Last week we attended the Exhibition titled A Taste for Impressionism: Modern French Art from Millet to Matisse at the Scottish National Gallery on Princes Street. The exhibition has been on for nearly two months and finishes on 13/11/22.

Some of the pictures on show weren’t quite what I would describe as impressionistic but all were worth looking at.

Two of the interesting ones for me were this Cézanne, Montagne Sainte Victoire, in which the abstract nature of the depiction of the fields in the flesh/paint looked to me to prefigure Cubism.

Thsi painting, The Open Window by Edouard Vuillard, reminded me of John Henry Lorimer:-

Also in February we went to a William Morris Exhibition at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh. The exhibition is now over.

William Morris was one of the leading proponents of the Arts and Crafts Movement. His wallpaper patterns covered many a Victorian wall and have been fashionable on and off ever since.

Wallpaper Patterns:-

A printing block:-

Textiles:-

Several of the exhibits at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, when we visited in February featured circles of different sorts, mostly of natural origin, but some not:-

Thios one has a depiction of Copernicus’s heliocentric solar system in the book at the centre:-

This was on the wall. It looks like the trace of an eccentically orbiting comet or something of that kind:-

Liesegang Rings. I confess I had only heard of Liesegang Rings in a chemical context before this but I now know they occur geologically too, as evidenced below:-

In February my eldest son and his wife (along with our grandaughter) took us to the Talbot Rice Gallery in Edinburgh, which I don’t recall visiting before.

I was taken by this by Angelica Mesiti which contrasts a natural piece of marble with a sea atlas from 1675:-

I can’t remember where I bought my hardback copy of Son of the Stars by Raymond F Jones (Hutchinson & Company, London, 1952?) but I did so mainly due to the excellent endpapers.

Aren’t they lovely? So of their time. They remind me a bit of Robot Archie from the British weekly comic Lion and of course Robby from the film Forbidden Planet:-

As it was our anniversary on Monday we decided to visit Jupiter Artland, a Sculpture Park and Art venue near Wilkieston in West Lothian.

At present it is hosting an exhibition of paintings/drawings by Tracey Emin under the collective title “I Lay Here For You.” These smaller works were split between the Ballroom and an exhibition space in the Park’s Steadings. I must say I’m not taken with Emin’s painting/drawing skills. The best bit about the Ballroom was the building’s ceiling.

The garden outside the Ballroom was pleasantly planted:-

There’s what looks like a paddling pool in the grounds. It’s not really. There are signs asking you to stay on the black area for a start. The estate’s “Big House” is in the background here:-

We also partook of lunch in the café. The menu was abit pretentious but the food was good.

On the way in you drive past some Charles Jencks landforms called Cells of Life. Below is a stitch from four photos:-

Closer view of Charles Jencks landforms at Jupiter Artland with a red bridge in middle distance:-

In our later stroll through the grounds we came closer to that bridge. It’s named Only Connect and is by Ian Hamilton Findlay:-

The Quarry by Phyllida Barlow. The colours on the columns are a bit faded but reminded me of totem poles:-

The Rose Walk is by Pablo Bronstein:-

One of the installations is Weeping Girls, created by Laura Ford. I didn’t photgraph that one as I found the figures rather creepy.

Signpost to Jupiter. I note the distance is given in USian. (Since a meter is a measuring device not a length the better spelling is kilometres):-

There is a Tracey Emin sculpture titled I Lay Here for You in the grounds.

To give some idea of the location here is a phptgraph of three bridges across the River Forth as seen from Jupiter Artland. The Forth Bridge (right,) The Forth Road Bridge (centre,) The Queensferry Crossing (left.)

Earlier this month we took in the Barbara Hepworth Exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Modern Two, Edinburgh.

The Exhibition is entitled Barbara Hepworth, Art and Life and is open till 2/10/2022.

As well as sculpture, for which Hepworth is most famous, there are some of her paintings on display. In the first room this one reminded me of Mondrian:-

Photograph of Contrapuntal Forms, a Hepworth sculpture displayed at the Festival of Britain’s South Bank site in London. Part of the Skylon can be seen in the background:-

Room 2 had more early paintings. Apologies for the picture quality. I didn’t use flash as I assumed it wouldn’t be allowed:-

These watercolours are very good:-

Also in room 2, some typical Hepworth sculptures:-

The leftmost one above, Dyad, caught the good lady’s eye:-

During World War 2 Hepworth’s access to sculptural materials was limited. This is one of the sketches she made as preparation for a sculpture:-

She even designed textiles:-

An ovoid sculpture with her characteristic smooth curves and voids:-

A more traditional sculpture but still with her distinctive curves:-

Orpheus. An example of her use of strings. (See also background of Dyad, above):-

Thsi one seems to be very similar to one I photographed outside the Pier Art Centre, Stromness, a few weeks before:-

In Stromness:-

Photograph of Winged Figure, John Lewis, London:-

Photograph of Hepworth beside one of her sculptures:-

Last week we also visited the City Art Centre in Edinburgh to have a look at an exhibition entitled National Treasure; The Scottish Modern Arts Association. The exhibition started on Sat 21 May and runs to Sun 16 Oct 2022.

The Scottish Modern Arts Association was started in the early 1900s to foster interest in and knowledge of upcoming Scottish artists. The Association mostly comprised artists and their supporters and over the years built up a collection of over 300 art works.

Unfortunately the collection never had a home to house it in despite several possibilities being put forward. Money for a building was the main problem but also a suitable site. The Association hoped to find a benefactor who could provide both. None materialised. It might have happened but the two World Wars scuppered likely suggestions.

When the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was proposed that could have been ideal but its proponents wanted to present modern art in a wider-world context and the Association’s collection was felt to be focused too much on works by Scots.

In the end the collection was handed over to the city of Edinburgh in the 1960s and the Association wound up.

There are many very good paintings in the City Art Centre exhibition. It’s well worth a look.

One of the artists whose work I recognised instantly was Arthur Melville. This is his A Scene in Tunis:-

Very familar too was John Henry Lorimer whose The Flight of the Swallows (see link) is featured:-

Also unmistakable was the work of Joan Eardley. Field of Barley by the Sea:-

New to me was John Quinton Pringle’s Muslin Street Bridgeton which is very good indeed.

Ian Cheyne’s Loch Duich is an unusual depiction of a Scottish Loch. There is something almost Japanese about the picture. It’s also reminiscent of the art in those 1930s railway posters but not quite so delineated:-

Last September we visited the Queen’s Gallery by Holyrood Palace. On that visit the facility was offered to convert the attendance ticket to one that allowed entry for a year.

Accordingly last week we took the opportunity to take in the latest exhibition there, Masterpieces from Buckingham Place, currently on view until Sep 25. Each of the pictures was captioned with the identity of the King, Queen or Prince who purchased it. Some of the paintings below appear on the Art UK website, others I photographed myself (allowed as long as no flash was used)

Given his fate it is somewhat ironic that Judith with the Head of Holofernes, painted by Cristofano Allori (1577-1621,) was bought by Charles I. Judith’s face in this painting looks remarkably modern to me:-

Artemisia Gentileschi (Rome 1593-Naples 1652) Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura.):-

Andrea del Sarto (Florence 1486-Florence 1530) Portrait of a Woman in Yellow:-

Rembrandt van Rijn (Leiden 1606-Amsterdam 1669) Agatha Bas (1611-1658):-

One of the most striking paintings of light in the exhibition was in this other Rembrandt, Christ and St Mary Magdalene at the Tomb. My photograph fails to do it justice:-

Parmigianini (1503 – 1540) Pallas Athene. For some reason this reminded me of the cyclist Laura (Trott) Kenny. Unfortunately my photograph has a reflection of the Gallery’s central light fitting:-

Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) Seascape with Jonah and the Whale. There is a lightning flash across the upper part of this picture of which I tried to take a close-up, but it didn’t come out:-

Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682) Evening Landscape, A Windmill by a Stream:-

The information card for the above says “a single figure swathed in black walks away from us.” Examining the picture closely two (female) figures can clearly be seen behind the black swathed one! They are brilliantly conjured up too, with just a few dabs of paint. How could the writer of the description have failed to notice them? (Is it perhaps because they are clearly women?)

There is a virtual tour of the exhibition here.

Original fabrics at Hill House, some by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh:-

Closer views:-

Display room, Hill House:-

Mackintosh style modern stuff for sale:-

Charles Rennie Mackintosh ‘Rose’ design biscuits in café:-