Barbara Hepworth, despite being born in West Yorkshire, is synonymous with St Ives, living in that West Cornish town for thirty five years from the outbreak of the Second World War. She was already an established sculptor by then and a pioneer of British abstract art. She set up her studio, Trewyn, in 1949 in the centre…
Category: Gallery Visits
Kew Gardens, The Palm House and Art Galleries
Last week we visited Kew Gardens. This was not our first visit but we concentrated on the Palm House this time as it will soon close for a major refurbishment. Decimus Burton and Richard Turner unveiled this astonishing iron‑and‑glass cathedral of the tropics in London in the 1840s. Even now, the great curving ribs overhead…
The Istanbul Modern
Istanbul is a city we have been meaning to visit for years and we finally arrived a few days ago. But what to write about. The architecture of the old city is amazing from the Byzantine Hagia Sofia to the seventeenth century Blue Mosque. But I have chosen the Museum of Modern Art a few…
Maurice de Vlaminck, The Fauve at Chartres
Chartres is a city, some sixty miles west of Paris, that we have visited a number of times and we were there again this summer. It is a busy vibrant place and known the world over for its magnificent gothic cathedral, Notre Dame de Chartres. Like many buildings of the time its predecessor was consumed…
Sean Keating at The National Gallery in Dublin
Art has a significant role to play in pricking the conscience of society. In a recent visit to The National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin we saw this provocative painting by Sean Keating. It is my painting of the month for July. An Allegory was painted in 1924 when Keating was at the height of his career…
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