Music and art has been my theme this month, which brings me to George Underwood and his current exhibition at The Fosse Gallery at Stow on the Wold. Underwood is one of those interesting characters who grew up in sixties Britain. Born in 1947 he went to school in Bromley with the likes of David…
Category: Painting of the Month
June Painting of the Month: Pictures at an Exhibition.
Modest Mussorgsky was one of the leading lights of Russian art and culture as the nineteenth century closed. His collection of suites for the piano, Pictures at an Exhibition, introduces my theme for June. The companionship between music and the visual arts has become stronger and stronger over the centuries until the two media are…
More on Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows
Salisbury Cathedral was the focus of my previous post. However, it did introduce one of Constable’s great paintings which has a history and symbolism worth its own spotlight. John Constable had just lost his wife, Maria, and was encouraged to produce this large scale painting by his friend and patron, Archdeacon John Fisher. Constable had…
Piero della Francesca and the ‘art’ of Looking at Art.
Piero della Francesco will always stand out in my memory of studying the History of Art at Oxford University. In the first module of the first term of the Certificate course we listened to the wonderful Mary Acton explaining how to look at paintings. She used a number of themes to illustrate her lectures: composition, space,…
Piero della Francesca and the ‘art’ of Looking at Art.
Piero della Francesco will always stand out in my memory of studying the History of Art at Oxford University. In the first module of the first term of the Certificate course we listened to the wonderful Mary Acton explaining how to look at paintings. She used a number of themes to illustrate her lectures: composition, space,…
More on Richard Wilson, Italianate landscape influence and Mountainous Wales
Cader Idris is a very popular mountain, and an enjoyable Painting of the Month, judging by your feedback on Richard Wilson’s eighteenth century painting. It inspired me to do more reading and research on Wilson. As well as meeting Francesco Zuccarelli while in Venice, and being persuaded away from portraiture, it is clear that Claude…
The Welsh Landscape Artist, Richard Wilson – March Painting of the Month
St David’s Day, the 1st of March, is often accompanied by a spell of mild weather, as if if to lull us into believing Spring had arrived. There are nearly always some very cold nights to follow just to check our enthusiasm. But, it is a time of year when we start to notice the…
February Painting of the Month (3) is Renoir’s Dance in the City
Renoir painted three, almost life size, paintings of dance scenes early in 1883, for the art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel. These paintings mark a change from the artists Impressionist leanings towards the more classical themes of David and Ingres. The third of these, which I have featured in my February “Painting of the Month” is Dance…
Renoir’s Dance in the Country is my second February Painting of the Month.
The Musée D’Orsay on the south bank of the Seine in Paris is home to my second painting of the month for February. Dance in the Country was also painted early in 1883. The artist claims the scene was inspired by his visit to Italy in 1881. It was during this visit that Renoir visited…
February Painting of the Month (1) is Renoir’s Dance at Bougival
Renoir’s Dance paintings of 1883. I thought, for February, I would have three “Paintings of the Month”. My inspiration is Pierre Auguste Renoir, an artist I regularly turn to and his ‘dance’ paintings. My first choice is Dance at Bougival. If there was a painting that evokes great memories for me this is it. Not…
