Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent three week online course from the Wallace Collection on Gainsborough. In the first week Karly Allen took two portraits in the Wallace Collection, Miss Elizabeth Haverfield and Mrs Mary Robinson (Perdita) to look in general at Gainsborough’s portrait work and to place them in the context of the time. She discussed how they became the main source of income which kept him away from the landscape work he loved. Week two with Aliki Braine turned to landscape and again placed Gainsborough’s work in context as well as looking at how he succeeded in elevating the genre combining the accuracy of Dutch 17th century work and the imagination of Claude. She included an interesting section of optical devises from Claude mirrors to camera obscurer. Finally Jo Ryhmer looked at the legacy of Gainsborough and using examples from the Wallace Collection putting him in a line of artists who admired the work of the Dutch artist Jacob Von Ruisdael from Gainsborough himself to Constable, thro...

Lovely exhibition at the National Gallery featuring Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, on loan to the UK after leaving for America 100 years ago. I was pleased I had done a curator’s talk on this show so I had a better idea why the pictures shown with it had been chosen. The show was gratifyingly busy with numbers being limited as it is in quite a small room but it was still quite difficult to read the information boards. Part of the need to queue was that people were spending quite a lot of time sitting in front of the star picture just gazing at it. He still has pulling power! The Blue Boy himself is a proud but endearing figure and such a wonderful colour. When you see it in person you notice the landscape behind more which tends to get murky in reproductions. I love the idea that the suit was a studio prop and it was interesting to see it next to real Van Dyck costume works to notice how different it was. It was a lovely idea to hang it with two of the Van Dyck’s which inspired it. It...

Excellent online lecture from National Gallery introducing their current exhibition showing Gainsborough’s Blue Boy on his return on loan to England from the Huntingdon Museum in America. Christine Riding, Head of Curatorial at the gallery, took us through the history of the picture and how it went to the US in 1922. She talked about whether the sitter was the artist’s nephew, Dupont, and whether is should be considered as a portrait or a genre work. She then outlined why is being shown with two Van Dyck’s and two other works by Gainsborough leading us though why artists from the 18th century chose to show people in the earlier fashion of the Stuart era. She also talked about how Van Dyck not only represented a great painter, but also the idea of connoisseurship as he himself was a collector. I hadn’t realise that Gainsborough had been part of the circle of artists around the Foundling Museum along with Hogarth and how this influenced his painting of children as well as how he s...

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...

Fascinating online lecture from the Wallace Collection looking at how Gainsborough was influenced by and compared to Rubens. John Chu from the National Trust took paintings called “The Watering Place” by both artists in the National Gallery to compare their styles and to then to discuss whether Gainsborough had seen the Rubens and indeed whether he had used elements of it in his own work. He then discussed the role of landscape in Gainsborough’s career and proposed, that like Rubens, it might have been more of a leisure activity for his and a way of relaxing while still producing art. It may have also been a way of commenting on the issues of the day such as The Enclosures, as well.

Charming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of portrait’s by Gainsborough of his own family. It was so lovely in this show to see the circle of people around an artist brought back together again. From an early traditional picture of his brother, a non-conformist minister, though numerous pictures of his wife and daughters and even a picture of his dogs you get a sense of an extended family of the time and how it operated. However I have a sneaking feeling this wasn’t just about sentiment but also about practicality. If you want to try out a new idea you can’t really use a commissioned work to do it so much better to turn to your family as a subject to try out in innovative idea. Also what a great selling point to come to the studio, to be welcomed by Mrs Gainsborough and to immediately see a portrait of her as an advert for the artist’s work. Despite practicalities I think the show does include some of the best of Gainsborough’s pictures as we get a real sense...

Talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival bringing together art and music.   Art was represented by the author James Hamilton who gave an interesting talk on Thomas Gainsborough based on his recent book. Using the title of the overall session he took eight pictures by the artist to take us through their life and give an overview of their work. His analysis of the pictures was fascinating and I’d love to hear him give a longer lecture. He finished with Gainsborough’s last self-portrait which was painted to give to his friend, a musician called Abell. The second speaker, the Radio 3 presented Clemency Burton-Hill, cleverly lead into her talk on her book recommending a piece of classical music for every day of the year, by playing a piece of music by Abell. It was a wonderful spontaneous link between two slightly disjointed talks. She talked about how technology is changing how we listen to music and how now we can hear any piece of music whenever we want i...

Excellent workshop at the National Gallery in a series on unfinished pictures focusing on works by Gainsborough. We talked about why pictures, particularly by Gainsborough, were unfinished. I loved the story of a portrait of the actress Kitty Fisher by him which is unfinished as changed lovers so the original one who’d commissioned the picture no longer wanted it! The lecturer, Jacqui Ansell, is an expert on fashion so she was particularly interesting on when pictures were unfinished or changed because fashion changed while it was being painted. We spent a long time in the gallery with four pictures (Mr and Mrs Andrews, a self-portrait with his wife and a child and two of his two daughters)   taking a close look and thinking about what areas weren’t finished or were changed. We also talked about the idea of the finish of a picture and talked about how Gainsborough’s pictures took on a looser less finished look as he got older and more popular. Less finish means more sp...