'French Impressions' - Prints at the British Museum

The British Museum has just opened a new, small exhibition about prints-making by the Impressionists and their successors, 'French Impressions: Prints from Manet to Cezanne'. It's upstairs in Room 90, a single room, but it has some great works that are well worth seeing. They seem to be mainly lithographs, rather than other forms of print-making, with some etchings on display as well. I've seen many paintings by some of the artists featured in this exhibition, but those were in oil paints rather than the mainly monochrome prints so it's interesting to see how they manage with a largely monochrome palette.

One of the first prints I saw was a lovely small portrait of the painter Berthe Morisot that also serves as the picture for the poster of the exhibition. It's by Manet, who was friend of hers. You've probably heard of Manet but possibly not heard of Morisot. I saw an exhibition of her works a few years back in Paris and all the exhibits were small, warm and very welcoming. Morisot also has a couple of prints in the exhibition that were more like line drawings, quite delicate and small, one of which was a self-portrait with her daughter.

One of the more experimental print-makers was Degas and there's one of his 'bather' prints on display. Apparently the first time he made this print if came out too dark so all the detail was lost so he scraped it clean and tried again and this is the result. Not as feminine as his pastels but still, obviously, a Degas.

There was, of course, the inevitable print by Toulouse-Lautrec but the one that surprised me was a portrait by Vincent Van Gogh of Dr Gachet, with whom he was staying in Auvers after his release from the mental asylum. It's an etching and is Van Gogh's only etching which he gave to the doctor and his son donated it to the British Museum in 1923. Apparently Dr Gachet taught Vincent how to etch.  

There were a few other portraits in the exhibition and one of my favourites was a portrait of the art dealer Ambroise Vollard by Renoir, a lithograph from 1904. They were friends and I think this comes across in the portrait which seems quite gentle and intimate.

Another portrait I liked was a self-portrait by Cezanne. Apparently Cezanne only made eight prints and this is a lithograph self-portrait from around 1896. He also knew Dr Gachet and stayed with him in Auvers in 1873 (it was a smaller world back then). This doesn't look like any of Cezanne's other self-portraits which were all painted in oil  but is really quite charming, sitting in front of a canvas (or mirror?) he was working on. There was a great exhibition of his portraiture a few years ago that I saw in Paris and in London and it's a great shame that this print wasn't included in it - it would've helped shed more light on his approach to portraiture.

In the display case beside the self-portrait was another of Cezanne's rare prints, this time a print of one of his 'Bathers'.

A final print I'll highlight is a colourful one to show that they also used colour back then and not everything was monochrome. This is another lithograph by Henri Gabriel Ibels from 1893, 'At The Circus, The Clown'. Lovely warm colours and simple lines and so very effective.

If you're in the area you could do worse than pop in to see the exhibition - it's free!

A Decade of Exhibitions 2010-2019

At the end of the decade I thought I'd look back at exhibitions I saw over that time and see if I could come up with a top ten. I couldn't so I've listed my top 14 exhibitions. The criteria are really quite broad, not simply those I've personally liked but also those I've learned from, exhibitions that have brought together the widest range of paintings rather than going for the obvious exhibits, a whole host of things.

They're in chronological order rather than a countdown to the top exhibition - that's a step too far into the impossible. So here they are, the best exhibitions I've seen in the last decade.

Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light - Musee Jacquemart-Andre, Paris (2011)

The first exhibition about Fra Angelico I ever attended was at the Musee Jacquemart-Andre in Paris in 2011 and that was the first time I'd seen the widest range of his works outside of San Marco in Florence. The exhibition was made up of 20-odd paintings by Fra Angelico and about the same number by contemporary artists he influenced or was influenced by. I still remember standing in the middle of a small room being surrounded by paintings of the Virgin & Child by Fra Angelico, the vivid colours, the serenity, the different compositions - definitely a wow moment.

Paul Klee: Making Visible - Tate Modern, London (2014)

I've liked works by Paul Klee since I first came across him in school in about 1978. He's not one of the most famous artists of the 20th Century but he's one of the most influential, being a member of various art movements in the first half of the century including Der Blaue Reiter in Munich. I remember this exhibition as being very big, and it was, but largely because his paintings are mainly relatively small so more fit onto the walls. There was so much colour in those galleries, shapes and textures, mesmerising paintings to gaze at and decide what they're about - is that a house in the hills? a human figure? or just a mass of colours? It doesn't matter really, the beauty emanates out of the paintings. I went back several times to be in rooms surrounded by those amazing paintings.

Matisse: The Cut-Outs - Tate Modern, London (2014)

The follow-up exhibition to the Paul Klee exhibition at Tate Modern in 2014 was about Matisse and his cut-outs. The cut-outs are just that, coloured paper cut up and torn into different shapes and pasted  onto a background, so simple and yet so effective. Monsieur Matisse was an old man when he started creating his cut-outs and it was great seeing early film of him working as part of the exhibition. As he grew older he needed to use his assistants to place the coloured papers just right to fit his vision. How can so much beauty come from cut up bits of paper? It was an astonishing exhibition that I re-visited several times.

Inventing Impressionism - National Gallery, London (2015)

There were many Impressionist exhibitions over the decade and I attended quite a few but the Inventing Impressionism was rather special. It was based on the collection of the art dealer Paul Durant-Ruel who championed the Impressionist painters in the early days and virtually all of the paintings in the exhibition went through his hands at some stage. The exhibition contained some astonishing works that were completely new to me, a high quality exhibition without any filler at all. There was a quote on the wall of the final room of the exhibition from Durant-Ruel, 'At last the Impressionist masters triumphed...'. I loved that quote, naming the impressionist painters as 'masters', equal to the Old Masters we're familiar with.

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun - Le Grand Palais, Paris (2015)

I'd never heard of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun until I went to the exhibition of her portraits in Paris in 2015 and I'm so pleased I went. Madame Vigee Le Brun had an astonish life, being the favourite portraitist of Marie Antoinette, going into exile during the French Revolution due to her connection to royalty, travelling around Europe with her daughter making her living by painting portraits in country after country before eventually returning to France and dying in her own bed when in her 80s after attending a party that evening. Her legacy was on display in that huge exhibition that seemed to go on and on, with portrait after portrait, so lifelike and alive in expressions and colours, a true master of portraiture. The poster for the exhibition was one of her own self-portraits.

Sonia Delaunay - Tate Modern, London (2015)

I've known of the Delaunay's for quite a while but mainly Robert, Sonia's husband, so I looked forward to seeing this exhibition of Sonia's work. They worked together in the early years developing radical colour theories and putting them into practice in similar but subtly different ways. From the minutes I walked into the exhibition I was surrounded by colour, by Sonia's sketches and paintings, illustrations for Dadaist poetry, designs for clothes and samples of her work, so much variety and colour everywhere. It was great to learn about her life and work, about how she's quoted as saying she discovered black when in her 60s, about how she continued painting and experimenting into her old age in Paris. I was mightily impressed by this exhibition and, more so, by the variety of her work, always inventing, always creative.

Painting the Modern Garden: From Monet to Matisse - Royal Academy, London (2016)

Another great exhibition was all about paintings of gardens in all their variety, all the colour and shapes and textures of flowers and trees and shrubs, gardens with people in them, with country cottages, with walls and just flowers. Lots of flowers. I loved it. As well as paintings it included information about the gardening habits of some of the artists, who swapped seedlings with who and who liked to paint someone else's garden. There was a  great photo of Kandinsky in his garden with a shovel, wearing shorts and with a cigarette in his mouth. I wanted to jump into some of the paintings and wallow in the flowers colours. The only poor thing about the exhibition was the rather dull poster featuring a detail of a Monet.

A Thyssen Never Seen - CaixaForum, Barcelona (2016)

I went to Barcelona to see this exhibition, mainly to see a beautiful Virgin & Child by Fra Angelico, one of my favourite paintings of his, but got caught by the sheer range of paintings in the exhibition which was showing off the Thyssen collection from Madrid. From early Renaissance paintings to modern works from the mid-20th Century, there was something there for everyone. Whoever curated the exhibition and managed to get so many masterpieces from the Thyssen-Bornamisza Museum in Madrid must've been a good negotiator since it was an amazing variety of paintings from across the centuries, all first rate and no filler.

Out of Chaos - Laing Gallery, Newcastle (2017)

The 'Out of Chaos' exhibition in Newcastle was in partnership with the Ben Uri collection in London, a collection of works telling the tale of migration and escape from persecution in the first half of the 20th Century. Of course, not everyone escaped and some of the works shown were poignant in that the artists were killed or died before they could reach safety and their potential forever lost. I can still remember some of the terrible images in those paintings. I was pleased to see a couple of small works by Sonia Delaunay since she and her husband fled persecution and war. It was a powerful exhibition with some very powerful tales to tell.

Raphael: The Drawings - Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2017)

This exhibition at the Ashmolean in Oxford consisted of drawings, big and small, by Raphael, all of which I'd never seen before but some of which were sketches for elements of paintings and I'd seen a couple of those finished paintings (such as Disco Jesus in the Vatican). To say that Raphael was a good drawer is an understatement. It was particularly good to see him practicing his compositions, having a character face this way and then that way as he experimented with what might be the most effective or dramatic. It's good to get a glimpse of how an artist of his stature worked.

Picasso 1932 - Tate Modern, London (2018)

This was  an odd exhibition in many ways - not everything in it was first rate Picasso but everything was authentic. It showed us his works from a very experimental year when he was already rich and famous but wasn't sure where to go next artistically. There was also one large room put aside to show us the works in one of his one-man exhibitions he curated that year. I loved how each exhibition was labeled with the day and date the work was done - so many works completed in less than a day before he moved on to something else. The sheer creativity of the man is astounding.

Florence - Alte Pinakothek, Munich (2019)

This was a truly great exhibition on so many levels, with great paintings from about 1300 - 1500 by painters associated with Florence. Giotto, Gaddi, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippo, Ghirlandaio, Leonardo, Fra Bartolomeo, Botticelli and a host of others. Altarpieces were re-imagined using available predella panels and side panels, early portraits showing the development of portraiture - so much stuff to marvel at. The museum had started work on this exhibition five years ago and it must have been a joy to see it come to fruition and see it constantly packed with visitors, both local and international to enjoy the wealth of glorious art gathered together in the same place for the first time. Well done Alte Pinakothek!

Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance - Prado, Madrid (2019)

A large exhibition of works by Fra Angelico from all over the world to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Prado, all centred on the newly restored 'Annunciation' by Angelico that is one of the prides of the Prado's collection. It really was a stunning collection of paintings from major, large collections and obscure small pieces from small collections in towns around Europe and the USA. It was startling to see all these paintings by Fra Angelico in the same place, see his art develop, his story-telling improving, the subjects he chose to paint and the colours he used. The ficus was on one decade of 1420-30 when Angelico reached his peak with his glorious Virgin & Child paintings and the masterpiece of the 'Annunciation'. So much care went into the detail of this exhibition and chosing Adam and Eve from the 'Annunciation' to front the exhibition was inspired. Well done Prado!

Keith Haring - Tate Liverpool (2019)

The final highlight exhibition for me was the recent exhibition of works by Keith Haring at Tate Liverpool. I suspect we can all recognise his cartoon-like works but I didn't know much about him before this exhibition, his activism and his untimely early death. He would've been just a few years older than me if he hadn't died and I can't help but wonder what he'd be producing these days. It was a very big exhibition with loads of his stuff on paper, vinyl and canvas, big pieces and small, some as stand0alone works, others were for posters and his activism. His early works about AIDS were particularly powerful and his later works reflected this except they were bigger, more complicated and more painful to see. Tate Liverpool obviously understood this and the final image, just as you left the gallery, was a blown up photo of Keith with his top off and wearing parched jeans having a bit of a dance and a giggle, reminding us of the fun he enjoyed and his indomitable spirit manifest in his art.

So there you have it, a decade of exhibitions. There were many more over the decade, well over 100 or more, but these are my favourites, the ones I think back to and enjoy, even the painful ones. I'm quite pleased that so many were outside London and outside the country - you don't have to be in London to see great art, it's happening everywhere!

There were many more that weren't about painting as well, exhibitions of sculpture, folk crafts, ancient artefacts, Buddhist scriptures, manuscripts, punk memorabilia, all sorts of stuff really. Take a look at what's happening in your local gallery or museum - or maybe your local coffee house or pub even - since amazing things happen everywhere. The important thing is to open your eyes and your mind - you never know what you might find.

Impressionists and Moderns: Masterpieces from the Phillips Collection at CaixaForum, Madrid

One of the joys of wandering round a strange city is that you never know what you might find. On the way to Museo Reina Sofia, walking down the road past the Prado, we stumbled across an odd building with a garden growing on one of the outside walls and saw a large poster highlighting a Degas painting of ballet dancers. It was the Madrid branch of the excellent CaixaForum in an exciting new building which provides the perfect space for exhibitions. The current exhibition was 'Impressionists and Moderns: Masterpieces from the Phillips Collection'.

I've not heard of the Phillips Collection but it's based in Washington, USA, and is an astonishing collection of 'modern' paintings in the European tradition. There were 60 paintings in this exhibition ranging from the neo-classical of Ingres and romanticism of Constable in the early-1800s to abstract paintings from the 1970s. It almost felt like a greatest hits of painters in the last 200 years - you name him and he's there (yes, overwhelmingly male painters other than Berthe Morisot). Delacroix, Degas, Cezanne, Picasso, Braques, Bonnard, Kandinsky and so many more.

One of the early paintings that grabbed my attention was 'The Road to Vetheull' by Monet, a simple but lovely landscape painted in the late afternoon, presumably returning home after a long walk. The colours are marvellous and the shadows tell us the time but where has the artist been and where is he going? What's round the bend in the road? I want to know.  I could almost imagine myself trudging along that road, aiming for the teashop for a cup of tea and cake on my return from a day out exploring the countryside. The sight of the village in the distance shows that I'm almost there. M. Monet knows how to draw you into a painting.

Another painting that made me look again was 'The Riviera' by Pierre Bonnard, another landscape full of colour and shape and motion. Painted from a high vantage point, this painting is full of vegetation and light, bright, sunlit colours and you can imagine the bushes and trees swaying in the breeze. A chateau is central in the middle distance and, perhaps, that's where Bonnard was staying?

Another landscape that pulled me in was 'Courmayear et les Dents des Geants' by Oskar Kokoschka, again full of colour and inviting me to stride around the jagged mountains in the painting. I'm not usually a big fan of landscapes but these paintings were excellent and pulled me in. I've never associated Mr Kokoschka with sunny landscapes before so I've obviously got a lot more to learn.

A final painting I'd single out is Matisse's 'Interior with Egyptian Curtains' from 1948. He's used this kind of composition before, an indoors scene looking out of a window - often of a palm tree - and this has a power to draw the eyes. It's so simple yet so effective. I can almost hear the palm leaves rustling in the breeze outside the window, those simple dashes of green and blue perfectly summing up the swaying palm leaves. How does he do it?

There were, of course, lots of other paintings to mention but I can't do that here - buy the catalogue online if you'd like (CaixaForum had an excellent shop). The Collection really is a 'greatest hits' of the best of 'modern' art and I'll certainly keep my eyes open for any future exhibitions involving the Phillips Collection.

I'm delighted to have discover the CaixaForum, a great space for exhibiting art and a lovely comfortable feeling to the place as well. I loved the lime green toilets on the 6th floor and the garden wall beside the entrance - that's partly what attracted me to the building in the first place, seeing the gardeners tidying up the wall for Autumn.

I plan to visit the CaixaForum in Barcelona in November to see an exhibition from the Thyssen-Bornimesza Collection so it'll be interesting to compare the two spaces. I wonder if it'll have lime green toilets as well?

'Inventing Impressionism' at the National Gallery

Last week we went to see the new exhibition at the National Gallery on the Impressionists. I'm not the biggest fan of the Impressionists - they've been far too ubiquitous and their paintings have found their way onto greetings cards and biscuit tins. I've walked quickly through the Impressionist galleries at the Musee D'Orsay in Paris because I've seen too many and felt like I was drowning in their paintings. They're everywhere.

And maybe that's why this exhibition is so good since there is no filler. It's themed around the collection of Paul Durand-Ruel, the art dealer who nearly bankrupted himself twice through his love of the paintings and support of the artists. All but one of the 85 paintings in the exhibition went through his hands at some point. He championed the new style of painting and almost single-handedly invented the idea of the solo exhibition. Holding exhibitions in London and New York took Impressionism international and eventually secured the funding they needed to keep painting and their reputations down the years.

The exhibition opens with two lovely paintings by Renoir of Durand-Ruel's children, sons sitting together and daughters sitting together, full of life and colour with their whole lives ahead of them. I liked the painting of the girls with the posy of flowers and bright hat, with the red flowers matching the red lining of the hat. They're having a chat and just look up to see themselves being painted. I wonder what they got up to in their later lives and whether they were happy?

I've never been that keen on Renoir before but I liked the paintings in this exhibition, not just the paintings of the Durand-Ruel's but there are three of his life sized 'dance' paintings in the exhibition as well. My favourite was 'Dance In The Country' if only because of the face of the young girl - she's clearly found the love of her life and the exuberance of the dance has taken her to another level. It's a lovely painting and made me smile.

Of course, the Impressionists are famed for their landscapes in which they painted light. There are paintings by Pissarro, Sisley, Monet and more, mainly set in spring and summer but also a few set in winter with snow on the ground and leaden skies. One of my favourites was 'Entrance to the Village of Voisin' by Pissarro with his classic tall thin trees casting shadows - this picture doesn't do it justice since to my eyes he was painting the light in, around and covering the landscape, rather than painting the landscape itself. It's quite a marvellous painting.

It was also lovely to see his small paintings of Sydenham and Upper Norwood from his years in and around London.

There are some gorgeous paintings my Monet, including five paintings from his 'Poplars' series, a beautiful painting of his garden with a courting couple in the background and this magical painting, 'Road at La Cavee, Pourville'. It's a lovely painting that draws you in as you gaze at it, wandering down a dusty path between two banks of grass and tiny flowers, down and round a hill towards the sea. But what is just round that corner? What surprise or adventure awaits the dreamer who just follows that path. I imagined a pirate ship sailing into view from behind the trees, coming to whisk me off an adventure on the high seas. It's a magical image that draws you in - I'd like to step into that painting and wander off down the road…

There are also paintings of everyday life and the everyday life of certain groups of people. We see Degas's racehorse paintings and the delightful 'Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando', swinging from a rope hanging from the ceiling. I like Miss La La for her athleticism, her bravery and her strong teeth. The painting is all about capturing movement, the feeling of her spinning around at the end of the rope and Degas has caught a split second of her act. Painted from below adds to the sense of height and danger and makes her an exotic character. Interestingly, we don't see her face. I wonder if he ever painted her with her face showing - I'm intrigued.

There's a lot to make you think in this exhibition and it seems to have been well thought out with text on the walls to give you an idea of what was going on and which exhibitions the paintings were part of. And slowly, the Impressionists started to become appreciated, welcomed and then lauded.

The final room includes the later paintings of some of the Impressionists and one that really grabbed my attention was 'Two Sisters (on the Terrace)' by Renoir - yes, another Renoir painting! It's the red hat that calls to me across the room, then the flowers on the little girl's hat and the flowers in the older sister's lap. They're a riot of dashes of colour brining fresh flowers to life against the greens in the background and the dark dress. I couldn't help but move over to that painting, by-passing some of the others to get lost in those impossible flowers. Nothing can be that colourful - I don't believe it but there they are, captured in paint forever. This picture doesn't do them justice at all - it's always so much better to see the real thing in front of you.

Also in that final room, on the wall beside the exit door is a quote from Paul Durand-Ruel from 1920: "At last the Impressionist masters triumphed… My madness had been wisdom". I like that quote. He honours the painters by calling them 'masters' and saying that they 'triumphed'. He also notes that his own judgement had been right all along.

This is a really good exhibition and is a must. If you visit only one exhibition in April go to this one. If you love the Impressionists you'll see new things to love and if you're ambivalent towards them, then this might make you think twice. Basing it around the life and collection of Paul Durand-Ruel is an inspired idea and it's great to see these wonderful paintings together in the same exhibition.

I'll leave you with 'The Artist's Garden in Argenteuil' by Monet. Let your eyes drink in those flowers and bushes and then wonder what that courting couple in the distance are talking about...