27/2/10
A real discovery. A fine building constructed between 1994 (when the foundation stone was layed) and 1999 (when it was opened by the Queen -- according to the plaques) to one side of Guildhall Yard, a vast improvement on the grey 1960s brutalist Corporation offices on the other side. (Are they a case, I wonder, as with the Royal College of Art, of a modern building's colour reflecting the colour of the adjacent buildings before they were cleaned?)
It took so long to build because they discovered the foundations of the Roman amphitheatre during construction and had to excavate and then redesign to display them in the basement. You can see one end of the oval arena, with a wide entry way and a wooden drain running down the middle.
The collection itself contain several huge portraits of kings and lord mayors and an absolutely vast Copley of some obscure 18th century battle off Gibraltar, complete with dramatically pointing officers, drowing sailors, swirling smoke and fluttering flags.
There's a fine selection of paintings of London, as you might expect: we particularly liked a collection of William Nicholson watercolours of St Paul's from a distance, during and after World War Two; a picture of a 17th century frost fair on the frozen Thames; lots of fine pictures of bridges, especially various iterations of London Bridge; and a great many Lord Mayor's parades both on land an on water (he used to go down to Westminster by barge).
There was also a small but high quality collection of Victorian paintings, mainly academic but including the odd pre-Raphaelite. They included a lovely pair of sentimental Millais: one entitled My First Sermon, showed his five year old daughter resplendent in red coat and hat and muff, sitting bolt upright in an old-fashioned high-backed pew at Kingston church; the other, entitled My Second Sermon, showed the same chil, in the same kit in the same location, but this time fast asleep.
There was a great full-length portrait of the actor Kemble, with spectacularly flashing eyes. There was a lifesize marble statue of a seated Henry Irving as Hamlet (too heavy to deliver to his rooms, apparently, which is why it ended up here). There was a smallish Alma-Tadema and a painting by one of his pupils with spookily realistic marble. And there was a picture of Edwardian young lovers taking a turn around the park in autumn weather, he with a rolled umbrella, she looking up into his face adoringly; the caption explained the moderls were a young friend or relative of the artist and her fiance, and they had to be closelychaperoned throughout the sittings.
I'm very glad to have been, though once was probably enough.
Showing posts with label millais. Show all posts
Showing posts with label millais. Show all posts
Friday, 5 March 2010
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
THE DISCOVERY OF SPAIN
17/8/09, Royal Academy
The National Galleries of Scotland old master blockbuster. Goya, El Greco, Velasquez, Zurbaran as represented in British collections, plus any number of British artists from the 18th century onwards and their responses to Spain.
A rag-bag, but a stimulating one. Goya's etchings of the horrors of war next to his portrait of the Duke of Wellington (and the preliminary sketch, in which the poor old duke looks absolutely shattered). Two version of the Maid of Saragossa (she fired the gun at the siege when her gunner husband was killed): in Goya's she is faceless, in silhouette, emblematic of defiant Spain; in David Wilkie's she is beautiful, fiery, the picture overwhelmed with unnecessary detail. Like many of the Brits' paintings of Spain it was, if not sentimental, then deeply self-indulgent.
The Brits loved Spain, painting endless bullfights and gypsies and funerals and exotic costumes and bustling streets. There was a striking big unfinished picture of boys playing at bullfighting by John Phillip. (There was a self-portrait in one picture, Phillip in Victorian suit and hat and fine moustache, sketching some gypsies: he was one of those painters whose preliminary sketches are so much more convincing than his finished oils.)
David Roberts was head and shoulders the finest British artist of the 19th century to visit Spain. The exhibition contained three crackers: his watercolour of the interior of Seville's cathedral, breathtakingly detailed and atmospheric; an oil of the Giralda in Seville; and an oil of a huge double staircase in Burgos cathedral, disappearing into the gloom, which S said looked positively three-dimensional.
There were several Zurbarans: an altar piece which could have been by anybody; and four examples from a set of 12 paintings of Joseph and his sons, lifesize, now (for some reason) in the collection of the Lord Bishop of Durham. The figures are all dressed in some exotic hybrid Mediterranean/Cossack/Arab garb, richly decorated with extraordinary detail and with all sorts of frills and furbelows: figures from a timeless fantasy world.
The El Grecos were wonderful, especially the woman in a fur wrap whose image is on the exhibition poster. Can this really be the same painter who produced the Tears of St Peter on the wall next to it (hands clasped, head tilted, looking up to heaven)? Or those great religious pictures full of reds and blues and whites and sharp folds, angular figures, which are so extraordinary in Toledo, a 20th century artist working 500 years ahead of his time?
Then there was a room full of British copies of Velasquez (presumably to make up for only having two minor examples of the real thing, plus one copy and one work by a pupil, in the exhibition). Least said about most of these the better with the excpetion of Millais's Souvenir of Velasquez, a picture of a girl reminiscent of V's Meninas, with a profusion of blonde hair, a very rich dress, bright pinky-red sleeves and unbelievably thick paint.
Lots of pictures of the Alhambra, including decoration from a mid-Victorian pattern-book by someone called Owen Jones (never heard of him, but very influential, apparently) derived from the Alhambra's decorations. David Muirhead Bone pictures of Granada in the 1920s and 30s especially detailed and colourful.
In the 19th and 20th centuries the Brits came for the bullfights etc (see above) but also discovered the Spanish light. There was a whole room full of the most glorious colour. Someone called Arthur Melville in particular produced watercolours full of deep saturated colour, especially the blue of water.
Finally, a rather disappointing room devoted to British artists and the Civil War, with some Picassos, some Edward Burras (overblown) and a Wyndham Lewis.
The National Galleries of Scotland old master blockbuster. Goya, El Greco, Velasquez, Zurbaran as represented in British collections, plus any number of British artists from the 18th century onwards and their responses to Spain.
A rag-bag, but a stimulating one. Goya's etchings of the horrors of war next to his portrait of the Duke of Wellington (and the preliminary sketch, in which the poor old duke looks absolutely shattered). Two version of the Maid of Saragossa (she fired the gun at the siege when her gunner husband was killed): in Goya's she is faceless, in silhouette, emblematic of defiant Spain; in David Wilkie's she is beautiful, fiery, the picture overwhelmed with unnecessary detail. Like many of the Brits' paintings of Spain it was, if not sentimental, then deeply self-indulgent.
The Brits loved Spain, painting endless bullfights and gypsies and funerals and exotic costumes and bustling streets. There was a striking big unfinished picture of boys playing at bullfighting by John Phillip. (There was a self-portrait in one picture, Phillip in Victorian suit and hat and fine moustache, sketching some gypsies: he was one of those painters whose preliminary sketches are so much more convincing than his finished oils.)
David Roberts was head and shoulders the finest British artist of the 19th century to visit Spain. The exhibition contained three crackers: his watercolour of the interior of Seville's cathedral, breathtakingly detailed and atmospheric; an oil of the Giralda in Seville; and an oil of a huge double staircase in Burgos cathedral, disappearing into the gloom, which S said looked positively three-dimensional.
There were several Zurbarans: an altar piece which could have been by anybody; and four examples from a set of 12 paintings of Joseph and his sons, lifesize, now (for some reason) in the collection of the Lord Bishop of Durham. The figures are all dressed in some exotic hybrid Mediterranean/Cossack/Arab garb, richly decorated with extraordinary detail and with all sorts of frills and furbelows: figures from a timeless fantasy world.
The El Grecos were wonderful, especially the woman in a fur wrap whose image is on the exhibition poster. Can this really be the same painter who produced the Tears of St Peter on the wall next to it (hands clasped, head tilted, looking up to heaven)? Or those great religious pictures full of reds and blues and whites and sharp folds, angular figures, which are so extraordinary in Toledo, a 20th century artist working 500 years ahead of his time?
Then there was a room full of British copies of Velasquez (presumably to make up for only having two minor examples of the real thing, plus one copy and one work by a pupil, in the exhibition). Least said about most of these the better with the excpetion of Millais's Souvenir of Velasquez, a picture of a girl reminiscent of V's Meninas, with a profusion of blonde hair, a very rich dress, bright pinky-red sleeves and unbelievably thick paint.
Lots of pictures of the Alhambra, including decoration from a mid-Victorian pattern-book by someone called Owen Jones (never heard of him, but very influential, apparently) derived from the Alhambra's decorations. David Muirhead Bone pictures of Granada in the 1920s and 30s especially detailed and colourful.
In the 19th and 20th centuries the Brits came for the bullfights etc (see above) but also discovered the Spanish light. There was a whole room full of the most glorious colour. Someone called Arthur Melville in particular produced watercolours full of deep saturated colour, especially the blue of water.
Finally, a rather disappointing room devoted to British artists and the Civil War, with some Picassos, some Edward Burras (overblown) and a Wyndham Lewis.
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