Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Royal Academy charting the history of Spanish art via the collection of the New York based Hispanic Society. I would have liked to see the show take a different narrative as the collection wasn’t comprehensive enough to give a full picture of the history of the art of the country and its colonies. For example there was no work by Murillo, Picasso or Miro and little Romanesque work. It might have been better to look at the history of the collection instead. Having said that there were some beautiful pieces. The poster girl is the amazing portrait of the Duchess of Alba by Goya which doesn’t disappoint. I loved this head of a girl by Velazquez and some wonderful Medieval and Renaissance sculpture. Unfortunately there were some pretty horrid work too such as “Maria Louisa de Orleans, Queen of Spain, Lying in State” by Sebastian Munoz, one it will take me a long time to forget! It was good that the show covered the Islamic period and the colonies well. ...

Dense but fascinating two day online conference from the Courtauld Research Forum on how art and artistic ideas moved between Spain and Portugal, the rest of Europe and into the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. The conference took the form of a keynote lecture and five panels of three talks on a shared theme. The keynote looked at the prevalence of Flemish art for the period in Madeira, brought by the trade routes. The speaker, Fernando Antonio Baptista Pereira, had some wonderful pictures of works in the Museum of Scared Art of Funchal. The panels looked at how objects and ideas moved around the Mediterranean and introduced me to the idea of an image chain through the spread of and popularity of prints by Martin Schongauer of the Passion. They also looked at Italian and Flemish artists working in Spain and Spanish artists in Italy, partly moving there in the wake of the Spanish Pope Alexander IV. There were interesting sessions looking at architecture but I think my fav...

Nice little exhibition at the Wallace Collection of Spanish pictures from the Bowes Museum. The Bowes Collection is celebrating its 125th anniversary and has a fine collection of Spanish pictures bought from a Spanish courtier. This small loan show formed a perfect example of the main Spanish painters and styles from the mid-16th to early 19th century in just 13 pictures. El Greco was represented by one of thirteen versions of the Tears of St Peter and Goya by a lovely small picture of the interior of a prison and a wonderful portrait of a poet with a fine wise face. There were also lovely still lives and great dramatic post Council of Trent religious pictures. I loved a painting of a Carmelite monk, possibly St Agabus, by Juan Bautista Maino, a handsome, bearded face painted in beautiful detail and holding a church. Closes on 7 January 2018. Reviews Times Guardian

Interesting exhibition at the Barber Institute of   Fine Arts Spanish of prints from their collection. Prints by Goya were the centre of the show but there were also works by Ribera, Picasso and Miro as well a Goya prints after works by Velazquez. The commentaries were excellent and in just 11 pictures they gave a good overview of Spanish art and its themes. The Goya prints were strange and surreal such as one called “There is Something Beneath the Sock Cloth” of a line of men in sacks. I always forget that Goya was working at the time of the French Revolution and showing the fear that this spread through Europe. The Picasso print was a nice one of his last wife turned to the right with good use made of dark patches as well as highlights. The Miro print was fascinating as it was the design for a stamp to be sold in aid of the Republican Government in the Civil War, an interesting contrast with Goya’s dissatisfaction with society. Closes on 22 October 2017

The third session of this six week course at the National Gallery focusing on the art of the 17th century. This week looked at the Spanish Golden age with the first lecture given by the course tutor, Lucrezia Walker, looking in detail at El Greco, Velazquez, Zurbaran and Murrillo. The focus was on Velazquez and his work at court. I would have liked a bit more on Murrillo but I think we ran a bit short of time. The second talk was given by Larry Keith from the National Gallery conservation department discussing how the colours in Velazquez pictures have altered and the gallery’s ethos for correcting this. He had interesting photos of the original colour of the bed cover on the Rokeby Venus. He also talked about restoration of “The House of Mary and Martha” where colour deterioration had altered the way the shadows worked in the picture. A fascinating talk.

Academic exhibition at the in the print room of the British Library focusing on Spanish drawings from 1500 to the early 19 th century. It was well organised focusing on particular cities at points in time to illustrate a technique or theme. It began with Madrid and designs of the Philip II’s palace including a beautiful design for a vestment.    Here was a slight misbalance to the show as Velazquez had done very view drawings so there were only two by him. This did mean there was rather a lot of fairly standard 17 th century studies for or copies of altar piece which got a but waring. My favourite piece in the show was a wonderful drawing of a monk by Zuberan which had such pathos. I am rapidly becoming a Zuberan fan! The main thing I learnt was the Tiepolo and his sons moved to Spain in the 1750s. I didn’t know that and would like to know more!  Reviews Independent  

Small exhibition at the Christchurch Gallery in Oxford which looked at the role of drawing in Spain and Naples in the 17th century. It discussed the connections between the 2 geographical areas where drawing is rare because it was not seen as essential to the growth of artistic ideas. There were many lovely works including Ribera’s St Irene which was the star of the show. I loved a picture by Preti of the Vision of St Anthony where he had offered the patron two versions of picture via stuck on flap on paper giving him a chance to choose his tabernacle.

One of a series of lectures at the National Gallery in the Paul Mellon Lecture series for 2011. Given by Elizabeth Prettlejohn, this was a fascinating dense look at the how Victorian artists’ discovered Spanish art and the effect it had on their work. She looked at when significant works entered British collections and who would have seen them. She also outlined contemporary art historic writing on Spain. Unfortunately I only managed to get to one lecture in the series so did not pick up on and follow the theme.

Small exhibition at the National Gallery to complement the wonderful “Sacred made Real” exhibition. It looks at how the statues in the larger exhibition were made and features three more the main one being St John of the Cross carved by Francisco Antonio Gijon and painted by Domingo Majias. It looked at how there were made and then the processes that they went through to be painted. Finally it looked at how these statues may have influenced more modern art such as Degas’s Little Dancer and Picasso’s Weeping Woman.

Lecture by Peter Cherry of Trinity College, Dublin, focusing on one picture in the current exhibition at the National Gallery “ Sacred made real ”. He used “Saint Serapion” as a way of looking at the live and works of it’s artist Zurbaran. He looked at why he tended to work for the Orders , despite the fact they did not pay well. He also analysed what Zurbaran was good at such as still lives and portraits using other works in the exhibition to emphasis this.

Lecture by David Davies of the University of London putting the current exhibition at the National Gallery “ Sacred made real ” into context. It was a good introduction to the exhibition which I had viewed earlier that evening. It looked at the political and religious context in which the works were produced. It also went though the various themes of the works explaining their contemporary meanings.

Brilliant exhibition at the National Gallery looking at the dialogue between painting and sculpture in Spain at this period. The objects in the exhibition were amazing and a real discovery for me. I know nothing about polychrome sculpture and was bowled over at how realistic and beautiful they were. The two standing figures of Saint Francis Borgia and Saint Ignatius Loyola were so lifelike that they felt like real people in the room with you. It was lovely that many of the works were not in glass cases but shared the space with the viewer. The paintings were stunning too, in particular the two pictures of St Francis by Zurbaran. But the exhibition was actually better than the sum of its parts. The objects were given space to breathe and to work off each other. The lighting was wonderful with the sculpture casting shadows against the walls. A friend also noticed that were there was an obvious light source in a painting then the lighting of it came from that place. I haven’t done the tap...