School Prints was a scheme stated in the middle of the twentieth century whereby artists were commissioned for works from which prints were subsequently given to schools. The scheme fell out of favour with the changes in education policy in the seventies. However the Hepworth Wakefield revived the idea in 2018 with a five year…
Category: Painting of the Month
Impressionist Masters and a day out at The Fitzwilliam in Cambridge
The Fitzwilliam Museum and Art Gallery is not a regular haunt for me as Cambridge never seems an easy place to either get to or park. However we went there last week on our trip to East Anglia and were well rewarded. The Museum with its magnificent classical front, is set out mainly on two…
Stanhope Forbes tale of life in the Cornish fishing industry: July painting of the month.
Summer Holiday over and time to look at paintings again. My July “Painting of the Month” has a flavour of the sea to celebrate our recent camping holiday by the beach. A Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach, (1884-5) by Stanhope Forbes, is owned by the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, and is one…
George Underwood paints mythically inspired figures and rock album covers
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…
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…
