Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting workshop at the National Gallery looking at Bomberg’s art education and how in turn he educated other artists. This day was to compliment the current exhibition “Bomberg and the Old Masters” and we opened the day with a talk by Richard Cork, the curator of the show, telling us about David   Bomberg’s early practice of studying and copying works in the National Gallery. This was followed by David Boyd Haycock looking at the training Bomberg would have got at the Slade under Henry Tonks and how he rebelled against this. We then had two talks by Kate Aspinall and Leon Betsworth looking at Bomberg’s time as a teacher at the Borough Polytechnic, the artists he trained and the style of painting he inadvertently established. Most interesting was that the latter speaker’s office is on the room in which Bomberg taught and that the college, now South Bank University, have a collection of the artist’s work which it doesn’t have on show. We ended the day with a talk...

Interesting small exhibition at the National Gallery looking at how Bomberg was inspired by his study of works in the gallery in the early 20th century. The most interesting thing about this display was that it showed studies as well as the finished works. Because Bomberg’s work is quite abstract and disjointed I usually can’t see the subject in it but seeing the more realistic studies with them helped me see the image trapped within.   I am not sure I always understood the connection with National Gallery work that they were trying to make. It might have worked better if more of the Old Masters were hanging in the room rather than having to remember the images in this display and walk round the main galleries to find the originals. However I am going to a day’s workshop on Bomberg and art education in a few weeks so hopefully I will be enlightened. Closes 1 March 2020 Reviews Times Telegraph Evening Standard

Interesting display at the National Portrait Gallery tracing the idea of transmission of an artistic culture over centuries by tracing a link from Ingres to Auberbach. The idea was represented by one portrait from each of five artists, Ingres, Degas, Sickert, Bomberg and Auberbach. The trail was that Degas met Ingres once plus was taught by a former pupil of the great man, Sickert was taught by a pupil of Whistler who had met Degas when taking the portrait of his mother to the Salon, Bomberg attended Sickert’s evening class at the Westminster School of Art and Auberbach was a at Bomberg’s classes at Borough Polytechnic. It could have gone one step backwards into the 18th century as Ingres was a pupil of David.   I did think some of the links were a bit tenuous but it was an interesting idea to trace an artistic tradition in this way and I’d love to see a bigger show on a similar theme   Closes on 2 September 2018