Favourite Paintings: 'Church at Auvers' by Vincent Van Gogh

One of my favourite paintings is 'Church at Auvers' by Vincent van Gogh. It's one of his biggies and was even the subject of a 'Dr Who' episode when aliens invaded the Earth and hid in the church. But that's not why it's a favourite.

As part of my art A-level at school in 1978 I had to do a copy of a master's painting for my portfolio and I chose this painting to copy. I'm not sure why I chose this particular painting, possibly because of the blue sky? I lost my copy of the painting many years ago but a print of it is on the wall in my living room as a treasured memory. The painting hangs in the Musee D'Orsay in Paris and I well remember my first viewing of it in 2003 and the tears flowed. For the painting or for my lost youth? I don't know, but probably both. Every time I've been to Paris since then includes a trip to D'Orsay and I seek out this painting. One day I might have to go to Auvers in person.

I don't really remember what else I had to do for the portfolio other than we had to do a life drawing and an original composition on a theme. I remember drawing my friend Helen who agree to pose for us in the classroom. She was long and thin and wore trousers and a jumpa for the session. My original composition was on the theme of 'gardens' and I remember painting barbed wire as thorns and taking almost an entire lesson trying to mix the right colours for barbed wire. I think I had flowers on top of the barbed wire (like roses) to add colour but I'll never know for certain. It's strange what sticks in your mind.

Anyway, here's 'Church at Auvers' by Van Gogh for your enjoyment.

Favourite Paintings: Sonia Delaunay 'Le Bal Bullier'

One of my favourite paintings is 'Le Bal Bullier' by Sonia Delaunay. It was painted in 1913 and is inspired by the tango craze that swept across Paris in the early 1910s. Sonia used to go to the Bal Bullier dancehall in Paris and sketched the dancers that ended up in this painting.

The painting is 12 feet long and the eye can't help but sweep from left to right as the dancers swirl across the painting. It's often cited as an example of the colour theory of Orphism, using primary colours against secondary colours - Sonia was very hot on colour theories and used them and experimented with them throughout her life in various media. I tend to respond to paintings on a more emotional rather than intellectual level. I don't see the theory, I see life and joy and movement and colour. I see the effect of that theory.

I saw this painting as part of the exhibition of Sonia's works at Tate Modern in 2015 and I visited it many times - I like colour. Each time I saw it I was drawn further into the dance. I stopped seeing blocks of colour and shapes and started to see couples dancing, enjoying the movement and the music and being together, and then started seeing movement as the couples danced across the dance floor. That's one of the magical things about painting - the painter doesn't dictate what you see. We all respond to art in different ways and that's a good thing.

I especially like that Sonia not only used the Bal Bullier dancehall as inspiration but she was part of it and designed her own dress to wear when she went there. That was included in the Tate exhibition.

'Le Bal Bullaire' is part of the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris so I'll have to pay it a visit on my next trip to Paris.

'Portraits by Cezanne' at Musee D'Orsay, Paris

On my recent trip to Paris I saw the 'Portraits by Cezanne' exhibition at Musee D'Orsay which opens at the National Portrait Gallery in London in October. That gives me another opportunity to see this excellent exhibition.

The exhibition starts off, as you'd expect, with early portraits as Cezanne found his own style. There were a few portraits of his uncle differentiated by wearing different hats, something he seems to do with his own later self-portraits, wearing hats of various shapes and colours. The consistent thing is the bushy beard, both for his uncle and himself. He's not the poster-boy for the exhibition however, that's reserved for 'Boy in the Red Waistcoat' which works really well with the splash of vivid red to liven up the colour palette.

To illustrate Cezanne's 'hats maketh the man' approach, I particularly liked his 'Self-portrait with a White Hat' with Cezanne looking straight out at the viewer wearing a white hat of sorts - or is it a bandanna tied around his head? Hair and beard are well kept and under control unlike in the self-portrait I'm more familiar with in the National Gallery in London. That painting is on loan to this exhibition and it was nice to see it again. I think I prefer the self-portrait with the white hat though, showing the artist in his prime, gazing out at the viewer in three-quarter pose, a man assured of himself and in control of his art.

As well as painting his own portrait, Cezanne painted his wife endlessly. There are half a dozen portraits of Madame Cezanne in the exhibition, the poor, long-suffering wife. I could well imagine her saying, 'ok, just another few minutes but I really need to make the dinner...' as Cezanne started yet another portrait.

Another portrait I particularly liked was 'Gustave Geffroy' from around 1896, with the good Monsieur Geffroy sitting in front of his book-case with books scattered on his desk. I suspect he's copying favourite passages into his notebook to keep them with him. The first thing I noticed were the orange-spines books in the book-case and wondered if Penguin paid Cezanne a royalty for inventing its trademark colour. That took me into the painting and could examine it with different eyes.

If you don't know the sitter or his/her history, then you need something to grab your attention to pull you into the painting, and those books did it for me. I assume the catalogue explains who he was and his relationship with Cezanne but, since the catalogue was in French then I have no idea. I look forward to reading about Gustave in the National Portrait Gallery catalogue.

Another portrait I loved was the one of Maggie Smith or, rather, 'Woman in Blue' to give the painting it's true title. As soon as I saw this one I thought of Maggie and still do. I can just see her sitting at a table waiting to be served a glass of sherry and sighing because of the wait. The slight downward glance and the angle of the hat, the plain blue jacket and dress against the colourful tablecloth all serve to give the painting a slight air of sadness, but I assume a momentary sadness. I'm sure she'll perk uo when the sherry is delivered.

It's a very simple portrait that cries out for a story to be draped around it and I hope the National Portrait Gallery version of the catalogue will do that. I want to know who she is and what was going on in her life at the time of the portrait.

One of the final portraits is another self-portrait by Monsieur Cezanne, this time as an old man whose beard has turned grey and he's gone all trendy by shaving it into a goatee beard. A large floppy beret tops off the portrait. The robust, beefy man of the earlier self-portraits has shrunk a bit with age but he's still using hats to cover his baldness. I looked at this portrait and thought old man and then wondered why he bothered to shave the sides of his beard? Was he still vain at that age? was it the fashion at the time? I don't know, but after all the earlier fully bearded portraits it did rather stand out for me.

I didn't realise that Cezanne was such a portraitist until this exhibition - I usually associate him in my head as a landscape artist because that's the genre I've mainly seen in his paintings. This exhibition shines a new light on him. That's always a good thing.

The exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery in London on 26 October and I'd certainly recommend it. I'll be going again to say 'bonjour' to Monsieur Cezanne.

Fra Angelico in The Louvre, Paris

The Louvre has an impressive collection of paintings by Fra Angelico, including a major altarpiece and a large fresco. It's easy to find them since they're opposite the entrance to the Italian room or corridor which starts off with the early Italian paintings at one end and gradually goes through the centuries as you wander along. There are seven works on display so make sure you see them all.

The first you come to is a large fresco of 'The Crucifixion' removed from Florence by easing the plaster off the wall and attaching it to a new backing to hold it together. This was done in the mid-1800s and sold by an art-dealer at the time. It's about ten feet tall and so the characters are virtually life-sized and shows the crucified Christ with Mary and St John the Evangelist, with St Dominic kneeing at the bottom of the cross. Stylistically, it's similar to some of the smaller crucifixion scenes at San Marco in Florence.

The fresco is on the wall in the ante-room before you enter the main Italian room and, if my visit was anything to go by, is largely missed by visitors who walk straight into the room without really looking at the paintings in the ante-room.

I particularly liked the characterisation of St John, looking up at his Lord and wringing his hands as the mortal man dies on the cross before he rises three days later. Look at the anguish in his eyes as he looks up. The fingers don't look quite right as his hands are clasped tightly and I've seen better representations by the Fra of this anguish but it's still an arresting vision. I suspect both St John's and Mary's robes would be brighter if the fresco was cleaned with modern techniques but I also suspect that could be dangerous given the history of the fresco now that it's no longer properly attached to a wall.

Walking past 'The Crucifixion' you're faced with the large 'The Coronation of The Virgin' which is directly opposite the entrance door to the Italian room. It shows Mary being crowned Queen of Heaven by Jesus, surrounded by angels, saints and other dignitaries. It makes the viewer almost a spectator at the event since the viewer would be kneeling and looking up as well. It's bright and colourful and very noticeable. The court of heaven of angels and apostles is separated from the mundane world by the figures kneeling and looking up at the heavenly pair.

There are seven predella scenes beneath the coronation scene that focus on the Dominican order, starting with St Dominic as a pillar of the church, literally holding it up with his own body. The central scene is the resurrection to remind the viewer how Jesus became the one to crown the Virgin.

I really liked the small scene with angels apparently serving the Dominican friars at a table - I don't know which tale this is meant to represent but I'll find out.

A detail I really liked was the figure of the bishop at the bottom-centre with his green robe with small scenes of the life of the Christ embroidered into the cloak at the back to make sure that even when facing the altar, the congregation still sees the life of Christ on his back. As ever, it's the detail that's fascinating and this shows the Fra's early training as a miniaturist. The embroidered scenes are very detailed and you'd have to be quite close to see them properly. It's almost a 'show off' moment for the Fra since the bishop is placed virtually central on the panel - it's almost saying 'look what I can do', 'look at the detail I could paint if you commissioned me and paid me for it to the friary'. It's really impressive.

I've seen clerical robes like this with embroidered scenes on the back displayed in the museum at Santa Maria Novella in Florence, although none were green.

The third work by Fra Angelico hangs on the wall beside the 'Coronation' and is a small predella scene of 'The Martyrdom of Saints Cosmo and Damian'. They were doctors and brothers and the patron saints of the Medicis who had funded the building of the Fra's friary of San Marco in Florence. They even had their own cell in the convent that was decorated with two scenes by Fra Angelico. It looks like it's part of the same predella about the saints that are housed in Munich and Dublic (neither of which I've yet seen but they are on my list to visit when I can).

The remaining four works by Fra Angelico are all fragments that are housed in a glass case against the wall to the left of the 'Coronation' as you stand with your back to it. Unfortunately, the case faces a window so it's not that easy to see them properly without dodging round to avoid the reflections. They comprise a predella panel showing the beheading of St John the Baptist, a small round figure of Christ and two angels facing each other.

The predella panel shows three scenes in one painting: the beheading of St John, a servant carrying his head into the banqueting room and Salome dancing to entrance the king into giving her her wish for his head. It's very cleverly done but I don't know which altarpiece this was part of the predella for.

The small figure of Christ is similar to the Fra's painting of the 'Blessed Redeemer' in the Royal Collection and currently on loan to the National Gallery in London. Christ is shown from the waist up offering a blessing. It's probably from the pinnacle of an altarpiece but I don't know which one.

My favourites were the two angels that quite possibly have been looking at each other from other sides of an altarpiece for 500 years and now look at each other in a glass case. They're not the same angel simply reversed, they are different if you look closely. The most obvious difference to me was in the positioning of the fingers of the hands crossing their chests - they're slightly different in each painting. Also look at the hair, which is different in each angel. It reminds me of something mentioned on one of my courses last year that Christ is often shown with hair that is blond/reddish to mark his difference from mere mortals in a place where the main hair-colour is dark. These angels are following suit. They are lovely and I'm only sorry I couldn't take a better photo of them.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Louvre didn't have more Fra Angelico treasures, other fragments not on display or drawings attributed to the Fra and his workshop, but these seven works are on public display to enjoy and admire. All photos were taken by me so don't let that influence you. They are all gorgeous and well worth spending some time to see if you're in the Louvre. 

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun at Le Grand Palais, Paris

While over in Paris we went to see the first major retrospective of the works of Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun to be held in France, which is very odd but shows that her status as a painter is increasing.

She was a painter to the court of Louis and Marie-Antoinette before the revolution, travelled round Europe during the revolution and Napoleon's empire and returned to France to take up her place as a painter again once stability had returned. She must have had an eventful life, leaving Paris because of her close association with the royalists to travel round Europe with her daughter, visiting the major cities and centres of art, making her living as a painter and spreading the word about her great skills with her brushes. This exhibition is almost entirely made up of portraits and some wonderful works they are too.

The exhibition is chronological, starting with her early world as she established herself as a portraitist with the aristocracy and the wealthy, refining her skills and creating her own contemporary legend as the go-to portraitist for the not-so-pretty because she could work wonders. The poster-girl for the exhibition is clearly pretty, with a slight blush on her cheek, covered in laces and bows but it was the tiny flowers on her hat that entranced me, such delicate little flowers adding to the beauty of the whole. The majority of her paintings are of women but she did paint some men, such as this lovely portrait of a long-forgotten actor in his silken garb. I suspect he was a little bit more portly than portrayed in this picture (his chubby face and neck doesn't quite match his waistline) but it works very well.

She knew the potential power of painting as propaganda and used it to great effect in her portraits of Marie-Antoinette, such as this one with her three children. Marie sits ramrod straight, every inch a regal queen with her feet resting on a thick cushion, but the whole effect is humanised by the poses of the children, leaning into her, playing around her and clearly loving her. Here we have queen and mother, mother to France and, through her children, to the future of France. The painting is very well constructed leaving the viewer in no doubt as to what you see, with the lush reds and velvet textures, the richness of the clothes but the almost down-to-earthness of children pulling at their mother, cuddling her  and wanting attention. They are clearly loved and indulged. That message obviously didn't work in some quarters.

The portraits became far more interesting to me once Elisabeth had left France after the revolution and went on her travels for a decade or so. The painting become richer and more intense, a wider colour palette and variety of subjects. The portraits are still mainly of women (or at least they are in this exhibition) but what an assortment of women - ladies and countesses, princes and mistresses, what characters they display. There are two portraits of Lady Hamilton (Nelson's lover) at the start of this section of the exhibition (upstairs from the first half) and these re richly drenched with colours that steer away from the light pastels of many of the earlier portraits. She is a woman, not a girl, of great beauty and energy, the lover of a warrior. Here she is, painted as a Bacchante dancing before a smoking Vesuvius, hair flying with her movements.

The portraits from her stay in St Petersburg are what really attracted me, with their bold colours and naturalistic poses capturing movement and passion. What glorious paintings these are and why has it taken so long for Vigee Le Brun to be recognised as a great portraitist? They are of individual people that were recognisable at the time and full of character for us looking on 200 years later. I was taken by this painting of a woman looking straight into your eyes, almost saying 'don't play your games with me Elisabeth, I know your tricks' and so Elisabeth did exactly what she does so well and painted the young lady with a direct gaze. Varvara Ivanovna Ladomirskaya was clearly a strong young woman who knew what she wanted and wouldn't put up with anyone trying to change her.

My favourite portrait was from about the same time, a strong young woman with a scarf in her hair and scarlet shawl wrapped close, looking straight out at the viewer, almost saying 'pay attention, I'm here and I have something to say'. I took the opportunity of a rare bench in front of this pinging to sit down and gaze at this painting and she drew me in, the plain background and bright red clothing. Her name was    but who was she really? That's one of the beauties of portraiture - these are real people with their own points of view and loves and challenges. They might have been nice or might have been nasty. I think the Countess Varvara Nicolayevna Golovina was nice and I'd have loved to have a chat with her. Her face says she's lived and she has a brain so she will have views to debate.

Elisabeth was also a great self-portraitist and the notes for the exhibition state that she used these to publicise herself. She was clearly a marketing genius ahead of her time. One of my favourite self-portraits was this one, painted with her daughter Julie, a loving mother and daughter, and the mother just happens to have been one of the greatest portraitists of the time.

This was a bit of an eye-opener of an exhibition. Before this I'd seen one of her paintings and now, having seen room after room of her work, I can really appreciate her skills. I'd like to know more about her - there were a few biographies in the shop at the end but they were all in French. The exhibition continues in Paris until January and then transfers to the USA and Canada so, if you get the chance, go and see it and wonder at this brave and incredibly talented woman. 

Vlaminck at the Atelier Grognard, Paris

Maurice de Vlaminck is an artist I know very little about but I've seen some of his marvellous fauvist paintings at the Courtauld Gallery in London and at Musee D'Orsay in Paris. There was an exhibition of his later works at the Atelier Grognard out in the suburbs of Rueil-Malmaison while I was in Paris recently so out came the map to try and find the gallery. Find it I did, and the nearest rail station which looked miles away… Still, where's there's a way there's a will!

So there we are, trudging down a quiet residential road, posh houses in walled grounds either side and the hot sun of an unseasonably warm and sunny Paris spring beating down. And no signposts or posters in sight. Luckily, my phone includes a map so I know I'm heading in roughy the right direction. And then finally there's a poster! At the end of the residential road, there are a few shops and then turning right, yet more walled in private houses and private roads. Posh indeed. And then there it is, the gallery, looking for all the world like a community art centre anywhere in the world.

The exhibition is in a large room with sections panelled off to make it more interesting and to separate out the works on display. We have a few early works including a couple of self-portraits with a pipe (I'm assuming Maurice liked a pipe) and a section with some of his vibrant fauvist-inspired works such as 'Restaurant' which normally hangs in Musee D'Orsay. I admit to loving 'Restaurant' and I want to eat there. I'd like a table outside please, beside the orange wall, so I can look at the pink-orange trees and the red grass. I'd sip a nice red while I waited for the surly waiter to serve me my food and drink in the colour along with the wine. Why isn't the world always like this?

These are the paintings I really wanted to see but most of the exhibition was made up of paintings of landscapes, of fields of corn and villages, of woods and trees being blown around. And all with a big sky. I didn't really notice at first but then that's all I saw - lots of skies. I should have got the hint from the exhibition poster, with half the painting being of the sky.

The skies were quite entrancing in their own way. None were the same and none done by rote. All were worked and moulded into being the right sky for that particular picture, occasionally blue but, more often, dangerous shades of grey, a sky that could change from benign to terror in the blink of an eye.

Some skies were violent and turbulent, some seascapes made little difference between the storming waves and the storming clouds but it was always there. The sky is a character in it's own right, not just the bit at the top of the painting that's normally blue.

Some of my favourite paintings were the snow scenes with the lowering grey skies contrasting with the often dirty, trodden snow on the ground. The people in these paintings were always negligible and roughly drawn, a few slashes of the brush and that's it, always bent as they trudged through the snow, almost cowering from the sky. They were all terribly atmospheric, a world Vlaminck has created in which we live in terror of the sky. Having so many of them on the walls together was almost oppressive. He might not have put much effort into painting people but he was a master of depicting the terror of clouds and atmospherics.

After a short sit down to rest, off we started on the trek back to the railway station. By now the afternoon heat was oppressive and a bottle of water wouldn't go amiss but where can you buy a simple thing like a bottle of water? Not in this neighbourhood certainly! It wasn't until we found the station again that we also found the station shop that sold water! What a funny area that was. I wasn't sad to be leaving at all and it was a delight to get a double-decker train back into Paris proper.

But there you go - at least I've seen some Vlaminck paintings I'd probably never have the opportunity to see without that odd trek into the middle of suburban nowhere. And I've learned about skies.

Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern

I saw posters for an exhibition of Sonia Delaunay's works in Paris when I was there in October 2014 but the exhibition opened the day I left so didn't manage to see it. That exhibition is now in London at the Tate Modern and opened a few days ago so I immediately went along to bask in her colours. I didn't know much about Sonia, although I'd come across her husband before (Robert Delaunay), so here was an opportunity to learn about this fascinating woman and see some of the works that have influenced avant-garde art movements throughout the last century.

As well as being an artists she branched out to design books for the dadaists, designed costumes for Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe, designed fabrics for Liberty and designed clothes for the great and good such as this coat for Gloria Swanson. This makes it such a great exhibition to wander round since you have no idea what might be in the next room.

There are sketches of clothes in her special colours and designs as well as specific examples, including a couple of woollen bathing suits and a parasol. There are shoes, ties, shawls, designs for commercial adverts, a dress and waistcoat and all sorts. In one room there is a big display of three of her fabrics rolling round and round, an interesting way to exhibit her works.

She was, of course, also an artist of great perception and power and, on arriving in Paris in 1906 she was attracted to the Fauves and the first couple of rooms are dedicated to this phase of her work. There were several portraits of 'Philomene' and this was my favourite with it's bright wallpaper behind the sitter. There were also a few portraits of a Finnish girl with a similarly yellow-based face, experimenting with the contrasts of colour on the body and how the eye interpets it.

From these early figurative works Sonia soon ventured down a more abstract route, developing the concept of 'simultanism' with her husband, using contrasting bright colours to bring a new vibrancy and life to painting at a time when other painters were becoming increasingly monochrome.  One of my favourites of her move to abstraction is a painting called 'Bal Bullier', named after a ballroom Sonia used to visit to sketch the dancers during the tango craze in Paris. There are two versions of the painting on display and you can see the shapes of the dancers swirling and strutting across the dance floor. The painting is full of energy and life.

From there she moved further into abstraction, focusing on geometric shapes, particularly circles in magical colours.

She contrasts colours and shapes to give them a vibrancy, make them resonate against and with each other and they're wonderful mandalas to gaze into and see the colours bubble and glow. Her art theories extended into trying to make them sing, to represent music with shapes and colours and she began her 'Rhythm' series of paintings.

I can't help but feel her forays into design and the applied arts helped her to develop her work, adding beauty to everyday life. That's partly what art's all about and Sonia's brings added depth. The swirling colours of her fabrics and magazine covers must have helped her to see ever more clearly where she wanted to go. What happens when the fabric falls just like this and the colours sit together…?

After the Second World War Sonia started using darker colours and is noted as saying that her great achievement was to discover black as an expressive colour in its own right. Who but a great artist would say something like that? The colours of her works are deeper and richer, more striking and just as gorgeous. Her 1969 painting called 'Syncopated Rhythm, known as The Black Snake' illustrates this perfectly and represents three phases of her artistic development from right to left. It really is quite marvellous in the flesh.

Sonia died in 1979 at the age of 94. She was born in the Ukraine and grew up in St Petersburg before moving to Paris in 1906 to train as an artist and what a life she must have seen. And kept painting and designing. A true artist. She is one of only two living artists to be exhibited at the Louvre and was awarded the Legion D'Honour. I learned so much by seeing this exhibition and there is so much more to learn. I have found a new hero and I need to learn more about her.