Cathy's Art Diary

Lecture at the National Galley by Jacqui Ansell a freelance lecturer to accompany the current Pompeo Batoni exhibition. This talk looked at the clothes worn by the Grand Tourists in the portraits and discussed how they reflected how these sitters behaved and wished to be seen. It was a bit of a repeat of the talk she gave at the workshop morning a couple of weeks ago but did add a bit more to this.

Lecture at the National Gallery on their current Batoni Pompeo exhibition by Francis Russell, Deputy Chairman of Christie’s UK. Visually this was a good talk with excellent slides but I did found the content wandered a bit and seemed to end up as a list of sitter’s names and names of art historians in this field. I had hoped to add to my knowledge of this artist but I got little from this which I didn’t get from the exhibition or the previous week’s study morning.

Study morning at the National Gallery on their current exhibition of the works of Pompeo Batoni (see blog entry for last week!), This was a good morning of 3 talks on aspects of the exhibition. The first talk was by Dawson Cart, co-ordinating curator of this exhibition for the gallery. This was a good walk though the exhibition using slides looking at which pictures had been chosen and why and how they fitted together to form the story of this artist. He talked about the stories behind the sitters as well which really brought them to life. The second talk was Rebecca Lyons, a freelance lecturer, on the Grand Tour, why people went on it, what they did and how they wished to be portrayed on it. Finally Jacqui Ansell, again a freelance lecturer, looking at the clothes in the portraits. She outlined the different styles of dressed and discussed which we modern and stylist and which were more old fashioned and trying to say more about dignity and gravitas. Particularly interesting was her c...

Exhibition at the National Gallery of the works of Pompeo Batoni, in his day the most celebrated painter in Rome. Now known for his portraits of British nobles on the Grand Tour the exhibition also looks at his allegorical and historical work. The stars of the show however were the portraits. I particularly liked one of William Gordon, a man in complete Highland outfit with the Coliseum in the background and an unusual landscape portrait of Duchess Girolama Santacroce Conti incorporating a wonderful silver toilet set. I found the allegorical pictures more difficult as we suffer from having distanced ourselves from many of the stories and ideals that they represent. I liked a Triumph of Venice a strange scene on the greatness of Venice superimposed on an almost Canneletto type scene of the Doges Palace and St Marks Square. All in all not a great exhibition but well presented and fills a gap. Reviews Daily Telegraph Evening Standard