Rob Bell from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers gives us an engineer’s take on these two paintings at the National Gallery. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers was founded in 1847 and has over 100,000 members around the world.
Tag Archives: British Painters
British Artist Views: David Hockney’s “Perspectives”
DAVID HOCKNEY Hotel Acatlán: Second Day, from Moving Focus, 1984-85
DAVID HOCKNEY Pembroke Studio Interior, from Moving Focus, 1984
Profiles: David Hockney At The Huntington Library
You can see fields in the distance and, in the center, a leafless tree with branches that twist and turn in an almost snakelike manner. The painting comes from a period in Hockney’s career when he created a series of plein air landscapes around his hometown.
The painting hangs in conversation with John Constable’s monumental View on the Stour Near Dedham (1822). While the two works were created more than 180 years apart, their inspiration comes from the same source—childhood surroundings—and they both convey a sense of place and nostalgia.
One of the most famous British artists of the 20th century, Hockney emerged as a major contributor to the 1960s pop art movement and has had a multifaced career as a painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. He is perhaps best known for his acrylic paintings of bright swimming pools, split-level homes, and suburban California landscapes.
In 2022, The Huntington acquired its first Hockney works: 17 works on paper that include an artist book, drawings, prints, photocollages, and watercolors. These works display an intimate side of Hockney—like the self-portrait of the artist in red suspenders, bent over a table and peering over his wire-rimmed glasses, paintbrush in hand. His blue eyes, gazing straight at the viewer, create an immediate intimacy.
Interviews: British Artist Cecily Brown At The Met
Cecily Brown: Death and the Maid assembles a select group of some fifty paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and monotypes from across her career to explore the intertwined themes of still life, memento mori, mirroring, and vanitas—symbolic depictions of human vanity or life’s brevity—that have propelled her dynamic and impactful practice for decades. On view April 4th, 2023 through December 3rd, 2023.
Learn more about the exhibition: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions…
Art History: ‘Portraits Of Henrietta Moraes – Three Studies’ By Francis Bacon
This extraordinary Francis Bacon triptych from the William S. Paley Collection is one of the true masterpieces of his career and marks the first inception of his painting of Henrietta Moraes, who became one of his most famous and preferred sitters.
Held in stewardship by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the last 30 years, it is coming to market for the first time since William S. Paley acquired it from the Marlborough Gallery.
Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. Focusing on the human form, his subjects included crucifixions, portraits of popes, self-portraits, and portraits of close friends, with abstracted figures sometimes isolated in geometrical structures.
To learn more about one of the great bohemian muses of the 1950’s and 1960’s, Henrietta Moraes, please click here: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/…
Views: ‘Niagara, 1857’ By Frederic Edwin Church
20th Century: Was Francis Bacon The Best Painter?
Is Francis Bacon really the greatest painter of the 20th century?
It was not an enormous surprise that an exhibition of works by Francis Bacon at the Royal Academy that is supported by Christie’s should swiftly be followed by an announcement of the auction house offering a large work for sale. Triptych 1986-7, whose central panel depicts the artist’s partner John Edwards, with Woodrow Wilson on one side and the assassinated Trotsky’s study on the other, is being offered in the sale that takes place on 1 March with an estimate of £35m–£55m. Nor is it a surprise that an auction house should drum up interest in one of their lots using superlatives. But Rakewell was a little taken aback by the claim on Instagram from a Christie’s specialist that ‘Francis Bacon is unmistakably on of the greatest painters of the 20th century.’
Inside British Art: ‘The Red Boy’ By Thomas Lawrence
Restorer Paul Ackroyd gets ‘The Red Boy’ ready to be displayed in the Gallery.
The Red Boy, or Master Lambton, are popular names for a portrait made in 1825 by Sir Thomas Lawrence. It is officially entitled with the name of its subject, Charles William Lambton, who was the elder son of John Lambton.
Paul Ackroyd, restorer, is cleaning ‘The Red Boy’, an iconic painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. It was so popular it was the first-ever painting to feature on a British postage stamp.
Profiles: British Painter William Lee-Hankey – ’19th Century Rural France’
William Lee Hankey RWS, RI, ROI, RE, NS was a British painter and book illustrator. He specialised in landscapes, character studies and portraits of pastoral life, particularly in studies of mothers with young children such as “We’ve Been in the Meadows All Day”.
British Masterpieces: ‘Purfleet And The Essex Shore’ By J.M.W. Turner
Travel back in time to J.M.W. Turner’s Harley Street gallery before immersing yourself in one of the finest seascapes ever painted by a British artist. Movie trailer legend Nick Ellsworth reads from Poet Laureate John Masefield’s ‘Sea Fever’ as we set sail across the mouth of the River Thames to explore Turner’s masterpiece. ‘Purfleet and the Essex Shore as seen from Long Reach’ established Turner’s reputation as the greatest marine painter of the modern age.
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