'Titian: Love, Desire, Death' at the National Gallery

The new exhibition at the National Gallery is 'Titian: Love, Desire, Death' which brings together Titian's 'poesie' series of paintings for the first time in nearly 500 years. The paintings are all of mythological scenes based on the tales of Ovid and others. The exhibition is basically in two rooms in the main gallery, the first does some scene setting explaining the background to the paintings and Titian's relationship with Phillip II of Spain, his patron at the time, and the paintings are all in the next room, seven large paintings in gilded frames.

Seven paintings? you might ask, but the 'poesie' series includes only six paintings. To which the National Gallery replies that it's included its 'Death of Actaeon' in the London exhibition since it was originally conceived as part of the series but was actually painted later. I don't know if it will be part of the exhibition when it moves on to other museums but it fits in nicely with the rest of the series. One of the other paintings is 'Diana and Actaeon' showing the moment when the young hunter Actaeon stumbles across the goddess bathing in the woods. For that sin the goddess turns him into a stag and he's attacked and killed by his own hunting dogs. In the 'Death' painting we can see Actaeon in the middle distance with the head of a stag, caught mid-transformation as Diana shoots him and his dogs attack him.

I prefer the painting in which Actaeon finds the goddess for the brighter colours and all the details, such as the nymph peeking from behind a pillar and the little lapdog growling and baring its teeth at the intruder.

Another scene of transformation is 'The Rape of Europa' and a detail of that painting is on the poster for the exhibition. The story behind the painting isn't the most pleasant but it's a lovely painting. Zeus has turned himself into a bull to capture Europa, his latest lust, who he carries off. Poor Europa looks very unsteady on the bull's back, her scarf whipping in the wind and little cupids doing their best to try to make it a love scene, but it's not. My favourite cupid is the one riding the dolphin in the sea, lower left.

A painting I hadn't seen before was 'Danae' with its dramatic light and dark sections. It shows Danae being visited by Zeus as a golden shower and who then gives birth to Perseus. There's a lovely contrast between the light, luminous Danae and the old, weathered woman looking after her (and not doing a very good job of it with Zeus around - you can't trust him around beautiful young women).

There's a little bit extra Titian in the way the exhibition is laid out in London. You exit through the shop and then into Room 8 of the Gallery which has been re-hung with the other Titian paintings the National Gallery owns. So, if you're looking for any Titian paintings, that's where they are for the moment (and the room is open to the public). To add context, paintings by other leading contemporary artists are also on display, including Michelangelo, Sebastiano (the huge 'Lazarus' painting), Parmigianino and Andrea del Sarto. It was a nice surprise to leave the exhibition only to have yet more Titians to look at.

Once it closes in London, the exhibition is travelling up to Edinburgh (two of the paintings are jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland with the National Gallery in London), then goes to the Prado in Madrid (which owns a painting) and then to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (it owns 'The Rape of Europa'). 

John Singer Sargent in Boston

There is a lot of John Singer Sargent in Boston. He's one of those artists that most people know the name but probably not a lot of his work. That was certainly me until  few years ago when I went to the great exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London when I saw a much wider range of his works. One of his paintings is even the object of a ballet performed by the Royal Ballet. Then I saw a range of his watercolours at Dulwich Picture Gallery last year so I was ready to have my horizons expanded beyond society portraiture and that's what you get in Boston. He's all over the place.

The first painting of his that I saw i Boston was his portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner that hangs in the museum of her name. Apparently she knew Sargent socially so is graced with her own portrait. The painting is in her 'gothic' room in her museum and looks out over a small panel by Giotto so she's in good company and is still keeping an eye on her treasures.

I next encountered Sargent in the Museum of Fine Art a bit further up the road from the Gardner Museum when I spotted a drawing that drew my attention. The pose reminded me of a model I'd drawn a few weeks earlier on one of my life drawing classes so I walked closer to have a look and saw it was by Sargent. I don't think I've seen a nude by Sargent before so that was a surprise but, I suppose, he's actually drawn all sorts of pictures.  He painted the dome and ceiling of the museum and there's an exhibition of his sketches in the space underneath the dome. I suspect this model was Thomas E McKeller of whom there is is an excellent portrait in the Sargent room upstairs.

This is an excellent portrait on so many levels. I'd never associated Sargent with nude paintings but, of course, he must have made many as all artists do to get the hang of the human figure. This is such a direct pose, so vulnerable and strong at the same time. I just stood there for a moment thinking 'Good grief, this is Sargent?'. Apparently he used Thomas as a regular model and he's the basis for many of the Sargent murals in the MFA. This is a great painting. The other paintings in the Sargent room are more like you'd expect from him, formal portraits and paintings with children but this powerful painting of a naked man is the one that will stay with me. It's very impressive.

There are more paintings by Sargent in Boston Public Library. It's a big old Victorian mausoleum of a building with big murals on the walls, grand staircases and lifts with the names of benefactors. Sargent's murals about religion are on the second floor (or Level Three in American) and are free to access. A few of the sketches at the MFA are sketches for these murals so it was nice to see them. I found it particularly strange to see a sketch of Christ on show - definitely not your standard Sargent drawing!

We see ancient Egyptian gods and demons at one end of the hall and Christ crucified at the other end. It's all very strange and painted in deep, rich colours. It's not entirely clear to me what Sargent was trying to say through these paintings even though he spent a long time working on them. It's a really odd collection of strangely religious, strangely mystical paintings that need an explanation but that's exactly what Sargent doesn't give us. He seems to be saying 'make your own minds up'.

I'm really pleased to have seen these drawings and paintings by Sargent that broaden my understanding of his work. Yes, he was a society painter but he was so much more. I've never understood why there were so many books about him but now I do. There's an angle to Sargent that can please almost everyone, you just need to find that angle. Boston is a good place to start.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

I can't possibly go to a foreign city to explore its museums and galleries and not blog about them. Because I needed to see the Fra Angelico exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston then that was the first place I visited.

After seeing the Fra Angelico exhibition in the new wing of the museum I walked through the glass tunnel to 'the Palace', the name now given to Isabella's house and art mansion. At first, I thought it was a bit like Leighton House in Kensington, a period residence full of art, but this is so much more and so much bigger. One of the prides of the collection is a portrait of Isabella by John Singer Sargent that is on display in one of the corner rooms upstairs. I quickly came to the conclusion that this museum should definitely be on anyone's top ten list of places to visit in Boston and, for an art lover, I'd say top five.

Once you're through the tunnel you come to the courtyard garden. My first reaction was to wonder where all the snow was? There was a foot or so of snow outside, so where was it? Looking up, I saw a glass ceiling protecting the garden and enabling the plants to grow and flower. You can't go into the garden but can walk all the way round it. There's a central mosaic and loads of statues dotted around the planting. Given the whiteness of the snow outside, it was odd to see all the greenery in the courtyard. I bet it's lovely in spring and high summer.

The mansion is very big and three stories high and that makes exploring it really interesting, never knowing what you might come across next. To a layman, the layout of the place makes little sense with X painting next to Y period desk and chairs and Z painting opposite with a gothic altarpiece just to the right... it's a right hodge-podge of stuff thrown together for reasons I can't fathom. Like having a Botticelli Virgin & Child in the alcove of a corridor that people will most likely miss and  turn left along the corridor rather than right to see the painting. Most museums would have a Botticelli front and centre with big lighting and signage. Not here.

In a talk in the Fra Angelico exhibition I learned that everything in the museum was put where Isabella Stewart Gardner wanted it and it's part of the bequest that the location can't be changed. Fair enough, it's her art and she can place it where she wants. Like placing the Fra Angelico reliquary on the side of a fireplace that makes it easy to miss unless you look but it's beside a north-facing window so it gets consistent sunlight rather than the vagaries of morning/afternoon sunlight.

I actually quite liked this approach, wandering round the place finding one 'wow' painting after another. I didn't really bother with the map you're given on entry but just followed my nose. My 'wow' factor almost went audible when I found a small panel by Giotto standing on top of a small red velvet-covered desk, close enough to touch. A lovey little Giotto in this collection, close enough to touch and positioned under her gaze. I suspect many world-cess museums would be happy to have this small panel in their own collections. I wanted to pull the seat out from under the desk and sit down and just look at it. I wonder how many people have actually touched this gem over the years?

In one room you actually enter under a wooden pulpit. I was too busy looking round the room to look for another gem but I suspect the pulpit was Italian and her guests probably played with it, making speeches or wotnot from the platform.

I really liked the 'you never know what you'll find next' experience of wandering around that big old house. All built around that lovely courtyard garden with lots of windows looking out over it so it really is central to the place. So much art in there: paintings, tapestries, furniture, sculpture and the house itself. What must it have been like to live surrounded by all that art? Not all of it is great art, but it's definitely interesting art.

So if you're in Boston and you like art then you could do a lot worse that spend a couple of hours in the Gardner Museum. It's just a few minutes walk from the Museum of Fine Art and you get a discount on the MFA ticket if you show your Gardner Museum ticket (the MFA ticket desk saw my Gardner Museum bag and helpfully mentioned it). The Gardner Museum also has a great little restaurant and gift shop. It also has best toilets in Boston - just look at all that green!

'The Humans' at the Shubert Theater, Boston

My final play in Boston was 'The Humans' at the Shubert Theatre. 'The Humans' is on tour following an award-wining run on Broadway and I caught it on its visit to Boston. I wasn't really sure what to expect so I was in for some surprises.

It's a simple tale of a family gathering for Thanksgiving dinner but, for the first time, this isn't in the family home but rather at the daughter's new apartment in Manhattan, so new, very little is unpacked yet. It's a small cast of characters with Erik and Deirdre as the parents, Aimee and Brigid as the two daughters, Richard as Brigid's partner and 'Momo', the grandmother with dementia. The apartment block is old and decrepit but quite spacious and Aimee says they're lucky to get in in New York these days.There are creaks and light bulb problems and the old lady upstairs makes a lot of noise.

Home truths soon start leaking as the family talks and gathers round the table, up and downstairs to the bathroom and living room and people talk endlessly, including over each other far too often for my liking. There are a lot of words in this play. Brigid is a bit resentful that her parents haven't helped her financially with getting a place to live, the daughters laugh together about random articles their mother emails to them, Dad makes bad jokes and Brigid tells her sister about her partner's need to make lists and tell her his dreams. Little frictions and niggles build and get glossed over and Erik is goaded into telling his family about the dreams of a weird, faceless woman that have been disturbing his sleep.

This goes on for some time, keeping the tension building amongst the jokes and laughs, the problems of the new apartment and the Catholic mother's little comments about her daughter not being married and in a stable relationship. Something's going to happen any minute, I kept thinking, the play is moving us towards something, but I couldn't guess what. And then the father comes clean and tells his daughters that he's cheated on their mother. With a prostitute. And has lost his job and pension after 28 years working with a private school with a morality clause in the contract. And they can't afford to move to the new house now and can't afford the bills for his mother with dementia and need to move into a small apartment themselves. The daughters are devastated by this bombshell, delivered while their mother is upstairs seeing to the needs of their grandmother. Throughout all this, I just thought 'what a brave man' for admitting all this so candidly and calmly.

Then the visit is over and they rush to get ready for the cab to take them home since Dad has been drinking and the light bulb blows, leaving him alone downstairs, with the odd sounds of the apartment building around him. He bumbles round and sits down in the dark, with the only light coming from the basement door that he's wedged open and we see a woman walk slowly across the corridor outside, but he doesn't. Tension is really mounting by this stage and, suddenly, the lights all go out and we start clapping. The end. Phew!

At first I didn't think I was going to like the play but it slowly wound me in until by the end I was hooked. It's very well constructed to build up the tension almost without us noticing until we get the bombshell. It included some lovely moments as well, with Dad consoling daughter Aimee over recently splitting with her girlfriend without making a thing out of it and also the almost throwaway moments of Momo's dementia and the touching letter to her granddaughters she wrote four years ago which Dad reads out. It's nothing special, just life carrying on as it does. The flow and tension was helped by it playing as one act with no interval.

I liked Richard Thomas as Dad Erik and Therese Plaehn as daughter Aimee but was less keen on Daisey Eagan as Brigid who's voice was too high and light and frequently got lost. I wasn't too keen on the 'let's all talk over one another' sections, particularly in the first half - do Americans really talk like that at home? It was also the rudest audience I've been with for a long time, talking, repeating lines,, shuffling round swapping seats and especially those arriving 15 minutes late for an 8pm start. They'd settled down towards the end but good grief people!

I'm not sure whether the play would work over here in London since it is so very American, but who knows? If it does transfer then I'd definitely like to see it again. It was written by Stephen Karam who I know nothing about but will certainly be interested in seeing anything else he does.

Fra Angelico in Boston

The people of Boston are very lucky in that they have three works by Fra Angelico on public display in the city. It is my duty and delight to report my sightings of new Fra Angelico paintings when I find them - sometimes I know they're there and visit places specifically to see them but, now and then, I have a surprise and find one that I wasn't expecting (which is another joy all together).

The most glorious of the Boston Fra Angelico works is the small panel bought by Isabella Stewart Gardner and is on show in her museum, 'The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin'. It's currently on display as part of the 'Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth' exhibition in the new wing at the Gardner Museum along with the three other reliquaries that the Fra painted for Santa Maria Novella in Florence as well as other works on loan to the exhibition.

It's part of Gardner's will that endows the Museum that the works can't be moved from where she placed them around her house other than for a short time for internal exhibitions. That will be why the other three reliquaries had to come to Boston from Florence rather than sending the Gardner reliquary to Florence.

The panel is normally hung on the side of a wooden fireplace in Gardner's mansion house beside a north-facing window in a corner room on the second floor (the first floor to British people). Apparently it was placed there deliberately so it receives constant light during the day rather than the vagaries of morning and afternoon light. This emerged during a very interesting talk from one of the museum experts in the Fra Angelico exhibition while I was there.

The second Boston Fra was an accidental find in the Museum of Fine Art (I really ought to do my homework properly). It's a small octagonal panel, about 10" x 10", hung a bit too high up on the wall in a corridor gallery in Room 219 on the second (i.e. the first) floor. It's a bit of a hodgepodge of art works in that corridor and it would be easy to miss the painting if the colours didn't attract my eye and, on a closer inspection, it's clearly by Fra Angelico. The painting is titled, 'Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Peter, Paul and George (?), Four Angels and a Donor'. The label mentioned that a head of Christ used to be on the other side of the panel but doesn't mention where it is now.

The scene takes place in a garden - just look at all those tiny flowers - which makes the figure pf St George look even more awkward in his bulky armour. I can't think of any other painting by Fra Angelico that includes St George which may be why there is a question mark in the title after his name. The saint I recognised immediately was St Peter, not simply because he holds the keys or that he's dressed in his traditional blue and orange, but look at his face. I've seen that face before, such as in the Corsini triptych in which St Peter looks the same. I wonder if the Fra had a consistent approach to faces so that different saints always had the same face so that viewers could recognise them by their features and not just by their symbols? I shall have to do some research into this.

The third Boston Fra Angelico work is in the Harvard Art Museums, 'Christ on the Cross, the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist and Cardinal Torquemada'. It's a very late work (estimated at 1453-54 and the Fra died in 1455) and is thought to have been commissioned by the cardinal with whom the Fra stayed with in Rome while working for the Pope. It's the central panel of a triptych, a tabernacle altarpiece that would travel round with the cardinal as a personal devotional piece. I don't know where the other two wings of the tabernacle are now.

It's an interesting, if rather stern, piece, with Adam's skull at the bottom of the Cross and the Cross turns into the tree of life at the top with a nesting pelican wounding itself to feed it's young, a symbol of Christ's sacrifice. Christ's blood flows down to the cardinal's red hat as he kneels there praying to his lord. Saint John looks particularly upset, with his hand pressed to his face and it looks like he's been crying.

I don't know if it was the snow, the time of day or the season, but the museum wasn't very busy at all which meant I could spend some time undisturbed in front of the altarpiece. It's hung on the wall in a glass case with a few paintings by Botticelli and his school on the adjoining wall.

So, there you are, the three Fra Angelico's of Boston. All are lovely and all are interesting in different ways. It's always rewarding looking at the detail in Fra paintings and these paintings have given me a new quest, to compare faces in different works by the Fra to see comparisons and differences in the same characters. Watch this space!