V&A Prints on tour

The V&A has an extensive collection of fine art prints and related material. The range of the modern holdings is clear from their 2001 publication, Impressions of the 20th Century, and these have been drawn on to send Modern Masters: Matisse, Picasso, Dali and Warhol on tour this year to Lincoln, Plymouth, currently Bath’s Victoria Art Gallery and soon Inverness. Visitors to the show should be able to find something of interest from all four artists in the form of prints, books and other items.

The works by Picasso spanned most of his career from 1904 to 1957. I liked the portrait of the dealer Ambroise Vollard (1937, below left) and The Sleeping Woman (1947, below right):

There were also four of the sugar-lift aquatint and drypoint etchings from the portfolio of Buffon’s L’Histoire Naturelle, including The Lizard (1942, below left), which were printed during the Occupation, and Skull of a Goat on a Table (1952, below right):

The Matisse exhibits included both the print (image unavailable) and the wood block (1905, below right) for Nude in Profile on a Chaise Longue. The lithograph Interior, Reading (1925, below right) is of a subject he painted on various occasions:

Visitors to the recent Matisse exhibition at Tate Modern may have come away with the impression that his later work consisted only of cut-outs. Not so, as demonstrated colourfully by Marie-Jose in a Yellow Dress (1950, below):

Curiously, Salavador Dali was omitted from Impressions of the 20th Century. I hadn’t seen before any of the six posters which Salvador Dali designed for the French railways (SNCF) in 1969, two of the four on display here:

Andy Warhol’s work like Marilyn (exhibition poster above, three of the ten colour ways of this print are on show) is, as they say, iconic and also ubiquitous to the point of over-exposure (in a week I came across him in shows in Bath and Blenheim and at the NPG) but this colour offset litho poster from 1978, based on two of his Self Portraits from 1966, was striking:

This Louisiana is the Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark which, from its website, seems well worth visiting, although like many British people I’m deterred by the prospect of Danish prices. However, as the website states “DINNER BUFFET IN LOUISIANA CAFÉ EAT AS MUCH AS YOU WANT FOR DKK 149”, which would be just under £16 (US$26), perhaps I ought to think again.

Modern Masters in Print Matisse, Picasso, Dali and Warhol ends in Bath on 23 November 2014.

Radev Revisited

Two years ago a post appeared here about The Radev Collection: from Pissarro to Picasso at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, an exhibition during the Collection’s 2011-13 UK tour. Now on at the same location is The Radev Show 2, and again visitors can be sure to find something they will like. There was some background to the Collection’s formation in the previous post, so I won’t repeat it here.

Some of the works on show last time have come back to Bath, like Modigliani’s Portrait of Soutine and Jawlensky’s Blaue Strasse c1916 (below, left and right):

Others are having a first showing: Vanessa Bell, Vase, Hat and Flowers, 1910 and a couple of Duncan Grant ceramic table-tops c 1950 (below, top and lower):

One of the originators of the Collection was Eardley Knollys, co-partner in the Storan Gallery in the inter-war period. Two pictures now in the Tate Gallery which were purchased from the Storan originally have been leant for this show, Maurice Utrillo’s Eglise de St Hilaire (Church at St Hilaire, c 1911, below left) and Chaïm Soutine’s La Route de la colline (Vence) (The Road up the Hill, c1924, below right):

However, as in 2012, most of the works in the exhibition are by British artists (more Ben Nicholson and Alfred Wallis!) and, as I said then, “Anyone interested in British 20th century art should try to see it” – again, possibly. The Radev Show 2 ends on 31 August. There might be a clue as to why the Radev Collection has returned to Bath towards the end of this post.

Two exhibitions in Bath

Last year the Holburne Museum in Bath showed Presence: The Art of Portrait Sculpture which explored whether sculptors pursue realism or idealisation when they create solid portraits. Their lateset exhibition, Characters: Portraits and People from the Arts Council Collection, looks at the parallel traditions of observation and invention in the painting of people, particularly appropriate since the Holburne’s permanent collection includes some fine British eighteenth-century examples of the genre.

The Director of the Holburne, Alexander Sturgis, and his staff have again demonstrated their curatorial expertise when faced with the challenge of selecting a small number of choice works (Sturgis talks about some of their choices here). The range of artists, all British post-War, is indicated in the poster alongside Richard Hamilton’s Hugh Gaitskell as a Famous Monster of Filmland 1964. Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud (portrait of Lord Rothschild above right) and Euan Uglow (German Girl, 1960s, above left) feature among the painters from life and the works of imagination include studies from Peter Blake and Francis Bacon. I particularly liked Maggi Hambling’s Frances Rose (3) 1973 and thought Jeffery Camp’s Laetitia Picking Blackcurrants 1967 (below, left and right) full of period charm, but everyone will have their own favourites. 

Characters: Portraits and People from the Arts Council Collection continues until 7 January 2014.

William Scott: Simplicity and Subject at the Victoria Art Gallery has now closed. Scott (1913 – 1989), although born in Scotland and spending his youth in Northern Ireland, spent much of his artistic life in the Bath area and was for a time Senior Painting Master at Bath Academy of Art. In his twenties he spent time in France and in Cornwall where he met Laura Knight and her husband. Later influences on his work included Picasso and the New York abstract expressionists – Mark Rothko spent time at his Somerset home. Although Scott was an RA and had contributed to the British exhibit in the XXIX Venice Biennale, his work seems to have become less well-known in recent years, so his centennial seems to have been an appropriate time to rekindle interest. Below are his Still Life with Candle 1950 and the more abstract Slagheap Landscape 1953 (from the Arts Council Collection). During a spell working in Berlin he encountered a blue pigment which led to his All Blue 1964. Another striking abstract was Monotone Still Life 1955 in black white and grey. I expect that the owner of that little gem of a painting, Still Life with Pears c1956, is glad to have his or her picture back!

There is a major retrospective of Scott's work now at the final stage of its tour at the Ulster Museum.

David Inshaw’s ‘The Badminton Game’ in Bath

A painting by David Inshaw (born 1943), The Badminton Game (1972-73), is currently on temporary loan to the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, not far from its setting, Devizes (Wiltshire, SW England). Inshaw was a member of the 'Brotherhood of Ruralists' group of artists active in the area from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, as was Peter Blake. The work is described in the Gallery's press release as both “rarely seen” and “iconic”. The latter aspect of its reputation must be on the basis of reproductions, as relatively few people ever set foot in 10 Downing Street, which is where the painting seems to have spent most of its time on display since its presentation to the Tate collection in 1980.


The glossy fortnightly Bath Life magazine gave the loan a full page in its current issue (above). I’m sure they had no intention of their comment being as pointed as it might read – “so that people in the West may view it without charge”. Unlike the Gallery’s previous exhibition of works also in public ownership, the Art Council’s Henry Moores, then.


UPDATE 9 JULY

Andrew Lambirth, the Spectator's art critic, interviewed David Inshaw, who still lives in Devizes, just before his birthday in March.


 

The Arts Council’s Henry Moores in Bath

The Arts Council Collection of works by British sculptors includes 11 sculptures and 15 works on paper by Henry Moore purchased between 1948 and 1963. Not for the first time these are on a UK tour which on this occasion has reached SW England at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. In the Bath show the Arts Council’s collection is supplemented with a loan of etchings by Moore from a local gallery.

One of the earliest works on paper on display is Standing Nude 1929 and the newest Women Winding Wool 1948 (below left and right). Regrettably the Arts Council collection does not include any of Moore’s World War 2 shelter drawings.
 

The sculptural works offer an opportunity to see one of Moore’s pre-War bronzes with strings, Stringed Figure 1938 (left).  Moore had met the emigré constructivist Naum Gabo by then but such works were as much surreal as abstract.  There are also some working models, the latest being Working Model for Knife Edge Two Piece 1962 (below left). The models are interesting but lack the monumental quality of the full size works in the open, for example the similar Knife Edge Two Piece (below right at Kew in 2008) which is familiar from another cast near Parliament in London, often a background to television interviews and currently under restoration.

In a departure from previous practice the Victoria Art Gallery has started to charge for admission to special exhibitions, in this case £3.50. The Bath and North East Somerset local authority which owns the gallery no doubt had their financial reasons for making this change. But perhaps this wasn’t the best exhibition to start with. Firstly, the taxpayers of Bath and beyond in the past supported the Arts Council in the original purchase of some of these works and subsequently in their conservation and in providing insurance through the Government Indemnity Scheme. Secondly, there was no charge to see this exhibition in its previous tour stop in Canterbury, nor will there be at its next in Limerick. More generally, Bath is a leading UK destination for cultural tourism with millions of visitors a year who bring obvious economic benefits to local businesses and employment. Is it appropriate for a city with UNESCO World Heritage site status to be charging £3.50 to see only 26 works, even if they do provide a useful survey in miniature of a major British artist?

Henry Moore In the Arts Council Collection continues in Bath until 23 June.


UPDATE 24 MAY 2013

On 17 May the Victoria Art Gallery retweeted:

Here are the forthcoming temporary exhibitions:

UPDATE 17 AUGUST

National Art Pass holders are now receiving a 50% discount on Victoria Art Gallery admissions.
Next summer's exhibition schedule has been revised.

The Radev Collection reaches Bath

The Radev Collection is described as being “The private picture collections of: Eardley Knollys (1902 - 1991), Eddy Sackville-West (1901 – 1965) and Mattei Radev (1927 - 2009). Bequeathed in friendship, begun in 1938, and preserved in the 21st Century.” Some of the history of the Collection, and of the “male salon” which formed it, can be found on its website. Each of the three men added to the Collection of 800 works which mirror their differing interests: Knollys in French artists acquired through his gallery which in turn Sackville-West patronised for Modernist pieces. Knollys inherited from Sackville-West in 1965 and later left their combined collections to Radev.

A selection of works from the Radev Collection is currently on a UK tour which began in 2011 and will end in 2013. Curiously, on the first two stops, in Chichester and Lincoln, its title was The Radev Collection – Bloomsbury and Beyond, but at Bath’s Victoria Art Gallery it has become The Radev Collection: from Pissarro to Picasso (at the time of writing, on their website as “Pisarro – Piccasso”). The current title has the virtue of accuracy, Radev’s connection with the Bloomsbury Group being a little tenuous despite the Pallant House Gallery’s description of him as “a feature of artistic and literary Bloomsbury society”. For example, one of the leading Bloomsberries, Vanessa Bell, three of whose works are in the Collection, was born in 1879 and was in her seventies when Radev arrived in the UK from Bulgaria. Eddy, on the other hand, was Vita Sackville-West’s nephew and in the 1920s mixed with the Bloomsbury set at Charleston and elsewhere, though perhaps not on such intimate terms as his aunt.

Visitors to the exhibition will see unfamiliar works of an agreeably domestic scale by British and international artists including Keith Vaughan, Duncan Grant, Ivon Hitchens, Maurice Denis, Jean Metzinger, Jean Millet, Amedeo Modigliani (on the website, “Modigliano”). and Lucien Pissarro. Artists shown who have featured in previous posts here include Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Ben Nicholson (Carbis Bay 1942, left), Alfred Wallis and Christopher Wood.

There is also an opportunity to see works by Winifred Nicholson, Henry Lamb and Matthew Smith (Cornish flowers c1920, right), British artists who are perhaps less well-known than they were. As well as the Vanessa Bell, Bloomsbury fans can enjoy several works by Duncan Grant (Brighton pier and boats 1938, below)

Two notable pieces are the bronze by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Bronze Dancer 1913 (left) and Blaue strasse c 1916, (below) by Alexei Jawlensky, the Russian Expressionist who painted in Germany with Der Blau Reiter.

The Radev Collection: from Pissarro to Picasso continues in Bath until 18 November. It re-appears in Falmouth Art Gallery, Cornwall in February 2013 retitled again, this time as A Framer's Collection. Radev’s abilities in this regard are clear from the exhibits like the Smith above. Next summer the tour will return to London at the Redfern Gallery and end the year at the Abbott Hall Art Gallery in Kendal. Anyone interested in British 20th century art should try to see it. The exhibition catalogue provides more details of the Collection's founders and history as well as  responses from the curators of its tour, but is a little expensive at £5-70. However admission in Bath is free.

Gillian Ayres in Bath and on tour

Andrew Lambirth recently expressed his disquiet at David Hockney’s being designated as our Greatest Living Painter following the death of Lucien Freud:

If there must be the title of Greatest Living Painter, then award it to someone who actually uses paint in an inventive and interesting way: to Leon Kossoff, Gillian Ayres or Frank Auerbach. The publicity-hungry Mr Hockney does not deserve it.

Now there is an opportunity to assess Gillian Ayres’ work in the form of a selection of prints (and a small number of paintings) making up a selling show at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, Gillian Ayres RA Paintings and Prints 1986 to 2011. The boldly colourful abstract pieces on show (Song Beneath the Stars, below) are probably too narrow in range to be able to bear out Lambirth’s suggestion, certainly by comparison with those in the Tate’s collection.

Ayres, who was born in London in 1930, has strong links with SW England having taught at the Bath Academy of Art (at Corsham Court) in the 1960s and lived in north Cornwall since 1987. Not long after arriving there she was interviewed by Art Cornwall, and in their film provided some interesting views on her form of Abstract expressionism which introduces representational forms. She collaborated with a local printmakers’ collective, 107 Workshop in Melksham, Wiltshire, to produce the limited editions on sale.

Gillian Ayres RA Paintings and Prints 1986 to 2011 continues at the Victoria Art Gallery until 21 March. Bath is the first stop on the exhibition’s tour and the Alan Cristea Gallery website will no doubt have details of the later venues in due course.