Category Archives: Art

Manchester Art Gallery

Posted on by
Reply

I was in Manchester so went into the art gallery. They have recently acquired a painting I saw last year at Tate Britain – Women’s Work: A Medley by Florence Claxton (painted when she was only 22). They’ve hung it right next to Work by Ford Madox Brown, so it’s instructive to compare the two. His is much bigger and (it must be admitted) more skilfully executed, but hers has a pull all its own. The figure in the bottom right with her gaoler holding the key suggest psychological incarceration, but, looking at some of her other work, I’m not sure how much of a feminist she was throughout her long life. However a work of art has a life separate from its author – and this was as much of a packed social commentary as Work.

York

Posted on by
Reply

Winter drags on, cold and damp. I headed to York to visit the art gallery for a second time, this time lingering in front of the non-working automaton clock (possibly by the designer of the silver swan in the Bowes Museum). It needs to be wound up regularly to work properly, but it fell victim to Covid lockdowns. I thought how you really would want to have your portrait painted by Allan Ramsey if you were an eighteenth-century bigwig – and then noticed, as I cropped the image, how neatly it was arranged on a grid. What to do with your bits and pieces of medieval religious art: arrange them as a polyptych. There were three abstract paintings hung together and I entertained myself by wondering why I admired one and not the other.

The best bit was stumbling across an exhibition of works by someone I had never heard of before: Harold Gosney, now a very old man, who seems to have been creating all his life. There was a sense of integrity and coherence in his work. His sculptures of horses from patches of metal and perspex somehow married physical grace and power with the inorganic materials.

I had time to look for the redundant Holy Trinity Church in Goodramgate. Many centuries of building in one small church, box pews (how did they affect the congregation’s experience of services?), some 15th-century stained glass, and a squint between the small chapel and the main altar.

More London

Posted on by
Reply

Thursday’s ticket gave me half-price entry into the London Transport Museum, so I decided to visit it, if only for the exhibition of art deco posters. Perhaps it’s an exaggeration to say that every other adult had a pushchair, but I certainly felt out of place without a small child in tow. They were pinging about all over the place. It wasn’t the first time I’d been there, so it was familiar. I did linger at the steam locomotive used on the Metropolitan & District underground for over 40 years; it had a condenser to capture the steam but nothing to alleviate the smoke. At first I thought how awful it must have been for passengers . . . and then I thought of the drivers and stokers.

I enjoyed the exhibition of art deco posters from the underground. They implied affordable modern luxury – a visit to Kew Gardens, the zoo or the West End. There were a couple by Sybil Andrews/Cyril Power that I’d seen in Dulwich.

Then, since I was nearby, I headed towards the Courtauld Gallery. I was briefly sidetracked by a youthful band celebrating the anniversary of the founding of RAF air cadets. I looked at the”Courtauld bag” (from Mosul, 1300-30) and was rather taken with Tobias and his fish in the Botticelli painting of the Trinity. There was also a small exhibition: A View of One’s Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860. I’ve seen a lot of Turner and Constable landscapes recently, and I can’t see that Elizabeth’s Batty’s is markedly inferior.

Leeds today

Posted on by
Reply

It was too cold and dank a day to want to do anything more than mooch up to the art gallery and look at the J Atkinson Grimshaw exhibition, “Nocturnes”.

No great surprise to learn that, as an artist, he was self-taught. (He obviously didn’t spend hours in life drawing classes.) He also churned out favourite scenes, as I discovered when looking online. But, oh, the light and shadows by Roundhay Park! The exhibition included some modern works to complement Grimshaw; they rather faded into insignificance beside his, but I noticed paintings by Judith Tucker that had been on display in the Burton Gallery – chosen, presumably, because of the lighted windows in dark landscapes.

There were also two extracts by Charles Dickens and James McNeill Whistler. Given yesterday’s visit to the Thackray Museum, I was inclined to view Grimshaw’s murky, polluted River Aire through Dickens’s eyes.

But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the bans were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.

Charles Dickens

And when the evening mist cloths the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens and fairy-land is before us – then the wayfarer hastens home; the working man, and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to understand, as they have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master – her son in that he loves her, her master in that he knows her.

James McNeill Whistler

As for the rest: I would happily have stolen the Inchbold, the Tunnard seemed to approach Ignatius Riley’s “geometry and theology” criteria (although undoubtedly falling short doctrinally), and on my way back I noticed a bus going to Roundhay Park. Grimshaw lives!

Turner in Time

Posted on by
Reply

A very wet and windy day, but the trains were running and that was enough for me. To the Whitworth for yet another Turner exhibition. This one was of Turner’s watercolours (low status compared to oil painting) from his teens to his old age – from precision to impression. I enjoyed watching the change in style as I wandered around the room and noticed how he embraced innovation (e.g. coloured paper for his watercolours). Some scenes were already familiar, like the fall of the Clyde in Lanarkshire.

As usual, there were other small exhibitions to dip into. One on trees in art, which was rather lovely, and one on abstract art, which wasn’t. Minimalism is OK, but the “messiness” of, say, Gillian Ayres means nothing to me, Well, my loss perhaps. Included in the exhibition room were fabric and textile designs from Edinburgh Weavers and Hull Traders – abstraction tamed and tidied into repeating patterns.

Turner and Constable

Posted on by
Reply

I set off for the Tate on foot and continued walking when the rain started, preferring to avoid crowds while I could for I knew the exhibition would be busy. It was indeed sold out for the day, and the cloakroom was quickly full.

The exhibition looked at Turner (b 1775) and Constable (b 1776), comparing their works and their success (the former seen at the time as “poetic”, the latter “truthful”). Turner travelled widely, portraying the sublime and maximising income from his output through his prints; Constable painted closer to home, often out of doors, trying to capture natural features and atmospheric effects as truthfully as he could. There was a sketch of Helmingham Dell which I wanted to steal: it combined the charm of poohsticks bridge with the elemental forest scenes in Hamnet. I much preferred his smaller works to his “six-footers” – paintings designed to be noticed at exhibitions. (Turner had learned that lesson early on.) It was interesting to compare Constable’s experiments with his brushwork – usually textured (which critics had divided opinions about), but occasionally smoother.

Again, I preferred Turner’s later, less finished paintings. There are only so many scenes of ravines, cliffs and castles that I can take. His unfocussed views leave more room for interpretation.

I wandered around the regular galleries too, and noted a painting of Mrs Mounter by Harold Gilman that I was sure I had seen last month at the Walker. Yes, I had – Mrs Mounter was a regular model for Gilman; I’ve even seen her in Leeds. The main hall had a selection of Jacob Epstein’s sculptures, and I was struck anew by the Rock Drill torso. Epstein changed the sculpture (originally more sinister) after WWI, amputating some of it and casting it in bronze, and the result is somehow sorrowful – almost like a Pietà with bowed head and arm reaching out in supplication.

I also spent time with William Stott of Oldham. Undemanding . . . but so lovely.

Anna Ancher and London

Posted on by
Reply

It was such a nice day and I was ready so early that I decided to walk towards the river and pick up the train somewhere en route. After yesterday’s crowds around Covent Garden, I opted for Gray’s Inn Road and Holborn, which I was sure would be deserted. I’m still infected by the locations in Hidden City; walking stirred memories of what I know about London – my own experiences (here I used to cycle, there I attended someone’s Call to the Bar) and what I have read (fact and fiction). I stopped to photograph Holborn Viaduct not only because of Hidden City but also because I recalled a line from a novel:

‘Of course I don’t expect you to come. You’ll do as you like. But I believe the Pont du Gard -’

‘My dear, I’ve seen the Holborn Viaduct. Life can hold no more . . .’

I chose a restaurant for lunch because it had an elevated view of the river and St Paul’s – and, yes, there was the needle spire of St Bride’s Church from the film. On my way back I stopped at a former telephone exchange and noted the phone-like decorations on the front.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

None of this was the aim of my day: I was going to Dulwich Picture Gallery for an exhibition on Anna Ancher (1859-1935), a Danish artist from Skagen, right on the northern tip of Denmark. Skagen was something of an artists’ colony, but Ancher was born and lived there all her life. She was admired for the way she painted light – and, certainly, some of her paintings were utterly delightful. It wasn’t just the depiction of light but also the colours.

My head was buzzing with other images by other artists, and once I had spent time with Ancher’s paintings I sat down and tried to separate them out. The little girl made me think of Philip Connard in Southport; the doorway of Gwen John’s corners of rooms (although more vibrant); there was something of Vermeer – and almost something of Rembrandt in an early portrait. There was something of the Glasgow Boys too, but with more sunshine. She painted local and domestic scenes of people she knew: her travels were to study other artists.

An enjoyable day all round.