Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery at Holyrood House looking at the relationship between the royal family and Scottish artists in the 18th and 19th centuries. The show gave a good overview of the taste of British monarchs and the development of Scottish art. It began with George III and the support he gave to Allan Ramsey who painting the main royal portraits of which hundreds of copies were made. Ramsey was the first Scottish artist of European significance. It then looked at David Wilkie and in particular two pictures purchased by the Prince Regent but it also looked at his work after he had visited Spain when he started using brighter colours and covered subjects from the peninsular war. There was also a lovely picture by him of Queen Victoria, probably the earliest picture of her as the reigning monarch. There was a large section on Queen Victoria and her taste for all things Scottish including portraits of the staff at Balmoral by Kenneth MacLeay. It a...

Lovely small exhibition at Kensington Palace looking at clothes worn by the Queen, Princess Margaret and Princess Diana to show changing styles and fashion conventions for the Royal family. The emphasis was obviously on clothes for official events with an emphasis on evening wear. The clothes were shown in a case you could walk round to see them from all angels or in mirror backed cases. There were then framed magazine covers on the walls and videos in some of the rooms of films of fashion shows on the times and of the ladies in the clothes. The first room of the Queen’s 1950s evening dresses for state occasions was very classic with the most amazing embroidery. It was nice to have Princess Margaret so well represented as she was quite a style icon at the time and was able to be more fashionable than the Queen. The Diana room was strange as I remember her clothes so well and loved them but 35 years on they do look quite dated. What a strange shape some of them were wi...