Cathy's Art Diary

An unbalanced online lecture from the Wallace Collection on two artists who mentored Winston Churchill’s painting. This lecture complimented the exhibition at the museum of Churchill’s art and Frances Fowle from the University of Edinburgh led us though the subject. I say unbalanced as it was a good lecture on Lavery with a bit on Sickert tacked on at the end. I didn’t know a lot about Lavery so it was useful, and it did explain how he was one of the Glasgow Boys yet is considered an Irish artist which has confused me. It might have worked better as two lectures

Fascinating exhibition of the war paintings of Sir John Lavery at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. I hadn’t realised that Lavery had been a war artists in World War I and yet this is a set of artists which have always fascinated me. A lot of the pictures were of war ships off the coast of Scotland , hence the title, and they were wonderfully pale seascapes. I loved a picture of Lady Henry's Creche at Woolwich for munitions workers as I have recently moved to the Woolwich Arsenal site and imagined it might have been in my buildings, I don’t think it was! The most poignant picture was of women's army auxiliary corps tending to newly laid out graves.