Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery bringing together twenty one of Monet's paintings of the River Thames. Monet had hoped that these works would be shown together in London   but a planned show for 1905 never happened. This show fulfils this wish just yards from the Savoy from which he made the sketches for two of the series. The 21 works, brought together from around the world, were hung in the three series of Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. I was fascinated to see that he only did sketches in London and that all the finished works were done back in Giverny. The commentary explained how Monet was captivated by the London fogs and the effect they had on light. Although you can view the pictures in any order I'd recommend going round in number order as the useful leaflet and labels do build a narrative. These are stunning pictures on their own but benefit from seeing them as a group   to really see what Monet was trying ...

Useful online lecture from the London Art History Society looking at the different reasons artists drew in the Renaissance. Grant Lewis from the British Museum proposed that as well as drawing being a way of working out compositions and for use within the studio as artists tried to enhance their prestige they became collectable by patrons. He outlined Vasari’s principle of disegno or design and how being able to see the intellectual thought behind a work became important in raising the status of artists. Lewis showed us how some artists, including Raphael, made works which looked like spontaneous preparatory work but were actually   constructed with underdrawings which were rubbed out. They were playing with these ideals and using the drawings as an act of performance. He also talked about how a market developed for finished drawings with some by Michelangelo talking up to 6 months to produce although he also told us about Luca Cambiaso whose drawings were so popular he set ...

Fascinating discussion at the National Portrait Gallery bringing together three past winners of their annual portrait award. Broadcaster, Louisa Buck, interviewed Tai Shan Schierenberg, Ishbel Myerscough and Stuart Pearson Wright from 1989, 1995 and 2001 respectively. To each she asked how they made the work that won and how winning influenced their careers. It rapidly widened out into a discussion of the current state of portraiture and what an artistic career really means. It was a great insight into the lives of working artists.

Colourful exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the career of Michael Craig-Martin. The show opened with Craig-Martin’s early work using found objects and explained how he developed this into painting large, bright, bold, simple images of everyday items. The work was explained clearly and I found they works were much deeper than I had imagined. I have had a tendency to dismiss them as pop art. I hadn’t realised that his drawings and wall murals are made using tape or that some of the objects reflect an alphabet he was developed with each representing an unrelated letter. The show ended with a new immersion piece shown on the four walls of a gallery using images he has made over the last 45 years. C losed 10 December 2024 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph Evening Standard

Interesting small exhibition at Leighton House of photographs taken by Edward Linley Sambourne,   cartoonist and illustrator for Punch over a long weekend in Paris in 1906. The show complimented one upstairs looking at the clothes of his wife and daughter and these photographs concentrated on people in the streets of Paris with an emphasis on clothing. I was intrigued as to how he took these street photographs at this date, many of which felt spontaneous. I loved this one of a sailor as well as this one of women walking which catches the movement of their clothes. Closed 10 October 2024

Charming exhibition at Leighton House looking at the clothes and shopping habits of two residents of their sister museum Sambourne House. The show looked at the buying habits of Marion Sambourne and her daughter Maud using them to examine the history of clothes shopping in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When Marion died in 1914, her children kept her house largely as she had left it, preserving the original contents including a collection of almost 150 items of Marion and Maud's clothing and related ephemera. There was a lovely selection of dresses shown with letters from Maud to Marion about clothes and invoices for purchase. A useful map showed the location of all the dressmakers and shops recorded in the archive. Closes 20 October 2024 Review Evening Standard  

Interesting installation at the National Gallery to mark its 200th anniversary. The piece consists of two video rooms. The first looks at the current work of the gallery over a series of screens. For each topic it gives a couple of facts then uses photographs of current projects, art works and archive material. It felt a bit slow at first but as you got into it you slowed down to match it. An interesting touch is that between each section you get plain yellow screens. One of the gallery assistants explained to me that if you walk past them it records your silhouette and these will be used in the reopening of the Sainsbury Wing. Look out for one with big hair and a back pack. The second room looked at the history of the gallery making good use of archive material over two walls. It concentrated on the early years and the Second World War. I’d have liked to have seen some of the gaps filled maybe with a photo of every director. If you are in the gallery pop in and give it a watc...