Favourite Paintings: Sketch 3 for 'Composition VII' by Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky is one of the great painters of the early 20th Century who went on an astonishing journey from representative painting into the far reaches of abstraction in a very short time. He was one of the founders of Der Blaue Reiter movement in Munich and that was the launchpad for his journey via colour theories, manifestos and intellectual treatises. There was a rationale behind much of what he painted and a lot of sheer joy in the use of colours and dynamic shapes.

One of my favourite paintings is a sketch for 'Composition VII' that hangs in the Lenbachhaus in Munich. Up on the second floor there is a large room full of paintings by Kandinsky and I couldn't help but grin widely when I walked into it for the first time, delighted at being surrounded by so much colour. There are two sketches from 1913 for 'Composition VII' side by side on the wall, Sketch 2 and Sketch 3, similar in some respects but different in others, and the one I've chosen is Sketch 3 (above).

Kandinsky was born in Moscow in 1866 and gave up teaching to study art when he was 30, later moving to Munich where developed his art and began a friendship with Paul Klee. He returned to Russia during the First World War and the early years of soviet Russia but returned to Germany in 1921 to teach at the Bauhaus. The Nazis closed the Bauhaus in 1933 and Kandinsky moved to Paris where he lived until he died in 1944.

The Lenbachhaus has both sketches hung side by side in it's Kandinsky room. This is Sketch 2, very similar to Sketch 3 but with subtle differences. I spent quite a while looking at both, comparing details and looking for differences. There is a bit more detail in Sketch 3 and that means more colours and shapes and that's probably why I like it slightly more. I respond to the painting by being absorbed into the colours and the swirling movement, an emotional response rather than anything else. Just look into it and lose yourself.

My favourite image of Mr Kandinsky is of him in his allotment leaning on a spade, wearing shorts and with a cigarette in his mouth. I saw it a great exhibition about paintings of flowers and gardens at the Royal Academy a few years ago. It's such an unusual image of a very cerebral artist that it really sticks in the memory. Here again is Sketch 3 for 'Composition VII'. Enjoy.

Der Blaue Reiter at the Lenbachhaus, Munich

A trip to Munich wouldn't be complete without a visit to the yellow Lenbachhaus to see the fabulous collection of works by the Blue Rider group of artists. This is where the group formed in the early years of the 20th Century and the collection really is quite extraordinary in its scope. The ground floor is where the exhibitions are, the first floor is for contemporary art, but the prize is on the second floor, so just keep walking up those steps, where you're confronted with more colour than exists in the world - Der Blaue Rieter!

The first room at the top of the main stairs is a collection of early paintings by Kandinsky and Gabrielle Munter (his first wife) and I was surprised at how figurative they were. I shouldn't have been since everyone has to start somewhere, but I was. The paintings are small and jewell-like and I loved the almost Impressionistic landscapes he completed in this period, with vibrant colour as well as exploring the make up of the landscape in shapes.

The largest room has a collection of Kandinsky paintings grouped together and what a riot of colour they present. What is it about colour and shape that can bring joy and a smile to the face? It made me wonder what an astonishing journey those artists took, moving from figurative works to abstraction in such a short time. What was the thought process behind that journey and how did it start? For some artists it was an intellectual journey and for others it was emotion and the emotional intensity colour can produce when used in different ways.

These paintings are both sketches for 'Composition VII' and I'd be delighted to have either on my living room wall.

Walking round the rooms my eye spied some sparkling colours on the wall through a doorway and, like a magpie, I headed straight for it. It's a small painting by Richard Delaunay in 1914 called 'Window Overlooking The City' (there's a similar painting in the Tate collection in London). You need to look at it properly and take your time so start seeing the shapes of buildings hidden amongst the colours, with a church steeple and other buildings gradually becoming clear. I'm a great fan of Sonia Delaunay (his wife) so it was delightful to find this painting.

There was also a small moment of joy to see 'Blue Horse' by Franz Marc, one of the iconic symbols of the Blue Rider painters from one of the founders of the group. It was larger than I expected it to be but he's a quite majestic beast in his uniquely blue way.

There's a lovely small collections of paintings by Paul Klee from different stages of his career and I particularly liked 'The Rose Garden' and 'The Wild Man'. They're both small paintings. 'The Rose Garden' was painted in 1920 and is made of shapes in different shades of creams and reds, sometimes moving to purples, and, put those shapes together and you see a small village overplayed with small, round roses. It's a very complicated painting and must have been quite difficult to create. It works well as a small painting and the choice of frame is quite inspired.

'The Wild Man' from 1922 is a very different painting, again quite small and quite beautiful in its own way. Multiple arms and legs, horns and direction arrows, wild hair and beard, it's an altogether strange painting, a depiction of a dream or vision and clearly quite wild.

There are more wonderful paintings by Mr Klee on display and part of me wondered whether there were any more - and how many - were in safe storage? Klee lived in Munich at the same time as Kandinsky so it's certainly possible.

The Blue Rider collection is extensive and includes paintings by artists who's work I haven't seen before, including a self-portrait by Marianne von Werefkin from 1910. I looked at this painting for a few minutes and couldn't decide if she was a scary lady or not - the red eyes and direct gaze are very confusing. What is she trying to convey through this direct and very colourful painting? Your guess is as good as mine and just as valid. The long neck and thin face, red hat with it's flower at the brow, the red lips and eyes and the blue-green background - what does this say to you. I think I need to try and find a photo of her - I suspect she was quite beautiful and quite driven with her art. I need to do some research.

I was very conscious that I was wandering round this astonishing collection of works and the gallery was almost empty - it wasn't that unusual to be the only person in a room. In a sense that was great since I could enjoy the space and the works, but why aren't people looking at this great art?

Walk on through the rooms and I found yet more paintings by Kandinsky and Klee as well as more works by artists unknown to me, all working in the Blue Rider ethos and taking it forward.

A final painting I'd like to highlight is 'Portrait of the Dancer Alexander Sacharoff' by Alexej Jawlensky from 1909. What a dramatic image with all that red on the body and the black hair, the narrow face and that smile. No 'Mona Lisa' is this. At first I thought it was a painting of a woman but no, this is an athletic man painted in a very gender-neutral manner. The direct gaze and that oddly twisted smile are very noticeable. Is he thinking, 'Yes, got you!' in presenting himself like this for his portrait session? It's the work of an artist painting an artist in a different field, someone who knows how to manipulate and use his body. It's not what I consider to be a beautiful painting but it's certainly very striking.

There are many, many more paintings on display by a much greater range of artists than I cover in this blog in the Lenbachhaus. If you go to Munich then you need to make time to see the collection, it's well worth it and quite an astonishing collection it is. The Lenbachhaus also has a surprisingly large bookshop on the ground floor. If you want to see more Blue Rider works then head on over to the Pinakothek der Moderne for yet more Kandinskys and Klees as well as others. Munich holds a unique place in the history of Der Blaue Reiter and it's only right that it holds such great works.

Photos are by me - sorry they're a bit wonky!

'Revolution: Russian Art 1917 - 1932' at the Royal Academy

Last week we went to see the new blockbuster exhibition at the Royal Academy, 'Revolution: Russian Art 1917 - 1932'. It shows the art of the revolution and the struggles that followed. There were lots of art movements on the go in those years in Russia with Kandinsky, Chagall and Malevich working, the new Soviet Realism being developed as well as traditional arts and crafts continuing and adapting to circumstances. We see paintings, ceramics, a giant mobile, and textiles, all depicting the art of revolution.

One of the first paintings that grabbed my attention was 'The Defence of Petrograd' by Alexander Deimeke. It's a monumental painting, almost life size and incredibly powerful - this reproduction doesn't do it justice at all. We see men and women marching to the front while the wounded and exhausted trudge home on the walkway above. The workers were given rifles to defend their home city led by Leon Trotsky, an untrained army prepared to die to defend their homes from the White Army. It's a very simple painting with a powerful story of workers rising up to fight their class and political enemy. I'm sure there are other versions of the tale behind the battles at Petrograd but I can only think of bravery and death and revolution.

Another stirring painting of revolution is 'The Bolshevik' by Boris Kustodiev, which is also the poster for the exhibition. A giant walking through a snowy St Petersburg carrying a huge red flag with hordes of workers following in his steps. Again, a simple image that can stir the blood. That's one of the gifts of political artists, narrowing the scope of works down to the key image or images, being very on-message in designs meant to raise the passions. Play on the archetypes and present a simple message.

There was already a lot of experimental art going on in Russia and the exhibition includes a couple of abstract Kandinsky paintings I haven't seen before. Hanging beside one of them were a few works by an artist I hadn't heard of before, Pavel Filonov. I know nothing about Filonov other than the notes beside his paintings that tell us that he died of starvation during the siege of Leningrad in 1941. The notes didn't say that he was still working up until that time but I like to think that he was.

I was fascinated by his endless tiny paint marks on the canvas to create his images, a strange mosaic style of different shapes, colours and patterns. I need to know more about Mr Filonov.

The 'star' of the show is Kasimir Malevich who gets a room to himself. The room was laid out to resemble the order of paintings Malevich displayed in an exhibition in 1929.  I recognised many of the paintings from the exhibition of his works a few years ago at Tate Modern and it's nice to see them again. I still remember a photo of his funeral procession at that exhibition that showed a stream of people following his coffin all carrying a poster of his 'Black Square'.

I like his simple, geometric paintings of peasants and sports people, broken down into a basic shape and distinct colours, such as his 'Peasant With A Rake'. We have a solid worker with an impossibly thin rake standing in a field with a village in the background. He was a theoretician but, even so, I wonder how he came to see in those terms?

As well as the paintings there was also a nice selection of ceramics with some wonderfully colourful designs and one of my favourites was a big painted vase labelled as 'Large Vase with Peasant Dance' by Ivan Ivanovich Riznich. I couldn't find a picture of it but it was covered all over with colourful scenes of happy peasants dancing, no doubt enhanced by vodka. I'd happily have that in my living room.

There were also some more 'traditional' paintings with some lovely snow scenes and I couldn't help but break out in a smile over 'Carnival' by Boris Kusztodiev from 1919 (one year before he painted 'The Bolshevik' above). It shows a troika in the centre of town with groups of people standing around in the snowy streets. It's a lovely 'chocolate box' type of painting and I quite like the idea that amongst all the artistic experimentation that was going on in Russia at the time, that people still had time for something like this. I think it's lovely.

One of the last artists we're introduced to is Kozma Petrov-Vodkin and his really lovely paintings. He was a great fan of the Italian Renaissance and Fra Angelico and this shows quite clearly in his painting '1918 in Petrograd (Petrograd Madonna)'. Those colours call out to you from across the gallery as being in the wrong time zone and belonging quite clearly to Renaissance frescoes. It's a painting of a worker on a balcony wearing a head-scarf and holding her baby and harks back to so many paintings of the Madonna and Child. It looked really out of place in the exhibition and quite rightly so to represent the full range of art in the revolutionary period. I will have to do some research into Mr Petrov-Vodkin.

The exhibition ended with examples of Soviet Realism and a small booth in which photos were projected of people arrested in the 1930s and sent to the gulags where many of them died or were killed. The hopes and dreams of the revolution didn't last long and soon degenerated into the purges and mass slaughter. It was so sad to see photos of ordinary people and a few words about their stories - teachers, accountants, farmers, Soviet officials, translators, academics - projected on a screen, the photos from when they were first arrested. I sat there to see them all, to witness their lives, as one by one their photos were projected in front of us, until they started to repeat. It was the least I could do.

It's well worth seeing this exhibition. I won't say that I enjoyed it since there was little joy, but it is powerful and made me think and ponder and made me want to know more. That's a good thing.

'A Thyssen Never Seen' at CaixaForum, Barcelona

I saw the excellent 'A Thyssen Never Seen' exhibition at CaixaForum on my recent visit to Barcelona. The 'Thyssen' in the title refers to the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection based in Madrid which has loaned 63 paintings to stage this exhibition. The CaixaForum is part of the philanthropic arm of La Caixa bank and I saw an excellent Impressionist and beyond exhibition at it's Madrid branch over the summer. I'm pleased to report that this exhibition matches the same high standard of the Madrid exhibition, really well laid out and thought through, spacious and it has a lovely booklet for visitors. More of that later.

My main reason for going to Barcelona was to see a painting by Fra Angelico, 'The Virgin of Humility' which is on permanent loan from the Thyssen Museum in Madrid to the National Museum of Art of Catalonia in Barcelona. It was further loaned to CaixaForum for this exhibition, so it was to the exhibition I found myself walking on Monday morning.

The CaixaForum is a converted old factory made up of several buildings and the Thyssen exhibition has its own building. The main entrance was busy with people and a couple of school groups, loud and full of life and that was a nice start and the noise dropped as I went into the exhibition building, turned right to walk down a short corridor and, straight ahead was Fra Angelico's 'Virgin of Humility' waiting to be viewed. There were three early Renaissance paintings (including a small Duccio) on the wall before reaching the Fra altarpiece but these were flush to the wall so couldn't be seen until you're right in front of them.

The exhibition is organised around five themes: religious paintings, portraits, objects, landscapes and the city. In part, it's showing off the glories of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, showing the extraordinary range of works in the collection, from Duccio in the late 1200s to Richard Estes in 1967. And almost every kind of painting in-between.

The painting I really wanted to see was an altarpiece by Fra Angelico called 'Virgin of Humility' with the Virgin and Child flanked by angels holding a gorgeous cloth of gold as a background while seated in the court of Heaven. It's a really lovely painting by the good Fra, delicately painted and full of detail you can only really see when you get up close to the painting.

Gold and blue, with a splash of deep red in the centre as the Virgin's tunic, with the Infant dressed in a related pink holding a lily for his mother. The Virgin is also holding a lily in a vase, one of her symbols of purity. I stood in front of this painting for some time, gazing at the detail of the Virgin's hair behind her ear and her delicate fingernails and trying to work out the Latin inscription in the Virgin's halo without success. If anyone know what the inscription says, I'd love to know.

The next room focused on portraits of people and paintings of characters, from Hans Memlink to Lucien Freud, showing a wide range of styles over the intervening 600 years. I was particularly taken with the painting 'Portrait of a Robust Man' by Robert Campin that I first saw in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid (which is where this photo was taken when I was there over the summer). The painting is possibly of Robert de Jasmines from around 1425.

If you ignore the fur trim around the neck of his coat and the hair style, this man could be alive today and living round the corner from you. It is very realistic with the creases around the eyes and forehead, the fat face and the jowls. Is he happy or sad? I don't know but, on the basis that he probably commissioned this painting himself, I'm happy to contribute to his ongoing immortality. He's not the prettiest or handsomest of men but he's actively saying 'I was alive, I was here' by the very act of being painted and I have to admire that. I don't know anything about him and I think I would like to know a bit about who he was and how he lived.

Most of the portraits were from Northern painters, which isn't surprising since portraiture was largely developed in the North and one of the poster girls for the exhibition is Ruben's 'Portrait of a Young Woman with Rosary'. 

The gorgeous background of red drapery and the complexity of her shiny bodice and her ruff really enhance the simplicity and realism of her face, passively looking out at the viewer. I wonder if she ever thought that total strangers would gaze on her 400 years after she sat for this portrait? 

There are a range of other portraits on show such as from Andrew Wyeth, Alberto Giacometti and Edward Hopper showing the vast range of the Thyssen collection. 

The next section of the exhibition focused on still lives and objects, starting with the grand old Dutch Masters but the painting that kept my eyes on it was Picasso's 'Fruit and Vases'. This isn't a painting I'd normally be attracted to, with it's rather dull palette and subject matter, but it's a good example of needing to see paintings 'in the paint' to properly appreciate them. There's something about the simplicity of the composition and green/gold/brown colours that really drew me into this one, painting one vase through another with the random fruit to the fore. The vases are simple in design and I like seeing the large vase through the smaller glass vase, such a simple effect and not a new thing at all but it keeps grabbing my eyes. I also can't help but see the front two pieces of fruit almost as a chicken waiting to be cooked. O well, it ca't all be magic! 

Coincidentally, I bought a scarf in the same colours and with an angular pattern the following day. Was that an unconscious influence of seeing the painting that made me buy a scarf that can only be considered dull by comparison with my more normal scarves? Odd that. 

Another painting that caught my eye was this rather small painting by Jan Breughel of Christ asleep in the fishing boat during a storm on the sea of Galilea. As well as the deep colours drawing me into the storm it reminded me of the Delacroix exhibition last year at the National Gallery in London which included one of Delacroix's several copies or interpretations of this painting that was included in the exhibition. So this was the painting that sparked his interest in the theme. It's a very dramatic painting, with the storm gathering and the Disciples starting to panic as the Christ happily sleeps in the middle of the boat. Have faith people, he's saying, it'll all be all right.

The final section of the exhibition focused on 'the city' and this is where it seemed we see the most 'modern' paintings. I really liked Pissarro's 'Rue Saint-Honore in the Afternoon' and even quite liked a Canaletto, but it was 'Architecture II (The Man From Potin)' by Lyonel Feininger, an American painter I haven't heard of before, that I wanted a good look at. It's an odd composition really, almost like you're drawing aside a curtain and looking out of a window at the city scene of angular men in suits busy being busy.

A painting I waited to get a good view of was Kandinsky's 'Johannisstrasse, Murnau' from 1908 with it's gorgeous green and pink houses and a solitary woman with her shopping basket. The muddy-looking ground reflecting the gloomy sky with the bright houses separting them. I wonder where the woman is going since none of the buildings look like shops - perhaps this is a residential district and she's heading off to do her daily shop in town? I don't know but I want to make up stories about the people who live in these colourful houses and their colourful or mundane lives.

The final painting brings us right up to date with Richard Estes' 'Telephone Booths' from 1967. It's a large work that brings New York to mind with it's shiny telephone boxes in a row that we've all seen it gritty films from the '60s and '70s and which you don't often see anywhere these days. The phone boxes reflect the outside world while the women inside are making urgent telephone calls to hospitals and homes or maybe gossiping with a friend about who they've just seen in the street and who she was with. It was, at the time, a depiction of the modern world but now, with mobile phones, it's a bit historical and that adds another layer to the painting. The only thing missing from the painting is the rubbish you'd expect to see in the street outside phone boxes.

So there you have it, this is a really good exhibition with a very wide range of paintings on show ranging from the late 1200s to 1967 - what a span of topics and styles and the thematic organisation of the exhibition helps us to appreciate it more. If you're visiting Barcelona over the next few months then I'd strongly suggest you visit. It's only €4 to get in and there's something there for everyone. Go and see it!

When you go in you can pick up a small postcard sized leaflet explaining the exhibition in Catalan, Spanish and English. It's a sign of the creativity of CaixaForum that it isn't just any old explanatory leaflet, it's made of light card with perforated folds. One side of the leaflet has text explaining each theme while the other has postcard-sized reproductions of some of the paintings on display. What a great idea! I haven't seen something like this before and it looks really good. The CaixaForum is, in effect, giving away free postcards, especially since none of the featured paintings are available to buy as postcards in the shop. I love this idea and I hope more institutions take it up.

'Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art' at the National Gallery

I finally made it to the Delacroix exhibition at the National Gallery. It's one of those 'here's a painting by the named subject and here are some painters he influenced' type of exhibitions that have become so popular in recent years. This one works better than most. I really wanted to see the painting used for the poster - the lion with a dangerous-looking spear poised to stab him. I am, of course, on the lion's side in whatever's going on here. I'm very much in the 'gerrof, you deserve to be savaged' camp.

Anyway, Delacroix. I don't know much about him at all. I know he's painted some iconic paintings and was held in great reverence by people like Baudelaire but that's really about it. He sits in the latter part of that period when my art knowledge is sketchiest, i.e. between the Renaissance and the start of the modern period around 1850-ish so this was a good opportunity to learn about him and his work. And that's sort of what the exhibition doesn't really do so I still don't feel that I know much about him. The exhibition is about his influence rather than being about himself so that's reasonable.

The first room is a collection of his more ordinary paintings and portraits, including a self-portrait. This is his world of people and places, ordinary but brought to life.

I much preferred the next room with paintings from when he visited North Africa and painted scenes and subjects far more exotic compared to his safe Parisian world. These still look exotic today, largely because they're historic and the same scene wouldn't happen today - he's captured a lost world that was novel back when he painted as well as today. I got a bit puzzled by seeing a cliff-top Tangier when it's built at the top of a beach, but what's detail between friends? The compositions and colours are really good, capturing the dramatic and telling a strange narrative behind them.

We then go into a room of floral paintings since he seems to have been responsible for  reinvigorating the art of the flower still-life. That's all fine and good, but I have to say that I preferred Gaugin's flowers to Delacroix's vase of flowers and fruit.

The paintings that really impressed were in the later rooms and they weren't by Delacroix. They were by Cezanne, by Monet, Matisse, Gaugin, Van Gogh and by Kandinsky, all of whom acknowledged the influence of Delacroix.

I loved the 'Pieta (after Delacroix)' and 'Olive Trees' by Van Gogh, both dated 1889. Such marvellous and expressive paintings and neither of which I've seen before. The 'Pieta' was the poster painting for an exhibition in Florence last year that I dearly wanted to see but I left the day before the exhibition opened but I remember it well beaming down from hoardings all over town, rubbing my nose in my bad timing. And I've finally seen it, with it's hundreds of blues, lemon yellow and Vincent's face and ginger hair on the Christ figure. There are approximately 2,596 shades of blue in Mary's frock, and I gazed and gazed at the swirling colours... and then went back to gaze again.

As ever, these reproductions don't do the colours or the intense brush strokes justice but they at least give you an idea of what the paintings look like. Such as the glorious colours in Van Gogh's 'Olive Trees' that even the merchandise in the National Gallery itself didn't do justice to.  The gorgeous sun and sky, bright lemon yellow helping the trees to put forth their offering of olives, the trees with their purple shadows in that scorching sun. The only green in that parched landscape is the silver-green of the olive tree leaves. Wow. I want to go to that land.

One of the last paintings was by Wassily Kandinsky (who also features in the 'Modern Gardens' exhibition at the Royal Academy up the road) and it was really quite stunning in its visual intensity. It has the odd title of 'Study for Improvisation V' with a woman kneeling before a man who's in a gale with two horse-riders in the background and goodness knows what else. I remember the exhibition of his works at the Tate Modern 10 years ago and seeing more of his paintings in the 'Russia' exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York. More recently I remember his flower painting at the 'Modern Garden's exhibition and the large photo of him in shorts in his garden.

The colours are so much more dramatic than in this reproduction. I can't help but keep looking at the horse-riders and wonder where they're heading? They're obviously in a rush so it must be important.

All in all, it's a good exhibition and I intend going back again in the next few weeks to see if M. Delacroix speaks to me more loudly. And to enjoy the paintings I liked again, of course. O, and if you're interested, here's the full painting that the poster is drawn from. In my world, the lions are protecting their pride from ruthless hunters and savage everyone in sight and then stroll off leaving the bodies to vultures...

Like A Magpie... in a Garden

Yes, that's me at an exhibition. Not the slow, stately walk along one wall following the crowd, then along another wall, moving at the pace of the slowest person further along. No.  I'm here, there and everywhere and back again. If there's a queue to see a painting why wait your turn when you could see another great painting on the opposite wall?

There's a strange dynamic about exhibitions that I've noticed loads of times and that is that the first few rooms are always busy and then the crowds slowly start to spread out in the later rooms. Why is that? Shouldn't the rooms all be equally crowded as people move through the exhibition? There are probably studies into this strange phenomenon.

I went to see the 'Painting The Modern Garden' exhibition at the Royal Academy again on Friday evening - the Royal Academy stays open until 10pm on Fridays so it's a good to avoid crowded weekends and see exhibitions after work. I've done that a few times in the past and it's great to stroll round the venerable old galleries while London comes alive on a Friday night. Except, guess what? The exhibition was totally sold out so it might as well have been peak hours.

It is an excellent exhibition and it's only on for another three weeks so go along and see it if you can. So many artists painting gardens and flowers, so many styles and so many different interpretations of what a garden looks like and how it can be painted. I loved it - it'll take a lot for any other exhibition to top this one this year. I first saw it in February and I'm tempted to go a third time, it's that good. So many paintings by artists I know and those I don't know, some I'm very familiar with and some I've only vaguely heard of but all on the theme of gardens. It's clearly a smash hit. A palpable hit.

There are, of course, many paintings by Claude Monet, that great old man of painting who refused to leave his home during the First World War and kept on painting his beloved gardens and ponds and bridges and trees, sometimes joyful and sometimes sorrowful. I've seen his enormous paintings of his waterlily ponds in the Musee de L'Orangerie in Paris and those are an astonishing and moving sight, Monet's gift to Paris, celebrating peace. There are many painting of waterlilies in the exhibition but this one really caught my eye, 'Corner of the Waterlily Pond'

This photo really doesn't do the painting justice, it's too light, but it at least lets you see what got me so excited. The thick oils merging and twisting to create new shapes and colours to try to capture the texture of the scene, the lush plants with hundreds of greens and the odd flower here and there. A serene view and a storm of emotion. Monsieur Monet was having a good day when he finished this painting and overloaded it with creativity and vibrancy - he threw everything at this one and I like to imagine him smiling in satisfaction as he put his brushes away and left it dry at the end of the day. You really need to see it to glimpse it's beauty and power. I went back to gaze at it three times.

In one of the final rooms is a set of large blown up photographs of many of the artists in the exhibition and some film footage of them too, so I can say I've seen M. Monet painting. There are lots of photos of Monet in his later years with his bushy beard and floppy hat but have you ever seen Wassily Kandinsky digging in his garden, wearing shorts and with a cigarette in his mouth. Well, here he is:

You may not be able to jump into the paintings or smell the blooms and feel the breeze but you can gaze at some of the most marvellous paintings and share the vision of some of the greatest painters the world has ever seen. Visit this exhibition while you can. It's gorgeous. And say hello to Claude and Wassily for me.

'Painting the Modern Garden - From Monet to Matisse' at the Royal Academy

I like gardens and flowers, I like painting and I love Monet and Matisse so this exhibition was designed to reel me in, wander round awe-struck and then buy postcards and the exhibition catalogue. I couldn't help it and neither could the unknown crowds who visited with me. After the first few rooms I decided that this was the must-see exhibition of the Spring in London - it is gorgeous, it is emotionally stimulating, it is truly fab (obv). Hundreds and hundreds of paintings (-ish) and dozens and dozens of rooms (well, it felt like it), the Royal Academy has scored a hit with this exhibition. Did I like it? O yes!

I've been to quite a few exhibitions at the Royal Academy and this was easily the most crowded so, if you want to see it, book tickets now to avoid disappointment. Is it the idea of gardens or flowers or the Impressionists and those that came after them that proves to be the draw? I don't know but I certainly want to go back before it closes. The paintings are glorious and it will take your breath away to see so many paintings on a similar theme all grouped together. It's fascinating to consider how different artists at different times saw their gardens so differently.

The Royal Academy keeps the theme going by replacing the leather benches with park benches to sit on, plants growing in a mini-greenhouse and books and letters describing the gardens we see. That's a nice touch from the curators - let's show that some of the painters were also serious gardeners and swapped cuttings and ideas. Because they did. I was vaguely surprised that some were keen gardeners but I'm not sure why that is - why shouldn't they like growing things and designing gardens? I'm jolly pleased they did because it led to some wonderful paintings.

There was one room that made me feel like I was in the flower tent at the Chelsea Garden Show, surrounded by banks of flowers, and I'm sure that's what the curators intended - one of the paintings is on the cover to the catalogue, Monet's 'Chrysanthemums', which is a glorious explosion of colour. As I entered the room I saw the painting out of the corner of my eye and headed straight for it. I've never seen it before and I wanted to jump into it.

As well as Monet and Matisse, there are paintings by all sorts of people, from the Impressionists onwards to those who took their art so much further. We see the delights of Pissarro and Renoir, a few by Caillebotte, Berthe Morisot, Van Gogh, and there are paintings by Kandinsky, Klee, Munch, Nolde and so many others. There are lots of paintings by M. Monet and his garden, of course, and the final room shows three enormous water lilies canvases placed together as a farewell to the art of painting a garden.

It's also nice that the curator hasn't gone for the 'usual' or 'obvious' paintings by the artists (except for Monet - you've got to have some waterlilies!). This shows us another side to these artists, a side I didn't know. Who knew that Caillebotte used to swap cuttings with Monet? I've only ever seen his 'urban' Parisian paintings but now I've seen his garden and learned more about him. It's also nice that this exhibition starts in winter and closes in spring - the glorious warm colours and shafts of light brightening up the cold, drab, grey winter outside. Great timing. When it finishes London will be full of greenery and spring flowers again.

Don't miss this amazing exhibition - I shall return!