Cathy's Art Diary

Beautiful exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse on Bloomsbury’s role in inventing Post-Impressionism. The show was mainly based on examples of pictures from after Impressionism from the Barber Institute of Fine Art including a late Renoir used to discuss the change in style and the variety of this work. It then also looked at Roger Fry’s role in organising the 1910 exhibition of the work and how he and a journalist coined the phrase. I loved the inclusion of a set of cartoons by Henry Tonks mocking the endeavour. The culmination of the show was “The Cezanne in the Hedge” the painting, infamous in Bloomsbury lore, which Maynard Keynes brought back from a buying trip to France after the First World War and left in a hedge at Charleston as he had too much luggage to carry up the path. It was lovely to see it return. I wonder if it remembers?! Closes 2 November 2026 Review Telegraph  

Small exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham looking at the use of colour in prints.   The show spanned four centuries in about 15 prints the earliest being from 1688 . The show talked through the different colouring techniques from hand painting, and I loved the idea of the teams of largely female hand colourists of 19th satirical prints, to prints on coloured paper and use of multiple blocks.   I loved an Edward Lear lithograph of a parakeet from one of the first British books on ornithology which was an interesting comparison with a Max Ernst of “Birds in Green Rain”. Closed on 10 June 2018  

Interesting exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham looking at the last Roman emperor, Justinian, via the coinage of the time.   The show included reproductions of the lovely mosaics of Justinian and his wife Theodora from Ravenna as well as maps of Europe before and after his reign. He became an Orthodox saint as he oversaw the 5th Ecumenical Council in 533 which laid down church law and founded the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The coinage was shown with good enlargements of them and a commentary of their iconography.   I was fascinated by the story of the Nika Riots in 532 when chariot racing factions, the blue and greens, who combined sport and hooliganism, joined forces against the emperor. Do societies really change?   Closes on 19 April 2019

Lovely exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art in Birmingham of John Sloan’s prints of New York shown to compliment the Saul Bellows show.   Sloan moved to New York in 1904 and these etchings were published as a portfolio in 1905-6 and show his first encounters with the city from 5th Avenue to Chelsea. They were an old fashioned style at the time and have a flavour of Hogarth’s observation of life.   The labels were excellent on the pictures with quotes from Sloan’s diaries and other contemporaries and it was a nice touch to show them with two books that he had illustrated.   I loved a picture called “Connoisseurs of Prints” as I can feel myself taking up a similar pose to those in the picture but you then realised that you are not sure if the eminent gentlemen are looking at the pictures or the ladies bottoms. My favourite was one of a woman reading the paper in a dishevelled room with a child playing on the bed. Do we judge her for the chaos or ...

Small exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham bringing together two pictures by Saul Bellows.   I was slightly disappointed as I’d misread the advert for this and thought it was a full blown Bellows exhibition but it was still nice to see Men of the Docks again, on loan from the National Gallery. It was good to see it in isolation and to get a chance to look at the detail in it. Usually at the National Gallery it is being mugged by the colour of the Impressionists around it.   I’d never noticed the heavy shadow in the picture before which makes you look outside the picture for the structure which might be casting it but no it’s in the picture. I love the use of white in the painting from the surface of the water, to the top desks of the ship and even picked up in the horses.   The picture was shown with the gallery’s own "Nude, Miss Bentham", a dark, rather Sickert like full length life study heavily influenced by Manet. These are t...

Interesting exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery looking at how Victorian photographers exploited the new medium. It looked at how Victorian and Albert pioneered the use of the new technique popularising it amongst the masses and at how studio were set up to meet this demand. It looked at pictures which had tinting added or details painted in. It had an examples of a day book from Camile Silvys studio and also of family albums. It also showed how images could be manipulated with an example of the original studio picture of Edward VII and Alexandra and the version which was marketed which was coloured and put them in a garden. It talked about how men were shown in active roles but women in passive ones even Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman doctor, who is shown reading with eyes downcast not looking at the camera. I loved the small studio they had set up with changeable backgrounds and dressing ...

Charming exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art of work by the University of Birmingham’s artist in-residence Matthew Pagett. Inspired by calendars and year book entries he was used three fictional characters, a student, a lecturer and a gardener, he presents university life in a calendar with one picture for each month. Each month has a picture of student activity, mainly sporting and lovely quotes from the fictional characters such as “Year in, year out, they’re all the same, thinking they are different, desperate to grow.” They are a lovely insight into university life. Closes on 17 September 2017  

Nice little exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Art looking at the history of Byzantium through its coins and seals. There was a good timeline of the empire in coins with the real coins and enlarged pictures of them so you could see the detail. It showed how depictions of the emperors moved from being in military dress to civilian. It also showed how sometimes emperors were shown with their successors   or empress regents with their sons. The show looked at the iconography on the coins showing how Christianity started to be seen in the images however pagan imagery carried on alongside it for a long time. It also looked at how the coins were made moving from dies in the early years to casting later on and the show included some glass weights used to check the metal content of the coinage. The show included seals made of lead rather than wax which were used to authentic official documents. Closes on 18 March 2018  

Interesting exhibition at the Barber Institute of   Fine Arts Spanish of prints from their collection. Prints by Goya were the centre of the show but there were also works by Ribera, Picasso and Miro as well a Goya prints after works by Velazquez. The commentaries were excellent and in just 11 pictures they gave a good overview of Spanish art and its themes. The Goya prints were strange and surreal such as one called “There is Something Beneath the Sock Cloth” of a line of men in sacks. I always forget that Goya was working at the time of the French Revolution and showing the fear that this spread through Europe. The Picasso print was a nice one of his last wife turned to the right with good use made of dark patches as well as highlights. The Miro print was fascinating as it was the design for a stamp to be sold in aid of the Republican Government in the Civil War, an interesting contrast with Goya’s dissatisfaction with society. Closes on 22 October 2017

Interesting small exhibition at the National Gallery of works on loan from the Barber Institute at Birmingham University. This collection are the first twelve pictures which were bought for the Barber and which were displayed and stored at the National Gallery before the building was built and this is the first time they have returned since. It was a lovely little overview of the history of art with works by Poussin, Hals, Tinteretto, Monet and Manet and the descriptions on the pictures gave a good idea of why the pictures are important and a view of the price paid. The highlight was a lovely big unfinished portrait by Manet of Carolus-Duran which gives a good idea of his working methods.