A new Gallery Talks course at the Wallace Collection will begin on Tuesday 19th June. Talks will then continue on one Tuesday per month in the Autumn and Spring.
This national museum houses a superb collection of fine and decorative arts assembled during the 18th and 19th centuries by Sir Richard Wallace and his ancestors. Bequeathed to the nation in 1897, the collection includes an extraordinary array of art, furniture and porcelain, including Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo works. In addition, there are amazing masterpieces by some of the greatest names in European art, such as Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Hals, Canaletto and Velazquez.
The home of the Wallace Collection is the sumptous Hertford House, where the fabulous art treasures are displayed in intimate, yet luxuriously decorated rooms. A visit to the Wallace Collection provides an escape from the hustle and bustle of London as you step back in time to a bygone era.
If you are interested in joining the group at the Wallace Collection, please contact me via the Gallery Talks website.
Tuesday Gallery Talks at the Courtauld Gallery
A new Gallery Talks course starts at the Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, on Tuesday 21st November and then on one Tuesday morning per month for six talks. Join the group to learn more about the treasures of art in the Courtuald Gallery, one of the finest small museums in the world.
Made up of a series of previously private collections, the Courtauld Gallery houses a staggering collection of iconic Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painitngs, as well as works of art of memorable beauty and historical importance by Cranach, Rubens, Gainsborough, Matisse and Modigliani, to name but a few.
Message me via the contact form on this website and I will send you further details.
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael around 1500, National Gallery
I will be giving a Gallery Talk on High Renaissance Florence and Rome, including this small exhibition, on Thursday 9th November and again on Tuesday 5th December, at the National Gallery. Please send me a message via the contact form on this website if you are interested in joining a group for this talk.
This is an exquisite display which highlights the relationship between the three artistic giants of High Renaissance Florence and Rome. It also reminds us of the incredible treasures of art which are here, freely available, on our doorstep in London.
Masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael from the National Gallery's own collection are exhibited alongside the mesmerising Taddei Tondo, on loan from the Royal Academy. Michelangelo's Taddei Tondo is his only marble sculpture in a British collection and is usually displayed, somewhat tucked-away, on a second-floor corridor at the RA.
Leonardo's detailed naturalism and scientific fascination imbue his works with vitality and humanism, whilst Raphael's serenely harmonious, idealised compositions inspire quiet contemplation and Michelangelo's emphasis on the human form in his expressive, energetic works results in heightened emotion.
Despite their highly individual approaches to art, these three great masters responded directly to each other artistically, as is demonstrated by the relationship between the works of art exhibited. Their friendships were respectful, yet with a rivalry that was at times acrimonious.
'Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael around 1500',
at the National Gallery until 28 January 2018
Canaletto and the Art of Venice at the Queen's Gallery
A beautiful exhibition of the adored Venetian view-painter Canaletto and his contemporaries, which transports the visitor to stunningly picturesque 18th century Venice complete with the allure of its lavish celebrations, carnival, theatre and opera.
Acquired by King George III in 1762, this collection of more than 200 paintings. drawings and prints, once belonged, amazingly, to one man, Joseph Smith, British Consul to Venice. Smith was Canaletto's main patron and acted as his agent, introducing him to British Grand Tourists, securing commissions and shipping Canaletto's paintings to Britain. Smith commissioned large works for his own Venetian Palazzo Balbi from Canaletto and Marco Ricci, both of whom had trained as theatrical scenery painters. He would show off these works to the British aristocracy on their Grand Tours and thus encourage them to order their own versions as souvenirs. Hence, the reason so many Canalettos are to be found in British private and public art collections, National Trust properties and stately homes and yet so few in Italian art collections.
Joseph Smith was also an avid collector of other 18th century Venetian artists such as Sebastiano Ricci, Francesco Zucarelli, Giovanni Battistat Piazzetta and Pietro Longhi, all of whose works are featured in this exhibtion. Rosalba Carriera is particularly fascinating as she was a female artist, which was highly unusual at that time, and pioneered the technique of pastel in her exquisite portraits and allegorical figures.
The quality and scope of this well put-together show is ravishing and it is well worth making a trip to Buckingham Palace to see it!
Canaletto and the Art of Venice, The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until 12th November 2017
Autumn Gallery Talks
Autumn Gallery Talks dates at the National Gallery, Courtauld Gallery and Wallace Collection, are listed on my calendar page. Choose from Tuesday, Thursday or Friday mornings, once a month, and discover more about the wonderful art in our London collections.
Send me a message via my website contact form for further details of Gallery Talks courses or one-off tours.
Summer and Autumn Gallery Talks
All Gallery Talk dates for 2017 are now on the calendar page of my website.
Summer Gallery Talks take place at Tate Britain, The National Gallery and The Courtauld Gallery.
This Autumn, new art history courses start at The Wallace Collection and The Courtauld Gallery on one Thursday and one Friday morning per month. Two new National Gallery groups begin the course in September, on either Tuesday or Thursday mornings, also once a month.
Send me a message if you're interested in joining one of these groups, to follow an art history course whilst experiencing the art first hand.
Alternatively, let me know if you'd like to come along to a single Gallery Talk on a date that suits you or book a 'tailor-made' tour on a subject of your choice.
Gallery Talks are designed to guide you through the wealth of art in the superb collections here on our dooorstep in London.
Hockney at Tate Britain - last few weeks!
This celebration of the hugely popular Yorkshire artist David Hockney, who turns 80 this year, surveys six decades of his phenomenal output in painting, drawing, print, video and photography.
Closing in a few weeks' time, this uplifting exhibition, which spans Hockney's entire career, is arranged largely chronologically.
Beginning with his student days at the Royal College of Art when he experimented with abstraction, graffiti, codes and spatial ambiguity in his paintings, the show continues through 1960s California with his more observational style, based on clarity and geometry, with bright colours inspired by the warm climate, then to his naturalistic representations of the human figure of his 1970s acrylic works.
Hockney's fascinating drawings, many in crayon and pen and ink, which provide the bedrock for his art, are well-represented, as are his multi-faceted photographic collages. The sensuous landscapes of the Hollywood Hills painted in the 1980s & 90s, as well as those of Yorkshire and the Grand Canyon, fill the rooms with colour and his more recent multi-screen video works and iPad drawings reveal the intense diversification and seemingly endless experimentation of this much-loved artist.
David Hockney at Tate Britain until 29th May 2017
Michelangelo & Sebastiano at the National Gallery
The National Gallery's major spring exhibition focuses on the collaborative creative relationship between Michelangelo and his near-contemporary, the lesser-known Sebastiano del Piombo. This fascinating exhibition gives us an insight into the jealousies and rivalries within the fiercly competitive art scene of Renaissance Rome in the early 16th century.
Born in Venice, Sebastiano trained under Bellini and Giorgione in the Venetian use of colour, and was brought to Rome by the Pope's banker, while Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Ceiling for the Pope. Michelangelo invited Sebastiano on to the scaffolding of the Sistine vault, a rare honour and the start of a partnership that brought together two contrasting artistic traditions, the draughtsmanship of Florence and the painterly mood and proficiency with oil paint of Venice. Michelangelo provided the figurative detail in the form of anatomical and preparatory drawings for works such as Sebastiano's Raising of Lazarus (National Gallery, London) and Pieta (Museo Civico di Viterbo), both of which are given special focus in the exhibition.
Michelangelo and Sebastiano collaborated on the decoration of the Borgherini Chapel in the church of San Pietro in Montorio and this chapel has been recreated using digital technology so that the visitor is transported to Rome and experiences seeing the art in the place for which it was created.
Michelangelo's animosity towards his rival Raphael goes some way to explaining his encouragement of Seabstiano and, soon after Raphael's premature death in 1520, the artistic relationship between Michelangelo and Sebastiano ended with a catastrophic falling out.
Michelangelo & Sebastiano is at the National Gallery until 25th June 2017
Vanessa Bell at Dulwich Picture Gallery
The first major solo retrospective of the work of Vanessa Bell effectively brings her singular skill and brave aesthetic to the forefront.
By collating more than 100 works, from post-impressionistic paintings to abstract designs for ceramics, fabrics and furniture, Bell's work is shown to capture a particular moment in interwar art and to stand on its own as pivotal to 20th century British art. Over a long career, from student works in 1905 to her last self-portraits before her death in 1961, Bell developed her own distinctive way of seeing the world, boldy experimenting with abstraction, colour and form and inventing a new language of visual expression.
Bell exhibited with Picasso before establishing the avant-garde decorative arts cooperative in London, the Omega Workshop, and creating the country retreat, Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex, for the Bloomsbury Group. Her considerable creative contribution has often been overshadowed by the other members of the Bloomsbury set, her sister Virignia Woolf, her husband the art critic Clive Bell, as well as her lovers the artists Duncan Grant and Roger Fry.
This tribute to Vanessa Bell aims to let her be seen in her own light.
Vanessa Bell at Dulwich Picture Gallery until 4 June 2017
Tate Britain Course
Places are currently available on my Tate Britain course, which meets on one Friday morning per month, in Tate's beautifully re-furbished surroundings.
Learn about British history through the works of art created in Britain over the centuries, by artists including Hogarth, Canaletto, Gainsborough, Turner, Millais, Moore, Hockney and Hirst.
This art history course follows Tate Britain's "Walk through British Art" staring with Tudor and Elizabethan times and travelling through the Georgian, Victorian and Modern eras up to the present day.
Contact me via the form on this website for further details.
Paul Nash - Tate Britain
This comprehensive retrospective of the great figure in British Modernism, Paul Nash, underlines his significance as a pioneer of the avant-garde.
Nash had a life-long love of the British countryside, by which he was transfixed and with which he felt a powerful mystical connection. This he combined with the influences from European art of surrealism, abstraction, cubism and found objects to create sensitive transformations of reality.
The paintings Nash produced as an official war artist in both world wars are amongst his most well-known and evocative. Here nature is no longer alive, but annhiliated by the madness of men in iconic, unflinching and shocking images which record the horror of war.
Tate Britain's superb survey proves Nash's art to be both personal and patriotic, yet modern and international.
Paul Nash at Tate Britain until 5th March 2017
Beyond Caravaggio at the National Gallery ends this Sunday 15th January
This week is the last chance to see Beyond Caravaggio at the National Gallery, see my review in the earlier blog post below.
Beyond Caravaggio; National Gallery
Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement, Courtauld Gallery
One of the most famous sculptors of the 19th century, Rodin also produced more than 10,000 drawings during his lifetime, hundreds of them of dancers. Yet he rarely attempted to evoke dance in his sculptures.
However, a series of nine vital small-scale terracotta and plaster figures of dancers were found in his studio after his death in 1917. They have never been exhibited before and are currently on show at the Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, as part of an exhibition which explores the influence on Rodin of dance.
Leaping and twisting figurines are displayed alongside fascinating drawings in which Rodin explored movement and new forms of dance. This small exhibition provides a rare glimpse into Rodin's passion for the avant-garde dance forms appearing on the Parisian stage around 1900.
Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement at the Courtauld Gallery until 22nd January 2017
Beyond Caravaggio, National Gallery
Jointly organised by three galleries, The National Gallery London, National Gallery of Ireland and the National Galleries of Scotland, this exhibition seeks to explore the international reach of the revolutionary artist Caravaggio's influence.
Caravaggio's rise to fame, in Rome at the beginning of the 17th century, was spectacular and his highly original style introduced a new language in painting. The innovative lighting effects, emotional power and visual impact of his art made a deep impression on his contemporaries.
Caravaggio had no direct pupils, yet he had followers from all over Europe, with artists from Spain, The Netherlands, Switzerland and France all working in the "Caravaggesque" style, during the first three decades of the 17th century.
This exhibition is made up almost entirely of works from British and Irish collections, from the three National Galleries, private collections, regional museums and the National Trust.
Beyond Caravaggio, National Gallery London until 17th January 2017
Picasso Portraits, National Portrait Gallery
An exhibition not to be missed, this show focuses on the many faces of Picasso portraiture, all of people he knew, painted from memory and live sittings. Characters from Picasso's social, artistic and family life are encountered as the show runs through his frantic life.
As such, his entire career is covered, every one of his phases touched on and his relentless experimentation highlighted. For example, the two portraits illustrated here are both of his first wife Olga Khokhlova, one portayal, of 1923, is classical and realistic, the other, from 1935, radically abstracted.
Picasso challenged what constitutes a portrait with innovation, freedom of expression and technical exploration. He produced an astonishing variety of portraits, all with a sense of intimacy and a touch of genius.
Picasso Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery until 5th February 2017
Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy
This ambitious exhibition of wildly beautiful art brings together Mark Rothko's chromatic rectangles, Jackson Pollock's pouring and drip paintings, Ad Reinhardt's rows of squares, Franz Kline's black and white pictures and Willem de Kooning's women paintings, to name but a few, for the first time in the UK since 1959.
Abstract Expressionism changed the course of 20th century art, happening after previous artists had opened up new ways of representing the world around them, such as the Impressionists, Surrealists, Cubists and Fauves, all of whom had been regularly represented in exhibitions in New York during the 1930s and 1940s.
The creative energy of 1950s America is captured by the diverse American Abstract Expressionists, who broke free from the constraints of convention with their radically experimental works, often on a huge scale, dealing with the language of emotions and the individual sensibilities of the artists.
RA: Abstract Expressionism 24th September 2016 until 2nd January 2017
David Hockney RA: 82 Portraits and 1 Still Life, Royal Academy
David Hockney has produced a new series of portraits of friends, family and colleagues, all seated in the same chair and painted in his studio on Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles, California.
Each portait is the same size, was created in the same time-scale and gives an insight into Hockney's life and the people he has spent time with recently. He has always been fascinated with portaiture and this exhibition of freshly painted work challenges our 21st century perception of the genre.
An artist who has never ceased to create and experiment, this show provides a prelude to the Retrospective of David Hockney, opening at Tate Britain in February 2017 to mark the artist's 80th birthday.
David Hockney RA: 82 Portaits and 1 Still Life, 2nd July-2nd October 2016, Sackler Wing, Royal Academy
Painter's Paintings: From Freud to Van Dyck, National Gallery
An exhibition of paintings once owned by painters, inspired by works in the National Gallery Collection, "Painter's Paintings" opens today at the National Gallery.
Over 80 works, all once in the possession of artists, paintings which they lived with and were inspired by, are displayed through 8 case studies of artists. Van Dyck's collection of Titian, Degas' collection of Manet, Ingres and Delacroix and Matisse's collection of Cezanne, Gauguin and Picasso, are just 3 examples.
These collections offer insight into the artists private worlds. Photographs of the artists houses with the paintings hanging on their walls enhance this clever exhibition of great art seen through the eyes of great artists.
Painter's Paintings National Gallery London from 23rd June to 4th September 2016
New Tate Modern Opens 17 June
The Switch House, the twisted pyramid-shaped ten storey extension on the south side of Tate Modern that opens this Friday, 17th June, was designed by Herzog and de Meuron, who also designed the conversion of the former Bankside Power station into Tate Modern.
The new space will enable Tate Modern to make more of its' international art collections in bigger and better gallery spaces spread over three floors, with two floors for learning facilities and a tenth floor public viewing terrace.
Housing and displaying the national collection of international 20th and 21st century art with ambitious exhibitions, education and acquisitions programmes had become challenging, as the volume of visitors and art collections grew. A collecting programme across Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East and beyond has ensured that Tate Modern reflects the fact that 'international' no longer means British, European and North American as it did in past centuries.
To launch the new Tate Modern, three days of celebration are planned, free and open to everyone, including music, activities, live performances and discussions.
New Tate Modern Opening Weekend
In the Age of Giorgione
"In the Age of Giorgione" is a fascinating exhibition which showcases paintings from the start of the sixteenth century, the cusp of the Golden Age of Venetian art.
Works by celebrated artists Titian, Bellini, Lotto and del Piombo are shown alongside masterpieces by Giorgione, a mysterious yet profoundly influential artist, about whom very little is known and to whom very few paintings are attributed.
The enigma of Giorgione is enhanced by the mystery and mood woven into his works, the emphasis being on light and atmosphere and through which he established a type of pictorial poetry. Idealised beauty, expressive force, sensuous use of rich colour and focus on landscape, all developed by Giorgione, were to become hallmarks of Venetian Renaissance art.
Royal Academy, London W1 until 5th June
In the Age of Giorgione
