Cathy's Art Diary

Useful online lecture from ARTscapades introducing the exhibition on Rubens and women at Dulwich Picture Gallery. I say useful as I’d hoped to get to the show but I’ve run out of time now so I was pleased to hear an explanation of what was there and what narrative they are suggesting. Amy Orrock, a co-curator of the show, guided us through the four rooms and their themes. The show is built around the seven pictures by Rubens owned by the gallery which are all of women. She guided us though those as well as the excellent loans which illuminate those works and add to the story. The show looks at portraits, Biblical subjects and Rubens development of the nude discussing the idea of the Rubenesque figure. I was interested to hear that Orrock feels it is based on the antique “Crouching Venus” figure. Wherever it comes from I think I have it!

Fascinating small exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the life and work of Mary Beale and her husband Charles. The show highlighted how Charles, who was Mary’s studio manager, also experimented with colours and paints to help her career as a portrait painter. I loved the labels printed on mock paint palettes with a small blob of colour where the narrative was describing an experiment. At first I was disappointed that there were a number of pictures by other artists, but in each case there was a good link to Mary and they added to the story eg a portrait of her son Bartholomew by Sir Peter Lely who was a neighbour. Closed 3 September 2023    

Delightful exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the work of the Impressionist Berthe Morisot. I loved that the show was based around how Morisot was influenced by the 18th century. It gave a good structure and the narrative was clearly explained by good labels and interesting hangs of her work next to the older works. Looking at the dates it is equivalent to us looking back to the 1920s. There were some great loans and it was lovely to get so close to the pictures to study the brushwork. I preferred the earlier work as the colours were richer and they had my favourite of her works of her husband, Eugene Manet, on their honeymoon on the Isle of Wight. It was in a good section on her time in London and on the island looking at who she met and the art she saw. Closed 10 September 2023 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Fabulous exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the life and work of Vanessa Bell. It was so good to see Bell’s work in its own right rather than being shown as part of a group. I loved the fact the show looked at her design work as well as her paintings including a lovely case of her book covers for her sister Virginia Woolf’s books and material designs in different colour ways. There were lots of old friends here but also lots of work I’d never seen before. They had got some really good loans from American’s galleries and private collections and it was a real treat to see those works. I’d never seen the self-portrait which was used a s the poster before and I loved the way she paints her checked dress and the engaging expression which just makes you want to sit down and talk to her. Old favourites included “Iceland Poppies” which I’d never seen as a comment of opium before but now it’s obvious. I was very touched by her painting of a bunch of flowers and f...

Delightful exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery of photographs from Vanessa Bell’s photo albums alongside pictures by Patti Smith taken while working at Charleston and Monks House. It was a shame that the Bell pictures had to be reproductions as the originals were too delicate to display but a nice touch that there were mounted in the original albums.   The images were nicely picked to complement the Vanessa Bell exhibition. It was good to go round both before doing the main show to familiarise yourself with the people mentioned but then to go back later to see how the photos related to the art on show. I loved the Patti Smith images as I had seen her when she did her residence at Charleston   a few years ago. Hearing her sing a acoustic version of “Because the Night” there is one of my magic moments in life. I wasn’t so sure about the inclusion of her pictures on the lives of other artists. It would have been nice to keep it to a contemporary view of Bloomsbury....

Stunning exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the life and work of Escher. I had the image of Escher as a pop art/surrealist which I now realise was completely wrong. Instead I found a Northern European super realist in the tradition of Dutch Golden Age still lives. I loved the attention to detail in these works and was surprised to find that most of the work was woodcuts not drawings. The precision needed to transfer the intricate pictures to an unforgiving print format is amazing. I was also interested to think about the influence of Durer. I had also never seen any of his early work such as a lovely print of San Gimignano and some lovely self-portraits. From early on you could see him finding pattern in landscape. It was only when he left Italy and that landscape that he turned to his imagination for ideas. I also loved the imaginative work being particularly struck by the transformative pieces where one repeated creature gradually becomes another ...

Delightful exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the work of Eric Ravilious. The show was divided into the subject matter of the pictures starting with machinery but also looking at landscape, interiors and seascapes. I do love and know Ravilious's work well so I’m not sure I learnt a lot from the show but there were some lovely works and it’s always good to revisit them. Favourite pieces included a picture of a farmhouse bedroom that was Van Gogh meets Vuillard, full of pattern and yet a picture of ordinary objects. Also a lovely picture of Edward Bawden working in his studio from 1930. I liked the fact it didn’t concentrate on the war pictures as a separate subject but wove them into the other subjects. I loved the first picture in his series of submarine lithographs which included his own hand drawing a picture. Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph

Delightful exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the work of Ben and Winifred Nicholson during their marriage and bringing in the work of their close friends the artists Christopher Wood and Alfred Wallis and the ceramicist William Staite Murray. The first gallery looked at the early years when they visited Paris and lived in Switzerland. In Paris they encountered Cubism and the show explored how that affected their work. It pointed out that Ben was interested in form and Winifred in colour and I’d never really throught what that might mean before. I think I’m with Winifred on the side of colour! The next room looked at their time in Cumberland where their friends Christopher Wood and William Staite Murray began to visit. The final rooms looked at their time in St Ives where they met Alfred Wallis and started to admire a more primitive style of art. I loved the sections where works by Ben, Winifred and Christopher were shown together, in particular three pi...

Nice small exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery bringing together four pictures by Jan van Huysum, the most revered Dutch still-life painter of the 18th century. I usually find the acres of Dutch still lives you see in museums a bit dull but it was nice to see these magnificent floral pictures having s spotlight shone on them. The flowers in them were just wonderful and as you looked carefully you realised there were often tiny dew drops or little insects in painted in wonderful detail. One even had a birds nest included. It turned out he could never had seen the complete bouquets as the flowers are all out at different time of year. Some of the pictures have two dates so it is thought he might have painted them over time adding each flower as it came into bloom.

Interesting exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at David Hockney’s work in prints throughout his career. I liked the way it split the show into etchings and lithographs and explained both techniques which made you focus on how he worked differently in each style rather than just thinking about how his general style changed over time. Also liked the way it showed sets of prints such as the Rakes Progress from 1963.    My favourite set was as illustrations to poems by C. P. Cavafy which were basically prints of men in bed together which may or may not have been done as a gay rights statement. Either way they are lovely gentle rather sweet pictures. There were some great still lives and I liked the wall of lithographs of flowers in vases from various stages in his career. Reviews Telegraph Independent Evening Standard    

Excellent exhibition at Dulwich Art Gallery looking at works by Whistler of the Thames and exploring he relationship with the river. I loved the etchings at the start of the show looking at the area round Docklands and the Pool of London as I go to work on Thames Clippers so it’s a section of the river I see every day and have grown to love. Whistler had captured it at a moment when it was still busy and thriving but was about to change. I particularly liked “The Lime Burner” with a wonderful multi-framed composition. The middle section looked at the various houses he lived in in Chelsea, his studios there and the work that came out of them. It also explored his nocturnes and his attempts to paint the river at night. The last section looked at how he was influences by Japanese prints particularly those showing important stages in trade routes such as bridges, All in all a really well thought out and displayed exhibition. Note to self however, to try to visit Dulw...

Brilliant exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the work of the students at the Slade School of Art in between 1908 and 1912 where they formed part of what their esteemed drawing teacher Henry Tonks described as the school’s last ‘crisis of brilliance’. The exhibition was based on David Boyd Haycock’s book of the same title. The main artists were C.R.W. Nevinson, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington, David Bomberg and Paul Nash who, I admit, are some of my favourites. The exhibition had all the main pieces you’d want to see if you know anything about the lives of these artists and some I had not seen before. I loved the first wall of portraits and self portraits of them particularly the run of pictures of Carrington and Gertler. It followed their lives not only through their college years but also in the First World War and beyond. I loved the room on how the war had influenced them either because they went or because   of their pacifism. I ju...

Nice exhibition of Paul Nash landscapes at Dulwich Picture Gallery . I had forgotten how abstract Paul Nash’s work is but I liked it and your eye quickly got use to the oddities. I loved a photo of a ploughed field next to a painting of a similar field called ‘Earth Sea’. I went on Bank Holiday Monday and it was great to see the gallery so busy! Reviews Guardian Daily Telegraph Independent Evening Standard

Small exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery bringing together sections of an altarpiece by Veronese from the Italian town of Lendinara. One piece is owned by Dulwich but the others are spread between the National Gallery of Scotland, the National Gallery of Canada and the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas. The exhibition showed how the pieces had been retouched to make the sellable and to erase the St Michael and the Devil from the middle section. Following cleaning this was rediscovered and the head of St Michael rediscovered in Texas. As you may realize from previous blogs I like exhibition which bring works back together which have been split up so I found this fascinating. Reviews Independent

Nice exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery looking at the work done by Sickert during his stays in Venice in the late 19th century. Starting with his views of the city it also looked at the models he found there and his relationship with them. There was a bit of a sense of mass production about some of the work and a real sense that it was painted to make money but he also did different versions of the same view in the same vein as Monet’s Rouen Cathedral pictures. However try as he might he paints in sludge brown! Reviews Guardian Daily Telegraph Evening Standard