Favourite Paintings: 'The Snail' by Henri Matisse

One of my favourite paintings isn't really a painting, it's a 'cut out' made by painting paper different colours and then tearing it up and carefully placing it to create a new image. There was a great exhibition of Matisse's 'cut outs' at Tate Modern a few years ago and I loved it, such amazing images the old magician created in his old age, using assistants to help place the coloured paper just *so*. 'The Snail' is a huge work and was the centrepiece of the exhibition but I go back a lot further with that particular snail.

I have two distinct memories of visiting the Tate for the first time in the early '80s, walking up those imposing steps into the foyer, not knowing what I'd find but expecting great art. And that's what I saw since the Tate has a really good collection. But my two memories are of seeing a big Mark Rothko for the first time and being mesmerised by it and also seeing 'The Snail', equally large and far more colourful, but where was the snail it was named for? I couldn't see it. I looked at it up close and from a distance but no snail. I saw it many times on subsequent visits and then the Tate split into two and Tate Britain and Tate Modern were born and 'The Snail' moved down river to be a star of the new Tate Modern.

At some point I finally saw a glimpse of a snail and then, suddenly, there he was and all I could see was a snail. So the old man wasn't playing a joke on us after all, he really had created a snail from his bits of colourful paper. He's an old friend now and I delight in seeing him and I always say 'hello'. It was lovely to see him at the exhibition surrounded by so many other cut outs, some much bigger and more colourful but none so special. He has a name, of course, but that's for me to know and for you to guess.

'Nicolaes Maes: Dutch Master of the Golden Age' at the National Gallery

There's a lovely small exhibition of works by Nicolaes Maes at the National Gallery at the moment, apparently the first exhibition of his works in the UK. He was a pupil of Rembrandt before becoming a popular master in his own right.

The exhibition is in three distinct sections over three rooms in the ground floor galleries. The first room displays his early works, some of which have been considered as by Rembrandt in the past, mainly religious works. The second room is made up of small 'genre' paintings which were great fun. The third room is made up of Maes' portraits, including a late self-portrait. Apparently he painted 900 portraits so he must have been well off.

My favourite of his early paintings was his 'Adoration of the Shepherds' which is a copy of an etching by Durer from 150 years earlier. I spent a gleeful few minutes trying to find all the health and safety hazards - those bricks could tumble down any minute and just look at the wooden roof that could easily crash down on Joseph at the slightest breeze and I'm not even mentioning the shepherd's crook sticking out waiting to trip up someone. Then I had to find the donkey and the ox and there they are, at the back in the shadow. It can't be a nativity scene without the donkey and the ox.

Dutch genre paintings of the 17th Century aren't really my favourites but I thought these were delightful.

My favourites were the 'eavesdropper' paintings in which the figure in the foreground is listening to what's happening in the darkened background, the servant listening to their master's goings on or to what other servants are up to. They're quite simple in a way but you need to spot the details to understand what's going on, and that forces you to look carefully. Often you can see tiny lovers in a dark corner, sometimes flirting and sometimes being discovered, the servants always know.

It was quite fun to notice that the same model was used for two of these paintings, and quite probably many more. I wonder who she was and how much she was paid for her modelling? I wonder what she might think if she knew people were looking at here 350 years later?

There were also some of Maes's drawings on show and I particularly liked these two drawings of old women. They're quite small but are incredibly detailed or slightly smudged to make them look detailed. These were made from red chalk on paper.

The final room is made up of portraits, some more dramatic than others. Some were in their original frames and I really liked these two, a pair of betrothal portraits in individual frames. The lady is Ingena Rotterdam and the gentleman is Jacob Benkes and they were painted in about 1676. As portraits they're nice enough but look at those frames. They were made to personalise the portraits so his has a figure of Mars at the top and she has Venus - he was a soldier so it is particularly apt. Sadly they never married since he was killed fighting the French in the new world. 

There is also a self-portrait in which he shows himself as a prosperous and important man, be-wigged in his curly finery. It's a nice little exhibition in the ground floor galleries and is free to view. Sadly, of course, the National Gallery is currently closed but hopefully it'll still be on when the current shut-down is over.

'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'). 

'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!

'The Visit' at the National Theatre

'The Visit, or The Old Lady Comes To Call' is the new play at the National Theatre that uses all the tricks and whizzes of the Olivier stage. It's a new version of the play, written by Tony Kushner (who wrote 'Angels in America' so he's used to writing long plays) and is set in the small town of Slurry in small-town America. I wonder if Americans know what 'slurry' means in British English? I suspect the playwtite does but still...

The richest woman in the world is set to visit the small town where she was born and grew up in before escaping in her teenage years and beginning her adventures that made her rich and famous. The townsfolk are suddenly proud of her since the town is dying, industries closing and poverty spreading, and proud of the local shopkeeper who was her boyfriend in high school.

Then, suddenly, Claire Zachanassian arrives in the smoke from the train that wasn't scheduled to stop in the small town but she pulls the emergency chord to get it to stop. She can buy her way out of everything. The climax to Act I comes with Mrs Zachanassian promising $1 billion to the town if it delivers justice for her and this justice is the death of her former boyfriend that got her pregnant as a schoolgirl and then lied in court so she had to leave the town in shame.

Ooooh big moral decisions here and $1 billion in the 1950s was a lot more than it is today. The townsfolk can't possibly agree to kill one of their own, the owner of the local store they all use, but they can still dream. And then they start opening charge accounts that will be paid off one day when they have the money. But when will they ever have the money with local industry closing down?  There is only one source of new money. I won't go any further in telling the story in case you're planning to see the play.

The leads of Mrs Zacharassian and her old boyfriend are played by Lesley Manville and Hugo Weaving, both of whom are excellent. They worked well together and led the rather large cast with ease. Once Manville appears in the first act, all haughty and laden with money, the act is hers as she's centre-stage and not about to give up an inch. I've seen Lesley Manville on stage before but not Hugo Weaving - I've seen some of his films, of course, ('Priscilla', 'The Matrix', 'Lord of the Rings', etc) but it was nice to see him on stage doing the acting thing and he was very good indeed. I also really liked Sara Kestelman as the school headteacher who's seen her town slowly die and who made a particularly fine drunk towards the end.

It was nice to see the big Olivier stage used to good effect, to see the set rotating away and changing, and a forest emerging from below the stage - the spectacle of those moments shouldn't be underestimated since they're so rarely seen. The large cast, the clouds of smoke that appear every time a train comes near, the lighting, all of these add to the atmosphere of the play, the almost claustrophobia of small town America with dubious morals and the need to get on.

I enjoyed the play and I suspect you will too, so go along and see it.

'Troy' at the British Museum

The 'Troy' exhibition at the British Museum is closing soon so I scooted along to catch it while I still can. I've been fascinated by Troy since I was young and read Homer's 'The Iliad' in my teenage years (in translation, obviously). It's strange how that story has wound its way into our culture through art, poetry, storytelling, films and virtually every medium you can think of. A universal tale if ever there was one.

There are so many different aspects to the tale of Troy, so many different stories that there's something in there for everyone. There are love stories, tales of war and mighty warriors, jealousy, greed, power struggles, domesticity, magic and the gods, so many different angles to it that can't possibly be captured in a single exhibition. This exhibition tries to be as broad as possible and, largely succeeds.

There are three parts to the exhibition. It starts with ancient views on the Troy story as illustrated in pottery, carvings and paintings, followed by a section on the archaeology of the site in modern Turkey, and finally a view of how the story has influenced more modern culture in the last thousand years or so through books, paintings and sculptures, and, of course, films.

There were some quite astonishing paintings from Pompeii on display that re-told the tales of the old story and showed how the Romans relished the tales. The quality of the paintings is amazing and the sad thing is that we'll never know who painted them two millennia ago. I didn't notice any information about the paintings in the signage - are they frescoes or painted on dried plaster? What sort of pigments were used to create those colours?

While many of the images dealt with the big parts of the story, like the judgement of Paris or the entry of the horse into Troy, some of them picked up on the smaller aspects, like the image of Ajax and Achilles chatting over a campfire on the side of a storage jar. In a way, it's these scenes that are more interesting since they're unusual but remind us that not everything in grand tales is grand or earth-shattering, that there's a lot of waiting around. There are quiet moments amongst all the noise and rush of war and great events.

After considering how the tales of Troy were dealt with in antiquity there was a section that looked at the archeology and the fact behind the legends. There is a lot of evidence for an ancient settlement on the site thought to be Troy - quite a few settlements over the millennia - but is there evidence for a war, mass migration, Greek invasion? This section had a range of artefacts from the different cities or settlements on the site of Troy, mostly small objects that were difficult to get close to given how crowded the exhibition was.

The next section looked at the influence on art and culture of the Troy stories and legends over the last thousand years, with examples of illuminated manuscripts re-telling the story, paintings. sculptures, films and videos.

One of the earliest examples were two gorgeous panel paintings by Biaggio d'Antonio from around 1490, a Florentine artist I've not heard of before but the colours shout out Quattrocento. They're on loan from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge so I'll have to take a trip to Cambridge to see what other treasures it might have. These panels show the 'Death of Hector' and 'The Wooden Horse' so someone had obviously read Homer (or possibly, Virgil) back then to get all the details.

There's a great statue of 'The Wounded Achilles' by Filippo Albacini from 1825 on loan from Chatsworth, which is the poster boy for the exhibition.

Further along is a lovely painting by Lucas Cranach of the 'Judgement of Paris' from around 1530 on loan from the Royal Collection. We see Paris in contemporary armour as a knight as he decides which goddess is the most beautiful and it's interesting that Cranach has chosen Aphrodite as the goddess to look out at the viewer - it could have been any of them really.

There are more modern pieces of art to illustrate the continuing fascination with Troy in all it's aspects. We see William Blake's version of the 'Judgement of Paris' and George Romney's painting 'Lady Hamilton as Clytemnestra' amongst a range of Victorian paintings.

The final exhibit was a bit of a surprise, a large light installation based on light readings at the site of Troy by Spencer Finch, 'The Shield of Achilles'. I loved it!

The exhibition is only on for another week or so but, if you're patient enough to survive the inevitable crowds, it's well worth seeing.

Bruges: A Hospital, a Church and a Museum

I was in Belgium to see the new Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent so I thought I'd take a trip to Bruges to see some early Renaissance Flemish art. Bruges is easy to get to from Brussels, with frequent trains and it takes just under an hour to get there. When I came out of the station I saw steeples in the distance and decided to head for them. Crossing the road outside the station the buildings quickly became older and I was suddenly in a medieval town with narrow cobbled streets and picturesque buildings. So on I walked.

My first visit was to the Sint-Janshospitaal and its great collection of works by Hans Memling. The Sisters of St John had been working on that site since the 1100s in a hospital that they turned into a museum for Memling in the mid-1800s. The museum is in the former chapel of the hospital and it's a lovely space for displaying works of art and other objects, not the biggest gallery but there's plenty of space and great lighting. Hans Memling is one of the later Northern Renaissance artists and he actually lived and died in St John's so it's a special place.

The first works are two triptych altarpieces in glass cases so you can see the wing paintings, one is a Virgin and Child and the other is a Deposition, so we see the start and end of Christ's life.

Turn right and you enter the chapel with the grand St Ursula Altarpiece, much larger than the previous altarpieces and sited in the space it was painted for. You can walk round the altarpiece to see the wing paintings and back of the work.

The central panel is gorgeous. We see the Virgin enthroned with the Child in her lap, the Virgin turning a page in a book while the Child holds the finger of (i assume) St Ursula. St John is standing nearby in his rough clothes beside the Virgin's sumptuous throne. It's noticeable that the Virgin is wrapped in red whereas she would be cloaked in blue in an Italian painting of the same time.

Also in the chapel is the lovely diptych with the portrait of the Virgin with Maarten van Nieuwenhove and a portrait of an unknown young lady. This young man must have been rich or important to have to his portrait painted like this.

Out in the main space is the gorgeous Shrine to St Ursula, a gorgeous casket shaped like a church with large paintings at either end and three smaller paintings along each side of the body of the church. The eight paintings tell the story of the life of St Ursula in glorious colour with incredibly tiny details. Her story isn'y terribly delightful given the subject matter and her martyrdom with the 11,000 virgins who followed her. What is wonderful is the detail in the paintings, small as they may be.

Just over the road from Sint-Janshospitaal is the Church of Our Lady, a lovely church which is free to visit but you need a ticket to go behind the altar and see the true secret of the church, a lovely Michelangelo statue, the only statue of his that left Italy during his lifetime. Just before heading to Belgium I'd watched the film 'Monuments Men' and this Virgin and Child statue plays a big part in the film, with a soldier sacrificing his life trying to save it during the Second World War. Tickets to see that part of the church are bought  from the booth to the left of the entrance.

It's a beautiful, serene statue set under a black conch shell in the middle of a rather ornate altarpiece. If you've got a Michelangelo statue you don't surround it by lesser works from other sculptors. You can't get very close to the statue and it's covered in a glass plate for protection.

After the Church of Our Lady I headed to the Groeningemuseum, the main museum in Bruges. It's having some building work done in advance of a major exhibition about Van Eyck in the spring so some of the building was closed but the important rooms, for me, were still open, and these included the early Flemish works. The first room holds only one painting, the treasure by Van Eyck of the 'Madonna with Canon Joris van der Paele'.

The room is slightly darkened with the lights focused on this painting. The Canon kneels at the feet of the Madonna's throne, flanked by saints Domitian (whose church this was painted for) and George (the Canon's namesake). The Child presents his mother with a posy of flowers and cuddles a green parrot (I assume that represents something but I don't know what). The Canon has just stopped reading and taken off his glasses at the moment this scene is painted. Joris commissioned this painting from Van Eyck on his return to Bruges after a spell in Rome and here he is, immortalised forever by the master. I wonder if he had any idea his image would attract attention nearly 600 years later? 

The painting rewards close inspection and is full of astonishing details, from the Canon's spectacles and the open book in his hand to the sheen on St George's armour and his marvellous helmet. You just know that the fabric at the back of the throne and the carpet would have been in the latest fashionable designs at the time and the clothes of St Domitian would have been of the finest embroidery. It's a gorgeous painting

As you walk on through the museum you come across some marvellous works by early Flemish painters, such as the 'Triptych of the Lamentation' by the Master of the Legend of St Lucy and an altarpiece by the Master of the Legend of St Ursula. It's always a bit sad that we don't know the names of these great painters that were clearly thought highly of at the time since they got the commissions for paintings but their names weren't documented for one reason or another. There's always hope that a box of old parchment might be discovered in an attic somewhere that will include the invoice for a painting or a lost diary will turn up. 

There are paintings by a host of great painters including Hans Memling and Gerard David and by a certain Heironomous Bosch. There are two altarpieces by Bosch, a 'Last Judgement' and a 'Triptych of Job'. The 'Last Judgement' is, as you'd expect, full of the strange images Bosch is known for as well as the panoramic view with tiny figures doing odd things. 

One of the highlights of the museum that wasn't on show when I visited is the portrait of Margaret Van Eyck by her husband, Jan, since it's currently on loan to the great Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent. She will return in March to star in the Groeningemuseum's own celebration of Van Eyck. I know that because she told me so when I went into the museum. 

So there you are, three great places to visit when you go to Bruge and there'll be so much more when the Groeningemuseum fully re-opens. There's a lot of art to see in Bruges and a lot of streets to wander round and marvel at the wonderful architecture around you. I hope to return one day.