The Barber Institute in Birmingham is probably one of the finest small collections of Western Art to be found anywhere in the world. When Lady Hattie Barber set out the acquisitions policy through the trust deed in 1933 the seeds were sown for a brilliant representation of the progression from early Italian painting through to the post impressionists of Paris. However the stipulation that no…
Month: January 2019
Worcester Cathedral Tombs
Worcester was our choice for a day out this week for some mid January therapy, and I thought, for a change, it was time I wrote about stone again. Memory was an important concept in the Middle Ages for church decoration and Worcester Cathedral is full of commemorative art. The architecture of the Cathedral is…
Monet and St-Lazare
To accompany my Painting of the Month (Turner – Rain, Steam, Speed, 1844) I have a new header series of paintings by Claude Monet from the third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877. They represent views of St Lazare Railway Station in Paris and were the most talked about at the exhibition. The view on the middle…
Rain, Steam, Speed – JMW Turner
The Great Western Railway in the 1840s must have been both exciting and a subject of huge trepidation. Steam power had been established for some years by the time Turner painted this view in 1844, which is my ‘Painting of the Month’ for January. The public railway was quite new though, especially in southern England,…
White Box Art Channel 