During the Great War Lavery was commissioned as a war artist. Several of his war paintings are on display at the Lavery on Location Exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery.

Mine-Laying Submarines Harwich 1917:-

Hendon 1917. Hendon was a Royal Flying Corps training base. I really liked this as I’m a sucker for biplanes:-

More sombrely this is The Cemetery, Étaples:-

Daylight Raid from my Studio:-

A Coast Defence. An 18-Pounder Anti-Aircraft Gun, Tyneside:-

Lavery was almost alone in portraying those who became casualties. Wounded, London:-

More of Lavery’s works can be seen on the Ulster Museum’s website, here.

Lavery made his name when he was commissioned to paint the State Visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition 1888. For this he had individual sittings for the privileged invitees so that he could then incorporate accurate portarits of them into his final composition.

He painted many pictures of the International Exhibition including this one of the main building. Along with many other depictions of various International or National Exhibitions, plus the Festival of Britain, I have a copy of this hanging on my study wall:-

Lavery also painted A View from the Canal, Kelvingrove, showing one of the gondolas which plied the waters of the River Kelvin as an amusement attraction:-

And this one of the exhibit The Blue Hungarians:-

One of the features of the international Exhibition was an array of restaurants and café including The Dutch Cocoa House (as depicted by Lavery below) which dispensed Van Houten products.

The above for some reason reminds me of both Edwin Hopper’s Nighthawks and Edgar Degas’s The Absinthe Drinker.

Lavery exhibited this painting in the Art Gallery at the International Exhibition. Dawn after the Battle of Langside. Mary, Queen of Scots in the aftermath of the battle:-

For some reason the title the Scottish National Gallery has given to its exhibition featuring the painter John Lavery is “An Irish Impressionist.”

I had always considered Lavery to be a Scottish painter, even if he was born in Ireland. He moved to Scotland as a child and started his career in Glasgow.

The Exhibition is on till 27^th October.

Lavery’s early work resembles paintings by The Glasgow Boys. This is The Intruders, very reminiscent of a painting by James Guthrie:-

His style soon developed as he took to painting more impressionistic works such as these two of the Bridge at Grès (Grez-sur-Loing):-

Then we have Windy Day:-

and The Harbour of St Jean de Luz:-

There are two versions of On The Loing in the exhibition. This one was a study for the larger painting exhibited beside it.

I’ve been to the City Art Centre, Edinburgh again. They have a retrospective exhibition of the works of Adam Bruce Thomson, of whom I admit that until the exhibition I had never heard.

The Exhibition’s title, The Quiet Path, perhaps explains that a bit. He seems to have been an unassuming man.

He was a very good painter but I was particularly taken by his drawings made during the First World War.

Zeppelin on the Ground:

Making Pontoon Bridge:

Royal Engineers Building a Bridge Near Mons:

Other drawings included Colinton:-

And, Loch Carron: Passing Storm:-

Bringing in the Hay is more colourful:

As is New Galloway:

There were some paintings of Edinburgh scenes.

North Bridge and Salisbury Crags:

The Old Dean Bridge:

And  scenes from elsewhere.

Stooks, East Lothian:

From my bedroom window:

Towards Mull:

Tréboul Harbour, Brittany:

The exhibition is on till the 6th of October.

More of Thomson’s art can be seen here.

The current Exhibition at Modern One, Edinburgh, is Tracing Time by the Korean artist Do Ho Suh, of whom I hadn’t heard until the exhibition came on. It ws quite interesting, though some of the exhibits were a bit of a miss rather than a hit.

The outline of this reminded me of the shape of the Korean peninsula:-

A fairly crude drawing of an odd subject:-

Circles or swirls feature in a lot of the exhibits:-

A somewhat scatological drawing:-

This seems to be just a shape:-

Houses, too, are a feature:-

This walk-thorough installation recreates the entrances to several of the homes in which the artist has lived:-

The Exhibition is on till Sep 1st.

One of the downstairs rooms in the Rijksmuseum held paintings that weren’t perhaps as famous as The Night Watch or Vermeer’s Milkmaid.

Two were by by Hendrick Avercamp, both reminiscent of the work of the Breughels.

Ice Entertainment Near a City :-

Winter Landscape with Skaters:-

Self portrait by Betsy Westendorp-Osieck:-

Self Portrait by Emile Bernard:-

van Gogh Self Portrait:-

Therese Schwartze Self Portrait:-

Portrait of Theresia Ansingh (Portret van Sorella) by Therese Schwartze. Also known as Woman Wearing a Hat. A better picture than mine is here:-

The Night School by Gerard Dou. An illustration of depiction of light. (Again better to see here):-

An unusual Mondrian. Painting of a Windmill:-

While we were in The Netherlands last June we took the chance to go to Amsterdam as it was somewhere we’d never visited. It involved quite a long train journey, first on a swish kind of Inter-City double-decker train from Heerenveen to Zwolle, then a slower type of train called a Sprinter, which seemingly stopped everywhere between Zwolle and Amsterdam, including six stations in Almere alone!

The sprinter had decorations in the style of the artist Mondrian.

Glass partition:-

The walls of the toilet were also styled like Mondrian – see where corridor doglegs :-

We got off at Amsterdam Centraal Station. Central facade:-

Stitch of frontage:-

Canal scenes:-

Amsterdam City Hall:-

Clock building in Muntplein:-

This exhibition, exploring 250 years of Scottish landscape is on until the 2nd of June 2024 at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh. We visited in mid February.

These four are a sample of what you can see.

Threatening Storm by William Gillies:-

A Late Snowfall, Galloway, by Charles Oppenheimer:-

A corrie in Argyllshire, by James Lawton Wingate:-

A street in Temple by William Gillies:-

Grayson Perry’s Smash Hits Show at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, got a rather sniffy and somewhat off the point review in the Guardian.

Yes, it’s about Englishness, even a very Grayson Perry kind of Englishness, but why should an exhibition about Englishness not take place in Edinburgh? Especially in the middle of an International Festival.

In any case it could be argued that Englishness has had more effect on Scotland than any other influence (except perhaps Calvinism) and is therefore an entirely appropriate subject for contemplation in the Scottish capital.

One of the most intriguing exhibits at the Exhibition was a model of a ship, titled The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. (I’m always a sucker for ship models.) Perry’s explanation of the piece is here.

Another piece, Temple for Everyone, reminded me of the story of Hansel and Gretel. See Perry’s explanation here.

I was more taken with this kintsugi piece than I was with Perry’s undamaged vases. Kintsugi* is the Japanese Art of smashing an object – especially a piece of pottery and then gluing it back tgether and highlighting the joins with gold:-

This plate, Two Old Guys Wearing Checked Skirts, like a lot of pieces at the exhibition, (far too many in fact) features Perry’s childhood teddy bear Alan Measles and is a sort of homage to the late Queen Elizabeth:-

This piece of pot, English Wanker, just about speaks for itself:-

*Edited to add: I have since found out that the Japanese frown on deliberately breaking something to reform it. Kintsugi is more properly the highlighting of imperfections – the repair of broken pottery lending itself to this.

A couple of weeks ago myself and the good lady went to the Grayson Perry Exhibition at the National Gallery in Edinburgh. It’s called Smash Hits.

I wasn’t expecting much as what I’ve seen of his work on television didn’t inspire me. However we are Friends of the National Galleries and that has various benefits – among them a discount in their cafés  (the one in Modern Two is excellent) and free entry to exhibitions such as this. (I would not have paid the entrance fee of £19.)

I had known Perry made his name as a potter and has an alter ego as Claire whom I find tiresome in the extreme.

I was, though, pleasantly surprised to see in the first gallery two sculptures which to me had a Japanese look.

Our Father and Our Mother. Clicking on the links should take you to my photos of the blurb accompanying each:-

The next gallery had a series of tapestries collectively titled The Vanity of Small Differences and based on Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress but updated for the Twenty-First century:-

Note the cafetiere and “literature” mugs in the second one above. Apparently these are emblems of being middle class. I admit to using a cafetiere. I don’t have literature mugs though.

The background in the last one seemed to me to sum up life in Britain in latter years:-

Another huge tapestry illustrated Perry’s lack of originality. It’s titled Morris, Gainsborough, Turner, Riley:-

His “Battle of Britain” ended up as a conscious channelling of Paul Nash. It’s quite effective though:-