OLANA HOUSE EXTERIOR

OLANA
We went to Olana, his Husdon Valley home and estate, one day in July last year, during what was a debilitating heatwave. Temperatures up on the high 30s!  We were on a visit to stay with family, who live in Ulster County, New York State, so it was within driving distance, and the car had  air con of course.

There are a number of interesting large houses on the banks of the Hudson River, which are usually placed on high ground giving fine views of this beautiful river.  The rich used to come there for the summer, to get away from the humidity of the city.
This particular house is very well preserved and quite unusual; it is built in the Persian style and was constructed at a time when Frederick Church had made himself a wealthy man from his paintings. So everything was of the highest quality.  The house is smaller than I had imagined it would be, and dark inside, with so many ornate surfaces and dark works of art, both paintings and sculpture and ceramics.

BOOK YOUR TOUR IN ADVANCE!

Remember to book your admittance though. We arrived at the ticket office a little after our booked time, due to the problem we had in finding a parking space.  The car park is tiny.  For that reason we had to wait for about 45 minutes before the next slot for visitors.  The house is kept closed and locked unless opened for a group tour, so all you can do is wander around the grounds, or buy stuff in the shop.  Luckily for us, there is a small barn where a film is shown, probably on a loop, about Olana and the Church family.

Inside we were conducted around and given a good introduction to Church and his work, but the guides are all volunteers so you may, or may not, get a good one. A bit like our own dear National Trust.

I liked the Church landscapes very much, and the family nicknacks were fascinating, as was learning about the background to the painter and his fellow artists of the Hudson Valley School.

RUSTIC FENCES ADD CHARM AT OLANA

HUDSON

The heat outside was still very enervating, and there is no cafe or drinks stall, so we decided to drive across the river to the small town of Hudson, where we parked.  Then we shrivelled up in the blast of midday walking along the deserted streets, to a well-reviewed Italian restaurant for a good lunch.

It is well worth going to Olana if you are there on holiday, and also try and see the other mansions in the Hudson Valley, they are quite different from our own stately homes, because they were designed for holiday residences and not long term family homes. In those days you travelled to your holiday home by river steamer, because the railroad had yet to reach that far up river.

NATIONAL GALLERY EXHIBITION

I was very interested to read the article in The Daily Telegraph Travel section of February 2, by Susan Marling, called ‘A brush with the sublime’, about the new exhibition at the National Gallery dedicated to Frederick Church.  The photographs too were excellent.  The exhibition is called:
Through American Eyes: Frederic Church and the Landscape Oil Sketch’
The exhibition runs from February 6 until April 28.

http://www.olana.org

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/frederic-church

http://www.gotohudson.net/about.php

The group, Cosmima, had a four day show at Frameless Gallery, Clerkenwell in London last week, and I was very impressed.
The jewellers were top of the tree, super-innovative and excellent, and the silversmiths likewise had some absolutely wonderful stuff on show. I shall keep in touch with the Group and hope to see their next show.
It would be great if I could buy some of the lovely stuff, have to hope I win the Premiums Bonds!

Coram Bear at London Marathon 2011

The South London Women Artists Group will be holding an exhibition at the Bankside Gallery, Thames Path, near the Tate Modern.

The exhibition is from 30 April to 8 May, and my London Marathon painting will be on show there.

The gallery is open from 11 am to 6 pm each day.  This is a group show with the title  “SNAP’.

Here is a link to the Bankside Gallery website.

Coram Bear at the 2011 London Marathon

OIL PAINTING FOR BANKSIDE GALLERY EXHIBITION

This is the completed painting which I have submitted for inclusion in the South London Women Artists exhibition

EDNA RUNS LONDON MARATHON

This painting is oil on canvas. It includes, in a loose and vivid way, the scene of the London Marathon in 2011, when passing near Westminster Tube Station and the Houses of Parliament, London.

You can see I have selected to paint one of the elite female runners, Edna Kiplagat from Kenya.

My working drawings were done in pencil, on the day last April when I visited the Marathon.

PENCIL SKETCH LONDON MARATHON 1

PENCIL SKETCH LONDON MARATHON 2

I also used some of my photographs for extra details, since I could not capture all the activity and the various vignettes of activity going on.

We were luck enough to see this new film at a preview in Surrey last Wednesday.

It is extremely enjoyable and I recommend it – in fact I might go and see it a second time!

Screen Notes: Director, John Madden, Screenplay.  Ol Parker,.  Novel, Deborah Moggach. Producers, Graham Broadbent and Peter Czernin. Cinematography, Ben Davis.

Some of the dialogue is very funny indeed and of course the cast is one to die for – even the beginning of the film, set in England, is amusing and relevant to me, being somewhat ‘over the hill’ myself!

Very beautiful did India seem.  Top marks to the photographer and director and all the back-room people, it must have been very difficult to film in the streets, of what I presume is actually Jaipur.

The colours and plants, the market stalls, the drummers, the marigolds themselves, all delightful.

I particularly liked the crumbling building that formed the hotel itself.  It makes me want to go to India, to that part of India, where I have not had a chance to go, as yet.  I have visited Goa, which seemed much more quiet and sedate.

Of course, one thing the film missed out was the smells, the heat, the problem with tummy upsets and the long boring waits for things, such as taxis that don’t turn up on time.  But then, the real thing is always going to be more fun than a film.  What the film can give you, is a nice burst of colour and nostalgia at the turn of a switch (if you have the DVD of course).

I congratulate everybody concerned with this film, and wish it great success.

Wikipedia entry about the film

“TEN OF BRITAIN’S MOST IMPORTANT POST-WAR PAINTERS”

This was my first visit to this gallery, at the top end of Bond Street so not far from Oxford Circus or Bond Street tube stations.

It has two floors and plenty of white space, but no seats to sit!  Why do galleries never put seats so you can either sit and look at the work, or make notes, which I like to do?

I was intrigued to read a description of the exhibition, The Mystery of Appearance, which ended today, 18 February, see here:

THE MYSTERY OF APPEARANCE

The painters are well-known to me, so I thought to see something familiar from previous gallery visits.

There were some things which are new to me, but the two big Hockneys I have seen before certainly.  Apparently only three of these ten artists are alive today.

The two painters who prefer to use very dense, textured oils have similar works on display, Leon Kossof and Frank Auerbach.   I don’t like them.  There is an Auerbach with a title including the name ‘Gerda Boehm’  of 1971-73 which is aesthetically unpleasant.  One painting by Kossoff titled Seated Woman No 2 of 1959 reminded me of a very large cow turd which had been played about with – brown and nasty.

The Hockney painting of a young man reclining on a bed, The Room Tarzana, showed his ability to paint tufted rugs and venetian-blind slatted doors, but the figure has a strangely floating arm, rather oddly positioned buttocks and very tiny feet.

A small female nude by Lucien Freud of 1956 seems to be focussed on a view of her bottom, with very large feet which reminded me of feet painted by Francis Bacon.

There is a large Bacon painting  (Pope 1) which is very familiar, in purples, violets and blacks.

The Euan Uglow paintings did not seem so exciting in actuality, they seem to present themselves better in reproductions.  Maybe it is the very very pink paint in the large female nude study?

There is a small sketchy head by Michael Andrews which appeals, maybe because it is so very sketchy.  As a contrast there is a very large painting of Norwich Castle Keep, which is  ‘Lord Mayor’s Reception, Norwich’.  This is apparently oil on canvas but seems to be oil on photograph, the black and white photo shows in large parts of the image.  I presume the photograph was transferred to the canvas and then he painted over it in parts.  Since I have just returned from looking at an exhibition in Norwich Castle Art Gallery, and walked through the keep, this was of interest and I felt that he had tackled a very difficult and boring subject with a certain amount of panache. Follow this link to see it: The Lord Mayor’s Reception

However, to sum up, all these painters seemed to working without any lightness or humour, a lot of works are dour and gloomy, the paint looked as it it needed dusting,  I made a note in my little book that the artists were, from these representational painting, all very serious and po-faced.

There were three working drawings, squared up, by Patrick Caulfield, and I wonder at the decision to hang these, since they did not seem to stand up to hanging alongside finished work by him, of the usual bottles.  Two are of very accurate-looking architectural drawings.

I was interested to see the black and white portrait photographs in the basement, in the ‘bookshop’, which somehow seemed refreshingly honest and direct, unlike some of the paintings upstairs. They are by Bruce Bernard in the 1980s, of Bacon, Freud, Andrews and Auerbach.

It was a relief to come out into the afternoon Bond Street glitz which in a way seemed so much more interesting and vibrant than these rather dejected works.

What an excellent lecture last week at Richmond on Thames as part of a series of lectures organized by the Richmond Art Society.

NATIONAL GALLERY

Colin Wiggins started by telling us that he is now Curator of Special Projects at the National Gallery.

Until recently he was Head of Education there.

He gave a one hour lecture with the above title, showing the continuity which is evident in Western Europen art, depicting and sculpting the human figure from such sources as the sculpture of Antiquity.

During this lecture he made many witty comments about modern practices in art; he said that the Leonard da Vince exhibition was a thorn in his side at present and that they had had ‘turned David Hockey away this morning’.

He began by saying the central foundation stone of Western European art is ‘us’, in other words, the human figure. Of these works, the male figure is the most important. He commenced by showing slides of sculpture of the male from ancient Greece.

He showed immediate links to figures sculpted by Michaelangelo, and paintings by Velazquez and Lucien Freud.

This was demonstrated by a projected image of a Roman god next to a painting of the god Mars by Velazquez and a nude full-length portrait of Leigh Bowery, in an armchair, by Lucien Freud.

Colin had many slides demonstrating his points, all of them interesting and relevant, particularly the works of the Italian Renaissance artists, such Raphael, who, he said, was not able to work from the nude female figure, it being impossible for a young man to have access to a nude female model.

Also we were asked to look at the Joshua Reynolds portrait of Sir Banastre Tarleton, who fought in the American War of Independence. Reynold had a directory of poses, from his time in Rome, and used a pose of Cincinnatus from antiquity for the Tarleton portrait. Tarleton was apparently very ‘thick’ and Reynolds did not like him at all. He painted the figure in a battle scene with a cannon right behind his backside!

The interest in ancient art was widespread in the USA too, from Victorian times, and he told of a mail order facility to order art from Europe, which resulted in a copy of the Venus de Milo being sent by railroad to the mid-west, where it was found to be without arms. The purchasers sued the railroad company for the loss of her arms, and won their case!

There was a very amusing point made that maidens were painted and sculpted being very modest, and while nude, covered their ‘private parts’. This he demonstrated by showing us a sculpture of a Roman or Greek (not sure which) girl, then a nude by Renoir and then a still from the comedy Carry on Camping, when Barabara Windsor is bra-less and covering her bosom with her hands.

Colin admires the ‘passive and beautiful’ male nude early paintings of David Hockney and is looking forward to the exhibition later this year at the Royal Academy.

However he did not like the Gerhard Richter work at the London exhibition (now ended), and said he finds German contemporary art takes itself too seriously.

My understanding is Colin suggested he likes humour in art and showed us a Johann Zoffany painting of the Tribuna in the Uffizi, Florence, where a collection of Milords are admiring the bottom of the Venus de Milo.

I found a link to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge which shows Frank Auerbach standing beside a portrait etching of Colin Wiggins.

COLIN WIGGINS – HE IS A ‘NATIONAL (GALLERY) TREASURE’

We went to see the Trampoline competition at the O2 Arena last Friday.

I did these three sketches

We had a great difficulty in getting to the O2 Arena, at North Greenwich, as the Jubilee Line was ‘up the spout’ again, due to a signal failure at Stanmore.   The tube trains were few and very delayed, crushed full to bursting.  So we arrived late, and I was disappointed to find that we could not take cameras inside.

The Arena was almost full on one side, nearest the entrance, and no seats near the front. Nevertheless we could see quite well, as the Trampolines were in the centre of the arena, and the athletes were easy to follow, their jumps and twists quite spectacular.

It was very interesting because I have never seen top class gymnasts before and was not aware how spectacular their movements are.  Of course they compete one at a time, and not together as I have drawn them.  First was the men’s competition and then the women’s.

More details can be found at www.british-gymnastics.org

Here is a quote from the brochure: ‘At the 2011 Trampoline World Championships in Birmingham the top eight competitors claimed places for their country at London 2012. Those who missed qualifying at this event will battle for the five places up for grabs at this month’s test event. The FIG will aware a final three places at their discretion at a later date.’

Standing near the Winston Churchill statue at Westminster, I did some drawings and took photos.

Here are some of the sketches I have collected together to use in my new painting.

DRAWING 1 LONDON MARATHON

DRAWING 5 LONDON MARATHON SPECTATORS

DRAWING 3 LONDON MARATHON