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Masterpieces at the Queen’s Gallery Holyrood, Edinburgh

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:-

Judith with the Head of Holofernes

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

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

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

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:-

Christ and St Mary Magdalene at the Tomb

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:-

Pallas Athene

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:-

Saescape with Jonah and the Whale

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

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?)

Figures Painted by Jacob van Ruisdael

There is a virtual tour of the exhibition here.

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

Doubleday, 2018, 346 p.

 Transcription cover

This once again, as in Life After Life and A God in Ruins, finds Atkinson turning to the Second World War for inspiration. Her focus here is not the RAF’s Bomber Command, though, but the intelligence service – to which Juliet Armstrong was recruited by Miles Merton in early 1940. The novel is bookended, however, by sections set in 1981 and flits between the war and Juliet’s subsequent experiences at the BBC in 1950 as a radio producer of children’s programmes.

In her war work Juliet typed up the voice recordings for an MI5 sting operation on German sympathisers who believed they were conspiring with a Gestapo officer, and also, in the guise of one Iris Carter-Jenkins, infiltrated the circle of a Mrs Scaife. The 1950s part of the novel sees Juliet receive an anonymous note saying, You will pay for what you did, which she believes must be from one of those sympathisers setting her on a path to investigate those who are left.

Marvellously readable, the narration is in a kind of joky, referential style reflecting Juliet’s thoughts. The MI5 code phrase, ‘Can I tempt you?’ seems to be said to her by everyone she meets; and in fact many whom she does, also work for MI5. This is a novel inhabiting spy territory; nothing may be what it seems. Towards the end, reflecting on the identities she had adopted she thinks, “then there was Juliet Armstrong … who some days seemed like the most fictitious of them all, despite being the ‘real’ Juliet. But then, what constituted real. Wasn’t everything, even this life itself, just a game of deception?” Well before this there are faint echoes of le Carré. In particular MI5 operative Oliver Alleyne’s name seems to allude to that author’s Percy Alleline. There are many subtleties though and Juliet’s transparent naivety is a cunning authorial device – the reader knows long before Juliet that her immediate MI5 boss, Perry, is a homosexual – but that naivety, approaching levity at times, is a surface phenomenon. It serves to hide as well as expose, though the injunction, ‘Never trust a coincidence,’ might just be good spycraft.

Paranoia strikes deep. Once a spy it’s hard to rid yourself of a spy’s habits. Sitting in the National Gallery in front of Lundens’s copy of Rembrandt’s painting, Miles Merton tells Juliet that, since the original was pruned to fit a space in Amsterdam’s Town Hall, “‘The counterfeit is in some ways truer than the real Night Watch.’” This is after all, MI5 in the mid-twentieth century.

The source of the note turns out to be less menacing than Juliet assumed, but at the same time more dangerous. Juliet’s service did not finish with the war. She reflects that, “She would never escape from any of them, would she? She would never be finished.”

I suspect Atkinson enjoyed writing this. There is a lot to admire in it and the dénouement, as in A God in Ruins, leads to the reader reassessing what has gone before, if not quite to the remarkable extent of that book. But having a character say to Juliet, “‘Come now, quite enough of exposition and explanation. We’re not approaching the end of a novel, Miss Armstrong,’” when the reader is doing just that, is over-egging it a bit, even as an authorial nod and wink.

Pedant’s corner:- “there were a number of files” (there was a number,) maw (it’s a stomach, it can’t swallow anything,) “from whence” (whence means ‘from where’ so ‘from whence’ means ‘from from where’,) “foraged from War Office” (from the War Office,) prime minister (Prime Minister,) imposter (I prefer the spelling impostor,) “the air fields” (airfields,) “MI5 were always bringing fifth-columnists in, questioning them..” (MI5 was always… .)

Emil Nolde: Colour is Life

The art exhibition with the above title is on at ModernTwo (The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art,) Edinburgh until 21/10/2018.

Nolde was born in a part of Germany that became Danish after a plebiscite in 1920 (though had presumably been Danish before the war of 1864) thought of himself as German yet retained Danish citizenship.

I noticed at the entrance that the gallery felt it had to emphasise it in no way endorsed Nolde’s anti-semitic views.

Despite those views and his membership of the Nazi party Nolde’s works were the single most withdrawn from museums by the Nazis (1,052 works) and the most represented in their Degenerate Art (Entartete Kunst) Exhibition, which managed to draw huge crowds – some of whom were quite enthusiastic about the contents.

I found myself not knowing quite what to make of Colour is Life. Some of the paintings were undoubtedly grotesque like Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve after expulsion from the Garden of Eden

and his Immaculate Conception (which I cannot find an example of to embed here) showing the mother of Jesus in an attitude of ecstasy as the Holy Spirit hovers nearby is in a similar style only more so.

Others are reminiscent of Toulouse-Lautrec posters, only more garish:-

On the other hand some of his pen and ink drawings reminded me of the Rembrandt ones in the exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery.

His depiction of the sails in one of his paintings of junks looked like Japanese calligraphy. I’m not sure I’ve found the exact match, the original image of the one below is apparently copyright so this is only a thumbnail:-

Junks with Full Sails

This is a more colourful version of a similar subject:-

Junks (Red) Emil Nolde

The introductory video from the exhibition’s web page is also on YouTube:-

Rembrandt Exhibition, Edinburgh

The latest exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland, Princes Street, Edinburgh – Rembrandt: Britain’s Discovery of the Master features quite a lot of paintings by the artist as well as many prints made from his etchings/engravings, along with other artworks by those who were influenced by him.

Of the two perhaps most famous of the paintings featured I found Belshazzar’s Feast to be somewhat overblown. (In the flesh it is a bit brighter than it seems here.) :-

Rembrandt: Belshazzar's Feast

The Mill is more restrained but an imagined Dutch scene I’d have thought. That promontory is just a bit too high, though the picture seems to have inspired many other artists.

Rembrandt: The Mill

His portraits, though, are stunning. Among those whose representations I could find on the net – these may disappear after the exhibition ends – are:-

An Old Woman Reading – originally thought to be a portrait of the artist’s mother:-

Rembrandt: An Old Woman Reading

and Girl at a Window which is said on the caption to be so lifelike that passers-by at Rembrandt’s studio would speak to its subject. (That seems a bit unlikely, why would the painting be near or in a window?)

Rembrandt: Girl at a Window

Two pictures in the exhibition capture light very well. Rembrandt’s own Landscape with the Rest at the Flight into Egypt:-

Rembrandt: Rest at the Flight into Egypt

(The English artist Joshua Reynolds is on record as complaining that Rembrandt painted light rather than the objects which it reflects from. Each to his own.)

The Holy Family by Night – thought now to be school of Rembrandt rather than by the artist himself:-
The Holy Family by Night

An example of his etching is The Three Crosses (more properly Christ Crucified Between the Two Thieves):-

Rembrandt: The Three Crosses

I must confess I preferred his etchings of rural scenes such as The Three Trees to the religious ones as in Christ Presented to the People.

He was the first (or among the first) artist(s) to recognise the commercial possibilities of the limited edition, altering plates to make variorum prints. The popular title given to the one below reflects the price it is said to have achieved.

The Hundred Guilder Print:-

Rembrandt: The Hundred Guilder Print

One of the most interesting exhibits, in a glass case in one of the rooms, was an actual etched copper plate set alongside a print made from it.

An introductory video to the exhibition can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=141&v=F1pjZqg5fTM.

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