Cathy's Art Diary

Lovely exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery of works from the Oskar Reinhart Collection. This Swiss collection has a similar collecting policy to the Courtauld and Reinhart and Courtauld met in London in 1949. There was just a selection of work here with an emphasis on the Impressionists and Post- Impressionists but it included a beautiful earlier Goya of salmon steaks. I loved a picture of a wave by Courbet from 1870 which drew you into the pattern of the water as well as a Sisley of barges. My favourite though was a Manet of a café which had originally been part of a larger canvas which he reworked as two pictures the other being a well-known painting of a waitress now in The Met. Closed 25 May 2025 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard  

Comprehensive and enjoyable online lecture from ARTscapades introducing the exhibition at the Courtauld on Monet’s views of the River Thames. The curator of the show, Karen Serres, lead us clearly through the three series of paintings, gave us the background to how Monet painted them and their afterlife from exhibition to sale.   I was fascinated to hear more about what London looked like at the time and how the subjects, Waterloo and Charing Cross bridges and the Houses of Parliament were all relatively new. I also loved the background information on Monet’s life in London including the fact that he is recorded on the 1901 census record for the Savoy, I had already been to the show and enjoyed it but this talk added a lot more information and I have revisited since to consolidate what I learnt and to cement the show in my mind.

Fascinating online lecture from ARTscapades introducing an exhibition recreating the First Impressionist exhibition. Anne Robbins, one of the curators of the exhibition at the Musee D’Orsay, set out the aims of the show and guided us through the display and its successful add-ons including a VR experience and the loan of other Impressionist paintings to other galleries in France. She began by looking at what was happening in Paris at the time from the building works by Haussman to the aftereffects of the Commune. She then moved on to what pictures were actually in the show and how they were hung. She spent some time discussing how the show was a reaction to the annual show at the Salon and yet how much the two shows had in common with 12 artists showing in both of them before looking at how it established a new school of art and is often seem as the starting point of the Avant Garde. It made me wish I had made the effort to go to Paris for this show. 

Brilliant four week online course from the National Gallery focusing on the female subjects and models in Degas’s work. The course complimented the excellent exhibition on the gallery looking at Degas’s “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando” and was delivered via a variety of speakers, a style I like as it gives different viewpoints in a longer course. In week one Aliki Braine gave us an overview of the artists life and main subjects. This was followed the next week by talks from Daphne Barbour from the National Gallery in Washington and Johanna Conybeare talking about his process from drawings to making small sculptures to work from. Week three saw the return of Braine as a replacement speaker who picked up the talk on Degas and women looking at the women in his life and the subjects he chose to depict. She discussed why we often view him as a misogynist now and whether that was justified. Denise Murrell from the Met then looked at his trip to New Orleans early in his career and t...

Fascinating exhibition at the Royal Academy bringing together works on paper by Impressionist artists. There was a lovely selection of works in a variety of medium including pastels, watercolours and drawing. I also spotted a number of artists I’d not come across before such as Federico Zandomeneghi so I have lots of look up. Because it was quite busy and the works were closely hung, I found myself having some good conversations as I went around. Closed 10 March 2024 Reviews Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

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

Interesting one  day course from the London Art History Society looking at the Impressionist, Berthe Morisot, and her impact as a woman artist. Jacqueline Cockburn started by looking at Morisot’s life and work with excellent illustrations. She talked us though how her style changed over the years and the subjects that she covered. We then went on to look at the wider artistic and social context within which she was working. Most interesting was thinking about how Paris had been designed to give male spaces in the city and female in the suburbs and how there were spaces into which women couldn’t go. In the afternoon we focused on other women artists, first those who were part of the Parisian avant garde. Ost of those we looked at became a success but we did also talk about how female dealers didn’t always help them. Finally we looked at artists who weren’t successful or who have been largely forgotten or eclipsed by their husbands. I would have liked a bit more on Morisot and...

Excellent exhibition at the National Gallery putting Manet’s portrait of the artist Eva Gonzales into context. The painting is the centre piece but the show then uses it to talk about the relationship between the artists. Eva was Manet’s only formal pupil and they had a sustained friendship and artistic dialogue. It featured work by both artists and I’d never consciously seen work by her before. The show went on to put the picture in the context of self-portraits by female artists to point out that they often show themselves in pale, fine clothes as in this picture and put themselves in the guise of the Allegory of Painting. It was fantastic to see such an array of pictures from Angelica Kauffman and Mary Moser, founder members of the Royal Academy to Laura Knight the first elected female academician in the 1930s. Finally it looked at how opportunities for female artists were still limited in this period. The Ecole des Beaux-Art did not admit women into 1897. It featured picture...

Comprehensive online lecture from ARTscapades previewing the current exhibition at the National Gallery based around Manet’s portrait of the artist Eva Gonzales. Richard Stemp described the portrait from 1870 putting it in the context of both their lives and pointing out some of the oddities in the work such as the fact she is painting a work that is already frame and she wears an impractical white dress. Most fascinating was the fact that the still-life she is working on is a copy of a print of a 18th century print which appears in a contemporary book on the history of French painting which is in the show. He then went on to explain some of the oddities in the context of other portraits and self-portraits of women artists explaining how many were painting the Allegory Le Pittura which was a female figure. He went through the pictures in the show which demonstrated this. He also used them to talk about what women wore to paint and how that contrasted with how they showed themselve...

Interesting online lecture from ARTscapades looking at the American artists who went to France in the late 19th century and worked with the Impressionists. Timothy J. Standring, author of “From Whistler to Cassatt: American Painters in France” and curator of an exhibition in Richmond and Denver of the same title, talked us through why it was easy for Americans to go and study in France in this period. He outlined the ways of studying and displaying art at the time in Paris and how reviews of the salon shows travelled back to the US creating an educated clientele for the work back at home. Strandring concentrated on James Whistler, Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent looking at their careers in Paris and how they took on Impressionist techniques. I would have liked a bit more detail on lives in Paris but the talk became more of a guide to the exhibition at this point which was still interesting but more of a description of paintings than a narrative.

Interesting online lecture from ARTscapades on how Impressionism began and what proceeded it. The author Ross King looked at the rivalry between Ernest Meissonier and Eduard Manet in the  1860s examining the work of each of them and discussing why Meissonier is no longer popular while Manet and his fellow Impressionists elicit large sums at auction and large audiences at exhibitions. He concentrated on Meissonier, as the now lesser known artist, outlining his successful career at the time and showing us some lovely images of his work. He then turned to Manet, how his career started and he was seen as a radical artist. King outlined how Manet was following the idea of contemporary authors encouraging the painting of modern life.   Despite reading King’s excellent book on this period “The Judgement of Paris” I didn’t know Meissonier’s work. I do prefer Manet but will start to look out for the former on my travels.

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery looking at two sets of paintings by Renoir and Vuillard that were painted for decorative schemes. Belle Smith started talking about “The Dancing Girls” By Renoir from 1909. She explained how the two pictures were commissioned by Maurice Gagnat for his Paris apartment. She talked about who the models were and one of their memories of it in later life. She discussed how the works fitted into his oeuvre and how the displayed Orientalism. Smith then looked at “Terrasse at Vasouy” by Vuillard, again two pictures painted in 1901 and reworked in the 1930s. She talked about how they were commissioned as one picture by Jean Schopfer and included people from the literary circle around Thadee and Misia Natanson. She discussed how they were painted in distemper, basically glue with pigment in it and how this gave a more matt effect. She then looked at why the picture was split in the 1930s and how Vuillard reworked it.

Insightful online lecture from Courtauld Research Forum and Ulster Museums on the fashions of the Belle Epoque and in particular an analysis of the dress in Renoir’s “La Loge”. This lecture marked two exhibitions at the Ulster Museums, a loan of various Renoir’s, including “La Loge” from the Courtauld and their own companion show on fashion in the Belle Epoque ie from 1870s to the start of the First World War. Charlotte McReynolds gave us a brief overview of the Belle Epoque exhibition then Ingrid Mida, a picture dating consultant, also known as The Dress Detective took us thought the finer detail of the dress in “La Loge”   revealing that at the date it was painted, 1874, the striped dress would have been slightly old fashioned. This may have been a deliberate statement about the woman by Renoir, or it might be that at this period he had to borrow outfits for his models. Mida compared the picture to real clothes, fashion plates and photographs of the time and looked at what...

Interesting online lecture from the National Gallery on the life and work of the female Impressionist, Berthe Morisot. Belle Smith took us through the story of Morisot’s life illustrating it with her paintings. She told us how Edward Manet became her friend and how she married his brother Eugene. We went through the artists who helped her and mentored her and the early influence on her work. I would like to have heard a bit more about Morisot’s later life and career and who bought her work. The talk concentrated on more on how she started as an artist and became established but I guess time was quite limited.

Beautiful exhibition at the National Gallery giving an overview of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art by using the Courtauld Institute’s collection while the gallery is being refurbished. It was nice to see these works from Samuel Courtauld’s own collection shown with those works which he bought on behalf of the National Gallery. They were arranged by artist to give a useful overview of these movements and shown alongside photographs of the work hung in Courtauld’s London house. I would like to see a bit more analysis of what the works he kept for himself or bought for the gallery had in common. It was lovely to see old friends from the Courtald Gallery in a different context and to set up dialogues with a different collection. Manet’s Bar at the Folies Berger was given a lovely central position. Every time I look at that picture I seem to see some new detail. There were two lovely Van Gogh’s from different points in his career, a late wheatfield and an earlier still...

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain looking at French artists working in Britain in the late 19th century. I have needed a show looking at this period of the exile from the Franco-Russian War and the Commune for a while. Lots of the biographies of French artists at the time mention that they went to England to escape the war but they rapidly move on to when they returned to France making the time spent here sound like a weekend break. Although the main title of this show mentions the Impressionists they are not the only artists that the show looks at so don’t expect eight rooms of Monet’s. The first section does focus on Monet, Pissarro and Sisley along with the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel. It does have to be noted though that the term Impressionist was not applied to them until after this early period of the show. The show also looks at Alphonse Legros who became a professor at the Slade, the sculptors Jules Dalou and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. The artist who caught ...

Delightful exhibition at Caumont Centre d'Art in Aix-en-Provence examining the life and work of Alfred Sisley. I always forget that Sisley’s father was English and Sisley himself trained as a business man in London. The show was chronological but used the places Sisley was working as the narrative rather than the dates. The show explained well how Sisley used paths and roads to lead you into compositions. The works were lovely and full of light and air although the colours got darker as he got older. Although we thing of his as a great French landscape painter it was great to see three of the fifteen works he did of the river at Hampton Court here. I love the one which looks at the view under the bridge focusing on the structure. There were also a number of his pictures of cliffs near Cardiff which the National Gallery did a small exhibition on a few years ago. I loved the four pictures near the end, again form a larger series, looking at the façade of a cathedral...

Interesting course over two afternoons at the National Gallery exploring the themes behind their current exhibition on the Australian Impressionists. In the first week we looked at the lives and output of three of the artists in the show, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Charles Condor. We discussed why the show was laid out as it is and what the two main themes of cities and countryside showed about Australia at the time. We discussed how only became a country in this period and how art reflected and helped shape its national identity. We also discussed what the Australia artists would have known about art trends in Europe. In the second week we focused on the fourth artist in the show John Russell who moved to Europe and became friends with many of the European artist of the time. He studied with Toulouse Lautrec and Van Gogh and continued to write to Van Gogh until the latter’s death. He also met Monet and later Matisse while painting. We talked about the house he built...

Beautiful exhibition at the National Gallery of work by four Australian artists painting in the Impressionist style Tom Roberts, Charles Condor, Arthur Streeton and John Russell. The show focused at first on the three artists who worked in Australia and made a point of how they were helping to define the national identity at a time which covered the centenary of Captain Cooks discover of the continent in 1888 and the formation of the country in 1901. I loved the section on their 1889 9 x 5 exhibition which features small works painted on the reverse of cigar box lids 9 in by 5 in in size in deep wooden frames with a gold inner frame. These were loose but concentrated pictures such as a lovely one of the bend in the road in the rain. I liked the contrast between the city and rural pictures. The city ones were darker but showed a pride in what had been built and established in a short time. I liked one by Streeton of the Railway Station at Redfern with a vast expanse of...

Vibrant exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the relationship between modern art and gardens. I liked the variety of themes and ways of presenting the work in this exhibition however after a while it all became a bit too much! It was just too big a show on one topic. The central room which looked at international gardens   became too chocolate boxlike and I felt like I was drowning in orange chocolate truffles! The stories of each of the gardens was fascinating but even for me there were too many images There was a great sense of visual relief when you hit the wittily titled Avant-Garden room and found works by Van Gogh, Kandinsky and got a different view of the world. However the star of the show was the Monet lilies triptych brought back together from three galleries and shown in the lovely round room, a perfect end to the show. I loved the fact there was no sense of the bank of the pool and they become pictures of infinity. Closes on 20 April 2016. ...