Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent seven-week online course from the National Gallery looking at painting in 17th century Holland. Lydia Bauman, artist and art historian, led us clearly through a series to themes with enough repetition to embed ideas while still making all the sessions feel fresh. She began giving an overview of the economics and society of the time to give context. She explained why she didn’t want to use the more usually descriptor of the period as “The Dutch Golden Age” as it wasn’t golden for people whose lands the Dutch colonised. The second week was also a useful overview of how artists worked paying particular attention to the different genre specialisms. She discussed how, with the rise of the Protestant religion in the region, the church was no longer commissioning art so artists had to start to work for the open market rather than to commission. In later weeks we looked at themes ranging from portraiture with a focus on the recent Frans Hals exhibition, the role of the home an...

Fascinating exhibition at the Queen’s House in Greenwich looking at the work of father and son painters the Van de Veldes. The painters specialised in sea and ship pictures and were brought over from the Netherlands by Charles II where he had probably known them when he was in exile. He gave them a studio in the Queen’s House so it was magical to see the paintings in the buildings they were probably painted in. The centre piece of the show was a recently conserved tapestry designed by them and commissioned by Charles II of the Battle of Solebay. It looked glorious and made you realise the richness of tapestry. Standing in front of it you felt like you were in the battle. I must admit as art they were exquisite but a bit repetitive however the most interesting aspect was the light it shone on studio practice at the time. The artists kept a large collection of drawings which they used to build they compositions. These included detailed studies of particular ships. In the last sect...

Repeat of an online lecture from the National Gallery on ebony picture frames. The gallery had originally run this talk back in 2020 but I signed up to this repeat by Clara Davarpanah by accident. It was a fresh live event not a recording. It was very similar to the original but with extra information on how the frames were made and the different types of moulding. It was actually very good to be reminded of this information particularly around the fact that the Dutch had a monopoly on ebony which they had discovered on the uninhabited island of Mauritius. It is always interesting to think about how different a work can look in different frames and to think about the fact most galleries show paintings without frames on their websites but in reality we nearly always see them in frames in the gallery.  

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery on animals and symbolism in Dutch 17th century art. Belle Smith led us through various paintings in the gallery’s collection looking at their symbolism. Although it was billed as being about animals it broadened out into symbolism in general. It was well done in a video presentation with a Q&A after but I’ve gone over this ground quite a lot recently and I didn’t learn much that was new to me. It was nice to visit some old favourites such as this picture by Jan Miense Molenaer along with “Boy and a Girl with an Eel and a Cat” by his wife, Judith Leyster. Both had hidden agendas on peace and war.

Interesting online talk from the National Gallery looking at the fashion for ebony frames in 17th century Holland. Clara Davarpanagh took us though the different styles of frame and how the ripple effect was added using one of the first pieces of mechanisation. She talked about how Holland favoured plainer frames but how Flemish and German artists favoured a more all over design as well as looking at other styles of frame that were is use. She gave us a brief over view of the East India Company to show how the Netherlands gained a monopoly on ebony when some of their ships washed up on the shores of Mauritius and how this also added to their popularity.    

Interesting online talk from the National Gallery on their current exhibition of the Dutch Golden Age painter Nicolaes Maes. I had enjoyed this show and was interested to hear more about it from it’s curator Bart Cornelius. Using pictures from the show he took us through Maes career from his time as a pupil of Rembrandt, to his return to his home town of Dordrecht where he became a genre painter though to his later career as a portraitist in Amsterdam. He explained how and why Maes’s style had changed throughout his career, giving an idea of how artists had to adapt to new markets if they wished to remain successful. It made me want to go back and look at the show again now that it has reopened.

Excellent course at the National Gallery on painting in the Netherlands in the 17 th century. This course ran over three Saturday mornings and was led by Chantal Brotherton-Ratcliffe. She is a very engaging speaker and seemed delighted that a course which was due to be run for a small group in the seminar room had to be moved to the lecture hall because of numbers. Week one looked at portraits and went through the reasons people commissioned portraits and the different styles. She had wonderful photographs with lots of good details. In doing this she also went though the reasons why there was such a high demand for art in this period. Week 2 was genre painting and we had a romp through the various subjects with interesting insights into their symbolism. I often find these work’s quite a turn off in galleries as there are acres of them but now I know a bit more about them I will look more carefully and I’ve already had a walk round the Wallace Collection’s collection. ...

Interesting exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the career of the 17th century Dutch artist Nicolaes Maes. Maes trained in Rembrandt’s studio and the show showed how this reflected in his early work but how he adapted his style throughout his career to reflect the fashion of the city he was working in. The first room looked at this Rembrandt influence including a large painting of Christ Blessing the Children and copies he made of picture of the Holy family by his master. My favourite section was the central one which looked at his time in Dordrecht when he painted genre pictures, mainly of women in interiors, which showed an innovative approach to portraying space and a remarkable clarity. I loved this picture of a girl threading a needle with its close observation of this action. In 1673 he returned to Amsterdam and started painting what to me were slightly overblown portraits often with sitters in fantasised clothes. I was fascinated though to see some of ...

Useful but slightly dull exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at Dutch and Flemish drawings from the 17th and 18th century. The show provided a good overview of styles and themes in this period with good commentaries on each piece but it felt slightly fragmented. That said there were some amazing works. I’ve used a picture of a Ruben’s study of Marie de Medici for the mural cycle in the Louvre. I’d not seen any drawings before for this wonderful over the top work. I have a certain sympathy for her double chin! There was also a wonderful Ruben’s drawing of a descending male figure, a great study in foreshortening. I liked a sketch by Van Dyck for the clothing of Lady Anne Wentwoth for a portrait, an interesting insight into how he worked. My favourite picture was a panorama of the city of Jaen by Van Der Wyngaerde, a wonderful detailed cityscape with a figure of a man sketching in the foreground. Closes on 13 November 2016. Reviews Guardian...

Interesting workshop at the National Gallery looking at the life and work of the Dutch flower painted Rachel Ruysch and using her to discuss the history of female artists. This was one in a series of workshop on women artists but I have only been able to get this one. It was led by Jacqui Ansell who is always good. The session began with an interesting look at why there are so few women artists represented in the National Gallery, whether this is just because there weren’t many or whether it is also because they have been forgotten by a male art historical world. We looked at the work since the 1970s to discuss this issue. We then went on to look at Ruysch’s work, how it was received in her own lifetime and what enabled her to be an artist at that time. A 75,000 gilder lottery win allowed her a certain amount of freedom in her work as she could work without money worries and take time over her work. He work was commissioned by the Duke of Tuscany which is why it is represe...

Delightful exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery of work by the natural scientist and artist Maria Merian. This exhibition told the story of Merian’s life well illustrating it with her work. Her step father was a still life artist who taught her. After a failed marriage she moved to Amsterdam with her daughters where she became interested in insects being brought back form the Dutch colony of Suriname. This inspired her to travel there and study the insects and plants in situ. The result of which was an amazing book of pictures and descriptions. The pictures were lovely delicate watercolours. She made a point of painting the insects a life sized and to depict them on the correct plants. She also painted different phases of an insect’s development in one picture for example showing the caterpillar, pupa and the butterfly they become. There was a nice section on her legacy talking about the pictures have been used by scientists and designers. Closes on 9 October 2016. ...

Nice exhibition at the National Gallery giving a quick overview of the Dutch genre of flower painting and how it developed in the 17th and 18th centuries. The early works showed a detailed interest in botany and coincide with the development of botanical gardens and tulip mania. Later work was more decorative. I loved the early pictures by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder who painted in oil on copper and often depicted the flowers in a glass vase. It was great to see work by a female artist Rachel Ruysch whose father was head of Amsterdam’s Botanical Gardens. The pictures were shown against dark walls which concentrated you eye on them and there was a useful chart naming the different flowers in the pictures. The commentaries on the pictures were excellent linking the painters and their styles. Closes on 29 August 2016. Reviews   Telegraph Evening Standard    

Delightful exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery using the Royal Collection to look at Dutch art of the 17th century and the relationship between the British and Dutch royal families at that time. There were some beautiful pictures in the show and a few old friends from previous exhibitions. I loved a Rembrandt of an old lady which showed lots of different textures in dark paint and a wonderful studies picture of age. It was a gift to Charles I and the first Rembrandt to leave Holland. Also another Rembrandt of a woman where you felt you could see the starch in her collar! I also liked a small picture of Charles I and Henrietta Maria with Charles II by Hendrick Pot. The figures were small and exquisite but the composition was rather sparse and open with them an either end of a long table. There was a useful room to the side which focused on the links between the Houses of Stuart and Orange using portraits prints. I must admit as usual I grasped it at the time but five min...

Stunning exhibition at the Hermitage Amsterdam looking at group portraits of the Golden Age. This was a beautifully designed show with a centre piece of a huge room full of large 17th century group portraits and an excellent audio visual presentation which picked out themes and individuals with spot lights. The whole thing gave a real feeling of being back in 17th century Amsterdam surrounded by the people of that time. I loved some of the stories such as that of a man who had held a high position in a militia and was shown carrying its flag on the group picture but he went bankrupt and ended up working as a steward for the same company looking at the grand picture of his former triumph every day. The upper floor with windows onto the lower gallery told the story of urban society in Amsterdam at that time looking at what the city looked like and how it operated. It basically gave the background to the people in the pictures and gave an idea of what their professional a...