The Encounter!

Jul27

THE ENCOUNTER: DRAWINGS FROM LEONARDO TO REMBRANDT, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 22^nd October 2017

I am grateful to John Kirkwood for visiting and writing about this exhibition:

Giulio Pedrizzano, The Lutenist Mascheroni by Annibale Carracci c.1593-4
Copyright: Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

This delightful exhibition features old master European portrait drawings by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Durer and Rembrandt, many rarely seen and some not displayed for decades.

Young Woman in a French Hood, possibly Mary Zouch by Hans Holbein the Younger c.1533
Copyright: Royal Collection Trust Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

It attempts to show that the artist and the sitter connected and is rather like going through a Renaissance copy of Vanity Fair featuring as it does eight portraits of people from the court of Henry VIII by Hans Holbein the Younger – the David Bailey of his day – but also people from the street as well.

Sir John Godsalve by Hans Holbein the Younger c.1532-4
Copyright: Royal Collection Trust Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

An exhibition which cheers the soul with these close encounters.

A sheet of figure studies, with male heads and three sketches of a woman with a child by Rembrandt van Rijn c.1636
Copyright: The Henry Barber Trust, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham

http://www.npg.org.uk/

Picasso in London and Warwickshire

Nov18

Woman in a Hat (Olga) by Pablo Picasso, 1935;
Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne
Copyright: Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016 Photo: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Rights reserved

There is no doubting the enduring popularity of Picasso with all age groups and I thought I would share these ongoing exhibitions with you. In the National Portrait Gallery is Picasso Portraits which is exciting in that the portraits – in various media – come from all stages of his career and while some of them are well-known others are not.

Portrait of Olga Picasso by Pablo Picasso, 1923;
Private Collection
Copyright: Succession Picasso/DACS London, 2016

They are all of people he knew, including friends, lovers, wives and children such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Carles Casagemas, Santiago Rusiñol, Jaume Sabartés, Jean Cocteau, Olga Picasso, Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Françoise Gilot and Jacqueline Picasso. You will also discover caricatures and portraits inspired by earlier masters such as Rembrandt and Velazquez. (www.npg.org.uk)

Picasso
Le peintre et son modèle IV 1970
Ink on cardboard
Courtesy Omer Tiroche

At Omer Tiroche in Conduit Street you will discover Picasso on Paper (until 16^th December 2016) with more than thirty works from the early 1900s onwards. They reveal how he used any piece or scrap of paper to capture his thoughts and ideas. (http://www.omertiroche.com).

Picasso
Femme Debout et Femme Assise 1939
Gouache and brush and black in on lined paper
Courtesy Omer Tiroche

Pablo Picasso
Sprung mit dem Stab, 1957
Jumping with the pole, 1957
Blatt 8 aus Die Tauromaquie oder die Kunst des Stierkampfes
Sheet 8 from Tauromachy or the Art of Bullfighting
Aquatinta im Zuckeraussprengverfahren
Sugar-Lift Aquatints
35 x 49,5 cm
Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf,
© Succession Picasso
Foto: Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Horst Kolberg, ARTOTHEK

Outside of London at Compton Verney there is another exhibition of Picasso on Paper (until 11^th December 2016) featuring prints from the collection of the Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf. The show gives us an ideal opportunity to look at Picasso as a printmaker with over 70 works from the 1920s-1960s and includes various media – etching, lithography, aquatint and linocut. Although not formally trained he became very adept at printmaking and regarded it as important as painting. In all he created over 2000 prints during his lifetime. Alongside the prints is a selection of his ceramics. They echo themes found in his prints and highlight how the relationship between the two was an important part of Picasso’s artistic output. The ceramics have been loaned by Leicester Arts and Museums Service by kind permission of The Estate of Lord and Lady Attenborough. (http://www.comptonverney.org.uk)

Pablo Picasso
Kopf des Fauns, 07.02.1962
Head of the Faun
Farblinolschnitt, Auflage 19/50
Colour Linocut, Edition 19/50
64 x 53 cm
Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
© Succession Picasso, Foto: Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, Horst Kolberg, ARTOTHEK

Lord & Lady Attenborough: A Life in Art
The Celebrated Private Collection of Picasso Ceramics
Sotheby’s London, 22 November 2016

Other Picasso ceramics from Lord and Lady Attenborough’s collection come under the hammer at Sotheby’s London on November 22^nd (Lord & Lady Attenborough: A Life in Art – The Celebrated Private Collection of Picasso Ceramics). The Attenborough’s used to visit the Madoura pottery, where Picasso worked, in the South of France on their summer holidays when staying at their summer house near the town of Vallauris and built up a collection which reflects Picasso’s artistic development in working in this medium.

Lot 30
Grand vase aux femmes nues
Terre de faïence vase, 1950
numbered 8/25
height: 26in
Estimate: £250,000-350,000

Their son Michael Attenborough CBE recalls that “Vallauris was a great annual pilgrimage. In those days I remember wrapping pots up in brown paper for the drive back to England. At Old Friars, our family home, there was a huge, long table in the hall and the top surface of it would have four or five Picasso pots and underneath it there would be another four or five. Dad scattered them liberally everywhere; he adored them and just loved their extraordinary combination of beauty and wit.”(sothebys.com)

Celebrating the Image – Three London Exhibitions

Mar21

Avedon Warhol, Gagosian, 6-24 Britannia Street, London WC1, until 23^rd April 2016

My camera and I, together we have the power to confer or to take away.

—Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon
Audrey Hepburn, actress, New York, January 20, 1967
Photograph by Richard Avedon
© The Richard Avedon Foundation

This is a major exhibition which celebrates two outstanding post-war talents whose common link was portraiture which they often repeated or serialized. Avedon, of course through photography and Warhol through his screen prints. It is a delightful experience and well worth a visit.

Andy Warhol
Miriam Davidson , 1965
Spray paint and
silkscreen ink on canvas
80 1/4 x 80 1/2 inches
203.8 x 204.5cm
Private Collection © 2015 The Andy Warhol
Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New York.

They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

—Andy Warhol

http://www.gagosian.com

Vogue 100: A Century of Style, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2, until 22^nd May 2016

The Beatles, by Peter Laurie, 1964 Condé Nast Archive London

The British version of Vogue was started a hundred years ago during the First World War as it was no longer possible to ship Vogue from America. It was an instant hit and continues to this very day to be at the forefront of fashion design and photography as the many images in this exhibition celebrate.

http://www.npg.org.uk

Performing for the Camera, Tate Modern, The Eyal Ofer Galleries, Level 3, Bankside, London SE1, until 12^thJune 2016

Claude Cahun, 1894 – 1954
Self Portrait
1927
Image courtesy of the Wilson Centre for Photography

Some five hundred images, ranging from the beginning of photography to our “selfie” age of today illustrate how the relationship between photography and performance has developed. Sometimes it becomes serious art while at other times is more humorous and relaxed. It is a history that has strong resonance as any of us could be a “performer” caught in a camera lens.

Erwin Wurm, b.1954
One Minute Sculpture, 1997
c-print
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong

http://www.tate.org.uk

An Icon Portrayed

Jul8

Once again I have asked John Kirkwood to contribute to my blog:

Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 18^th October 2015

Audrey Hepburn by Antony Beauchamp, 1955
Copyright: Reserved

For admirers of Audrey Hepburn (and who isn’t?) this exhibition is a real treat featuring as it does many rarely seen images as well as classics we have all come to know.

Dance recital photograph by Manon van Suchtelen, 1942
Copyright: Reserved

It takes us from Audrey’s early years as a dancer at Ciro’s night club, which by strange coincidence was located on the very spot in Orange Street which now houses the Gallery’s Heinz Archive and Study Room, through her film career right up to her inspiring work for UNICEF.

Audrey Hepburn on location in Africa for The Nuns Story by Leo Fuchs, 1958
Copyright: Leo Fuchs

I am sure that she would have been amazed and indeed puzzled by becoming a modern icon and wonder what all the fuss was about as she was one of the very few film stars about whom you could say ‘what you see is what you get’.

Costume test for Sabrina, Paramount Pictures, 1953
Copyright: Reserved

Not long before her death she appeared at the Barbican reading from the diary of Anne Frank to music composed by Michael Tilson Thomas. A truly magical night but afterwards she was telling everyone how she had been shaking with nerves. This from one of the biggest stars in the world!

Audrey Hepburn dressed in Givenchy with sunglasses by Oliver Goldsmith by Douglas Kirkland, 1966
Copyright: Iconic Images/Douglas Kirkland

Film star, fashion icon, humanitarian and loving mother, all aspects are covered in this truly wonderful exhibition devoted to one of the best-loved actresses of all time.

npg.org.uk/hepburn

National Portrait Gallery

Apr1

SARGENT: PORTRAITS OF ARTISTS AND FRIENDS, National Portrait Gallery, London, until 25^th May 2015

Robert Louis Stevenson by John Singer Sargent, 1887
Copyright: Courtesy of the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio

This impressive show, which goes on to New York’s Metropolitan Museum in late June, brings together the artist’s wide circle of friends from the theatre, literature, music and the arts whether in New York, Boston, Paris or London nor forgetting his forays into the countryside of Italy and England. Included from these latter expeditions are pictures of fellow artists Jane and Wilfrid de Glehn who accompanied him. You may be interested to know that the de Glehns’ are the subject of an exhibition at Messum’s until 17^th April (www.messums.com).

Dame Ethel Smyth by John Singer Sargent, 1901
Copyright: National Portrait Gallery, London

Through these highly engaging portraits and studies we see a more intimate and relaxed approach to his subject matter than found in his commissioned portraits. A factor perhaps best summed up in the words of Richard Ormond CBE, who has curated this exhibition: ‘Sargent’s enthusiasms were all for things new and exciting. He was a fearless advocate of the work of younger artists, and in music his influence on behalf of modern composers and musicians ranged far and wide. The aim of this exhibition is to challenge the conventional view of Sargent. As a painter he is well known; but Sargent the intellectual, the connoisseur of music, the literary polymath, is something new.’

Group with Parasols by John Singer Sargent, c.1904–5
Copyright: Private collection

npg.org.uk

Elizabeth I & Her People – National Portrait Gallery, London

Nov7

Elizabeth I & Her People, until 5 January 2014, National Portrait Gallery, London

The glorious era of the first Elizabethan age is very well evoked in this exhibition which includes not only portraits but also over a hundred objects, such as costume, accessories, jewellery, coins and crafts to give a flavour of the period.

Queen Elizabeth I (‘Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses’) c. 1590, attrib. Isaac Oliver.
© National Portrait Gallery, London, Purchased with the support of Mark Weiss

And what a time it was! Elizabeth I’s reign saw the rise of prosperity and economic stability as well as successes in overseas exploration and indeed in the defence of the realm against Spain. The growth of trade and the development of new industries saw a flourishing middle class and the expansion of literature and the arts.

The Procession Portrait of Queen Elizabeth, Unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, c.1600-03 ©Sherborne Castle, Dorset

At the centre of it all was the Queen, whose power and authority was clearly expressed through her portraits be they owned by nobles or institutions. The Queen ruled. Ok!

Her courtiers were also captured in paint, such as William Cecil (Lord Burghley) and Bess of Hardwick, but what is particularly interesting about this time is that members of the middle classes be they lawyers, goldsmiths, financiers, merchants, playwrights or butchers and artists, also wanted their images to be recorded for posterity. They, after all, were contributors to the growing economic and political security of England.

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520/21–1598) by an unknown artist © The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

Nor were the explorers such as Drake and Frobisher ignored. In a newly restored portrait Sir Walter Raleigh’s devotion to the Queen is expressed though the colour of his costume and by the symbolic crescent moon above the blue sea waves depicted in the picture’s top left-hand corner.

Sir Walter Ralegh Unknown English artist, 1588
(c) National Portrait Gallery, London

You will no doubt have gathered by now that the only class of Elizabethan England not represented in portraits was, of course, the lower classes. Their time had not yet come.

A hugely enjoyable, informative exhibition which gives us a fresh look at life in the first Elizabeth’s reign. A friend said, reading the introductory board to the show, that some of the things expressed there were not dissimilar to the present Elizabethan age. I will leave it to you to agree or not.

A Fête at Bermondsey by Joris Hoefnagel, c.1569–70, Reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House

http://www.npg.org.uk

	Yellow Walls - Why D… on THE ART OF DESIGN AT CHRISTIE’…
	Lorena on The Wallace Collection on…
	dunelight on BOOK REVIEW: Marjorie Merriwea…
	http://tfeanda.wordp… on ‘Syrian Art: Of Today’ –…
	Online slots on ‘Syrian Art: Of Today’ –…

Tim Forrest's E & A

Art & Antiques, etc – news from London and around

Tag Archives: National Portrait Gallery London