Cathy's Art Diary

Small exhibition   at Tate Britain focusing pictures painted by Joshua Reynolds in the period he was president of the Royal Academy. The commentary of the show was giving the historical context of each picture and talking about how he used experimental techniques which often didn’t work or deteriorated quickly. It also talked about his intellectual circle, the Streatham Group, many of whom he painted. It also pointed out that the political background to work was the French Revolution. There was a feature made of the portrait of Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, which the gallery had bought recently. I liked the detail that they’d found out the dog he was painted with was called Rover and had died in Paris. It was painted in 1769 but was not delivered until 1775 and sent back as it had been damaged and Reynolds had to repair a tear. Closes on 14 July 2019

Small Room 1 exhibition at the National Gallery to commemorate 200 years since the abolition of the slave trade bringing together "Mrs Oswald" by Zoffany and "Colonel Tarleton" by Reynolds to look at their and their families role in the trade. Also looked at the role of slave trade money in art collection of the C18th and how those collections formed the foundation galleries such at the National itself. The initial core of the collection was given by John Julius Angerstein (of whom their is a portrait in the exhibition) who was instrumental in the development of LLoyds which profited from insuring slave ships amongst others and who also had shares in Caribbean plantations. The Room 1 exhibition was complimented by new work by Yinka Shonibore MBE both in that gallery and Room 36 where the two main portraits usually hang, which explores the effects of the wealth created by the trade on society. The main work were two headless figures shooting birds with clothes mirror...