Cathy's Art Diary

Excellent online lecture from ARTscapades on Hans Holbein the Younger. The author of a new biography of Holbein, Elizabeth Goldring, was in conversation with Michael Prodger of the New Statesman, to bring out the highlights of her book. I was fascinated to hear how Goldring went about her research given that Holbein left no diaries or letters. The only source material from him are a dictated will and notes on his drawings. Instead she turned to his patrons’ archives such as the letters of Erasmus. I liked her description of these as adjacent works. She talked about how Holbein’s portraits have become our view of Tudor England and how she can’t image Tudor art or history without him. However she also talked about other works by him from before he came to England, in particular his portraits of Erasmus which his workshop continued to produce in Basle even after he’d moved to England. She also mentioned his design work including armour for Henry VIII and over 200 pieces of jewell...

Interesting discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival looking at the life and art of Paul Gauguin. It brought together the author of a recent biography, Sue Prideaux, with Mette Gauguin, the artist’s great granddaughter chaired by Michael Prodger, associate editor of the New Statesman. Both had sought to place Gauguin as a man of his time rather than judging him by contemporary standards. They talked us through his life and I learnt that he gone to the Americas to help build the Panama Canal but it went bust before he got there!