Art Galleries – my daily art display

The Hungarian Artists. Part 1.

Viktor Madarász & Pal Szinyei Merse

Museum Of Fine Arts Budapest

Buda Castle

I visited the Hungarian city of Budapest the other week and decided to visit some of its art museums. The two main establishments are the Szépművészeti Múzeum, the Museum of Fine Arts on the Pest side of the city and the Hungarian National Gallery on the Buda side of the city which is located inside the royal palace of Buda Castle, and the vast collection there traces the country’s creative history from medieval triptychs through to post-1945 art and sculpture. In the following blogs I want to look at the works of art of the Hungarian painters which feature predominantly in these collections.

Viktor Madarász

Self portrait by Viktor Madarász

Viktor Madarász was born on December 4^th 1830 in the small village of Csetnek, (today: Štítnik, Slovakia) in what is now middle-eastern Slovakia. He came from a once noble family. His father, András was an iron manufacturer and craftsman. Originally, his parents wanted Viktor to have a career in law and so he went to study in Bratislava. The majority of Hungary had been under Ottoman rule from 1541 and 1699 at which time the Habsburg monarchy defeated the Ottoman forces and took control over Hungary.

In 1848, when the Hungarian Revolution began, Madarász left college to join the struggle for independence. Despite being only seventeen, which was too young to join the army, he was accepted and participated in numerous battles and became a Second Lieutenant. The revolution failed and for Madarász the experience was traumatic and one which he never forgot. He dedicated his art to the idea of Hungarian independence from Habsburg rule for the Hungarian people and recalled pictorially the heroic and tragic memories of this time in the history of Hungary.

Kuruck and Labanc by Viktor Madarász

One of his early historical paintings was entitled Kuruc and Labanc which depicted two brothers fighting on opposite sides of the Hungarian Revolution. The Kuruck was a group of armed anti-Habsburg grouping that wanted to rid Hungary of the Habsburg rule and the word “kuruck” is used in both a positive sense to mean “patriotic” and in a negative sense to mean “chauvinistic.” The term Labanc was designated to those Hungarians who advocated cooperating with the outside powers, the Habsburgs, and is almost always used in a negative sense to mean “disloyal” or “traitorous”. The painting was well received by the critics.

Thököly’s Dream (The Dream of an Exile) by Viktor Madarász (1856)

Dózsa’s People by Viktor Madarász

After the war of independence, the uprising had been defeated, and Madarász lived in exile and after hiding out briefly, returned on foot to his family’s home in Pécs. Once back home he continued with his legal studies but also enrolled in art lessons from a local artist. In 1853, he enrolled for preparatory work at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna but was disheartened with the old-conservative atmosphere there, and he went to the private school of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, who was looked upon as a bold innovator at the time. In 1856, Viktor Madarász moved to Paris where he studied in the studios of Léon Cogniet and at the École des Beaux Arts.

The Mourning of László Hunyadi by Viktor Madarász (1859)

One of Madarász most popular works and considered the main work of his life, is part of the Hungarian National Gallery collection. It is entitled The Mourning of László Hunyadi and was completed by Madardsz in 1859 whilst he was living in Paris. It is a major work of romanticism. The painting depicts the altar of the Church of Mary Magdalene in Buda, before which is the body of László Hunyadi. László Hunyadi, the son of János Hunyadi, who had defeated the Ottomans and became a national hero, was ordered to be killed by Vladislav V. Young Hunyadi enjoyed widespread popularity among the Hungarians, so he was seen as a threat to the seventeen-year-old, inexperienced King Vladislav V, the only son of the Habsburg German King Albert II. The king, fearing the popularity of Hunyadi, ordered his execution and he was beheaded on March 16^th 1457. In this depiction we see two women kneeling at the feet of Hunyadi. One was his mother, Erzébet Szilágyi, the other was his bride, Maria Gara. This painting by Madarasz was believed to be an anti-Habsburg political statement during a time of the Habsburg oppression of the Hungarian people. The work of art became a symbol of the failed Hungarian Revolution and National self-sacrifice. The painting was thought of as the Hungarian Pieta following the iconography of the Lamentation of Christ, in which Christ’s torso was removed from the cross and his friends mourned over his body and so in a way Madarasz’s painting offered a promise that like Christ, the Hungarian nation would rise again.

Zrínyi and Frangepán in Bécsújhely Prison by Viktor Madarász (1864)

Another painting in the Hungarian National Gallery by Madarász was his 1864 historical work entitled Zrínyi and Frangepán in Bécsújhely Prison. When the painting was first exhibited in 1866 people flocked to see it. The painting depicts two men, Péter Zrínyi, the Ban (local ruler) of Croatia, and the Hungarian Count Ferenc Frangepán, sitting facing each other across a table in the Bécsújhely prison. Guards and imperial officials can be seen in the background. Both had been implicated in the Wesselényi Conspiracy, a plot among Croatian and Hungarian nobles to oust the Habsburg Monarchy from Croatia and Hungary. The two men are saying their last farewells to each other before they were both executed.

Pal Szinyei Merse

Self portrait by Pal Szinyei Merse (1897)

The second artist I am showcasing is Pál Szinyei Merse. Pál Szinyei Merse was an outstanding master of nineteenth-century Hungarian painting and one of the most influential figures in Hungarian art. He was born on July 4th 1845 in Szinyeújfalu, a village and municipality in the Prešov District of eastern Slovakia.. He was the third of eight children of Félix Szinyei Merse and Valéria Jekelfalussy and came from a noble family which had 700 years of history, but by the 19th century the family wealth had dwindled, and yet, Pál, because of his art, never ever had problems making ends meet.

Winter by Pal Szinyei Merse (c.1905)

After the death of his grandfather in 1850, the family moved to the mansion in the east Slovakian town of Jernye (now Jarovnice). His father graduated in law from Košice and became ambassador to the town of Sibiu during the 1839/40 Parliament, and was appointed Alispan, an office held by the most prestigious and generally wealthiest of the commoners and in 1871 became the High Sheriff. His father was a great supporter of his son and his artistic ambitions, and his mother was a lover of literature and music, who brought considerable wealth into their marriage.

Skylark by Pál Szinyei Merse.(1882)

From 1856 Pál studied at the Catholic high school in Prešov and remained there until he reached the sixth grade. He remained a private student until 1859, and, in the autumn of 1861, he studied in Oradea, where he graduated in the summer of 1863. Pál Szinyei started to become interested in painting and took it more seriously during his high school years and received tuition from Lajos Mezey a local artist from Oradea.

The Field by Pál Szinyei Merse (1909)

In 1864, thanks to the support of his parents, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he studied under the Hungarian artist, Alexander von Wagner, and later, from 1867 to 1869, his tutor was Karl von Piloty, the German historical painter. Another famous artist he met whilst attending the Academy was Wilhelm Leibl, who introduced Pál to plein-air painting. After seeing a major art exhibition in 1869, Pál was anxious to get to work on his own and decided to leave the Academy. Pál Szinyei Merse was a ground-breaking pioneer and the first true colourist in the history of Hungarian painting.

On October 15, 1873, Pál Szinyei Merse married the love of his life, Zsófia Probstner, the twenty-year-old daughter of the owner of the Lublo bath. They went on to have six children, a son, Laszlo Paul Felix and five daughters, Sophie, Mary, Valeria, Elisabeth and Adrienne.

Picnic in May by Pál Szinyei Merse (1873)

In 1873 Pál Szinyei Merse completed the painting entitled Picnic in May and although it was ridiculed by his contemporaries it is now looked upon as one of the finest Hungarian paintings.

In his autobiography Pál wrote about the painting, saying :

“…I painted myself into the picture prone, minching away, with my back to the spectator. I must admit I was thinking of the critics who would dislike my picture…”

Lady in Violet by Pál Szinyei Merse (1874)

Probably one of his most famous works was painted a year later, 1874, and is entitle Lady in Violet. It is seen on many posters around Budapest advertising the Hungarian National Gallery. It has become the Hungarian Mona Lisa and is one of the most well-known painting to this day.The painting depicts the artist’s wife, Zsófia, who was pregnant at the time, resting in the garden of their manor house in Jernye. She is wearing a taffeta bustle dress which was very popular in those days. The artist started the painting using complementary colours and then created a new colour harmony by juxtaposing yellow, violet and green. While he was in Munich he had bought the high-quality violet paint from Richard Wurm, a paint merchant and a mutual friend of both Pál Szinyei Merse and the Swiss Symbolist painter, Arnold Böcklin. It was Böcklin who encouraged Pál to use colour vigorously.

The Artist’s Wife Dressed in Yellow by Pál Szinyei Merse (1875)

The painting of his wife, which was never finished, was painted a year after his painting, Lady in Violet.

Portrait of Zsigmond Szinyei Merse by Pál Szinyei Merse (1866)

His family featured in many of his painting, such as his 1866 painting, Portrait of Zsigmond Szinyei Merse which he completed while spending his summer in Jernye. It is a depiction of his younger brother Zsigmond with a red cap, lost in thought as he plays a chibouk.

Portrait of Ninon Szinyei Merse by Pál Szinyei Merse (1870)

Pál Szinyei was working in Hungary during the French-Prussian war and painted several pictures of members of his family in a naturalist style. This portrait of his elder sister is one of them.

Portrait of Artist’s wife by Pál Szinyei Merse (1880)

Lovers by Pál Szinyei Merse (1869)

One of Szinvei’s favourite themes was outdoors parties and the enjoyment of periods of relaxation. His 1869 painting entitled Lovers depicts two people relaxing in a rural setting, on a hillside during the early summer. The artist has used pale colours which he has used harmoniously and this muted colouration evokes a lyrical aspect to the scene. It is a scene of great intimacy as we see the couple lock eyes whilst their fingers tenderly intertwine and set in an almost dream-like countryside background.

…….to be continued

Southport’s Atkinson Gallery

The Atkinson Gallery, Southport

Art galleries or Museums of Art come in various shapes and sizes from the gigantic multi-room edifices such as London’s National Gallery, Paris’ Louvre and Madrid’s Prado, to small one-room private galleries. The former is awash with works which would take you days to properly study them all, whilst the latter often contain less than fifty paintings and you are sometimes hard-pressed to see a work you like.

A couple of days ago I visited Southport on the Merseyside coast, a seaside resort which is close to where I was born and lived for most of my life and yet I had never visited the town’s art gallery. There was something about the site’s publicity I found off-putting. You see, it was a multi-faceted building; part museum, part library, part café, part children’s playroom, part theatre, part bar, part locals selling their art and crafts etc etc., and yet there was only a small shop/theatre ticket office which had no literature on the permanent collection and as I feared, the room set aside for works of fine art was small. However the works of art in the permanent collection, numbering about fifty, were excellent and for that reason I can recommend you visit their permanent collection. Today’s blog is about some of these fine works. There were a number of paintings, presumably on loan, which belonged to the Harris Museum and Art Gallery in the nearby town, Preston, which had been closed whilst undergoing renovations.

A Golden Dream by Thomas Cooper Gotch (1895)

Thomas Cooper Gotch was an English painter and book illustrator. He studied art in London and Antwerp before he married and studied in Paris with his wife, Caroline, a fellow artist, and when they returned to England, initially his works depicted the lives of Newlyn fisherfolk but after a visit to Italy his style changed and he began painting Symbolist images conjuring up dreamlike idylls of Arcadian innocence, in a Pre-Raphaelite romantic style. Gotch exhibited A Golden Dream for the 1895 opening of the Newlyn Art Gallery.

Cordelia Disinherited - John Rogers Herbert als Kunstdruck oder Gemälde.

Cordelia Disinherited by John Rogers Herbert (1850)

The subject of John Rogers Herbert’s painting is Cordelia, a fictional character in William Shakespeare’s tragic play King Lear. Cordelia, along with her sisters, Goneril and Regen are the three daughters of King Lear. After her elderly father offers her the opportunity to profess her love for him in return for one-third of the land in his kingdom, she, unlike her two sisters, refuses. Lear banishes Cordelia from the kingdom and disinherits her. Cordelia is depicted as a saintly figure. She looks impassive and wears blue and white clothes which remind us of depictions of the Virgin Mary. Herbert painting is a detail from a large fresco commissioned for the Houses of Parliament.

The Orphan of the Temple by Edward Matthew Ward (1875)

On the face of it, we are simply looking at an elegant young lady painting en plein air. The title of the painting does not offer us a clue as to what is going on in the depiction ! However, if I tell you that the young lady painting is Marie Thérèse Charlotte, the eldest daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette you will realise that this painting depicts a little piece of French history. In a brief synopsis of Marie Thérèse Charlotte life : she was the daughter of Louis XVI, king of France and Marie Antoinette. She was educated at French was imprisoned with her family in the Temple, originally a fortified monastery of the Templars and later a royal prison, in 1792. Her mother and father were guillotined in 1793 although she was unaware of their fate at the time. She was released from prison in 1795 and four years later married the Duke of Angoulême. Later she lived in exile with her uncle Louis XVIII in various European countries. The painting clearly contrasts the innocence of the young woman, dressed in white, with her gaoler who stands in the background.

On the Bridge by Stanhope Forbes (1925)

Stanhope Alexander Forbes was a British artist and a founding member of the influential Newlyn School of painters. He was often referred to as the father of the Newlyn School. This is the second time Stanhope Forbes painted this scene. The first was in 1888. The old bridge we see in the painting is in the Cornish village of Street-an-Nowan, in the lower part of the fishing town of Newlyn.

The Fish Fag by William Banks Fortescue (1888)

Fortescue was also one of the Newlyn School’s many Birmingham-born artists. He began his career as an engineering designer but later trained as an artist. He studied art in Paris, and later travelled around Europe, reaching Venice in 1884. On his return he exhibited many of his works depicting Venetian scenes at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. Fortescue went to live in the Cornish fishing town of Newlyn around 1885 and took lodgings in a house which also included Stanhope Forbes as another lodger. This work by Fortescue was painted in the style of Stanhope Forbes and as is the case with this work, he used local people to model for his paintings. The painting’s title Fish Fag is the term used for “Fishwife” and she would be in charge of cleaning the fish prior to them being sold. Prior to the men setting sail in their boats the Fish Fags would also be tasked with baiting the hooks. The little boy holding the toy boat and walking alongside the woman has probably been added by the artist implying that one day he will experience life as a fisherman.

Welcome, Bonny Boat! The Fisherman’s Return (Scene at Clovelly, North Devon) by James Clark Hook (1856)

The life of a fisherman is a precarious one, even in the present day but more so in the nineteenth century. Catching fish to feed the family was a necessity and sometimes the fisherfolk heading out to sea to bring home food and to eke out a living sometimes meant taking risks which often resulted in dire consequences. James Clarke Hook RA., an English painter and etcher of marine, genre, historical scenes, and landscapes, was born in London in November 1819. Initially his favoured painting genre was history painting but then he turned his attention to genre depictions in rural landscapes. He made several trips to Devon and the fishing village of Clovelly which in Devon stimulated him to adopt coastal scenes as his main motif but it was more than just depictions of the sea and boats as he incorporated figures into his paintings in order to highlight the hardship and rewards of life by the sea. He completed so many of this type of depiction that his coastal paintings were soon dubbed “Hookscapes”. In this painting we see a returning fisherman being greeted by his family, all of who are relieved to see him back safely.

Katy’s Letter by Haynes King (1875)

Haynes King was an English genre painter, who was born in Barbados in December 1831. He came to London when he was twenty-three and became a student at Leigh’s later known as Heatherley’s Academy in Newman Street, London. In 1857 he exhibited some of his paintings for the first time at the Society of British Artists, of which he was elected a member in 1864 ; many of his works appeared at its exhibitions, and forty-eight were shown at the Royal Academy between 1860 and 1904. He painted interiors, landscapes, and coastal scenes with figures. The motif in this painting centres around the letter which the young woman is reading. The action of reading a letter was depicted in many paintings and became very popular. The popularity of such a motif is probably because we are subconsciously being asked to imagine what was in the letter. Good news or bad news? We then put together in our minds a cover story both past and future for this young woman due to what she is reading !

The Argument by Tristram Hillier (1943)

Tristram Paul Hillier was an English surrealist painter and a member of the Unit One group led by Paul Nash . He was born on April 11^th 1905 in Beijing, China, and was the youngest of the four children of Edward Guy Hillier, a banker and diplomat, and Ada Everett. He attended Downside, an independent boarding school. He later went to Christ’s College, Cambridge and later in 1926, the Slade, where his tutors included Henry Tonks. From the Slade he travelled to Paris and studied for two years under André Lhote, and also at the Atelier Colarossi. Whilst in Paris he mixed with many members of the Surrealist movement and was particularly influenced by Giorgio de Chirico and Max Ernst. He lived in France until 1940, but travelled extensively; he remained a surrealist painter throughout his life. His painting style is unique to him and if you look at some of his other paintings you will recognise similar characteristics.

The Children’s Prayer by Arthur Hacker (1888)

There were a number of paintings on show with religious connotations. One such work was Children’s Prayer by the English painter Arthur Hacker. Hacker was born in St. Pancras, Middlesex in September 1858. In 1876, aged eighteen, he enrolled on a four-year course at the Royal Academy. From there he went to Paris where he studied at the atelier of Léon Bonnat. He became a member of the Royal Society of Portrait painters in 1894. His paintings were shown at the Royal Academy on two occasions, in 1878 and 1910. It was also in 1910 that he was elected as a Royal Academician. He travelled to France, Italy, Spain and Morocco., and of the RA in 1910. Hacker was most known for painting religious scenes and portraits.

La Prière du Matin (Morning Prayer) by André-Henri Dargelas (c.1860)

André Henri Dargelas, a French painter of the realist movement, was born in Bordeaux on October 11^th 1828. In his twenties, his paintings became very popular in England due to the positive assessment of his work made by the English art critic, John Ruskin, who liked Dargelas’ sentimental vision as seen in many of his paintings. In 1857 he began to exhibit his work at the Paris Salon and the motifs of his paintings were influenced by the very popular eighteenth century French artist, Jean Siméon Chardin.

The Word by Keith Henderson (1931)

The above painting is more modern in comparison to those I have showcased earlier and some would say a more realistic view on religious trends and differing views of the old and young on the subject of religious worship. The Word was completed by Keith Henderson in 1931. Keith Henderson was a Scottish painter born in Aberdeenshire in April 1883. He was one of three children born to George MacDonald Henderson, a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, and Constance Helen, née Keith. He attended Orme Square School in London before being admitted to Marlborough College, a prestigious Wiltshire public school. He then studied at the Slade School of Art before moving to Paris and studying art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. During the First World War he served as a Captain with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry where he spent time in the trenches acting as a war artist. He recorded his time on the Western Front in a book, Letters to Helen: Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front, which included several of his illustrations. During the 1930s Henderson returned to Scotland to live on the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides where his paintings at the time depicted village life. He was forty-eight when he completed The Word which depicts an old lady seen distributing free bibles coming across a group of young revellers who have just come out of the local pub. They seem to be little interested in her offer. The depiction harks back to Victorian moralistic paintings.

By the Waters of Babylon we sat down and wept by William Etty (1832)

“…By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?…”

My final painting in this blog also has religious associations as it illustrates a passage from the tragic 137th psalm of the Book of Psalms in the Tanakh, the Jewish bible. The painting by William Etty, By the Waters of Babylon depicts the biblical story of the Israelites’ captivity in Babylon. The psalm is a communal lament about remembering Zion, and yearning for Jerusalem while dwelling in exile during the Babylonian captivity. The psalm reflects the yearning of the exiles for Jerusalem as well as hatred for the Holy City’s enemies. In Etty’s painting the lyre can be seen hanging from the tree. William Etty was an English artist best known for his history paintings containing nude figures. He was the first significant British painter of nudes and still lifes and in this “religious” painting the three women depicted are in a state of undress.

Stacey Gillian Abe

When I was in London last week I made my first visit to the Unit London Gallery. The gallery is in the heart of London’s Mayfair at No.3 Hanover Square which is off Regent Street, very close to Oxford Street underground station. It is well known for representing some of the finest local and international talent, and provide an unhindered showcase for artists who operate outside of the mainstream art world and by so doing, has successfully launched and enhanced the careers of many influential contemporary artists.

Unit London

The gallery was hosting two exhibitions and my blog today is all about one of those, which closed at the end of January. It was a large display of work by the Ugandan multi-disciplinary contemporary artist, Stacey Gillian Abe entitled Shrub-let of Old Ayivu. Like my previous blog featuring Kyu Hun Kim the artwork is best described as unusual but this does not detract from its beauty.

Bibiana’s Window, by Stacey Gillian Abe (2022)

The name of the exhibition is unusual but Stacey says it can be traced back to the clan is a descendant of. She explains:

“…Ayivu is one of the major clans of the Lugbara-speaking people from Arua in the West Nile region of Uganda. We are a tribe intersecting three countries that is Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Uganda. Our people are spread out within these countries, and I belong to the Ayivu clan in Uganda. Shrublet of Old Ayivu is a metaphoric term which alludes to growths that have originated for a long time from a place of great significance that eventually create the perfect conditions for shrub-lets to morph and branch out of the old ways to form new connections independent of their origin. The shrub-let is representative of this transportation from traditions, mindsets, norms and past lives, places to mention but a few…”

The Farmer’s Daughter by Stacey Gillian Abe (2022)

She goes on to say that the imagery of the plant life also extends to the colour of the models themselves. Jute is seen as a symbol of the Ayivu clan, and it is a motif that unites all of the work on display. She reveals that jute is a plant of many uses, so this totem recurring in the work is a symbol of possibilities and growth.

Stacey Gillian Abe was born in Kampala, Uganda, in 1991. From an early age she loved art. For her, it all started with painting and drawing in high school in 2008. In 2014, she graduated from Kyambogo University, Kampala, with a BA in Art and Industrial Design.

Forbes Africa Under 30

In 2018 Abe made it onto the 2018 FORBES AFRICA Under 30 list which is the definitive list of Africa’s most promising young change-makers. There are thirty “game-changers”, all under the age of 30, in each of the three sectors – business, technology and creative, a total of ninety young African people who were said to be challenging conventions and rewriting the rules for the next generation of entrepreneurs, creatives and tech gurus. Abe was placed in the “creative” group of thirty. Over six hundred candidates had been put forward and months were spent researching, verifying and investigating them.

Of herself, Abe describes herself as being reticent:

“…My passion started from the need to express myself more, I am not an introvert but a bit reserved…”.

Her way of expressing herself is through her art. She says that a huge part of her practice now revolves around highlighting complex situations as autobiographical documentations of past and continuous experiences.

Fatou by Gillian Stacey Abe (2022)

Unit London gallery describes the exhibition I went to see:

“…Stacey Gillian Abe’s first solo exhibition at their gallery as an exploration of memory, time and emotion. It focuses on the concept of shared memory, Abe’s latest body of work examines how memories have been passed down through her family’s lineage, alluding to the ways in which traditions are absorbed and transformed from generation to generation. These ideas are represented in the jute plant and flowers that are detailed in various paintings. A fibrous plant with multiple uses, jute is a totem for the Ayivu clan, one of the major clans in Arua in the West Nile Region of the artist’s native Uganda. The shrublet appears in sections of embroidery that decorate Abe’s paintings, becoming a motif that connects each canvas. Most importantly, Shrub-let of Old Ayivu questions how memory can be shared. With her paintings, Abe explores the transference of abstract memory, of subjects that are not easily explained visually. These notions do not simply materialise through composition or through the artist’s own subjectivity. Instead, they take shape within the space of the canvas itself, seemingly forming from the subject’s own consciousness. Each painting and each figure tell a different story, becoming part of a tapestry of interwoven threads…”

The Sitting I by Gillian Stacey Abe (2022)

The colour Abe uses for her figures is further explained by the gallery:

“…These ideas of generational memory link to Abe’s striking use of the colour indigo. Acutely aware of the colour’s presence in African history, the artist acknowledges its role in centuries-old textile traditions in West Africa. The rich dye was subsequently introduced to East Africa through the exchange of textiles, facilitating the East African slave trade or the Arab Slave Trade and the Indian Ocean Trade. Here, Abe references Catherine McKinley’s study Indigo: In Search of the Colour that Seduced the World (2011), which details that one length of indigo was equivalent to one human body. Through the Indian Ocean trade, Abe’s home country of Uganda also encountered trade routes from the coast to the mainland in the mid-1800s. Her village of Arua, positioned at the intersection of Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Uganda, saw many Congolese people from the surrounding areas abducted into the slave trade to work in silk production…”

What We Wanted by Gillian Stacey Abe

In Abe’s own words:

“…Indigo for a skin tone in my work signifies a tribe, a breed of black, a people that are not limited to social, economic, cultural, political or historical constraints…”

In the exhibition, Shrub-let of Old Ayivu, Abe also shows us her fascination with indigo via its connection to cloth and material. She is fascinated with the colour and this manifests itself as an exploration of the relationship between cloth and the body. Through embroidery and the cloth there is a strong visual element throughout Abe’s body of work, which allows her to revisit the traditional, historical and personal significance attached to fabric.

See you Later, Again. by Gillian Stacey Abe

During the last three years Abe has carried out wide-ranging research on the colour indigo. It is a colour that has been viewed as both very rich and very valuable, but in her mind also one that has fashioned narratives around the black body. She says that indigo is a dominant colour in her work and she utilises it as a skin tone for her subjects. In a strange way it allows the observer to behold the black body in a different light.

Too Much and Not the Mood by Gillian Stacey Abe

Like my previous blog featuring the work of Hun Kyu Kim, Abe’s work is one you either love or hate. I actually found the exhibition fascinating.

ArtCatto Gallery

Often when you visit small galleries which are staging a joint exhibition of paintings done by a small number of artists, you like some and are disappointed with others. I was in Portugal last week and my visit coincided with an opening of a joint exhibition at a local gallery and I was fortunate to have received an invite which coincided with my short break away.

The exhibition was at the ArtCatto gallery in the heart of the Algarve town of Loulé. ArtCatto was the brainchild of Gillian Catto, who after 30 years as the owner of an internationally recognised and respected gallery in London, decided to settle in the Algarve and she opened ArtCatto in 2011. Gillian Catto developed a reputation, which is second to none. She was responsible for launching the careers of artists who have subsequently become household names, such as Jack Vettriano. His solo exhibition at her Gallery helped to create a global demand for his work, which skyrocketed in value virtually overnight.

The gallery is divided into a number of small rooms, each featuring the work of one artist. In one of these rooms there were six exquisite works of portraiture by the Chinese artist, Shen Ming Cun. Shen was born in 1956 and graduated from the University Art College of Guangxi in China, where he is now a professor of European Art. He is highly respected as an official artist for the Chinese Government, and has exhibited in Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore, New Zealand, and Britain.

Shen Ming draws his inspiration from the ancient traditions, crafts and culture of the tribes of the Miao, Yao and Dong of the remote GuangXi region of China. There are large changes in China which is causing a massive strain on the ancient way of life in these small village communities and as the young people leave the villages to seek work in the large cities one has to wonder how long these cultures can survive.

Each tribe has a quite unique tradition in dress and adornment from the other. The young girls sew everything entirely by hand and their jewellery is crafted in the village.

Shen’s paintings have come to focus on capturing, distilling and representing the inimitable customs, dress and heritage of these minority tribes of Southern China. His empathy and admiration of these tribal people is well-defined in his paintings, which possess a lyrical beauty, dignity and grace. In fact, his paintings have been likened to a kind of visual poetry in their way they communicate to the viewer a variety of emotions and to entice the spectator into their worlds.

Shen’s paintings capture the chromatic vibrancy of the costumes and ornate silver jewellery with a lightness and confidence that has undoubtedly led to his success. Their adornments are genuine symbols of the wealth, religion, ritual and national consciousness that shape their lives. It is truly remarkable to witness the intimate moments that he often portrays which provide an atmosphere of invitation and intrigue for the viewer. Shen explains his inspirational art:

“…I have spent a long time researching the richly colourful cultural heritage of the Yao and Miao nationalities and the Dong minority of Southern China. Over the years I have lived amongst them and become friends with these beautiful people who radiate pure goodness and a simple love of life. Cultivating their ancestor’s achievements, they turn life into immortal art…”

On entering another room I came across some fascinating works of art by Pedro Guimares. Pedro Guimarães, born 1974 in Guimarães, Portugal. From an early age, Pedro was fascinated by art and design, resulting in an exhibition at the age of sixteen at the Youth Centre in Braga. The success and impact of that show confirmed his career as a professional artist and as a result he set up his studio in Guimarães to continue his practice.

In 2011 he moved to Cantabria, Spain, having the opportunity to exhibit his work there. Back in Portugal it was in Guimarães that he set up his atelier. There he devoted an increasingly greater amount of time to plastic arts until it finnaly became his exclusive activity. Since then, Pedro Guimarães participated in several individual and collective exhibitions in Portugal and abroad with an intense and always innovative artistic production.

Pedro Guimarães’s work is based on a conceptual language created by him, which he defines as:

“…the true transparent reaction of our consciousness with the synapses that make us unique and influence the direction of our concepts, associating colours and shapes…”

*Untouchable. In loving memory of* *Queen Elizabeth II by Pedro Guimares*

Enjoying a wide creative freedom, Pedro Guimarães uses various resources and materials. One of the strangest and probably the most time-consuming work was a portrait entitled Untouchable. In loving memory of Queen Elizabeth II. For this work, Guimares used a technique which he terms “Untouchable” which gives the work a unique content, curious, and some might say disarming. Standing before the portrait you see nothing unusual but……….

*Side-on view of Queen Elizabeth II portrait*

………..stand to the side of the portrait and when you look again you realise the artwork comprises of numerous pins (180,000 pins) that forms the figure into a three-dimensional shape. You only notice the pins when you view the work side-on.

The painting of his, maybe I should say the three paintings of his, which fascinated me was entitled The Three of Us. I suppose the portrait(s) fall into the category of being a Trompe L’oeil depiction. As I stood in front of this strange slatted painting I saw a depiction of Princess Diana. At first I could not fathom out the reason for the vertical slats.

However when I moved to the left and viewed the painting at a 45 degree angle the image of Diane disappeared and as if by magic, the depiction of her son Harry came clearly into view………

……and when I moved to the right of the painting an image of William gradually appeared. Yes, I know it was just a work of trickery but it was very cleverly done.

On entering the gallery, you were greeted by a wash of bright colours which extended along the walls of the passageways. The paintings reminded me of some of the colourful seascapes I saw at the Joaquín Sorolla Museum in Madrid. These artworks at the ArtCatto gallery were by the English artist Richard Gower.

*Finding the Perfect Spot by Richard Gower*

Richard Gower was born in West Yorkshire in 1962 and is a fine artist who is known for his contemporary oil paintings rendered in his characteristic impressionistic style. At the age of seventeen, he studied at Batley College of Art and specialised in fine art and sculpture. He is influenced by the great artists of the nineteenth and twentieth century such as Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, Sickert, Francis Bacon. Richard’s determination to paint and learn everything he needed to learn motivated him to study the great impressionists. Richard’s fascination with the great painters pushed his own creativity and observations to develop and fine-tune his personal ‘Reflections’ style over the years. As a young man he travelled throughout Europe on his motorbike stopping of at various cities and towns always visiting galleries and exhibitions, whilst all the time honing his artistic skills and developing his passion for painting.

The semi-abstracted, figurative compositions we see in his beach scenes have both a real sense of joie de vie but also intrigue. As observers, we are asked to conjure up narratives about these anonymous characters who are enjoying a day at the seaside and who are immortalised on his canvases.

These seaside scenes by Gower would light up any room and bring with them the hankering to leave rainy and windswept climates and visit beautiful beaches and soak up the sun.

*Mario Henrique with his portrait of Marilyn Munroe*

Another room at the ArtCatto exhibition was dedicated to the artwork of Mario Henrique. Mario Henrique is an artist based in Cascais, Portugal, who graduated in Design from Lisbon’s University of Fine Arts and started his career in online marketing and web development agencies. Later on, as a creative director he recruited and led teams in Portugal, Spain and Brazil.

*Somnium No. 1, Series X by Mario Henrique*

Of his painting style Mario explains:

“…I try to be fast and spontaneous when I’m painting – that process should be reflected in the final piece. The observer should be able to infer the physicality of the painting process, when looking at the brush strokes and paint drippings…”

“…When I throw paint, I can do it with some premeditation – but I can never really predict where the paint will actually fall on the canvas. So, my approach to painting is – in part – based on chance, on small random accidents – it doesn’t rely exclusively on my persistence or my technique.

That’s why I don’t feel completely responsible for my paintings – in the sense that, although I can answer for my initial intentions, the final…”

Mario Henrique is passionate about his work and has exhibited his work in Portugal, Brazil, Germany and the US. He says that he is forever intrigued by the subtleties and double meanings of people’s body language, expressions and looks, and he composes works centred around people. Mario uses his portraits to represent the impermanence of facial expressions and unpredictability of human movements, and paints abruptly and spontaneously in drippings and splashings.

*Nebula No. 5, Series IV by Mario Henrique*

Listed in various private collections across Europe, America and Asia, he has exhibited in galleries both locally and abroad, and was awarded an Honourable Mention for his participation in the Brasília Biennial of Contemporary Arts 2016. He was also featured in Saatchi Art’s Inside The Studio.

At the ArtCatto’s exhibition, there was also a selection of sculptures both with a modern style and a classical one.

Sculpture Flow by Paul Sibuet

Paul Sibuet, a French visual artist, was born in 1986. He was trained in Design and Art and his work has been submitted at numerous competitions, in Tokyo and Paris. He has now broken free from the techniques he was taught by exploring his own perceptions of the object and volumes, and in so doing so he has created his own signature. He lives today in Lyon and exhibits in particular in Geneva, New York and Venice.

At the rear of the gallery there is a narrow outdoor passage way which was lined by statuettes by Anneke Bester. Anneke Bester is a South African born artist who now considers New Zealand her home country. She not only exhibits in New Zealand but also regularly in Portugal and Dubai. Her body of work is a combination of one-off, delicately cast, bronze sculptures as well as editioned works. Anneke’s work focuses on celebrating Femininity in all its aspects. She sculpts gorgeous female forms in sensual poses. She develops the female energy of nature and depicts the female forms as daughters of mother earth in her most recent work.poses. She sees the female in its internal beauty and its core driving force that only a female sculptor can explore to its full extent.

If you are ever in the Algarve you should try and visit the ArtCatto gallery which lies on the town’s main street, across from the large Municipal Market Hall,

British Victorian Art and the Maas Gallery, London. Part 2.

My second blog continues to look at some of the Victorian paintings which were on show at the Maas Gallery in London.

*The Last Song of the Girondins by Claude Andrew Calthrop (1868)*

The first painting I am displaying in Part 2 is one by the English artist Claude Andrew Calthrop. Calthrop was born in Deeping St Nicholas, near Spalding, Lincolnshire, on December 20th 1844, the youngest son of James Thompson Calthrop, a farmer and grazier, and his wife, Edna (née Knowles). Calthrop attended the Merchant Taylors’ School, in the City of London, but, by 1861, had transferred to King’s College School. From there, he then studied art at Lambeth School of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, where in December 1864, he was awarded a silver medal for the best drawing from life and a gold medal and a scholarship for £50 for the best historical painting, a biblical one, depicting a subject from the Book of Job. He went on to exhibit at the Royal Society of British Artists and the Royal Academy. At first, Claude Calthrop concentrated on history paintings depicting episodes of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Later he changed to depictions of contemporary life, portraiture and genre scenes.

Today’s painting, Last Song of the Girondins, was completed and submitted by Calthrop to the Royal Academy exhibition in 1868. It depicts a scene from the French Revolution and the Jacobins, an anti-Royalist grouping formed mainly of two prominent parliamentary factions, the Montagnards, lead by Robespierre and the Girondins lead by Jacques-Pierre Brissot. The Montagnards referred to those who occupied the higher benches in both the Jacobin club and the national legislature. Those who sat on these high benches were generally more radical in their ideology and their policies, while those who sat further down were usually more moderate. The conflict between the Girondins and Montagnards came to a head in the spring of 1793. The catalyst for this was the trial of Louis XVI

*Detail from* *The Last Song of the Girondins by Claude Andrew Calthrop*

The two factions fell out and in 1793, the Girondins were charged with conspiring against the Republic by the Montagnards. They were all immediately found guilty in a show trial, and just before midnight on the October 30th 1793, they were sentenced to death. The following morning, the twenty-one convicted men were taken by cart from the dungeons of the Conciergerie to the guillotine. Defiant to the end, the prisoners, led by Brissot, started to sing the Marseillaise and as each was beheaded, the sound of the song dwindled to silence, until the very last Girondin was executed. The twenty-one died in a space of thirty-six minutes and this heralded in the Reign of Terror.

Of Calthrop’s painting, the art critic for Bell’s Weekly Messenger, described it as:

“…a more difficult scene to portray could scarcely have been chosen; but he has given individuality to each character, whilst he has managed the processional grouping with an ease which says much for his appropriate idea of detail. The manner, too, in which the general scheme is worked out by means of a happy blending of colour, is also appropriate. The handling is minute, without being laboured; and the tone, kept down, to represent the vault from which the prisoners are about to emerge, is as sober as the scene is sad. We shall expect, after such a specimen as this, to note Mr C Calthrop’s rise in his profession…”

*Ruskin in his Turret Brantwood* *by William Collingwood*

William Gershom Collingwood, a writer and artist, was born in Liverpool in 1854. He had always liked the Lake District and had accompanied his father there on sketching tours. He received his early education at Liverpool College and at the age of eighteen went to University College, Oxford, where he first met John Ruskin. During the summer of 1873 Collingwood visited Ruskin at his Lake District house, Brantwood. Ruskin had bought the somewhat dilapidated house in Coniston in August 1871. Brantwood was Ruskin’s main home from 1872 until his death in 1900. Ruskin oversaw many renovations to Brantwood including adding a turret to his bedroom which gave him a panoramic view of the lake

Later Collingwood was working at Brantwood with Ruskin and his associates. Ruskin was impressed with Collingwood’s draughtsmanship, and so he influenced Collingwood to study at the Slade School of Art between 1876 and 1878. Collingwood exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1880. For many years Collingwood dedicated his life to helping Ruskin and lived at Branston, taking on the role as Ruskin’s personal assistant. In 1883 Collingwood married Edith Mary Isaac and the couple lived close to Ruskin in the Lake District. Collingwood went on to edit many of Ruskin’s texts and published a biography of Ruskin in 1893.

*Michelangelo Nursing his Dying Servant by Frederic, Lord Leighton* *(c.1862)*

In this 1857 watercolour painting by Frederic, Lord Leighton, we have a depiction a young man supporting and comforting an older man. It is a tender and compassionate scene. The old man, a servant, is Urbino and the benevolent person with his arm around the old man’s shoulder is his master, Michelangelo. Leighton has fashioned the depiction similar to many religious depictions of The Deposition, the cradling of the dead Christ after being brought down from the cross. A number of years later Leighton completed a copy of the work in oils.

This is an unfinished watercolour portrait of Kathleen Newton by the French painter James Tissot. She was his favourite model who also became his lover. The story of artist and model is fascinating and I covered it in my blog, James Tissot and Kathleen Newton ten years ago.

This watercolour is thought to be a preliminary sketch which Tissot used when he worked on his painting entitled Quiet. This was one of Tissot’s most famous pictures of Kathleen and it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881. Kathleen is depicted sitting on a bench in the garden at Tissot’s house in Grove End Road with one of her children and a pet dog. The depiction of Kathleen in Quiet shows her in a similar pose as in the unfinished watercolour sketch.

My next offerings were paintings by the prolific English Victorian painter William Lionel Wylie, an artist of maritime themes which he painted in both oils and watercolours.

William Lionel Wyllie, better known as W.L.Wylie, who was born on July 5th 1851 at 67 Albany Street, Camden Town, London. He was the elder of two sons of a prosperous minor-genre painter, French-born English William Morrison Wyllie, who at the time of the birth of his son, was living in London. His younger brother Charles William Wylie was also a talented painter. William Jnr. received a first-class artistic education, studying firstly at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, and then in 1866, when he was aged fifteen, at the Royal Academy Schools, where he studied under some of the great artists of the time like Edwin Landseer, John Everett Millais and Frederic Leighton.

*Dawn After a Storm by W.L.Wylie (1869)*

His artistic talent showed through with his 1869 painting entitled Dawn After a Storm which won him the Turner Gold Medal. He was just eighteen years old.

*Landing the Catch, Portel Sands by W.L. Wylie (1875)*

William Wylie submitted his painting Landing the Catch, Portel Sands, in 1875. Wylie who had success at submitting his work to the Royal Academy’s Exhibitions the previous years was horrified and disillusioned to have his work rejected by the Exhibition jurists. It was the first time this had happened to him in seven years. He swore that he would give up painting and go off to sea.

His parents once had a summer home at Wimereux, a coastal town just north of Boulogne and just to the south was Portel Sands which is depicted in his painting. This painting depicts fishermen landing their catch on the beach at low tide. The scene is lit up by the blazing sun overhead.

*Shrimpers Hauling to Windward* *by W.L. Wylie*

Wylie’s painting entitled Shrimpers Hauling to Windward is a small work (58 x 71 cms) and is looked upon as one of Wylie’s masterpieces of maritime art. It appeared at the Royal Academy in 1905. It is a work full of movement, air, and light. It depicts a sea reach, which is the last bit of river before it meets the sea. To the right we see the submerged mud bank. The last of the shrimper fleet heads towards land, hard on the starboard tack in the channel, battling against both wind and the current, whilst the leading boats have already made it to the inner harbour and protection against the elements.

*The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805 by W.L. Wylie*

Wylie’s small painting featuring the Shrimpers which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1905, was overshadowed by another of Wyllie’s works, the monumental (148 x 272 cms) painting of Trafalgar on the centenary of the battle. The art press and critics alike stated that this large maritime depiction ‘stole the show’.

*A Walk in the Country by John Ritchie (1863)*

Little is known about the artist who created the painting above, simply entitled A Day in the Country. The artist is John Ritchie and we know he is Scottish and was born around 1821. The difficulty in unearthing facts about his life is strange as he did exhibit his work at such hallowed establishments as the Scottish Academy, Liverpool Academy and the Royal Academy in London. He began to exhibit his work in 1840 when he was nineteen years old. One of the artists who influenced Ritchie was John Brett (see earlier painting in Part 1). His painting, A Day in the Country, was exhibited at the Liverpool Academy in 1863 and depicts a farmer taking a stroll on his land and checking on the forestry management with, in the middle-ground, some of his workers hauling away a felled tree. In the foreground we see the exposed roots of a large old oak tree. Rabbits have nibbled at the roots and the bark and have burrowed under the sandy bank beneath the tree. Besides checking on the tree-felling he is carrying a shotgun and is also hunting the rabbits that are damaging his trees. To the left we see one of his men collecting the body of a rabbit his boss has killed.

The painting above is by George Clausen, an artist I have dedicated two blogs to back in 2015. This work is his beautiful and sensitive portrait of a young woman which he completed in 1895 and originally it was entitled Pensive but later was given the name Cinderella on the behest of David Croal Thomson, an Edinburgh-born art dealer and critic, who was based mainly in London, managing the London branch of the prestigious Goupil Gallery. Thomson advised Clausen that such a change of name would add a touch of romanticism to the work. The painting was shown at the New Gallery in 1896 and the critic for the Pall Mall Gazette praised the work saying that Clausen had captured a creature exquisitely tender in nature. The girl who modelled for the painting was Lizzie Deller a girl from Widdington, Essex.

Although the exhibition at the Maas Gallery has finished by the time you read these two blogs, I just wanted to remind you of the benefits one gets when you call in and look around these private “selling” galleries.

British Victorian Art and the Maas Gallery, London. Part 1.

*Maas Gallery, Clifford Street, London.*

In my next couple of blogs, I am going to delve into the world of Victoriana, and the British art of that period. The Victorian era began in 1837 when the 18-year-old Alexandrina Victoria inherited the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as Queen Victoria. It was a time of the start of the industrial revolution and a time when Britain was regarded as an industrial superpower. It lasted for almost seventy-four years. On a recent visit to London, which I managed to make despite the train strikes, I decided to bypass the major galleries and visit a “selling” gallery in Mayfair which had a month-long exhibition of Victorian paintings.

The current owner of the gallery is Rupert Maas who was born in 1960, the same year the gallery was founded by his father. His father died in 1996 and Rupert took over the running of the establishment. The Gallery deals in Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite, Romantic and Modern British paintings, watercolours, drawings, reproductive engravings and sculpture, and the work of two or three living artists. Rupert, like his father before him, has arranged a number of important exhibitions at his Gallery, including Pre-Raphaelites and Romantics, Masters of British Illustration, John Ruskin and his Circle, Burne-Jones, Victorian Fairy Paintings, biennial exhibitions of Victorian Engravings and annual exhibitions of Victorian Paintings. So the day I visited the gallery it was staging a Victorian Pictures exhibition and I thought that in these blogs, I would highlight some of my favourites and look at some of the other paintings by those artists.

My first pick is a painting, completed in 1900, entitled Sirens. The artist was Sir James Jebusa Shannon. Shannon, an American, was born in Auburn, New York in February 1862. At the age of eight he and his parents relocated to Canada and in 1978, aged sixteen he went to London to study fine art. He went on to win a gold medal for figure painting and gained recognition for his submissions to the Royal Academy. He soon became recognised as one of the leading portrait painters in London. He was one of the first members of the New English Art Club, and became a founder member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In 1897 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and a Royal Academician in 1909

*Sirens by Sir James Jebusa Shannon (1900)*

Sirens was exhibited at Thomas Agnew & Sons, one of London’s leading art dealerships in 1900 where it was considered one of the most original of the contributions. It depicts nymph-like beings positioned in a charismatic way. They are not simply modelling for an artist, but relishing a world of translucent waters, of beauty, both deep and impenetrable in which they live. The art critic of the Evening Standard wrote in the November 10^th 1900 edition:

‘…The heads and shoulders of four young girls in the water – a piece full of movement, colour, and of charming life – is called by Mr. Shannon “Sirens”. The girls are delightful, and, in intention, absolutely innocent and harmless. Not even the most ridiculously cautious mariner, whoever hesitated about the passage of Southampton Water need be concerned to steer clear of sirens so benevolent and so bewitching. And yet, for all that, the piece is imaginative, and satisfactory entirely…”

Sometimes facts and information stick in your mind for years. In this case it is the name of an artist. Some fifty plus years ago I was inveigled into helping my daughter with an art project and the artist and painting she had to research was John Brett’s Realism work, The Stonebreaker. The facts behind the work and the reason for painting it made me, from then on, become interested in what made an artist depict a certain subject and in a certain way. So, I was surprised to see a painting by John Brett in the Maas gallery exhibition especially as it was completely a different genre to that of The Stonebreaker. It was a seascape.

*Sunset off Lundy Island by John Brett (1872)*

The painting, Sunset off Lundy Island, is a sunset depiction of a yacht, a gaff ketch, sailing on choppy waters off the Isle of Lundy in the Bristol Channel. He completed the work in 1872 although the idea for the painting went back five years earlier in September 1867 when Brett started to make a series of sketches. The ketch we see battling the elements is heading in a south-east direction towards the safety of Appledore harbour which is more than twenty miles away. The painting was a commission for Alfred Morrison, an English collector, known for his interest in works of art, autographs and manuscripts, who had built up a collection of Brett’s paintings.

*Presentiments by Emily Mary Osborn (c.1859)*

The title of the 1859 painting by Emily Mary Osborn is Presentiments. A presentiment is an intuitive feeling about the future, especially one of foreboding. The artist was the daughter of a curate of a parish in West Tilbury on the Thames Estuary near the sea, which at the time, was surrounded by fishing communities. She lived there up to the age of fourteen. By the age of twenty-three and now living in London, she had her own studio. She was exhibiting her work at the Royal Academy, one of which was this work which graced the walls of the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1859. This painting is all about the perilous life of fishermen who have to go to sea to fish, Despite the gale blowing outside, the title of the painting forewarns us that the fisherman we see exiting his cottage is not coming back. Osborn was inspired by the Charles Kingsley’s poem, The Three Fishers:

Three fishers went sailing out into the West,

Out into the West as the sun went down;

Each thought on the woman who lov’d him the best;

And the children stood watching them out of the town;

For men must work, and women must weep,

And there’s little to earn, and many to keep,

Though the harbour bar be moaning.

Three wives sat up in the light-house tower,

And they trimm’d the lamps as the sun went down;

They look’d at the squall, and they look’d at the shower,

And the night wrack came rolling up ragged and brown!

But men must work, and women must weep,

Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,

And the harbour bar be moaning.

Three corpses lay out on the shining sands

In the morning gleam as the tide went down,

And the women are weeping and wringing their hands

For those who will never come back to the town;

For men must work, and women must weep,

And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep—

And good-by to the bar and its moaning.

The painting depicts a fisherman’s family. There is a look of poverty with their surroundings but despite the family members being poor they are clean and well-dressed. We see the fisherman’s son is seated on the floor playing with a toy boat. Look at the wife’s expression as she watches her husband depart. It is an anxious look and although she has seen her husband depart every day to board his fishing boat, today is different. She feels that something bad will happen and she is afraid. She has this terrible presentiment that her husband will not return. Even the cat senses something as his fur is standing up and its back is hunched. It is a Realism genre painting.

*The Old Mill at La Mortola by Sir Frank Dicksee (1925)*

A wealthy English Quaker, Thomas Hanbury, who had made a fortune in buying property in Shanghai, bought and slowly restored the gardens of La Mortola, the forty-four acre gardens close to the Italian town of Ventimiglia, on a promontory which juts out into the Ligurian Sea. The painting above depicting the Old Mill at La Mortola was completed by seventy-two year old English artist Sir Frank Dicksee, who portrays the scene with quiet shadowy tones. He had been appointed president of the Royal Academy in 1924, a position he held until his death in 1928.

*Miss Ethel Brignall as a Mythological Figure by Ralph Peacock*

The painter and illustrator Ralph Peacock was born in Wood Green, London on August 14th, 1868. His initial training was as a civil servant but his love was art and at the age of eighteen he enrolled in the twice-weekly evening art classes at the South Lambeth Art School. The well-known Scottish painter John Pettie, who was considered to be one of the most successful painters in his days, saw some of Peacock’s work and advised him to consider take up painting professionally. Peacock took Pettie’s advice and became one of the leading British portraitists of the Victorian era. The painting by Ralph Peacock, which was on show at the Maas gallery was his work entitled Miss Ethel Brignall as a Mythological Figure.

Ethel Brignall was the subject of Ralph Peacock’s 1897 painting, Ethel. Peacock painted this portrait the year the Tate Gallery was founded, and once on the walls of that gallery it became one of the most popular pictures of the 1900’s. Ethel Brignall was fourteen-years-old when she modelled for Peacock and in a letter she wrote in 1958 she recounted the experience:

“…I was 14 years old at the time…. I stayed with Ralph Peacock’s parents, Mr and Mrs Thomas Peacock, in the summer holiday while the picture was being painted…”

Ralph Peacock’s involvement with the Brignall family culminated in a third family portrait. This time it was a double portrait of the two sisters, Edith and Ethel Brignall. The elder sister, Edith Brignall, is depicted reading from an open book. She married Ralph Peacock in 1901 and they lived with their two sons in Wimbledon. He eventually moved to Camden and died there on 17th January, 1946. The younger sister, Ethel Brignall, married Harold A. Titcomb, an American mining engineer, in 1908. According to US Census records, in 1940 the couple were living on Orchard Street, Farmington, Maine, along with two sons and a daughter. She died in Farmington in October 1970, aged 88.

*La Tristesse by Abraham Solomon* *(c.1847)*

My last painting in this blog looking at British Victorian paintings, which were on display at London’s Maas Gallery, is one by Abraham Solomon. Abraham Solomon was born in Bishopsgate London in May 1823. He was the second son of Catherine and Meyer Solomon. His father was a hat manufacturer and one of the first Jews to be admitted to the freedom of the city of London. Two members of the family, besides Abraham, also became artists. The painting is a half-length portrait of the Countess Eugénie de Teba, who would become the Empress of Napoleon III, when she married the Emperor in January 1853. Eugénie supported French opposition to a Prussian candidate for the vacant Spanish throne, in the argument that precipitated the Franco-German War of 1870. After the Battle of Sedan on September 1^st 1870, Napoleon III was defeated and held prisoner by the Prussians. On hearing of her husband’s capture and surrender she fiercely told one of his personal aides:

“…No! An Emperor does not capitulate! He is dead!…They are trying to hide it from me. Why didn’t he kill himself! Doesn’t he know he has dishonored himself?…”

In March 1871 Napoleon III, his wife Eugénie and their son Louis Napoleon plus a large entourage settled in a large property in Camden Place in Chiselhurst, London. Napoleon III died in 1873 and her son Louis died six years later and Eugénie assumed the role of the grande dame in exile.

Solomon’s painting was completed around 1847, years before her marriage to Napoleon or his fall from power so the title of the painting La Tristesse (Sadness) could not be about Napoleon’s life but may instead be about her early life as she grew up into an impetuous and audacious young woman. In her early twenties, she was rescued from drowning and twice attempted suicide after romantic disappointments.

……………………………….to be continued

Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Part 3.

*The Sun Setting Through Vapour by Turner (c.1809)*

Joseph Mallord William Turner’s painting The Sun Rising Through Vapour was described at the time as masterly, and his early reputation was founded on a series of dramatic seascapes that he regularly showed at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and in his own gallery until about 1810. The sun disperses the clouds and infuses sand and sea with a golden glow. In the foreground against a seascape with the setting sun which casts a golden light over the entire picture, we see a group of fishermen and women unloading their catch and laying it out on the beach for sale. In the distance we see a number of ships at anchor including a man-of-war and a dismasted hulk which was being used as a prison ship, which is a stark reminder that at the time Turner completed the work, France and England were still at war. Turner painted numerous marine subjects early in his career. As here, he sought to make his reputation by matching the Dutch masters of the 17th century. Throughout his life Turner was fascinated with including the sun in his paintings

See the source image — *The Sun Rising through Vapour by Turner (1807-09). National Gallery London*

A similar painting can be found in the National Gallery, London entitled The Sun Rising through Vapour. The setting is low tide in the early morning and fishermen unload their catch from a boat beached high and dry on the shore. Some of the people are partaking of a meal whilst others prepare the catch for sale. There is a noticeable contrast between the human activity on the shore with the stillness of the glassy sea which, like a mirror, reflects the hazy sunlight. The sun is just a pale yellow glow and has yet the power to burn off the sea mist which is alluded to with the word ‘vapour’ in the picture’s title.

My next offering is by the Italian painter, Jacopo dal Ponte, better known as Jacopo Bassano, named after, Bassano dal Grappa, a village northwest of Venice, where he was born in the first decade of the sixteenth century. He was probably first trained by his father, Francesco, before becoming an apprentice in Bonifazio Veronese’s large Venetian workshop. He was mainly active, throughout his long life, in Bassano, where he painted landscapes and genre scenes. In his painting, Adoration of the Magi sometimes known as the Adoration of the Kings he depicted the Three Kings, or Magi, carrying their gifts, as they approached the infant Christ. It’s a scene that has been caught countless times on canvas. Despite their status and wealth, they bow to Christ who they acclaim as the King of Kings. The setting, is the inside of a ruined classical building and has a symbolic meaning. The decaying building symbolises the decline of the pagan world and the old gods. They will be further ruined as a result of Christ’s divine mission. Look at the various aspects of this picture. Look how Bassano has painted the sumptuously extravagant robes and depicted a splendid collection of animals and servants. Look how the light comes through the decaying architecture and settles on the head of the baby Jesus. This is looked upon as being a light source emanating from God the Father.

Visual search query image — *Jockeys Before the Race by Edgar Degas (1879)*

I wrongly associated paintings solely depicting ballerinas with the French painter Edgar Degas but in fact he had another favourite theme for his work – horse racing. Horse racing was a popular pastime in the nineteenth century in France under Louis-Philippe and Napoleon III. Degas became fascinated by the sport while visiting friends in Normandy. During his lifetime, Degas created forty-five oils, twenty pastels, two hundred and fifty drawings, and seventeen sculptures related to horses. One such work featuring horse racing is in the Barber Institute collection, entitled Jockeys Before the Race. It is a painting, made using oil essence, gouache, and pastel, which he completed in 1879. It is an image of three jockeys on horseback readying themselves at the start of a race on a dull winter’s day with its watery sun. This very large work (107 x 73cms) was exhibited at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879. There is a definite lack of symmetry about this work as the vertical starting post is placed two-thirds from the left-hand side. The warm red and pink colours of the jockey’s clothes on the left of the painting are balanced by the lighter white/blue colours of the clothes worn by the jockey, who sits astride his horse in the right foreground.

My next choice of painting is both unusual and yet strangely beautiful. It is a 1860 watercolour over pen and pencil, partly heightened with white and gold work by Caspar Nepomuk Scheuren, a German landscape painter and etcher. It is thought to have been commissioned as a prize in a lottery held by Kristiania Kunstforenings, Oslo, the oldest art gallery in Norway, which is why the Norwegian coat of arms is at the top centre of the work. It is an elicitation of a poem by the German nineteenth century poet, Ludwig Uhland which tells of a legendary magical castle, depicted in the centre of the painting, which reaches up towards the moonlit sky and down to the shimmering sea. On one side we see a king and queen and on the other, their musical daughter, who serenades passers-by with a tearful lament, whose premature death forms the focus of the poem’s lament. The castle and characters are surrounded by an architectural framework, in which the separate compartments serve to isolate episodes of the unfolding narrative. The tragic fate of all three characters is depicted at the bottom of the painting. In the centre the king and queen are seen dressed in mourning clothes. To the left we see the tomb of their daughter and to the right we see a depiction of their own tomb. Below is the poem which tells the sad story.

The Castle By The Sea

By Johann Ludwig Uhland

‘Hast thou seen that lordly castle,
That Castle by the Sea?
Golden and red above it
The clouds float gorgeously.

‘And fain it would stoop downward
To the mirrored wave below;
And fain it would soar upward
In the evening’s crimson glow.’

‘Well have I seen that castle,
That Castle by the Sea,
And the moon above it standing,
And the mist rise solemnly.’

‘The winds and the waves of ocean,
Had they a merry chime?
Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers,
The harp and the minstrel’s rhyme?’

‘The winds and the waves of ocean,
They rested quietly,
But I heard on the gale a sound of wail,
And tears came to mine eye.’

‘And sawest thou on the turrets
The King and his royal bride?
And the wave of their crimson mantles?
And the golden crown of pride?

‘Led they not forth, in rapture,
A beauteous maiden there?
Resplendent as the morning sun,
Beaming with golden hair?’

‘Well saw I the ancient parents,
Without the crown of pride;
They were moving slow, in weeds of woe,
No maiden was by their side!’

*Huntsmen Halted by Aelbert Cuyp (1655)*

One of my favourite Dutch painters and one who is regarded as one of the finest artists of the so-called “Golden Age” of Dutch painting, a period during and after the later part of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence is Aelbert Cuyp. Cuyp was born and raised in the town of Dordrecht where he completed paintings for his patrons. His notoriety as a great painter only came the late eighteenth century when British aristocratic collectors began to collect his pictures. His works were admired for the way he combined his figures with his beautiful landscapes and the British aristocracy particularly liked his many depictions of equestrian and hunting themes. Although Cuyp did not visit Italy himself, but he studied those Dutch artists who had been there and who had adopted the poetic light of the paintings by the French artist, Claude Lorrain. In fact, Cuyp was dubbed the Dutch Claude.

In this work we see a party of hunters at rest under the shade of a large tree. The huntsmen we see depicted are the three sons of Cornelis van Beveren, Cuyp’s wealthiest patron. De Beveren was the most powerful man in mid-seventeenth century Dordrecht. On five occasions he had been appointed burgomaster of the town, representative to the Staaten-General and ambassador to England, as well as to France. The van Beverens were not classed as aristocrats but undoubtedly prosperous members of the so-called “striving classes” – the nouveau riche.

The three riders wear fashionable Hungarian hunting costume and are accompanied by an exotically dressed black servant, another sign of their wealth. Why Hungarian costumes? The reason was probably because Hungarians were admired by the Dutch not only for their famed equestrian skills but also for their staunch support of the Protestant cause, which also reflected a newfound sense of Dutch national pride and independence from the Catholic Spanish rule. The depiction shows the hunting party has come to rest in a landscape bathed in a warm golden light more associated with southern Europe than Holland. The right to hunt had once been jealously guarded by royalty and aristocracy, and thus those who hunted were afforded a traditional mark of the very highest status. However, in the region of Zuid Holland, which governed Dordrecht, regulations had been altered in 1623 expanding hunting privileges to owners of country estates and to citizens with an annual income of more than 100 guilders.

*The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown (1855)*

For my last offering I want to look at a painting which is part of the collection usually on display at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, but as I said at the start of Part One of this blog, the main Birmingham Museum is closed for renovations and this painting was then loaned out to the Barber Institute. The Last of England was completed in 1855 by the leading Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown and is recognised as a masterpiece of Victorian painting. In the depiction we see a young family huddling together on an open boat as they say farewell to the shores of England and head off to find a better life and a fresh start in Australia. This oval shape of the work which is almost circular, makes us concentrate our focus on the faces of the young couple, who have literally turned their backs on their homeland. In the picture we see a father, mother and two children wrapped up well against the cold sea breezes as the ship leaves the familiar shores of their English homeland. The picture, in some way, was inspired by the emigration to Australia of Maddox Brown’s friend, the sculptor Thomas Woolner in 1852. It is ironic that although Maddox Brown started the painting the year Woolner departed from England, he had returned to England the following year, disillusioned by the false promises of wealth to be had from the gold rush. This was some two years before Ford Madox Brown had completed the work. Thousands of working-class and lower middle-class people, who were totally disillusioned with their life of poverty and slum-like dwellings of England, just packed up the few possessions they had and made this long and momentous journey to the other side of the world. There were about fifty thousand free immigrants arriving each year in Australia. The immigrants were following their dream and although they believed the “grass would be greener” for them in Australia, they would a little as to whether they had made the right decision. Such worry and doubt was etched on the faces of the couple in the painting and in some ways we can empathise with them even though we know they had a free choice in the matter.

In the background we can make out the white cliffs of England as they fade away in the distance. This rock structure of white chalk is often depicted in paintings which highlight the coast of England. In contrast to the white rock formation, we see a black steamship, with billowing black smoke coming from its funnel, heading for port. The ship that the family is sailing on is surrounded by choppy green seas topped with white crests and this may in some way allude to the testing and difficult times ahead for our emigrants. It is interesting to see in the foreground netting around the lifeboat deck, hanging on which are some of the ship’s fresh vegetable supplies. We can see some cabbages and wonder how long they will remain fresh during this long, probably six-to-eight-week journey. If we look behind “our family” we can see a small child wearing a pink bonnet, her right hand grasping the scarf warn by her mother, whilst she eats an apple held in her other hand. Somebody, slightly hidden from view, can be seen smoking a long clay pipe but the characters that amuse me the most, and who are just visible in the background in this painting, are a pair of angry men arguing. The man wearing the top hat has turned away and as he looks back at the departing coastline, waves his fist at it. To this man, his departure from England is a thing of joy and for some reason he seems to be cursing the country he has just left behind.

The main characters in this painting are the father and mother and these are portraits of the artist himself and his second wife and beloved model Emma Hill. The small fair-haired girl in the background eating the apple is their daughter Katty and the baby hidden from view is their son, Oliver. The father is tightly wrapped up in his warm brown woollen coat. His hat is being buffeted by the strong winds but see how there is a “safety string” from the hat attached to and wrapped around a button of his coat. The sight of the father with his grim determined face says it all for me. This is a journey into the unknown and probably he is still racked with doubt with regards his decision to remove his family from the safe environment of their home and whisking them off to a foreign land. It still troubles him but he knows that he and his family cannot go back now and so his resolute look tells us that he is determined to see the venture through to its conclusion. The look on the face of his wife is indicative that she too has concerns about their venture. Her small, slim black leather gloved-hand tightly grasps her husband’s bare workman-like hand, the force of which wrinkles his skin. It is, in a way, a sign that she supports him and it lets him know that fact. Her other hand is holding the tiny fingers of the baby she cradles in her arm and which is hidden from view inside her warm woollen cape. She is wearing a pink bonnet which is partly covered by the grey hood of her cape but we see the pink ribbons of her bonnet flying horizontally in the gale-force wind. It is a touching picture of a family on the move.

This tense and challenging time for our emigrants was mirrored by the testing times felt by the artist himself. Commenting on his frame of mind at the time of the painting, Maddox Brown said:

“…I am intensely miserable, very hard up and not a little mad…”

And it was at these times that he, himself, thought about emigrating to Australia.

That is my final blog about the works held in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts’ collection and if you ever visit Birmingham, England, I hope you will visit this excellent institution.

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Part Two. Portraiture.

I am starting this second part of my blog talking about my favourite paintings in the Barber Institute collection by focusing on beauty in a work of portraiture. I suppose I have three portraits in mind when I think of extreme female beauty.

*Jeunesse Dorée by Gerald Brockhurst. Lady Lever Art Gallery.*

I fell in love with the woman featured in Gerald Brockhurst painting Jeunesse Dorée which is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Wirral, which I have seen many times.

Virgin Annunciate, 1474 - 1475 - Antonello da Messina — *Virgin Annunciate by Antonello da Messina. Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo*

My second true love is the portrait I saw when I was visited the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, Sicily. It was of the Virgin Mary and entitled Virgin Annunciate and the artist was Antonello da Messina.

My third beautiful portrait is in the collection of the Barber Institute and is entitled Portrait of Countess Golovina painted by the French painter Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun. Lebrun was born in 1755 during pre-revolutionary France. In 1789, aged thirty-four, she had to escape the Revolution and in 1795 she had settled in St Petersburg. It was whilst in Russia that she painted the beautifully crafted portrait of Varvara Nikolayevna Golovina who was the wife of Count Nikolai Golovin. Countess Golovina was an artist and memoirist who came from Russian nobility and was a close confidant of Empress Elizabeth. She was appointed a maid of honour at the court of Catherine the Great. In Vigée-Lebrun’s portrait the countess is dressed in a red shawl which is decorated with a gold border. She wears a deep gold headband. Her hair flows down her shoulders. She gazes directly towards us with a look of amazing openness. What is quite captivating about her pose is the way she has laid her arm across her body as her hand clasps her shawl to her body in a gesture that suggests she has been caught off-guard by the artist. It is a very intimate depiction of a beautiful woman.

Govert Flinck, the son of a cloth merchant, was born in Cleves in the Lower Rhine region. When he was fourteen he began to draw and paint and began his apprenticeship as a painter in Leewarden with the painter and Mennonite preacher Lambert Jacobsz. Whilst there he met the painter Jacob Adrianesz. Backer and the two artists travelled together to Amsterdam to continue their studies in Rembrandt’s studio where Flinck spent around three years and it was there that he collaborated with him for some years. During this time, he lived in the house of the art dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh. In 1636 he opened his own studio. Rembrandt had never taken a commission to paint a portrait of a child but many of his pupils were pleased to fill the gap in the market for such a genre. One of the best was Govert Flinck who had gained in popularity in the mid 1630’s and at one time it was thought that he was more popular than his master. Flink, like Rembrandt, used a dark palette of browns and greys for this work. The identity of the boy is somewhat of a mystery but recently Flick’s eight-year-old nephew, David Leeuw, has been suggested as the sitter. He was the son of a wealthy businessman and avid art collector. The depiction has a low horizon line which gives prominence to the boy’s figure and theatrically silhouettes his head and body against the menacing sky.

Of all the Impressionist painters I think my favourite is Renoir. Renoir differed from his Impressionist colleagues as his works often featured figures whereas his contemporaries preferred to depict Impressionistic landscapes. In this painting entitled Young Woman Seated we see one of his favourite professional models posing for the work, so we are aware that this not a commissioned portrait. Renoir started this painting around the time of the Second Impressionist Exhibition in April 1876 and completed it in 1877, the year of the Third Impressionist Exhibition. Renoir was a major exhibitor at both these Paris exhibitions. In the work we see the model tilting her head and partially turns to face us but her eyes fail to meet ours. Renoir has depicted his model with her hand raised to her face which draws our eyes towards her mouth and cheeks which he has highlighted with subtle shades of pink and peach. Her clothing is a mass of superficial fabrics and depicted with delicate frothy curls which create a sense of femininity and sensuality.. Although the title of the work is a very general one the art market at the time gave it the title of La Pensée (Thought). On hearing this, Renoir cuttingly stated “my models have no thoughts”.

*The Blue Bower by Dante Rossetti (1865)*

I have always loved the works of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and was pleased to see one of Dante Rossetti’s works at the Barber Institute. It was his 1865 painting entitled The Blue Bower. Twelve years earlier, around 1853 Dante Rossetti and his colleagues, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, had gone their separate ways. Rossetti began to concentrate on depictions of medieval fantasy and focused on themes from the life and works of Dante Alighieri and from Malory’s legends of King Arthur, and his depictions were exclusively in watercolour. Around 1859 Rossetti’s artwork changed and he went back to oil painting and produced a series of idealized portraits of beautiful women often depicted at close range in glamorous settings. These women were depicted as being dominant and strong-willed females and often had a back story of the ruining of men. The woman who sat for Rossetti’s painting was Fanny Cornforth, who was born Sarah Cox. Cornforth met Rossetti in 1856 and became his model and mistress. Rossetti has enhanced her natural beauty. She has thick wavy hair and wears a loose luxurious gown, and her eyes are not cast down modestly as a geisha’s might be, but watchful. From every point of view, composition, colour and character, it is a fascinating and very beautiful work. The background has a blue cornflower pattern and actual cut cornflowers lie on the table in front of her. Also on the table is a small Japanese koto, a half-tube zither instrument, that she is playing albeit without showing any interest in what she is doing. The arrangement of the portrait offers the proposition that her role in his life was that of courtesan, mistress, the entertaining geisha, although her eyes are not cast down in a geisha-like modesty. At this point in time artists were captivated by all things Japanese, their culture, and the fashion for blue-and-white china, and Japanese ornaments.

In April 2011 I was in London and went to see the George Bellow’s exhibition at the National Gallery entitled An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters. This small twelve painting exhibition, seven by Bellows, featured his work as a painter of urban scenes. . My favourite was his 1912 painting which the National Gallery actually owned, Men of the Docks.

Miss Bentham, by American realist George Bellows — Nude, *Miss Bentham by George Bellows (1906)*

So I was surprised to see a nude painting at the Barber Institute attributed to the American painter. It is only the second work by the artist to enter a British collection. Bellows is regarded as one of the greatest early 20th-century American painters who was much better known for his gritty urban and brutally realistic boxing scenes than for naked ladies. It is entitled Nude, Miss Bentham. Bellows painted this attractive nude in 1906 after completing his studies at the New York School of Art and when he had set up his own studio. Bellows was the outstanding American talent of his generation and a member of the group which was later known as the ‘Ashcan School’, a reference to their commitment to finding subject matter in the people and scenes offered up by the bustling modern city. It is a full-length work of a standing nude woman as viewed from behind. It was Bellow’s first attempt at depicting a nude and he never sold it. It was also the first nude painting to grace the walls of the Barber Institute. When he died in January 1925 it was found in his studio. The work was sold by his widow in 1985, to Andy Warhol. After Warhol died in 1987, it was sold to an anonymous private collector who in turn sold it in 2015, through the dealer Collisart, to the Barber Institute.

The Barber Institute director, Ms Kalinsky said of the purchase:

“…This is a thrilling departure for the Barber Institute and our first major purchase for some years. It fits in extremely well with the strengths of our gallery as a historical collection, but it takes us into new areas too. The painting is very American and very much of its time, strengthening and expanding our representation of early 20th-century art…”

Bellows painted it in a realistic but highly dramatic style against a dark background. The full-length oil depicts a model named by Bellows as Miss Bentham, painted in a realistic but highly dramatic style against a dark background. Notice how there is a reddish abrasion seen around the woman’s knees and feet, a sure sign that she has experienced hard physical work.

…………..to be continued.

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Part 1.

I had a short city break in Birmingham the other day when I had intended to visit some of the main art galleries. Unfortunately, the main Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in the centre of the city was closed until late April, for essential electrical works and so I was able to concentrate my cultural journey on a visit to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the centre of the Birmingham University Campus. I had been here once before, five years ago and especially fell in love with two of the paintings. The Barber Institute is a smaller gallery in comparison to the main one in the Birmingham centre and yet it is full of artistic treasures by the most famous artists. In my next three blogs I will introduce you to and tell you about some of the wonderful paintings in their permanent collection, so as to tempt you to visit the museum.

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts is housed in one of Birmingham’s finest Art Deco buildings and was opened in 1939. The architect tasked with designing the building was Robert Atkinson, one of Britain’s leading architects of the 1920s and ’30s. The building is laid out around the central music auditorium, surrounded by corridors. On the Ground floor these form offices and lecture halls for the Departments of Music and History of Art, as well as a dedicated Art History library. The galleries occupy the same space on the first floor, approached by a stunning travertine staircase directly opposite the entrance.

The first painting I want to present to you is one of my all-time favourite landscape works. The 1832 work, entitled Ramsau, is by Thomas Fearnley. Fearnley was born in Norway, but studied abroad, often with his fellow countryman Johan Christian Dahl. It was whilst working alongside Dahl that Fearnley developed the habit of painting directly en plein air. Fearnley was travelling to Italy when he and his party stopped at the village of Ramsau, a small town located on the Königssee in the district of Berchtesgadener Land in Bavaria. In the painting we can see the road winding and disappearing around a corner of the village before we catch a glimpse of it again as it heads off towards their destination, the snow-covered Alps and the beautiful snow-capped Hoher Göll, which straddles the border between the German state of Bavaria and the Austrian city of Salzburg. It is such a beautifully tranquil scene. In the middle ground of the depiction, we see a lone farmer collecting hay. Such hard work was so important so as to have food for his animals during the harsh and bitterly cold winter, which was fast approaching. This en plein air work would have taken Fearnley several sittings during the week-long stay, on each occasion adding another layer of colour.

*The Wrath of Ahasuerus* *by Jan Steen (c.1670)*

I have always loved the works of the Dutch Golden Age painter, Jan Steen, so I was pleased to see one of his works in the Barber Institute’s collection. It was not one of his exuberant genre scenes but a Biblical painting. It was his painting The Wrath of Ahasuerus which he completed around 1670. The characters who appear in the painting come from the Old Testament Book of Esther. The depiction before us is an episode in the life of the Persian king Ahasuerus and his Jewish wife Esther. King Ahasuerus had sought a new wife after his queen, Vashti, had refused to obey him, and Esther, the adopted daughter of the Jew Mordecai, was chosen for her beauty. The subject of the painting is from Esther vii, 1-7. Haman, the king’s First Minister had issued a decree that all the Jews in Persia should be killed. Esther, the wife of the king, held a banquet and at it she confessed that she was a Jew, and that she too was threatened by Haman. So we see in the painting, on hearing what his wife had to say about Haman, her husband jumps up in a violent reaction to what he has just heard. Ahaseurus explosive and exaggerated gesture, eyes bulging, red in the face, fists clenched, jumps up knocking over a vase and the peacock pie. Haman, on the left, cowers away from the king’s fury. The peacock is a symbol of pride and is a reference to Haman’s fallen pride and his downfall. The king ordered Haman to be hung. This story of Esther’s triumph over the evil Haman was popular with the Dutch people who could see the similarity between her battle and their plight against the mighty, and in their eyes, the evil Spanish invaders and occupiers of their country, being a similar story.

Symphony in White, No. III — *Symphony in White No. III by James McNeill Whistler (c.1867)*

James McNeill Whistler completed Symphony in White No. 3 in 1867 and it is now part of the Barber Institute collection. It was thought to have been originally entitled Two Little White Girls. Two women are depicted in the painting. One, sitting on a sofa, is Joanna Heffernan, Whistler’s mistress. The other, resting on the floor in the cream/yellow dress, is Millie Jones, the wife of an actor friend. Laying on the floor is an Oriental fan which is a reminder of the popular Japonisme cult of the time. Japonisme was a French term that referred to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century. Whistler had embarked on this painting in July 1865 and within a month, he had completed the preliminary sketches and by September he had completed the work and had signed and dated it.

However, he was not happy with what he saw and began to rework it and Whistler was not finally satisfied with it until 1867 when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy. He painted over the final “5” in the original date, and replaced it with a “7”, to mark the changes it had undergone.

Whistler chose the term ‘Symphony’ to highlight to visitors to the exhibition that it was purely a study in colour and the connection of two branches of the Arts, music and art.. It was the first of Whistler’s paintings to be exhibited with a musical title. And so, why was it entitled “No. 3”?

The reason behind this numerical conundrum was that Whistler’s 1863 painting was given the title White Girl but Paul Mantz, a French art historian and writer for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, called it ‘Symphonie du blanc‘, and so it was later renamed Symphony in White. No. 1.

*Symphony in White No.2 by Whistler. Tate Britain.*

In 1864 Whistler completed a second similar work entitled The Little White Girl, which later became known as Symphony in White. No. 2. In their 1908 biography of Whistler, The Life of James McNeill Whistler, Elizabeth and Joseph Pennell, make the point that this may have been a factor that influenced Whistler in his choice of titles for the third in the series.

The work was greatly admired by all who saw it. It is thought that Deagas drew inspiration from Whistler’s painting when he worked on his painting, Portrait de Mlle Eugénie Fiocre in the Ballet “La Source”

However, there were some critics who were not altogether in love with the work. Philip Hamerton, an English artist, art critic and author, writing for the Saturday Review on 1 June 1867, remarked:

“…In the “Symphony in White No. III.” by Mr. Whistler there are many dainty varieties of tint, but it is not precisely a symphony in white. One lady has a yellowish dress and brown hair and a bit of blue ribbon, the other has a red fan, and there are flowers and green leaves. There is a girl in white on a white sofa, but even this girl has reddish hair; and of course, there is the flesh colour of the complexions…”

Whistler was horrified by what had been written in the journal and wrote a letter to the editor but he would not print it. However in Whistler’s own book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, he reproduced the letter in which he had written:

“…How pleasing that such profound prattle should inevitably find its place in print!…Bon Dieu! did this wise person expect white hair and chalked faces ? And does he then, in his astounding consequence, believe that a symphony in F contains no other note, but shall be a continued repetition of F, F, F ? . . . Fool!…”

*Two Peasants binding Faggots by Pieter Brueghel (c.1615)*

For my last offering in Part One of my blog relating to my best-loved works in the collection of the Barber Institute I have reverted to one of my favourite painters, Pieter Brueghel the Younger. He was the son of one of the greatest sixteenth century artists, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and the brother of Jan Breughel. This amusing and fascinating painting entitled Two Peasants binding Faggots, was completed around 1615, and it was the type of work which was popular in the seventeenth century. It was entitled Two Peasants binding Faggots. It is a depiction of peasants binding a bundle of stolen branches for firewood whilst their fellow accomplice is seen in the background cutting the branches of a tree. The two peasants in the foreground glance around furtively and from that we gather that they are up to no good, The larger of the two, on the left, is stout symbolising the sin of gluttony whilst his thinner and gaunt accomplice with a paler face and wearing a codpiece has a bandage around his head and it is thought that Brueghel has depicted this as it relates to the Flemish proverb “to have toothache behind the ears” meaning a malingerer. On the ground, next to the gaunt-looking man, is a pipe which is a traditional phallic symbol and represents the sin of lechery.

Bruegel Netherlandish Proverbs@0 — *Netherlandish Proverbs by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525)*. Staatliche Museen Berlin.

The artist’s father, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, had painted a large work, Netherlandish Proverbs, in 1559, which featured a large number of similar characters each representing various Netherlandish proverbs which today is part of the Staatliche Museen collection in Berlin.

…………….to be continued.

Manchester Art Gallery. Part 1. The Females.

Manchester Art Gallery

If you happen to visit Manchester, England, you will find two main art galleries, the Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth Gallery. Last weekend I was in the city for a weekend break and decided to revisit the main Manchester Art Gallery.

The main part of the collection is derived from the Royal Manchester Institution which demonstrated a partiality for purchasing contemporary art and that predilection continued when it eventually became the City Art Gallery in 1883. The retired Bradford-based textile businessman and philanthropist with a passionate love of art, Charles Rutherston, although not an artist himself, was both an art collector and a generous friend and patron to artists. He had amassed a large collection of paintings which he bequeathed to the Gallery in 1925. Between the two World Wars, the Gallery accumulated a large number of contemporary artworks. Today the Manchester Art Gallery has an extensive collection of work by nineteenth-century British artists, particularly the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1979, the European Old Masters collection was transformed by the Assheton Bennett bequest of almost a hundred paintings, mainly by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish artists. Today the collection includes over 2,000 oil paintings, plus related studies and archival material, and there is a renewed focus on collecting contemporary art. In the next three blogs I will be looking at some of my favourites which were on view.

Study of Jane Morris

Chalk drawing of Jane Morris by Rossetti (1875)

In the Gallery, there are a number of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite artists but the one I find the most haunting is Rossetti’s late work entitled Astarte Syriaca. The story behind this work started back in 1875 with a chalk drawing Rossetti had made of Jane Morris, his lover. Rossetti’s friend, Theodore Watts–Dunton, told Rossetti that the drawing could form the basis of a full-length Venus portrait. After one of Rossetti’s patrons, Clarence Fry saw some of the preliminary sketches in August 1875, he commissioned Rossetti to complete the Venus painting.

Rossetti started working on the painting, Astarte Syriaca, sometimes known as Venus Astarte, in the Autumn of 1875 but abandoned it, unfinished in March 1876, saying that he was dissatisfied with it and he began work on the “second” Astarte. Finally it was completed in December 1876 and framed at the end of January 1877 ready for his patron. Jane Morris was the model for Venus (and May Morris, her sister, the attendant figure on the left)

Astarte Syriaca Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Astarte Syriacs by Dante Rossetti (1876)

The depiction is a full-length figure of a woman dressed in sea-green robes, gazing towards us, the viewer. Astarte Syriaca has long, thick. and wavy flowing hair that flows on her back. She is pictured holding an ornate floral metal strap with her left hand under her chest. Her left hand seems to be holding a similar strap that rests around the hips area. This is known as a traditional pudica pose.

Both her hands, the limbs, and her breast are large, and her lips seem to be full and pink. Astarte Syriaca portrait is one of Gabriel Rossetti’s iconic paintings that romantically evokes the marvellous power of women in the context of the European Symbolist Movement, the nascent pan. In the same breath, it signifies as a covert admonition of the patriarchal Victorian Christianity. It can as well be interpreted in various other ways. The woman has one of her legs placed forward to look as if she is striding towards us. Also in the painting we see two male figures placed symmetrically in the background. Rossetti wrote a sonnet which was first published in 1877 and which accompanied the painting.

ASTARTE SYRIACA

Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon

Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen

⁠Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen

Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon

Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune:

⁠And from her neck’s inclining flower-stem lean

Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean

The pulse of hearts to the spheres’ dominant tune.

Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel

⁠All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea

⁠The witnesses of Beauty’s face to be:

That face, of Love’s all-penetrative spell

Amulet, talisman, and oracle,—

⁠Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.

Cinderella by Valentine Prinsep (1899)

The next painting featuring a female is simply entitled Cinderella. The artist is Valentine Cameron Prinsep who was born in India on St Valentine’s Day 1838. His father was a civil servant based in the country but who would return to England with his family when Valentine was five years old. Valentine’s mother was a great art lover and would often hold parties at their Kensington home with artists and writers, including poets Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning and artists John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. Although his parents assumed their son would follow his father into the Indian Civil Service but having been stirred by the artistic company he kept, Valentine decided his future life should be as an artist too. Prinsep never reached the status of a great artist although he had his successes. He was influenced by Rossetti, Millais and Burne-Jones, and he painted initially in the Pre-Raphaelite style. He exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts for the first time in 1862, after travelling with Burne-Jones in Italy.

The painting, Cinderella, was completed in 1899 and is a work of great sentimentality. The young girl rests against the stone wall of the kitchen. It is a depiction of poverty. The girl is barefooted and is wearing a dress which is ragged at the hem. She raises the hem of the skirt to allow the warmth from the fire to caress her body. Look at her posture and facial expression. Is it a happy looking expression awaiting for the arrival of somebody she looks forward to seeing or is it one of trepidation at the thought of the impending arrival? We all know the story of Cinderella so probably we also know the answer to the question.

Girl with Beret — *Girl with a Beret by Lucian Freud* (1951)

Girl with a Beret, the 1959 painting by Lucian Freud is a beautifully painted, close-up head and shoulders portrait of a young woman wearing a plain blue-grey jumper and beret. The girl has pale skin and shiny blue eyes, which stare off to the left in a self-absorbed manner. Her hair is parted to one side and she wears a small gold hoop earring in her left ear. The background colour is muted. Freud liked his portraits to be of people he knew well and as such were people Lucien had a close personal relationship with and because of this, these portraits could be looked upon as being pictorial autobiographies. The sitter for this portrait is the Irish actress, Helena Hughes who was twenty-three at the time. Helena had been introduced to Freud by his lover Anne Dunn during one of his frequent visits to Dublin in the 1950s. In 1950, Helena Hughes had invited Freud to Paris where she was working on a stage production with Orson Welles. The portrait took more than one hundred and fifty sittings to complete and for this protracted length of time artist and model were together which led to an intensity of their relationship and in a way, this could be detected within the painting.

The painting entitled Sapho was completed in 1877 by Charles-August Mengin, a French Academic painter and sculptor. He was a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel and exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1876 to 1927. Sappho was a Greek lyric poet born around 600 BC. Her poems considered love, desire and contemplation. Many of her works were devoted to her female pupils who studied with her on the island of Lesbos. Legend had it that she threw herself into the sea from the cliff of Leucadia because Phaon, a young man from Mitylene, did not return her love. In the painting we see Sapho depicted standing on the cliff edge in dark, in translucent robes, with her breasts exposed. Her left arm rests lightly at shoulder height, on a huge rock whilst her right hand holds her lyre down by her right side. Her face is partly put in the shade by her dark wavy hair, gauzy veil. Her dark eyes, which have shadows beneath them, stare down into the middle distance. Her feet are bare. She wears gold hoop earrings, a gold bangle, and there is a gold tie or belt around her waist. The dark sky in the background, which is only broken by a sliver of light on the horizon adds to the feeling of impending doom. Two grey birds fly in the sky behind.

And now for something different. Gone is the exotic beauty of Sapho and Artiste Syriaca. Gone is the everyday prettiness of the girl wearing her Beret. It is now about the reality of mortality.

Mamma Mia Poveretta — *Mama Mia Poveretta by Walter Sickert (c.1904)*

Walter Sickert, a German-born English painter, made a series of visits to Venice, initially focusing on the city’s topography but it was during his last painting trip from the autumn of 1903 to the summer of 1904 that, due to inclement weather, he was forced indoors to his small studio at 940 Calle dei Frati, close to the Rialto, to paint and it was during that time he developed a distinctive approach to portraiture. The models for many of the Venetian paintings are believed to have been prostitutes, whom Sickert might have known through being a client. One of his models which he nicknamed La Giuseppina was his favourite and one day she arrived at the studio with her mother, the old lady who became known as mamma mia poveretta (my poor mother)

*La Giuseppina by Walter Sickert* *(1904). Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund*

In the first decade of the twentieth century in Britain which was also the end of the reign of Queen Victoria, artists and designers began to try new things. Artists were starting to create a new art for a modern era. Traditional ways of completing portraits, landscapes and interiors would be undertaken in new ways. Gone was the romantic view of life and an acceptance that urban life was often a matter of hectic rushing around and there was definitely an air of brutality to it. Life was becoming a challenge. Walter Sickert’s 1904 painting entitled Mama Mia Poveretta is realist depiction of life. It is a half-length frontal portrait of this gaunt, almost emaciated elderly Venetian woman who is nearing the end of a hard life. She is wrapped in a dark shawl and wears a headscarf. She has turned her head slightly to the right, and her face is illuminated from the left and highlights the darkness around her eyes.

In my next blog I will look at work by some of the Pre-Raphaeliete artists which are on display at the Manchester Art Gallery.

………………………………..to be continued