Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating online talk from the Foundling Museum looking at how children with what we would now call learning disabilities were treated by the Founding Hospital. Thomas Aird, a volunteer at the Museum, took us through some detailed research he had done on children listed as ‘idiots’ at various times in the hospital, tracking what had happened to them over the years. I was fascinated by the amount of detail he had found on the children, often finding where they had been placed in apprenticeships and in some cases finding out when they died and where they are buried. Most touching was Ann Valley who lived in the care of the Foundling Hospital for the whole of her 83 years. He explained that the term ‘idiot’ was not seen as derogatory at the time, it only became so as narrower definitions of conditions were adopted. He also explained how the issue had become more pronounced following the period of general admission to the hospital between 1756 and 1760 when, in return for government...

Fascinating online tour from London Art Week of an exhibition at Sam Fogg looking at Medieval women as the subject and makers of art. Jana Gajdosova, Medieval specialist at Sam Fogg and Alexandra Gajewski   of Burlington Magazine took us round the show with four brief videos of the installation then picked out specific images to highlight themes. I loved the image of St Avia shown here which would probably have been set in a wall and fascinated to hear about Shrine Madonna’s which open up down the chest to reveal an image, often a Trinity, and fell out of fashion due to the theological contradiction that them implied the Virgin came before all aspects of the Trinity not just the son. They kept mentioning a previous round table discussion which I found on the Sam Fogg website which involved the two speakers from the talk plus Jeffrey Hamburger from Harvard University and Madeline Caviness from Tuft University. This talked more about the themes involved including the idea of who...

Interesting online interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution, which campaigns for ethical production in the fashion industry. Tamsin Blanchard, Editor, 'Hole & Corner' magazine, interviewed Orsola about her new book “Loved Clothes Last” advocating the mending of clothes. Tamsin described the book as a “why to” book rather than a “how to” one. They talked about Orsola’s fashion brand using upcycled remnants from the fashion industry, her work supporting ethical designers and manufacturers via the Aesthetica initiative at London Fashion Week and the work of Fashion Revolution. They then looked at some of the ideas and suggestions in the book including what emergency repair tools Orsola keeps in her handbag and the idea of having mending stations in high street stores. She advocated thinking though the life cycle of a garment before buying it, how you will look after it, how it might be repaired and if it might...

Tantalising online lecture from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition on Durer’s travels due to open on 20 November this year. Susan Foister, the curator of the show, took us through how Durer’s journeys fitted into his life and discussed what they brought to his art and how his presence in new places influenced the artists around him. I knew about his two trips to Venice but didn’t know about his later trip to the court of the Emperor Charles V in the Netherlands. It seems that the National Gallery’s own St Jerome is going to be a pivotal work in the show but she took us through some exciting loans which will put this in context and help to illuminate other aspects of the narrative. It seems very early to have a curator’s talk on a show but I think it was originally planned for it to open about now. I can’t wait to see it in the Autumn and watch out for a number of other talks I have booked on the topic. I suspect 2021 might be the year of Durer on the blog!  ...

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at Degas’s art collection, what he planned for it and how it influenced him. Christina Bradstreet started by listing the paintings in Degas’s bedroom as an indication of his taste in art. She took us through a brief outline of his life including how he had to sell his father’s art collection and how he started to build up a collection himself as he grew richer. He looked at how the artists he owned influenced his own work in particular focusing on Ingres, from whom he took line and composition, and Delacroix, for his use of colour. She talked about his plans for his collection to become a public museum on his death however this didn’t happen and it was auctioned at the end of the First World War. The National Gallery sent Maynard Keynes to the sale and bought old masters and works by Degas and we looked at some of the works they bought.  

Interesting online lecture from the Wallace Collection looking at the golden age of Venetian glass as part of their "Meet the Expert" series.  Curator Suzanne Higgott talked us through the different styles of Venetian glass with wonderful illustrations from the Wallace Collection and elsewhere. She explained how the Renaissance glass makers tried to imitate natural minerals forms such as rock crystal and agate. She also talked about how the city moved the glass makers to the island of Murano to keep their recipe a secret as well as to protect the main islands from fire due to the furnaces. She mentioned glass makers who were allowed to travel to other courts and how they adapted their designs when competition came from lead crystal and potash glass.

Fascinating online lecture from Birkbeck College looking at the symbolism of the vaults in the lower church of St Francis in Assisi. John Renner took us though the four faults over St Francis’s tomb possibly by Giotto linking their allegorical narrative with the theology of the Franciscan order at the time. He took us though the imagery in some detail and pointed out that the three vaults on the vows of the order all followed the same pictorial template. I love this sort of detailed analysis of images and wish we had had longer on them. Looking again as I write this I find myself looking at sections he didn’t describe and wondering what they mean. Oh dear, another place to add to the post lockdown list!

Interesting online lecture from the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at how the architecture of Syria and Islam have influenced Western architecture. Diane Darke talked to us about her book “Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe” taking us through the influence of early Christian architecture in the Dead Cities of Syrian, that of the Umayyad Caliphate and from the Islamic expansion into Spain. She looked at how the ideas spread via pilgrims, crusaders and merchants. In particular she introduced the premise that the Gothic style has strong Islamic influences and traced a line from the first pointed arches in Egypt through various monasteries along the pilgrim routes. She also talked about the high regard in which Sir Christopher Wren held Saracen architecture basing the Dome of St Paul’s on their principles of vaulting.

Interesting but disjointed online lecture from the National Gallery using early pictures and late 19th century works to look at gardens in art. Belle Smith led us through images of the Virgin in a garden from some of the earlier works in the National Gallery explaining their symbolism and the links to the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. She introduced me to some images I didn’t know and I’d never realised before that the turf bench the Virgin often sits on was a real thing which a box was covered in turf and planted with flowers as a garden seat. In the second part she looked at Monet’s garden at Giverny and the role it played in his art. She told us how he acquired and developed the garden and took us through a selection of the works made there. I had not realised before that part of his turning to garden painting in later life was to move away from more French nationalistic images such as haystacks and cathedrals following the Dreyfus Affair. Both parts of this talk were...

Interesting online lecture from the Churches Conservation Trust looking at how we can see the presence of Vikings though looking at English churches. I had assumed the talk would be looking at possible Viking carving and architectural details but the speaker, Eleanor Parker, looked more at how the dedications of churches showed the Viking presence. She took us through the legends of various saints who the Viking’s favoured including St Edmund, the King of East Anglia. She talked about how, bizarrely they often championed English saints whose deaths they may have been involved in. Was this a political move? King Cnut did a similar thing with St Olaf who he had defeated in battle. S he also looked at saints and traditional for which there is no basis in fact but looking at how the stories may have come about eg St Ragnar whose ‘body’ was conveniently found when rebuilding a church although it is likely his legend was a confusion of the life of Ragnar Lothbrok. She used good illu...

Fabulous three week course from ARTscapes looking at the relationship between Netherlandish painting and Italy.   Paula Nuttall look us clearly through various aspects of this relationship with wonderful illustrations. In week one we busted idea, started by Michelangelo, that Netherlandish art was seen as primitive and sentimental, and looked at the common themes in Netherlandish and Italian art in the 15th century and how Northern art was admired and purchased at that time. Week two we focused on how the Northern paintings got down into Italy, who the patrons were and whether they bought work when travelling to the north or commissioned it from a distance. Examples we looked at included this wonderful portrait of Francesco D’Este, the illegitimate son of Leonello D’Este who was sent to the Burgundian court to be educated, by Van Der Weyden. We also looked at three art works commissioned by Thomaso Portinari including the fabulous altarpiece in the Uffizi. Finally we looked ...

Stunning five week online course organised by the London Art History Society on the city of Lucca in Italy, its silk manufacturing and trading and the merchants patronage of the arts. Led by Geoff Nuttall it was wonderful to spend so much time, 10 hours in all, looking at quite a specific subject. I knew very little before the course about the silk trade in the 14th and 15th centuries and will now be spotting the cities textiles in paintings and annoying fellow gallery goers by shouting LUCCA! In the first week we looked at the origins of the trade and how the silk was made leading to week two on how the merchants set up colonies throughout Northern Europe and Italy bringing not only their textiles but also their banking skills. I’d not realised how active they were in England and want to have a walk round the city looking at the places they worshipped and operated. The later weeks were devoted to looking at specific families, both at their trading but also their commissioning o...

Interesting online interview from the Victoria and Albert Museum with contemporary artist Katerina Jebb. Oriole Cullen skilfully led Katerina through her career and influences. Katerina’s work is photographic montage often using a standard scanner to record either a whole object or person or to scan them in sections and reassemble the parts, a bit like the Hockney Polaroid montages. Katerina did not always talk that clearly about her work but I guess, like many artists, she is not always sure how a work happened at one point she said “I don’t know why I made it, I just made it”. However she said some insightful things about art in general and I loved it when she said art “should have the capacity to change your frequency.” When the V&A reopens she will have an installation inspired by a sampler by Elizabeth Parker from the 1830s which simply, in red thread on a cream textile, outlines the terrible things that have happened to her as a domestic servant. This is a remarkable s...

Fascinating online lecture from the Wallace Collection on Lady Wallace, Julie Amelie Castelnau who bequeathed the Wallace Collection to the nation.   Suzanne Higgott told us the story of Julie’s life from humble beginnings as the illegitimate daughter of a   factotum and a linen maid and how she in turn bore Richard Wallace an illegitimate son, before living with him for 20 years then marrying him on his father’s death. Wallace himself was the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquis of Hertford and was surprised to inherit his father’s estate and art collection. Higgott told us how Lady Wallace was viewed rather negatively by contemporaries in society, partly due to her origins and also because she never learned to speak English despite the couple making London their main residence. She inherited the collection on her husband’s death in 1890 and in turn left it to the nation when she died in 1896, possibly fulfilling his wishes.  

Glittering three week online course from Richard Stemp on the use of gold in paintings in the International Gothic and early Renaissance periods. In the first week we looked at the use of gold on early works in the National Gallery. Richard explained the different techniques   and showing us different examples of how it was used. He talked about the practical function of gold to reflect the candle light in the dark churches and led us though the iconography of a series of images. This all set us up to study two specific pictures over the next two weeks, The Wilton Diptych from 1395-99 and Carlo Crivelli’s Annunciation from nearly 100 years later in 1486. The former is a more traditional gold picture showing King Richard II with the patron saints of England kneeling before the Virgin and a troupe of angels. Richard talked us through the religious and political iconography of work. The later is mainly painted but uses gold to pick out the ray of light and the dove representing t...

Delightful series of online lectures from Charleston Farmhouse on the Bloomsbury Group telling their story in their own words. Holly Dawson, reader in residence at Charleston, took us through five aspects of the group using their letters, diaries, memoirs and novels to tell their stories, as well as wonderful images from the house’s archives, many of which I hadn’t seen before. The talks were quite long for online, about an hour and 20 minutes, but each was given in the form of an essay on a topic (friendship, love and sex, homes, politics and bodies) and built up a lucid and well thought out narrative through the talk. If you read my blog you’ll realise I’m a great Bloomsbury Group fan it was nice to check in with Holly and her wonderful, healthy cheese plant for an hour so on a Sunday and think about different aspects of this group of friends. The talks will be available online until 14 March 2021, for a small fee, and I highly recommend them if you want to know more about this ...