a novel and, although the title gives away the two key facts about him, there was a lot more to learn from his apprenticeship to a confectioner where he was bullied by his fellow apprentices, to deliberately looking to be press ganged, though a spell in America, which was told via an excellent video, to his retirement at the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich an...

Interesting  online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at the meaning of the sea in paintings by Winslow Homer. Maggie Cao from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, took the picture “The Gulf Stream” from 1899 and used it to explore various social and political issues which Homer may have been alluding to. She referenced writing on the nature of the phenomena of the Gulf Stream and how it bought economic benefits to America, opening up trade from South America, but also conflict with the fishing disputes off Canada with the British. She also noted that it was shown shortly after the Spanish-American War. She also said the work may reference, the by then illegal, Slave Trade as it shows a black figure fighting the elements with sugar cane on the desk of the boat and sharks circling the boat. It makes the figure heroic but vulnerable. She introduced me to some beautiful pictures of sponge divers in the Bahamas and I was interest in the idea that most s...

Lovely new public sculpture on the upper level of London Bridge station by Jaume Plensa. I found this by chance when catching a train. I was drawn towards it to find out what it was. It is outside the station and is in two parts. The main figure is outside in the Shards Piazza and it speaks to a head and shoulders version hanging over the escalators down to the lower level. The figures seem to be made up of a filigree of letters and checking the website I learn they are from seven different alphabets. I like the way they look solid and yet you can see the urban environment around them through the work. As you can see the photo when I was there a small child was enjoying playing inside the main figure.