Tag Archives: prints

The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition

Summer Exhibition 2017, The Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1, until 20th August 2017

 

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

 

Installation view of the Summer Exhibition 2017.
Photo (c) David Parry

This year’s Show is vibrant and exciting and varied across several media.  Of particular note is Yinka Shonibare’s Wind Sculpture VI in the Annenberg Courtyard which explores the notion of harnessing motion and freezing it in a moment of time.

Installation view of the Summer Exhibition 2017.
Photo (c) David Parry

Gilbert and George are showing a new large-scale work from their Beard Speak series and there are works by Phyllida Barlow, Anthony Gormley, Sean Scully, Bob and Roberta Smith and Wolfgang Tillmans – a very impressive line-up!

Installation view of the Summer Exhibition 2017.
Photo (c) David Parry

Farshoud Moussavi has curated the Architecture Gallery which celebrates architecture by focusing on construction coordination drawings which show the full complexity of a building.

Installation view of the Summer Exhibition 2017.
Photo (c) David Parry

The Charles Woolaston Award has been won by Isaac Julien for his five-screen film WESTERN UNION: Small Boats which is apparently inspired by Visconti’s The Leopard. I have to say as that is one of my favourite films I couldn’t really see the connection apart from the two films being set in Sicily, however it is well worth a look.

 

As always, the show is a real treat for art lovers and the standard remains as high as ever.

 

http://www.royalacademy.org.uk

The 2017 Summer Olympia Art & Antiques Fair

The Art & Antiques Fair Olympia, Olympia London, Hammersmith Road, London W14, 26th June – 2nd July 2017

Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill who will be speaking at The Art & Antiques Fair on ‘Incorporating Antiques in Design’ on Thursday 29 June at 12.30-13.30.

This is this fair’s forty-fifth year and as ever potentially offers much to its visitors. There is no doubt that change is inevitable and that emphasis and focus changes as one generation of collectors is succeeded by another. Styles of living change and what may have been our ideal does not necessarily resonate with our children and grandchildren.

It is therefore probably a sound idea to launch an Interior Design Talk Series at this year’s fair. The speakers include Henrietta Spencer Churchill, Douglas Mackie, Christopher Vane Percy, April Russel, Emma Burns from Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler, Susie Rumbold and Caroline de Cabarrus from Hotspur Design and the wide-ranging topics covered include Incorporating Antiques in Design and how to Decorate your House in a Day.

The fair’s director Mary Claire Boyd said, ‘We are excited about our new Interior Design Talk Series. There is a strong demand for advice from experts on how to incorporate art and antiques into interiors and previous designer talks have been very well attended. We are taking it to the next level this year by hosting top designers throughout the run of the fair.’ Perfect for inspiration to go out into the fair afterwards and buy!

It is also interesting to note that the number of picture dealers attending this year’s fair will be double that of last year’s. This increase is made up by new and some returning former exhibitors. The Chicago-based show, Sculptural Objects Functional Art and Design Fair (SOFA) who first showed three-dimensional contemporary art and design last year also returns.

Galerie Boccara
Sonia Delaunay.
Serpent Noir’, wool tapestry,151 x 308cm

As these changes evolve over the Fairs I wish this Olympia Fair a fair wind in its voyage to different waters.

http://www.olympia-art-antiques.com

Hetty Feather

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

 

Picturing Hetty Feather, The Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, London WC1, until 3rd September 2017

Emma Brownlow, The Foundling Restored to its Mother, 1858
©Coram in the care of The Foundling Museum,
featuring illustration of Hetty Feather © Nick Sharratt


Fans of  Jacqueline Wilson’s character Hetty Feather will love this exhibition featuring as it does many costumes and artefacts from the  television series  based on the popular and successful books displayed in the Foundling Museum  the actual location of  the stories where you can experience a little of what  Hetty’s  life would have been like.

Girls in the London Foundling Hospital schoolroom, early 20th
century,
courtesy Coram in the care of The Foundling Museum

foundlingmuseum.org.uk

Treasure Houses: The homes of the Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensberry

 

BOUGHTON

The House, its People and its Collections

By Richard, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry

Photographs by Fritz von der Schulenburg

Published by Caique Publishing Ltd
ISBN 978 0 9565948 5 3 
£17.95 / $21.80 / 81.41 TL 

 

 

 

BOWHILL

The House, its People and its Paintings

Introduced by Richard, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry

Edited by John Montagu Douglas Scott

Photographs by Fritz von der Schulenburg

Published by Caique Publishing Ltd
ISBN 978 0 9565948 2 2
£12.95 / $15.73 / 58.73 TL
 

 

DRUMLANRIG

The Castle, its People and its Paintings

By Richard, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry

Photographs by Fritz von der Schulenburg

Published by Caique Publishing Ltd
ISBN 978 0 9565948 4 6
£10.95 / $13.30 / 49.66 TL
Paperback, 96 pages, Second Edition
 

These three guidebooks are much more than just that as they provide a fascinating introduction to the houses and collections of the incumbent Dukes.  You will encounter Rembrandt, Canaletto, Van Dyck and El Greco, as well as family portraits by Gainsborough, Reynolds and Ramsay, There are miniatures, French and English furniture, Sèvres made for Louis XV, items commemorating Sir Walter Scott and the Duke of Monmouth, silver and a huge variety of textiles and rugs. It is an extensive and engaging collection in three very different houses, two, Bowhill and Drumlanrig, are in Scotland and then Boughton in England which the late John Cornforth once described as ‘the English Versailles’.

These books are of serious appeal to anyone interested in the fine and decorative arts, architecture and historic interiors.

http://www.bowhillhouse.co.uk

http://www.boughtonhouse.co.uk

http://www.drumlanrigcastle.co.uk

http://www.caiquepublishing.com

 

Jane Austen’s Portraits

The Mysterious Miss Austen, The Gallery, Winchester Discovery Centre, Jewry Street
Winchester, until 24th July, 2017

Jane Austen by James Andrews, watercolour, 1869
(c) Private collection, courtesy of the 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop, Stevenson, Maryland.

I had of course known about Jane Austen for many years but had not actually read one of her novels until I was in my early twenties and found out what an absolute delight they are. I knew something of her life (I just passed where she stayed in Covent Garden’s Henrietta Street this morning) but it was a real delight to come and see this exhibition which marks the two hundredth anniversary of her death and which not only brings together five portraits of her under the same roof for the first time, but includes letters, items of clothing and a manuscript alternative ending to her final novel Persuasion, which was not used in the end. There are also items from both an English and an American private collection which bring the story up-to-date and the rather fine ceramic vase Jane Austen in E 17 by Grayson Perry has been loaned as well.

Installation view:
Jane Austen Pelisse coat

I found it unexpectedly moving and although as the exhibition’s title suggests she does remain somewhat mysterious I felt I had at least encountered her. It was therefore wholly appropriate to pay my respects as I bowed my head to read the inscription on the tablet set into the floor of the north aisle in nearby Winchester Cathedral, commemorating her life and burial there.

Jane Austen ledgerstone – Winchester Cathedral by John Crook

https://hampshireculturaltrust.org.uk/the-gallery-at-winchester-discovery-centre

Installation View:
Jane Austen portraits display

Stories Unfold!

Every Object Tells a Story, 5 Cromwell Place, London SW7, until 5th July 2017

Installation view
(photo credit: Exhibition Design and Photograph by Charles Marsden-Smedley)

In May 2015 I shared with you the eponymous exhibition Oliver Hoare held at 33 Fitzroy Square, London W1 (Curiosities, 12 May 2015).  This new edition in the former studio of Sir John Lavery RA is even larger, beautifully displayed and crammed with some four hundred intriguing objects which you just do want to learn more about. There is a wonderful catalogue to help achieve that.

Installation view
(photo credit: Exhibition Design and Photograph by Charles Marsden-Smedley)

I shall let Oliver Hoare sum it up: “What is assembled here might look like a modern ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’, an assemblage of the exotic and curious from the four quarters of the world. There is an intention behind it, however, that goes beyond presenting a wide variety of curiosities. We are today linked up to all those four quarters, and while a huge amount of information is available to us, unlike to those who awaited the ships in the ports of Amsterdam, Genoa, Lisbon, London, Marseille, Seville or Venice, the horizon of what interests us seems to have shrunk. The art market is an interesting barometer of this shrinkage. The point is, therefore, that we can connect with the whole world on a more profound level than can be gained from package touring, through the possession of, and study of even the most modest objects of different cultures. The purpose of collecting, as Molière might have put it, should not be limited to becoming rich through the investment in one’s purchases, but to become enriched through the intelligent possession of what one has acquired.”

 

Installation view
(photo credit: Exhibition Design and Photograph by Charles Marsden-Smedley)

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 6pm
(Closed on Mondays (except by appointment))

www.everyobjecttellsastory.com

An update: Sir Edward Heath – at home

An update: Sir Edward Heath – at home, until 1st November 2017

The view from Sir Edward’s bedroom window

Further to my post on Sir Edward’s home in Salisbury on 28th July 2016 I thought you may well be interested to know that Sir Edward’s bedroom – now used as a meeting room – is open to the public for the first time but retains its original contents. The artworks include watercolours by Thomas Bush Hardy, Peter Greenham and a gouache attributed to Giacomo Guardi. There are also pieces of Biedermeier furniture and a small occasional table which is thought to have been made by Sir Edward’s father. As I said last year this is great place to visit.

Biedermeier secretaire cabinet

 

A small mahogany occasional table possibly made by Sir Edward’s father.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.arundells.org/

Tribal Art and Ceramics in London’s New Bond Street

I take pleasure in sharing these two shows with you. They are at The Fine Art Society 148 New Bond Street, London W1.

 

Gordon Reece – The Art of Collecting, until 16th June 2017 

DSC_6706
30 Zula People, Democratic Republic of Congo
Female caryatid stool
First half of the 20th century
Wood
Height 18 1/2 in (47 cm)
Provenance: Private collection, Rwanda

This collaboration with Gordon Reece the esteemed dealer in Asian and African artefacts is a veritable treat.  His love of the objects is reflected in what he buys and they are eminently liveable with as this show which sees them displayed among the Fine Art Society’s furniture and artworks skilfully proves. A great celebration of Tribal Art.

‘Installation view, including two Lega masks and a Suku standing figure’

 

DSC_6725
41 Bembe People, Democratic Republic of Congo
A rare standing reliquary figure (Muzidi)
First half of the 20th century
Cane, fibre, cloth and buttons
Height 41 in (104.1 cm)
Provenance: Private collection, USA; purchased by Gordon Reece Gallery in New York in 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hylton Nel – For Use and Display, until 16th June 2017

Hylton Nel
Cat with Pope’s shoes

The South African ceramicist Hylton Nel shows his flair for creating both useful and decorative objects. You will discern influences from Chinese, Staffordshire and European ceramics in them and he uses many ideas in their decoration whether sexual, whimsical or written prose.  A delight and one understands why his works are eagerly snapped up.

Hylton Nel
Green Tree and Figures

 

Hylton Nel
A Game of Notes

 

 

www.thefineartsociety.com/

The London Original Print Fair 2017

The London Original Print Fair 2017, Main Galleries, Royal Academy of Arts, London W1 4th –  7th  May 2017

General shot of the London Original Print Fair
Photographer credit: Benedict Johnson

This Fair always fascinates as it seamlessly combines prints from across the centuries, including newly published works by artists such as Brian Eno, Gillian Ayres, Tess J and Christopher Le Brun PRA. The talks programme includes the Annual Printmaking Talk by Cornelia Parker OBE RA and Gordon Samuel on the Grosvenor School.  Definitely a place to go whether looking for works to hang on your walls or to start a collection.

Brian Eno,
Grapefruit, 2016.
Courtesy Paul Stolper, London

 

Claude Lorrain
Coast scene with an artist – Le dessinateur
Etching, circa 1638-41
Courtesy Christopher Mendez

 

Anish Kapoor
Blue Shadow 2013
Courtesy Lyndsey Ingram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eric Ravilious,
Commander Looking Through the Periscope, 1941
Courtesy The Fine Art Society

 

Bridget Riley
Untitled 1962
Courtesy Karsten Schubert

 

 

http://www.londonprintfair.com

A new exhibitor at The Spring Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair

The Spring Decorative Antiques & Textiles Fair, Battersea Evolution, Battersea Park, London SW11, 4th – 9th April 2017

Alison Elliott
Tinker
Oil on gesso panel
5.91 x 4ins (15 x 10cm)
Courtesy of Jonathan Cooper
Copyright Alison Elliott

This edition is slightly earlier than usual and its special stand – The Morning Room Revisited – near the fair’s entrance updates the traditional idea of such rooms by transforming them into a space where the outside can be brought in or as a place of display for collections.

Rebecca Campbell
The Artist’s Muse
Oil on linen
35.2 x 45.75ins (89 x 116cm)
Courtesy of Jonathan Cooper
Copyright Rebecca Campbell

The highly successful gallery Jonathan Cooper makes its first appearance at the fair and I feel sure that visitors will find much of interest among its fine contemporary artworks.

 

www.decorativefair.com

http://www.jonathancooper.co.uk