Category Archives: United Kingdom

The Great Wave

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To the Whitworth (while I waited for an iphone repair) for an exhibition of Japanese wood prints, mostly by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1868). In one room landscapes, in another more urban scenes and beautifully-rendered figures of actors and courtesans. They are examples of Ukiyo-e – “pictures of the floating world” from the Edo period (1601/03-1868) a time of peace, creativity and comparative stasis. Prints that now line the walls of art galleries were once cheap and commonplace; I thought of the woodcuts and engravings of artists like Dürer, but it was the colour of Japanese wood prints that was so striking. A print by Kunisada of a printer’s workshop gave an idea of how production was shared out, from the cutting and smoothing of the woodblocks to the manufacture of paper and paints to the eventual printing.

To my untutored eyes, they hover between sublime and strange. The Great Wave, for example: so decorative but with a sense of terror when you notice the tiny boats and even tinier humans inside them.

The Laing

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I always like going to the Laing art gallery. Today I wandered again around the “Northern Spirit” gallery, focussing on the glassworks (Sowerby, Davidson’s) which grew up around the Skinnerburn and Ouseburn, and Maling Pottery. I noticed that J Atkinson Grimshaw’s children also became painters. I looked more closely at Ralph Henley’s paintings – some are a bit twee, but something like “Seeking Situations” is worth thinking about. And I compared two landscapes: one by John Atkinson and the other by Duncan Grant.

Manchester Art Gallery

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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.

Peter Grimes

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The singing was sublime (and it’s fascinating to hear a libretto in English) the staging was simple and dramatic . . . but Peter Grimes is such an alienating character. The pre-show talk focused on his outsider status, his yearning for a “safe harbour”, and suggested that he would be seen today as neuro-divergent. Well, yes – but two boys in his care die, he can be brutal (albeit in a brutal world) and he’s obsessed with making his fortune. But he did have an absolutely beautiful voice.

  • Peter Grimes – John Findon
  • Ellen Orford – Philippa Boyle
  • Captain Balstrode – Simon Bailey
  • Auntie – Hilary Summers

York

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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

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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.

Cutty Sark

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The most surprising thing about the elegant Cutty Sark (1869) was that it had an iron skelton. That saved on space, which was crucial for the container ship of its day. The hull was covered in a metal alloy (Muntz) to deter barnacles and to smooth her passage through the sea. She was one of the last and fastest tea clippers of her day but was soon replaced by steamships. The crew was around 26 men and boys, all living in small quarters on the top deck – with rather larger quarters for the captain and officers. One of those visits that are more fascinating than you expect.