Cathy's Art Diary

Intriguing online lecture from London Art Week introducing new research on a 14th century monument near Dijon. I encountered this monumental well in another recent talk and was fascinated by it. In this discussion Alexandra Gajewski, deputy editor of The Burlington, interviewed Susie Nash, from the Courtauld, about an article she was about to have published in the magazine outlining her latest research. The well was in the grounds of a monastery near Dijon and has prophets around the base and Nash has concluded that it was topped by a Crucifix with Mary Magdalene at the feet of Christ. She has also linked the work, commissioned by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, to the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396 in which the sons of many of the French noble families were killed and his son was taken hostage. I enjoyed hearing a clear, well-argued piece of research and would love to read the article which was promised to those who attended the talk but it hasn’t materialised.

Interesting online discussion as part of London Art Week focusing on the 17th century portrait artists Mary Beale. Christopher Baker of the Burlington magazine chaired a discussion between two curators who had produced shows on Beale, Lucy West of Dulwich Picture Gallery and Ellie Smith of Philip Mould & Co. Smith focused on the life of Beale and took us through themes in her show which was on at the time at Philip Mould & Co and I have since been to see it.   She talked about how Beale made her money from commissioned work but also painted her family and friends often using them to experiment with new material and ideas. West looked back to show on Beale’s studio from a couple of years ago which focused on her technique and the experiments of her husband, Charles, who was a pigment expert and salesman. She talked about his notebooks which documented the work of the studio. It was fun to hear the speakers discussing Beale’s work which they had obviously grown to lo...

Fascinating online lecture from London Art Week looking at the discovery of a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi in the Royal Collection. The talk brought together those involved in the rediscovery and experts on Artemisia to discuss how the painting was identified and why it is an important rediscovery. Niko Munz, Christchurch College Oxford, described how, while working as part of a project to catalogue and trace works owned by Charles I , he flicked through some files of royal pictures and found an old catalogue sheet from 1862 which had a dull photograph of the work linking the work to Charles and mentioning Artemesia. He then checked old inventories which showed it had hung in Henrietta Maria’s rooms and might have been part of a design to prompt the Catholic faith. Adelaide Izal, conservator for the Royal Collection, then took us though the historical and technical evidence from confirming that it did date from the period when Artemisia was in England, that it was painted i...

Basic online discussion from London Art Week looking at monasteries and the art they produced. Jana Gajdosova of Sam Fogg and Michael Carter of English Heritage discussed the rise and fall of monasteries and convents. They are working on an exhibition at Sam Fogg of objects from monasteries and the talk was illustrated with objects which will be in the show. It was a slightly simplistic talk but a good introduction to the subject for those who didn’t know much about it. However it did also have nuggets of things I didn’t know like an outline of the different types of tonsures and an interesting outline of how the austere Cistercian style evolved over the years.

Fascinating online discussion from London Art Week bringing together a panel of younger dealers to talk about how the idea of ‘sleepers’ in the art market is changing. The speakers talked about how it is becoming harder to find traditional ‘sleepers’ ie unrecognised Old Masters with better promotion of auctions online making it easier for more people to see what is available which can push prices up on potential finds. They then each introduced works they had acquired recently by artists they felt should be better known and explained how it was more about discovering stories that particular works. They also discussed issues you can face when researching such as women who change their name when they marry. Will Elliot of Elliott Fine Art mentioned a selection of artists but I loved the picture I use here by Lily Steiner who worked in Vienna and Paris. He talked about how you can also add value by identifying a sitter which he has not yet done in this case. Ellie Smith of Philip...

Interesting online lecture from London Art Week looking at a sculpture by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux which is featuring in a current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. Elyse Nelson, co-curator of the exhibition “Fictions of Emancipation” introduced us to the sculpture “Why Born a Slave” from 1868-73 which is in the show in both a terracotta version and a marble one. She placed it in the context of France at the time which had abolished slavery for a second time in 1848. She discussed whether this could therefore be a called an abolitionist work and whether it was influenced by works which were. She also likened it to ethnographic sculptures of the time. She talked about how the image had become part of popular culture even appearing in a Beyonce video and about works it influence which are also in the exhibition including contemporary images by Kehinda Wiley and Kara Walker.

Excellent online symposium from London Art Week looking at the role of Jewish dealers in the late 19th and early 20th century art market. Over three one hour sessions and with an array of good speakers we were guided through aspects of the subject. Day one looked at how Jews influenced the growth of Modernism in this period. Charles Denhiem who has written a book on the topic said that, with the growth in interest in Nazi stolen art, he didn’t want to see Jews as victims but wanted to know how they played a part in the art market in the first place. Why did they have the art that was taken? Day two looked specifically at the dealer Asher Wertheimer and how he commissioned portraits of his whole family from John Singer Sargent which he then left to the National Gallery. They are currently on display at Tate Britain and I blogged the display recently. Speakers discussed the reasons both for their commissioning and donation as well as talking us through some of the works and the cont...

Interesting online conversation from London Art Week looking at the use of stone in painting. The talk chaired by   Emanuela Tarizzo from the Board of London Art Week split into two parts. Fabio Barry from the Centre for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington talked how stone has been used over thousands of years to decorate buildings, in essence to paint them. I was fascinated by the Byzantine idea of creating thin tile veneers of marble to set in repeat patterns called book-matching. Judith W. Mann from St Louis Museum of Art then talked about her current exhibition on painting on stone comparing artists who covered the whole stone and those who left some of it exposed to incorporate into the composition. I loved the attached image by Giuseppe Cesari of Perseus Rescuing Andromeda from 1593-4 painted on Lapis Lazuli which works the composition around the flaws in the stone. I didn’t know that painters sometimes worked on stone or ever thought...

Thoughtful online discussion from London Art Week on black figures in portraits. Samuel Reilly of Apollo Magazine chaired the event with Aloyo Akinkughe, Founder of @ablackhistory of art; Michael Ohajuni, Cultural Historian, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Arthur Timothy, artist and architect and Will Elliott, Elliott Fine Art. The talk started with each speaker picking two or three pictures to illustrate their thoughts and I was introduced to several works I didn’t know plus it placed others in a new context. I must admit I had never thought about the black boy in Rosetti’s “The Beloved” who evidently cried while posing but in a letter mentions how his tears made his cheeks shine. The artists, Timothy, had been invited to show a couple of his own works showing himself and his brother when they were still in Sierra Leonne. The discussion talked about how we look differently at a picture when we know the names of the sitters and more about them. One speaker took John Martin’s ...

Interesting online lecture from London Art Week looking at the Bloomsbury Group and the importance of Charleston Farmhouse to them. This talk brought together Darren Clarke from Charleston Trust and Lawrence Hendra, head of research at Philip Mould & Co to talk about the art of Bloomsbury and the current exhibitions at their respective galleries and was ably chaired by Janet Hardie of Bonhams.  Clarke outlined who the group were and the role of Charleston in their work while Hendra took us through some of the works in his exhibition and their role in the story. As you’ll know if you read my blog I am a huge Bloomsbury fan and had already done both these super shows so I didn’t learn a lot from the talk however it was nice to hear the work discussed but two such knowledgeable speakers. One idea which came up in the Q&A was the idea that Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell were working on the murals for Berwick church which resemble a pageant as Virginia Woolf was writing he...

Excellent online discussion from London Art Week looking at works on paper. The panel consisted of Tom Marks, Editor of Apollo magazine; Tom Edwards of Abbott and Holder; Liberte Nuti of Helm Newty; Mathews Travers of Piano Nobile and paper conservator Jane McAusland. Marks chaired and invited each of the dealers to show two or three images on paper and talk about why they should be considered as collectable works of art alongside paintings and any issues that their condition and conservation might raise. They all picked lovely works. I was interested to hear Edwards pick a fashion drawing which was a working document and never made as a finished art work but is now becoming collectible. Nuti chose this Matisse drawing which was a study for a portrait which was never completed. Travers picked a Picasso drawing partly to show how he signed drawings but also dated and numbered then all. MacAusland then took us through the work of her paper conservation studio and talked about how ...

Fascinating online discussion from London Art Week looking at the history of Renaissance Maiolica as seen through the collection of the Bargello in Florence and pieces from the Detroit Institute of Art. There was as an impressive panel chaired by Katherine Zock, Director of the Friends of the Bargello and consisting of Timothy Wilson, Professor of the Arts of the Renaissance, Oxford, Alan Darr from Detroit Institute of Art and a dealer Justin Raccamello. They picked significant pieces which outlined both the history of the ceramics concentrating on Medici pieces and also of their collections. Sometimes this type of format can become a bit of an insiders talk but all of them talked clearly about their pieces for the amateur and had a lively discussion handing over to each other with ease even on Zoom. I had not come across Medici porcelain before so was particularly interested in those pieces. I could get seriously into Maiolica!  

Intriguing online exhibition and talk from London Art Week looking at art works on the theme of revolution and renewal. Curator of the online show, Arturo Galansino, Director of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence talked with Emanuela Tarizzo of the Tomasso Gallery about the decision they made when grouping and choosing the works. Each gallery involved in London Art Week had submitted a work to the show which they grouped into the four themes of revolution in art, faces of revolution, spiritual renewal and moments in history. There were some fascinating pieces in the show including this beautiful coloured plaque by Eric Gill of Boxers from 1913, a beautiful portrait drawing of a man from the end of the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, a Jan Breughel the Elder “Noli me Tangere” from the late 1630s and a Van Dyck portrait of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Stafford which was probably owned by Charles I.

Disappointing online talk from London Art Week looking at the early life of Thomas Lawrence. I say disappointing because, as the title suggests, it was meant to be on the early life of Lawrence based around a new book by Amina Wright who was one of the speakers. She started well and I was intrigued to hear more about how Lawrence was a child protegee, initially working from his father’s inn. However the chair of the event, Andrew Graham-Dixon, interrupted her narrative on a number of occasions making it hard to follow. The other two speakers were interesting, Lowell Lisbon, on Lawrence’s drawings and Ben Elwes on finding a lost self-portrait from these early years but there was not as much concentration on the astonishing story of his early life as I’d have liked and, as someone who didn’t know a lot about the artists I didn’t feel I came out of it knowing a lot more.

Fascinating online tour from London Art Week of an exhibition at Sam Fogg looking at Medieval women as the subject and makers of art. Jana Gajdosova, Medieval specialist at Sam Fogg and Alexandra Gajewski   of Burlington Magazine took us round the show with four brief videos of the installation then picked out specific images to highlight themes. I loved the image of St Avia shown here which would probably have been set in a wall and fascinated to hear about Shrine Madonna’s which open up down the chest to reveal an image, often a Trinity, and fell out of fashion due to the theological contradiction that them implied the Virgin came before all aspects of the Trinity not just the son. They kept mentioning a previous round table discussion which I found on the Sam Fogg website which involved the two speakers from the talk plus Jeffrey Hamburger from Harvard University and Madeline Caviness from Tuft University. This talked more about the themes involved including the idea of who...

Intriguing online talk from London Art Week looking at the role armour and weapons play in Old Master portraits. This was well chaired by Charlie Mackay from the Weiss Gallery who currently has an exhibition of the same title showing portraits with examples of armour borrowed from one of the other speakers. He brought together Toby Capwell, from the Wallace Collection, and Red Finer, from Peter Finer, a dealer specialising in fine art and armour, to discuss the armour being worn in some of pictures in the show. Unfortunately I had a bad connection at the start of this zoom talk so I missed some of it while I logged out and back in again. I’m hoping a recorded version appears sometime as I came in at the end of them talking about Gerard Reynst, the 2nd Governor General of the Dutch East India Company from 1613. I would love to have known more about the symbolism in this work. Other pictures included Lord Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk by John Michael Wright which they used to ta...

Excellent three online talks from London Art Week over three days to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael.   These were engaging and intelligent talks with high quality speakers from many of the planned celebrations and from ongoing projects and research work. They had left you feeling that you had been listening to three fascinating conversations and wanting to follow up lost of the leads and discussions.   Day one looked at how the celebration had been affected by Covid-19. Touchingly the main three speakers were asked to show a handful of slides which encapsulated what the event had meant to them. Matteo Lanfranconi, curator of the main exhibition in Rome, showed photos of the pictures draped in black when the country went into lockdown and a picture of the front of the Pantheon where Raphael is buried on the actual anniversary and it’s deserted square again due to lockdown. Day two focused on the tapestry cartoons in the Victoria and Albert Museum brin...

Engaging online conversation as part of London Art Week between two dealers. Jorge Coll of Colnaghi and Andreas Pampoulides of Lulla Pampoulides, who had previously worked together, discussed their careers as dealers, gave advise to people entering the profession and told fascinating stories from the market place. The event was chaired by Frans Ihm of Hedors Insurance Brokers, however the conversation needed little guidance and it felt like eavesdropping on catch up between friends. They both emphasised the importance of collaboration to galleries and of good contacts and relationships with other dealers as well as the museums and galleries. A diverting hour and I wish I’d poured myself a drink to listen!

Fascinating  online discussion from London Art Week Digital talking about wat a frame can tell us about a picture and how frames can effect how we look at a work. Matthew Reeves, of Sam Fogg London, led a lively conversation with Peter Scade, Head of Framing at the National Gallery on frames by showing an interesting array of original pre-1520 examples as well as example of reframing of works from the National Gallery to a frame that is more contemporary to the painting. I was most interested in the examples which with included architectural details like a Dieric Bouts which had an applied frame of the same tracery as in the picture and those which incorporated the architectural surround of the work in the composition like my favourite Bellini altarpiece from San Giobbe in Venice now in the Academia. I loved the work shown here by Memling which has a sill effect at the bottom of the frame which is made more illusionistic by the Virgin’s robe being painted over it to pull us i...

Interesting online discussion as part of London Art Week Digital about portraits. The talk was chaired by Matthew Reeves of Sam Fogg London and brought together curators, auctioneers and a gallery owner to talk about their recent experiences of working with portraits. It would have been good if the talk had been more themed but I was introduced to some wonderful pictures which were new to me and I am a sucker for a good portrait. An Van Camp, from the Ashmolean Museum, talked about curating the Young Rembrandt show which was on as the museum closed. She compared three self portraits from 1628/9, a drawing, a painting and an etching to demonstrate the different mediums he worked in, She also talked about a Van Dyck portrait the gallery is hopefully in the process of purchasing and shared research she has been doing in lockdown to identify the sitter, which she thinks may be the wife of a friend of Van Dyck’s father, Olivia Ghosh, of Christies, talked about some works in a recent ...