'Van Gogh: Self Portraits' at the Courtauld Gallery

The Courtauld Gallery re-opened in late 2021 after being closed for several years for renovations to make better use of the limited space it has in Somerset House, a listed building. Its first major exhibition of 2022 is a selection of Van Gogh's self-portraits, about half of all the self-portraits he painted in his short life. 

There are 15 paintings and one drawing self-portrait, one symbolic self-portrait and one portrait of his friend Eugene Boch. The Courtauld owns one of the paintings, the self-portrait of Vincent with a bandaged ear, and the other works come from various collections around the world. They're all roughly the same size and shape and most have a plain background rather a scene of a room or landscape behind him. 

I wandered from painting to painting wondering what Van Gogh was trying to achieve with these paintings. Was he just practicing and using himself as a convenient model? His style clearly changed between the paintings, sometimes noticeably, using his brush markings in different ways to evoke the image of his face but was there more to it? His colour palette changes frequently, from rather dark and 'formal' self-portraits to freer, lighter paintings, sometimes in a hat and formal coat or jacket and sometimes in more informal or work clothes. No doubt there'll be a learned essay in the catalogue about this.

In only one of the paintings does he present himself as a painter, with a canvas, palette and brushes, wearing his painters' smock. Artists have been painting themselves like this for as long as they've done self-portraits.

One of my favourite paintings is of Van Gogh in a straw hat, in which the only dark element is his eyes. It's slightly smaller than the others but is very attractive in the gentle, almost dappled, colours he's chosen for it. Perhaps that's why it's in the chunky black frame? It would look very different in a lighter and thinner frame (my hint to the Detroit Institute of Art where it normally resides).

Mr Van Gogh is known for his bright ginger beard and in one painting it almost jumps off the canvas at you. He was experimenting with pointillism at the time, using dots of contrasting colours to create the image. It's fascinating to look at his brush marks with dots and little dashes of colour on his jacket and filling the background with more usual marks on his face, particularly over his nose to create the contours, a definite mix of styles creating his own style. 

It's interesting to note the different frames his works are placed in, presumably the frames they came in when loaned to the Courtauld. Most are quite thick and chunky in different styles and colours and I can't help but think they'd look better in simpler frames. They're not big paintings so having a chunky frames makes them appear bigger by taking up more wall space but I don't think that adds anything to the paintings themselves. 

There is also only one full face self-portrait with Vincent looking straight out at the viewer. Apparently he didn't like showing his full face since it demonstrated his gaunt, sunken cheeks due to losing his teeth.

A final two paintings for you, the famous self-portrait with a bandaged ear that is the only one in the exhibition with a background of what looks like his room with art on the wall. In none of the paintings does he look particularly happy or relaxed. There must have been bright moments in his life but you wouldn't guess that from the self-portraits. 

A painting I am very familiar with is Van Gogh's painting of his chair, a symbolic self-portrait, since it's normally in the National Gallery. I don't have a problem with including this painting since it is a representation of him, his chair with his pipe and tobacco on the seat is saying 'this is me'. It was a companion piece to the painting he did of Gauguin's chair from the short time they lived and painted together. He signs it simply as 'Vincent'.

This is a lovely exhibition and I'm pleased I've seen it (several times now). It hasn't shown me different side to Van Gogh the man or the painter but it does emphasise his constant experimentation, even in relatively small ways. He died very young but left behind a wealth of paintings. Highly recommended.

'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!

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.

The Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh

There are three Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh: the Scottish National Gallery, The Scottich National Portrait Gallery and the Scottish Museum of Modern Art. The National Gallery and Portrait Gallery are about 10 minutes walk apart, with the Modern Art museum about 45 minutes walk away.

The Scottish National Gallery is a few hundred yards walk from Waverley Station, on the other side of the incredibly gothic memorial to Sir Walter Scott. It's small (-ish), but it really is quite lovely. The Renaissance rooms were closed for re-hanging when I was there otherwise my view might have been totally different. It has a nice selection of works, lots of Scottish themed works (as you'd expect) but lots of international works as well.

There were paintings of heroes and battles, of history and antiquity, a bit of this and a bit of that from named artists and those you've probably never heard of, but all interesting and worth seeing. I was enchanted by the painting of Oberon and Titania and their realm of fairy folks by Sir Noel Paton, a very Victorian fascination with the faerie world and Shakespeare. The rooms were smallish and comfortable and I was pleased it was so full on a weekday afternoon. Free entry helps, of course.

The best room, in my view. was the late 19th Century room of Impressionists and Post-Impressionists with it's Van Goghs and Sargent and Gaugin. I loved Vincent's twisted, tortured 'Cyprus Trees' and Sargent's beautiful and serene 'Lady Agnew of Lochnaw'. These paintings were worth seeing so why were there no postcards in the shop? So typical of galleries these days.

About 10 minutes walk across the road and over a hill (there are lots of hills in Edinburgh) is the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, a rather lovely gallery, much smaller than the National Portrait Gallery in London but, I think, better, Whenever I think of the London gallery I think of rooms full of old Victorian men with beards wearing black frock coats. That's not a real reflection of the gallery but it's what my head summons up about it. The Scottish gallery is full of colour and light and I loved the different colours on the walls, the strange range of portraits and the attempt to make them relevant to the viewer. I'm really pleased I visited the gallery.

The entrance hall was rather splendid, a painted Victorian gothic hall with statues of the Scottish great and the good, marvellous painted walls with their strange tales of an invented past. On the sides of the balcony is a procession of men and women through the ages leading up to the (present) Victorian day. I loved the hall and the incredible contrast with the very modern cafe through a door on the right. The entrance hall alone could be the subject of a blog post but I must move on to some of the paintings in the gallery rooms.

The first painting that grabbed my attention on entering the galleries proper was a portrait of 'Tom Derry or Durie' by Marcus Geeraerts the Younger dated 1614. What an astonishingly real portrait this is, especially for portraiture in this country at the time. Look at that face. That man lived and could live today - watch out for him on the 159 bus tomorrow because he could be there, only dressed in a jacket and shirt rather than a ruff.

I also loved the full-length portrait of 'Kenneth Sutherland, 3rd Lord Duffs' by Richard Waitt with his wig and mini-kilt and his faithful hound. I couldn't help but crack a smile and wonder what on earth was going on back in those days to wear that get-up.

It was also a pleasure to see Dora Carrington's portrait of Lady Strachey (Lytton Strachey's mother) and the self-portrait by a young Duncan Grant.

All in all, I was very pleased with the Scottish National Galley, it's well curated and the works are well hung - there's something there for everyone to engage with. It's not just showing old paintings, it's trying to tell a story of particularly Scottish history through portraiture and it succeeds very well in doing that. It doesn't overdose on any particular period or theme but calmly moves the viewer forward through history into different coloured rooms with some great portraits. The shop beside the entrance hall has a great guide to the gallery with some lovely reproductions and text - I bought it. I think a lot of galleries could take lessons from this gallery. Well done people.

The third gallery was the Scottish Museum of Modern Art which is split over two buildings about 45 minutes walk outside the city centre, down roads of lovely old stone buildings but with the endless traffic of all modern cities. Having spent a lot more time in the Portrait Gallery than anticipated, I didn't have time to explore the modern art and focused on the Emil Nolde exhibition that I've already blogged about. It's in an old country house in its own grounds so is limited to what it can do by the architecture but I was impressed by the Nolde exhibition and, if that's an example of the kind of exhibitions it puts on, I'd be more than happy to return again. Preferably in sunshine rather than rain.

I'm very pleased to have visited the Scottish National Galleries and would be happy to explore them again, preferably when they're fully open next time. The Scottish Portrait Gallery was my favourite on this visit, for the colour and the story-telling, but I'd still like to see the Renaissance collection in the Scottish National Gallery. Next time...  

The Museum of Fine Art, Boston

If you're in Boston then a trip to the Museum of Fine Art is a must and I walked there in the snow. I actually went twice since I didn't see enough on my first visit and the beauty of ticketing at the MFA is that you buy a ticket but can visit a second time free provided it's within ten days of the first visit. That means you don't have to cram everything into your visit because, if you've got the time, you can always go back again. What a good idea.

It's a bit of a monster of a building with the majority of works on the Ground and First floors but with some works in it s Americas collection on the Lower Ground and Level Three (remembering that Level Three is actually the second floor to British people). You need to pick up a free map to try to understand the place and how the galleries are organised with its art and artefacts from all around the world and, in particular it's huge Art of the Americas collection. And don't forget to look around you at the building itself since the dome and surrounding corridors were painted by John Singer Sargent and there was an exhibition of his sketches on the ground floor underneath the dome. I always associate Sargent with society portraits so it was interesting to see these sketches on a range of subjects way beyond his portraiture.

I wanted to see it's European collection spread over Level 1 & 2 so I headed to the Fenway side of the building. On Level 2 you enter that wing of the building through  large room hung with loads of 16th and 17th Century paintings by the likes of El Greco, but I kept going through to find the real gems in the collection from the early Renaissance. 

One of the earliest works in the painting collection (if not the earliest) is a lovely little triptych by Duccio from the early 1300s. The main scene is the crucifixion with saints Nicholas and Gregory on the wings. This is a really high status work that was probably commissioned as a travelling altarpiece by a prince or rich merchant. It's quite small and the detail is gorgeous and is one of the many works I'd love to see lit only by flickering candlelight to see it the way that Duccio would have done when he handed over the work to its first owner. 

There's also a lovely painting by Roger van der Weyden of 'Saint Luke Drawing the Virigin' which is a composition I can't recall seeing before in a gallery but I know that some artists used similar compositions. It's sort of the artist saying 'look, my art goes back to one of the Saviour's followers drawing the Saviour himself' and increasing its status from being a mere craft. It uses the Italian device of having a window and landscape at the centre of the painting but van der Weyden goes one step further by including people outside the window looking at the landscape. He's almost telling those Italians that Netherlanders can use all that artistic trickery too and go one better. It's a lovely little painting, full of the detail you'd expect from early Northern Renaissance works.

Another early painting I want to mention is 'Virgin & Child with Four Angels' by Neri di Bicci from Florence, a new name for me and you can probably guess why I'm including it here. It's quite a nice composition but just look at the faces of those angels... 

It's a good Renaissance collection and includes other paintings by people like Bosch with a version of 'Ecce Homo', a lovely Crivelli and a small hexagonal panel by Fra Angelo.

The collection moves forward in time and there are lots of other paintings to gaze at and muse over  with the mandatory Delacroix and, surprisingly, a smallish John Martin. Jumping forward to the late Nineteenth Century and we have a Monet room and a Sargent room and lots of Impressionist paintings and post Impressionists with Gauguin and van Gogh. Americans invested in these paintings long before we did in Britain (other than the Courtauld collection) which is why their collections can be astonishing. One of the lass colourful paintings in these rooms was 'Man at his Bath' by Gustave Caillebotte which shows a pastey-skinned man drying himself off after a bath. This is as far from the Classical ideal of a naked man as it's possible to get but is the everyday reality for all of us.

A far more colourful painting that caught my eye was 'Women of Paris: The Circus Lover' by James Jacques Joseph Tissot. I'm not a great fan of Tissot who was contemporary with the Impressionists but whose style is more realistic, but this is a grand painting and, if you remove the women in what we now think of as as period costume, that circus scene could easily be played out in Wonderground on the Southband in London today. I particularly like the slightly belligerent bloke in the Union Jack shirt walking towards the women. You just know that the bloke bottom-left has just told the ladies that the acrobats aren't all that really and he can do some of the tricks - bet you can't matey!

Two of my favourites were in the same room and by van Gogh. They would probably benefit from being hung in less ornate frames but they are both gorgeous. 'Houses at Auvers' with it's thick paint that made me want to touch it to feel the textures and the mysterious 'Ravine'. Both are superb quality and would command wall-space in any gallery in the world. But did the MFA shop have postcards of either? You can guess the answer.

One of the benefits of American museums is that once you've paid your entrance fee then everything is free to see inside, including the temporary exhibitions. The exhibitions at the MFA were small but worth popping in to see. I saw the Escher exhibition which was so-so but missed the Rothko exhibition. I did, however, visit the exhibition about the drawings from Vienna by Klimt and Schiele that is coming to London later in the year to celebrate the centenary of their deaths. The drawings are in various media and at a relatively small size and it was interesting to see the similarities in their styles as well as the differences. I'm in two minds as to whether to see it again in London but, with my new-found interest in drawing, I probably will, if only to see if there are any tips I can steal from them.

Another exhibition - the main one for the museum that featured on all the posters but has now closed - was an exhibition by Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist I've never heard of before but will watch out for. The exhibition was full of mainly big pieces and was full of light and colour and fun. In one of the exhibits the flooring that you walked on ran up to and onto the wall making it part of the work and, for some reason that just tickled me. Big pieces with smiley flower-heads and brash colours, encouraging the kids to run around making a noise and it all seemed so right. It was actually quite wonderful to be surrounded by these works in a very different way to the wonders of the Renaissance upstairs. I liked it.

There were also galleries of Greek and Roman statues, a huge collection of the Art of the Americas, furniture, craftwork and all sorts of stuff. It's a massive collection and you probably need more than two visits to do it justice but I was pleased with what I'd seen in the European painting collection. That was enough for this visit.

One thing that did irritate me was finding my way around to see the rooms i wanted to see. The visitor map is laid out by room number but the galleries are labeled with the name of the sponsor of that room or corridor. You have to really look for the room numbers which seem to be on small plaques near the door that, all too often, are blinded by the art inside the room. It's all very confusing which is another reason for setting aside plenty of time to see the place. I suspect it probably works better for locals than for visitors. I'd recommend the American Cafe in the courtyard of the museum for lovely food, excellent service and a great view of a Dale Chihuly work in glass and steel that kept me focused on it and wondering how it didn't fall over. I loved it! 

If you're in Boston and have a few hours to spare you could do a lot worse than pop along to the Museum of Fine Art. There's something there for everyone but don't expect it to be laid out for you - do some research first so you know what you really want to see before you arrive.

'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...