Cathy's Art Diary

Stunning small display at the British Museum of botanical drawings by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. From a first glance I had assumed these were late 17th early 18th century works so was stunned to find they came from an album given to Lady Mary Sidney in 1586. Le Moyne was a Huguenot who came to London in 1580 having been on a French Protestant expedition to America in 1565. The pictures were exquisite showing fruit, vegetables, insects and plants in detail. In some of the flower pictures he shows all stages of their development in one image. A beautiful picture of a fir come uses the frame to build the composition whereas in others the plant escapes from the frame. As ever at in British Museum print gallery displays the labels were well written, not only explaining the art but also the plants and their histories. Closed 24 January 2024

Insightful online lecture from ARTscapades on the Lucien Freud and plants exhibition at the Garden Museum. I went to the exhibition a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it but Giovanni Aloi’s insightful talk added another layer to the show which I hadn’t thought about. Aloi is from the Art Institute of Chicago and has written “Lucian Freud: Herbarium”. He set out the argument that Freud approached plants and gardens in the same way as his nudes concentrating on the detail and reality of the subject rather than seeking a sense of idealised beauty. He talked us through a selection of the pictures and I understood more about they. For example I hadn’t realised that the large work “Two Plants” from 1997 was painted over three years. It shows fresh and faded parts of the plant. When it was bought by the Tate Freud said he had been painting small portraits of leaves not the plants as a whole. He also talked about how Freud’s life often overpowers his art and how he has reached “...

Thoughtful exhibition at the Garden Museum focusing on Lucien Freud’s painting of plants and gardens. With just a few works the show told the story clearly and comprehensively beginning with drawings from when he was six kept by his mother of trees. There were sections on his portraits of people with flowers and his paintings of the gardens and backyards outside his studios which one description called an anti-garden. I loved the inclusion of a room on his murals of cyclamen both at his own home at Croome in Dorset and Chatsworth which included the painting materials he left behind, presumably to finish the work on a future trip. The main fact I took away is that the zimmerlindes which appear in a lot of his pictures was probably a descendent of one in Sigmund Freud’s office in Vienna and the plant became a family emblem. Closes 5 March 2023 Review Telegraph  

Annual show of the Society of Botanical Artists at Methodist Central Hall in London. This was a real find of an exhibition, full of very detailed pictures of flowers and plants of almost Flemish intensity. I had assumed it would be quite a small show but quickly realised that I was only in section A of a whole alphabet! It took up most of the very large basement of the building and spread over a number of rooms. It was fascinating to listen to the other visitor many of whom seemed to members of the society and were commenting wisely and gave an added insight into the work. There was some attempt to add a theme of the language of flowers with some works having description if the symbolism of different plant but this was hardly needed the lovely works spoke for themselves. I’ll certainly look out for the show again next year.