Cathy's Art Diary

Lively online   discussion from the National Gallery looking at fashion and masculinity via portraits in the gallery’s collection. The event was chaired by Jacqui Ansell, an expert of the history of fashion, who brought together ph student Holly James Johnson dressed as her drag king alter ego Orlando and fashion journalist Mark O’Flaherty. They started by looking at the clone like male fashion in Manet’s “Music in the Tuileries” from 1862 then looked back to the 18th century to discuss how styles had changed from a more ornate aesthetic.   They looked at the ideas of the Macaroni and Dandy and the clothing of the Grand Tour and how styles which look feminine to us were considered masculine at the time. I liked the free flow of this event with some fascinating facts and stories coming out of the discussion.

Brilliant four week online course from the National Gallery focusing on the female subjects and models in Degas’s work. The course complimented the excellent exhibition on the gallery looking at Degas’s “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando” and was delivered via a variety of speakers, a style I like as it gives different viewpoints in a longer course. In week one Aliki Braine gave us an overview of the artists life and main subjects. This was followed the next week by talks from Daphne Barbour from the National Gallery in Washington and Johanna Conybeare talking about his process from drawings to making small sculptures to work from. Week three saw the return of Braine as a replacement speaker who picked up the talk on Degas and women looking at the women in his life and the subjects he chose to depict. She discussed why we often view him as a misogynist now and whether that was justified. Denise Murrell from the Met then looked at his trip to New Orleans early in his career and t...

Disappointing online lecture from the National Gallery looking at female artists in the gallery’s collection. I say disappointing as from the title, I had assumed the talk would focus on female studio practice and in particular, that of Eva Gonzales. However the talk became a mix of a standard talk on female artists in the collection and ones I had done a couple of year’s ago on the Eva Gonzales portrait in a studio by Manet when there was a focus exhibition on the painting at the gallery. Jacqui Ansell, from Christies Education, as ever delivered the talk well with good images and intelligent coverage of the subject, but I felt the talk’s title had promised more focus than this. It was a good International Women’s Day talk but, as a paid talk, was not novel enough. Maybe I have just done too many National Gallery talks now!

Timely online course from the Wallace Collection looking at Royal and court clothing and its symbolism.   On day one Jacqui Ansell from Christies Education took us though the clothes worn for coronations and the objects which monarchs can be seen holding and wearing in their portraits. She talked us through how the crown jewels were melted down in the Civil War and how Charles II reinvented them, as well as discussing some of the jewels in the Imperial Crown. She also talked about the idea of court dress and why this was often quite based on the fashion of a previous generation as well as comparing the competing courts of England and France. On the second day she concentrated on George IV and the idea of the presentation at court looking forward to the reign of Queen Victoria. Ansell used Lily Langtry’s account of being presented from her autobiography extensively, highlighting that she was in fact the mistress of the Prince of Wales at that time. She had previously also loo...

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...