OLDART3

ROGER & FRANS PAGES

These are write-ups of art gallery visits which are no longer current, but which I didn't want to throw away.

OLD ART PAGES - 3

THE ART OF WILLIAM NICHOLSON
The Royal Academy of Art December 2004

Top, l to r : Rowntree's advert 1896 ; portrait of Diana Low 1933 ; "A was an Artist" 1898
Bottom : The Canadian Headquarters Staff 1917-19,

Until I saw this exhibition I did not know that I already knew some of William Nicholson's work. As well as being an accomplished artist, he was also a printmaker. Not only had I seen his "Rowntree's Elect Cocoa" advert before, but he also produced an alphabet of woodcuts, commencing with "A... Was An Artist". Many years ago I was responsible for the finances of a large country house called Hedsor House near Cookham - a senior management training establishment which then belonged to my employers. In the bar we had a complete set (reproductions of course) of Nicholson's Alphabet.

It is a fine exhibition, displaying his apparently rapid - yet accurate - artwork which ranged from woodcuts and children's book illustration to some amazing portraiture (The picture of the Canadian Headquarters Staff 1917-19, on the left, is almost eight feet by ten feet in dimension). His painting style visibly changed across his life, being quite dark in the late 1890's moving through to a position where his pictures almost overflowed with light in the 1930's. He died in 1949 - the year I was born.

I was particularly impressed by his portrait works - especially those in the mid thirties, of which the portrait of Diana Low shown on the left is an example; but also by his more impressionist works such as "The City Dinner" - dated 1932 it is a classic "modern impressionist" piece in that it is a sketch of a room full of diners, with eight, apparently key, yet unidentifiable individuals in the middleground. The vast background which absorbs almost three quarters of the painting comprises the sketchy outlines of towering portraits in a huge hall. The spirit of the opulent banquet is caught wonderfully with the light and form of the diners being sandwiched between the huge background and an improbably wide table top in the foreground.

FOLK ROOTS PHOTOGRAPHS
Ray's Jazz Cafe, Foyle's Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, November 2004

Not my usual sort of exhibition, but one I very much enjoyed because one of the two artists featured is a good friend of mine, David Peabody. If you read the music section of this site you will learn that David is an exceptional guitarist, having been voted Acoustic Blues Artist of the year three times. He is also an exceptionally good photographer and because he mixes his work with his play whenever he can he has produced some excellent pictures of musicians.
This exhibition was celebrating the twenty fifth anniversary of a Folk Roots Magazine, a publication in which David has had many photographs published. The show comprises about forty photographs of musicians, about half of which are by David. They are displayed around the walls of Ray's Jazz Cafe on the first floor of Foyle's Bookshop in Charing Cross Road (right next door to Chris Bryant's Guitar Shop).

RAPHAEL - URBINO TO ROME
The National Gallery, Autumn 2004

This collection is in the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery until mid January 2005. A wonderful collection of drawings and paintings by Raphael and his associates dating around the first ten years of the sixteenth century. The exhibition is very popular, tickets are timed, and even with my array of memberships and special treatment cards I had to wait a whole hour before I could get in - and even then it was very crowded so vision was limited as people shuffled round the exhibition.
The works are extremely well catalogued and focus on the period from about 1500 to 1513 The early works from the year 1500 were made when Raphael was aged only 17 and he was already a popular young artist from Urbino. Even at this tender age he made a living drawing and painting both portraits and religious scenes around central Italy, eventually finding his way to Rome and the papal Court in 1508. In this time he worked with many masters including Santi, Perugino and Bernadino di Betto. Later in the decade his work starts to influence - and be influenced by - Pintoricchio, who even asked Raphael (thirty years his junior) to provide design drawings for some of his own projects. In common with his contemporaries Leonardo Da Vinci and Giorgionne, Raphael is one of the earliest artists who did not use extensive underdrawings (although he made copious "studies") and so was probably a user of the "new fangled" lens projections or camera obscura techniques. This collection covers his early works and his Vatican works up to the death of Pope Julius II in 1513. In fact Raphael died very young at age 37 in 1520, so this exhibition covers more than half his working life's output. The style he developed and the "realism" with which he depicted people - whether due to lens and prism work or not - were a major leap forward in the history of art.
The works are incredibly clear considering that they are five hundred years old - for the most part the paintwork is crisp and bright and many of the drawings are unfaded.

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
The National Portrait Gallery, Autumn 2004

Dame Freya Stark

A surprising little presentation in a corner of the National Portrait Gallery. This is a collection of portraits of three centuries of women travellers. A very feminist celebration of these lives, the exhibition focuses not so much on the portraits of the ladies in question as on their contribution to society and their spirit of adventure. Indeed, many of the portraits are photographs, and only a few paintings are incorporated into the show.
The exhibition also explores the reasons why some of these famous women chose to travel. Some, like Amy Johnson, did it for the personal drive to break records - but most were either following their vocations as missionaries or teachers, or were intelligent humans escaping from a society which pitied unmarried women. Once abroad some of them, like Lady Hester Stanhope, were often so far beyond the comprehension of the locals that they were treated as honorary males.
I was pleased that there was at least one lady in the exhibition whom I had met - that was Dame Kathleen Kenyon, a renowned archaeologist in the 1950's. I had met her in the late 1960's when I was working on the excavation of part of Verulamium (St Albans) during a summer vacation, and was quite surprised that I recognised her before I read the exhibition captions.

ANCIENT ART TO POST-IMPRESSIONISM [CARLSBERG]
The Royal Academy of Art , Autumn 2004

left: Ancient Egyptian Pastoral Scene
late 5th Dynasty - about 2300 BC

right: Laughing Boy with vines in his hair
by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux - about 1860

This amazing collection is on loan from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, while that building undergoes some refurbishment. The collection is mainly statues and carvings ranging across over 4000 years of history - hence the wide ranging title of the exhibition. It also includes some impressionist and post-impressionist paintings and so was a fascinating mix. The display was set out more or less chronologically, starting with Egyptian statues and carvings dating from as long ago as 2100 BC. Next was a hall of nineteenth century Danish art - quite interesting, but sadly not very gripping. Then came three halls - including the main exhibition room in the RA, filled with Roman and Etruscan statues and funeral carvings. These had been sourced during the nineteenth century, mainly from Almyra and Rome. It was fascinating to see rows of carved heads, all 2000 years old, and each an individual. Then came the impressionist and post-impressionist works, including carvings by sculptors including Rodin, Picasso and Degas as well as paintings by such well known artists as Corot, Monet, Millet, Degas and Gaugin. The Rodin carvings in white crystalline marble were especially wonderful. His beautifully sculpted angels emerge out of the rock as if they are stepping out of a solid fog - a brilliant artist.

BOUCHER - SEDUCTIVE VISIONS
The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, London , Autumn 2004

detail from
The Rising of The Sun
Boucher 1753

This was a nice collection, but didn't feel too special as it all appeared to be work which was normally on display at the Wallace Collection, but for which you have to pay to see. (The Wallace collection is usually free). On top of that I found the staff surly and unhelpful - perhaps it was a bad day for them.
The title is apt, much of Boucher's work was "seductive" - indeed it was almost the sixteenth century equivalent of soft pornography. Loads of gratuitously naked shepherdesses and nymphs, a lot of less than passive nipples and a lot of misty eye contact between figures.
I chose The Rising of The Sun to represent the display, but it is probably the least representative because the key figure (see detail to the right) is not a typical Boucher tubby nymphette - which is probably why this particular composition stood out to me.
The exhibition is disjointed, with figurework on the first floor supplemented by a couple of small rooms of his landscapes in the basement. The landscapes did nothing for me, were not very well lit, and I was by then generally put off by the surly nature of the security staff in Hertford House and the poor signing and directions within the galleries. The Wallace Collection is generally a great exhibition (including Frans Hals' Laughing Cavalier) and is free to enter - but while the rest of the collection seemed warm and familiar, this exhibition somehow didn't have the same ambience.

SCOTTISH PAINTINGS
The Fleming Gallery , Summer 2004

John Milne Purvis - The parasol & the pierrot

Stephanie introduced me to this little gallery on Berkley Street, just round the corner from Green Park Tube Station. It is a free exhibition space dedicated to Scottish artists. (Stephanie's family are of the Scottish persuasion).

The exhibition was mainly landscapes and seascapes, which were all very nice - but not the sort of art that I usually go overboard for. However I did find one portrait - reproduced opposite - which caught my attention.

I know very little about Scottish artists, excluding the obvious like Jack Vettriano - and even he is not well documented in the art world. These landscapes showed an obvious preoccupation with the wildness of both the countryside and of the seas around Scotland. The wildness manifested both as tempest in some of the seascapes and as primal serenity in works like the views of Loch Katrine.

An interesting gallery - thank you Steph.

THE END IS IN SIGHT