Last outing with CityLit - Intro' to The National Portrait Gallery

Five weeks really isn't enough when you're having fun - but as they say all good things to come to an end and Course Leader Leslie Primo pretty much brought us up to date.


So the last day of my course at the Portrait Gallery -and  again our leader had to make some changes as work was going on in the gallery.

We included after looking at the span of time  reflected in portraiture development  (see further below) a viewing of a bold modern portrait of Dame Eileen Younghusband by Sir Kyffin Williams  - this was both formal and intimate in a 20th century sort of way.

A nice display at NPG shows evolution from Ingres  via Sickert 

 I enjoyed spending time looking at and discussing the Sickert - he is one of my favourites, but not sure how successful this Self portrait example is. The thoughts were that the effect of press photography is a big influence on him here.

Walter Sickert used the press 

 For me I thought I'd begun to understand something of portraiture but modern practice and expectations are confusing me - I'm not so excited by works like Bomberg and Auerbach - in fact I prefer the effect of the older works like that of Ingres.

A historic spread across the Years (to Auerbach)

 The last pictures we looked at were a painting of Anna Wintour by Alex Katz an early self portrait by the modern British/Nigerian artist Ofili (1991) - (First heard about Chris from Nick Pearson nearly 5 years ago) not sure that these really represent progress!

A Self Portrait -Chris  Ofili 

Fashion Guru Anna Wintour - something about Clebrity?

Oh yes and here’s a rather good picture of the late Sir Ken by David Cobley which I noticed and I do like the trick used here (not uniquely) where a mirror gives us the chance to see more than one side of the subject.

The recently departed Sir Ken Dodd by David Cobley

The End of Looking at Paintings at Tate Modern (or the beginning?)

This week was the final session of The Looking at Paintings and we wound it up at Tate Modern

Sickert at Tate Modern -Ennui (1914)

bringing us into the 20th Century.


It was nice to be at Tate Modern it is (by it's nature) less stuffy than The National Gallery but there are (despite what are esteemed course leader Julia said) lots of traditional-ish paintings, we did see a sneaky sculpture but stayed away from the edgy performance stuff.


 It was nice too to keep seeing more connections we breezed past another Sickert and even another Meredith Frampton (which featured the same vase as we saw in 'Trial and Error' last week) This one was titles  -Portrait of a Young Woman.

One of the group takes a look at
'Portrait of a Young Woman (1935)'

Tate Modern is well stocked with Picasso and we saw both influences in his work  of Matisse and the fashionable (at the time) African masks.

Picasso showing his influences

We were able to see Picasso through his cubist journey  and we took a look to at a Lee Krasner painting - Gothic Landscape, it seems close to an abstract but is not quite.

  Krasner was the lover of Jack the Dripper/Jackson Pollock and was  was eclipsed by the larger than life Pollock.

Gothic Landscape 

The standout for me though was the surrealists and the skill (and importance)  of Dali was very clear

Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Dali (1937)

For sure I feel better equipped to look at Paintings (critically) and along with what I've been exposed to on other courses I'm beginning to get some feel for the flow of works in terms of 'isms' and chronology

CityLit's looking at Paintings course -Getting to the end

Tate Britain - it's beginning to look a lot
like Christmas  

This Wednesday we were back at Tate Britain for the penultimate group (City Lit Looking at Paintings  course) - Tate Britain has got a great Kitsch-y Christmas look and it was nice to there (less Crowded than National Gallery).



Generally the course has run along the theme of Genres but there's also been a less defined underlying chronological undercurrent and with these last two sessions (next one is at Tate Modern) we're coming (almost) up to date.

Julia shows us a 'near' abstract

 
So first of all don't get me wrong I do like Tate Britain but there are times when I'm struck by the fact that certainly after the Pre-Raphaelites and before the British Pop Art there was a period where most of what came along did not do it for me - much of it looked downbeat and  was concerned solely with the artist - so it was that what we looked at on Wednesday might have been of significance but was (I'm sorry to say) for was not exciting.

A story of Lizzie

[By the way interested to see that there's a book about the somewhat tragic Lizzie Siddal a muse and model to many of 'The Brotherhood and lover of Rossetti].

We did look at an example of British 'Quasi Surrealism' by Meredith Frampton called 'Trial and Error' which can also be read as a Still life Momento Mori. Meredith was the son of celebrated sculptor George Meredith.

Trial and Error (1939)

We did look at some Walter Sickert works and I do like his paintings but he is almost an honorary European, spending much of his time in France and being the son of a German-Danish Artist.



Sickert was a somewhat restless artist associated with Camden Town Group latterly much of his work was derived from Media images (often The Press) like the picture below of Miss Gwen..., who was a famous actress.


This use by Sickert was long before it became the 'vogue' to use Mass Media in works of Art as Sir Peter Black and Andy Warhol did in the 60's.


I am looking forward to (I hope) seeing more examples of Sickert when I visit the National Portrait Gallery with a City Lit  course in 2018.

[There were stories that Sickert was in fact Jack the Ripper - not sure how much salt is needed with that!]

Late Period Sickert - Miss Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Isabella of France (1932)

Conan Doyle at Portsmouth Museum and Red 64

So on Sunday we took a walk to the altogether excellent Portsmouth Museum.
The driver for the walk from our hotel was the exhibition about Sherlock Holmes and his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Items associated with the fictional Holmes

In fact Sir Arthur was an awful lot more than just the creator of Holmes, he was a Doctor, a keen sportsman (who played in goal for Portsmouth), a campaigner and he was also something of a spiritualist.


Almost as fascinating as Sir Arthur was the man who donated his life's work to Portsmouth Museum and whose death was the inspiration for two crime novels the very mysterious Richard Lancelyn Green.

With Holmes Sir Arthur created the modern detective and his accoutrements have become shorthand for detection - with the symbolism of the pipe and magnifying glass deployed in a variety of advertising campaigns for a diverse selection of products.

Not as worn by Holmes

The Museum though is far more than just a homage to Sir Arthur, there's a great section on modern history recreating rooms in working class homes, a fantastic selection of Sickert drawings and a lot about the artist Edward King (b 1863) who spent 25 years in a Portsmouth Asylum following a breakdown triggered by his wife's death.

A really great provincial museum - with free entry.

A front room that brought history to life

Red 64

Perhaps it should be a 'person' box?

A touch of 'Stateside'

[see the latest rough cut of the ongoing project here]