Poetic Pairing: April 2014

Vessels at anchor and rowing boats in a calm sea William Lionel Wyllie National Maritime Museum

Extract from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

 Down Dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,

'Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea!

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody Sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the moon.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Last days of Klee at Tate

If you haven't been to see the work of this wonderful artist then head to tate to get it before it's gone. (Closes this Sunday) There even a late opening until 8 on Sunday.

It will inject some much needed colour into your day.

The Fine Art Society - A Barrister's Collection

After my Italian class I decided to take a little walk through the park and head down the glitzy and glamorous New Bond Street to visit The Fine Art Society.

At the moment they are showing an exhibition of the private art collection of lawyer William M Ballantyne 'A Barrister's Collection'. It is always fasinating to look at the private collection of one individual. There was recently a sale at Sotheby's of the collection of Stanley J. Seeger. It is intriging to look at the works that collectors bring together and how this reflects their personal tastes and interests and to see the interesting links that exist between the works they buy.

Ballantyne's collection spans the ages, including a 14th Century Siennese wedding chest, paintings by the old master's, 19th century works and modern British paintings. 

Detail of Siennese Marriage Chest Attr. Ambrogio Lorenzetti 14th Century (horrible image through glass apologies)

It is not a huge collection but there are some lovely pieces. I was particularly drawn to an etching by Millet 'La Grande Bergere', a lively lithograph by Bonnard, a stunning painting of a washer woman by Harold Gilman below and the atmospheric oil painting 'Bethleham, Looking towards the Dead Sea also below.  

The Washerwoman 'Le lavendeuse' 1911 Harold Gilman

Bethleham, Looking Towards the Dead Sea 1853 David Roberts

So if you are in the area with a little time to pass then pop in and do some fantasy painting shopping!

The exhibition runs until 21st March.

Poetic Pairing: March 2014

This months poetic pairing is a poem inspired by this 14th Century sculptural tomb of an aristocratic couple in Chichester Cathedral.

Tomb of Richard FitzAlan 10th Earl of Arundel and his wife Eleanor of Lancaster 14th Century Chichester Cathedral

 

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd–
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends could see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
Their air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone finality
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Philip Larkin

Henry Moore

During today's artistic wanderings I came across an artist whose work I have a definite soft spot for. His name is Henry Moore and no I don't mean the modernist sculptor, rather an artist born in the previous century. I am sure this artists reputation has been damaged in part by the unfortunate coincidence of sharing names with one of Britain's most loved and well known sculptors.

This Henry Moore was born in 1831 in a very different era, a few years before the abolition of slavery in Britain and it's empire, the year Victor Hugo published Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Darwin set off for his travels and rather bizarrely the inventor of Coca-cola (John Stith Pemberton) was born. Imagine... a world without coke.

Henry Moore was a painter of landscapes and had a particular penchant for dramatic seascapes and marine scenes usually in the English Channel.

The Wreck Henry Moore 1875 City of London Corporation

He had a gift when it came to the realistic representations of waves that can only be explained by hours spent observing them. It must have been a fairly difficult enterprise. His paintings often forgo a foreground jumping directly in to the representation of the churning sea. This gives a sense of immediacy to the paintings, you can just imagine the artist slaving away sketching, painting or simply observing the sea. In fact one story reads that he suffered from rheumatism after a particularly intensive painting session during a gale. Perhaps a gale similar to the one in the painting below described simply as a Winter Gale in the Channel. We can see the rolling clouds the intense darkness of the sky and the rays of sunshine breaking through the clouds. You can almost hear the shrieking gannets looking for washed up food in the breaking waves. A familiar sight to anyone who knows the sea.

Winter Gale in the Channel Wolverhampton Art Gallery 1872

My heart was originally won by this artist because he painted a part of the world that I love more than any other, Alderney. In 1886 he painted a view of the Race of Alderney which is a dangerous tidal race reaching more than 11 knots. It seperates the Island of Alderney from France. However like many dangerous currents it has the most innocent of appearances.

  The Race of Alderney 1886 Cheltenham Art Gallery

He shows us a dark choppy water surface with white peaks dotted around and the cliffs of the island and two small sailing ships in the background.

It is not the most dramatic of his paintings but it tugs on my heartstrings and I believe that his paintings would do the same to anyone who loves, lives by or works on the sea. In them he demonstrates a profound understanding of the calm, the drama and the danger of the waves he paints.

When it comes to flooding the more things change the more they stay the same

This year parts of the United Kingdom have suffered serious flooding due to the frankly unacceptable quantity of rain we have experienced this winter.

We have all seen the dramatic and striking images of the flooding and it led me to wonder how artists have rendered the floods of years gone by. So here are just a couple of the interesting works and comparisons I came across.

The flooded fields of Holland and Somerset:

Flooded Fields in Holland with Silver Birches, Unknown Artist The Shipley Art Gallery

 

Flooded high streets:

Nuneaton Floods Warwickshire John Woodward Lines 1975 Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery

A train takes a treacherous journey along the coast in Saltcoats Scotland and a similar event in 1894:

 

Durston Somerset, Flooded out Thomas H Heawood 1894 Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

 

Take to the boats!:

A Flood Leon Augustin Lhermitte Manchester City Galleries 1876

Two red cars years apart brave the roads:

 

Floods Roland Vivian Pitchforth c.1935 Tate

 

High tides causing huge waves such as this one over the breakwater in my beloved island of Alderney:

1953 Floods in Southwald, Suffolk Frank Forward 1953 Southwald Museum

Flood waters in Chertsey after the Thames burst it's banks:

Llugwy in Flood 1881 Benjamin Williams Leader Oxford College Anon II, University of Oxford

Whether in paintings or in current day photos nature never ceases to put me in awe.

Cutty sark: Lantern Making

If you are in Greenwich today or looking for something to fill the last couple of days of half term then come and join us at the Cutty Sark!

We are making Chinese paper lanterns to celebrate Chinese New Year and to learn about the importance of lanterns on ships. Oops nearly forgot one of the most important reasons... Fun! 

The workshop is free with the regular ticket to visit the ship and takes place in the Sammy Ofer gallery from 11.30-1.30 and again from 2.00-4.00.