Greetings!

A trio of fabulous books!

Three new and perfectly inter-related books were published this month:

Simon Morley’s “La Belle France” (Yale University Press) is an arty road journey around contemporary France investigating why British artists from Walter Sickert to David Hockney have found the country – from Paris to Normandy to the Riviera – have found the landscape and culture so inspiring, and so liberating.

One of the artists mentioned is Roger Fry, the subject of Fiona McKenzie Johnston’s new biography (Triglyph Books) telling the life story of the man who gave up his scientific studies for Renaissance Art, his own painting and – famously – bringing Post-Impressionism to Britain.

That exhibition is, in turn, the focus of David Boyd Haycock’s “Art-Quake, 1910” (Old Street Publishing): “The exhibition ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’… would be the closest thing, metaphorically, to a bomb in the National Gallery.”

Each are written with great insight and panache, very much enthusing this reader for one!

And if you’re interested, I’ll be discussing Roger Fry with Fiona McKenzie Johnston as part of Dalloway Day at Hatchards, Piccadilly on Saturday 13th June (tickets available via hatchards.co.uk).

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I hope you will be able to join us on

Saturday 27th June, 11.15am (for about an hour & a half)

at The Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea.

as we continue our research into the ‘long decade’ of 1950s Britain, from the end of World War II to Pop Art.

This month we’ll look at the early paintings of Francis Bacon whose work seems to delve into the existential crisis and evoke the very zeitgeist of the post-war world.

Photograph (above) Francis Bacon by John Deakin [early 1950s]

Francis Bacon (1909-1992) Figure in a Landscape [1945; Tate; artuk.org]

There’ll be plenty to see & discuss as always!

Tickets are £10 (cash) on the door and include coffee & a biscuit at The Jazz Centre afterwards.

Looking forward to seeing you!

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Greetings!

I hope you will be able to join us

on Friday 19th June, 11.30am (for about an hour)

at The Beaumont, Barchester Care, 15 Cannon Hill, Old Southgate, N14 7DJ

to further explore the art of Desmond Morris and Ithell Colquhoun whose post-war Surrealist works developed from very different ways of thinking and understanding the world around them.

Left: Desmond Morris (1928-2026) Entry to a Landscape [1947; c/o Christie’s]

Right: Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) Guardian Angel [1947; private]

There’ll be lots to look at and discuss – I hope you’ll be able to come along!

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The discussions are for everyone, whether residents or local community. Please note a £3 on-the-door request to cover the cost of coffee and biscuits. With all thanks to Barchester Health Care.

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Greetings!

A few odds & ends that might be interesting:

In case you missed it, there’s a great documentary about the life of the artist Gluck (1895-1978) on i-player

The story of Gluck – Britain’s cross-dressing high society painter of the 1930s – who staged ‘one-man shows’, had relationships with women and somehow got away with it.

Gluck: Who Did She Think He Was? – BBC iPlayer

In turn I would definitely recommend Diana Souhami’s biography

If you’re in ‘holiday spirit’ then Simon Morley’s La Belle France: British Artists Abroad, from Walter Sickert to David Hockney is published by Yale this week (and is very good!)

Simon Morley explores the influence of French culture on British artists during the modern period, and from his house in central France travels in the footsteps of artists including Francis Bacon, the Bloomsbury Group, Edward Burra, Leonora Carrington, David Hockney, Gwen John, Ben Nicholson, and Walter Sickert. For these British Francophiles, France’s culture and social milieu were the most powerful expressions of the spirit of modernity and profoundly inspirational, helping to free them from what they perceived as the straitlaced parochialism of their homeland.

And, if you’ve been with us either at The Beecroft or The Beaumont and are interested in our discussion of Patrick Heron’s paintings from the 1950s, there’s a small but fabulous exhibition at the

Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert Gallery (38 Bury Street, St James’s; website https://hh-h.com/exhibitions/44-patrick-heron-1950-54/ )

until 10th July that is definitely worth exploring if you’re passing by!

Patrick Heron (1920-1999) The Red Table [1950; Hazlitt Gallery]

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I hope you will be able to join us on

Saturday 30th May, 11.15am (for about an hour & a half)

at The Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea.

as we continue our research into the ‘long decade’ of 1950s Britain, from the end of World War II to Pop Art.

This month we’ll look at the ideas and paintings of post-war British Surrealists, in particular the art of Desmond Morris (the Scientist) and Ithell Colquhoun (the Occultist).

Left: Desmond Morris (1928-2026) The Last Serenade [1959; desmond-morris.com]

Right: Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) Autumnal Equinox [1949; Rediscovering Art by Women; artuk.org]

There’ll be plenty to see & discuss as always!

Tickets are £10 (cash) on the door and include coffee & a biscuit at The Jazz Centre afterwards.

Looking forward to seeing you!

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A new book that may be of interest in this context: Surrealism of Angst: Emmy Bridgwater by Silvano Levy (Paul Holberton Publishing)

Surrealism of Angst explores the extraordinary work of Emmy Bridgwater (1906–1999), the British Surrealist artist who has long been unjustly overlooked. Born in Birmingham, Bridgwater became associated with the Birmingham Surrealists in 1937 and joined the London Surrealist Group three years later. Her haunting imagery—sinister birds, savage cats, scenes of mutilation and violation—forms a visual language of disquiet and emotional intensity. This book reclaims Bridgwater’s place in the Surrealist canon, revealing a profound and often unsettling vision that is as innovative as it is affecting.

And Emmy Bridgwater’s art will be included in an exhibition “Surreal Solihull” at the Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham from 24 Oct 2026 to 10 Jan 2027.

Greetings!

I hope you will be able to join us

on Friday 22nd May, 11.30am (for about an hour)

at The Beaumont, Barchester Care, 15 Cannon Hill, Old Southgate, N14 7DJ

to further explore the life, times & art of Patrick Heron (1920-1999) at Eagle’s Nest in St Ives, where he engaged with abstraction in the pursuit of colour.

June Horizon [1957; The Hepworth Wakefield; c/o artuk.org]

There’ll be lots to look at and discuss – I hope you’ll be able to come along!

*

The discussions are for everyone, whether residents or local community. Please note a £3 on-the-door request to cover the cost of coffee and biscuits. With all thanks to Barchester Health Care.

*

Notes:

Very interesting books:

***

I hope you will be able to join us on

Saturday 30th May, 11.15am (for about an hour & a half)

at The Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea.

as we continue our research into the ‘long decade’ of 1950s Britain, from the end of World War II to Pop Art.

This month we’ll look at the ideas and paintings of post-war British Surrealists, in particular the art of Desmond Morris (the Scientist) and Ithell Colquhoun (the Occultist).

Left: Desmond Morris (1928-2026) The Last Serenade [1959; desmond-morris.com]

Right: Ithell Colquhoun (1906–1988) Autumnal Equinox [1949; Rediscovering Art by Women; artuk.org]

There’ll be plenty to see & discuss as always!

Tickets are £10 (cash) on the door and include coffee & a biscuit at The Jazz Centre afterwards.

Looking forward to seeing you!

***

A new book that may be of interest in this context: Surrealism of Angst: Emmy Bridgwater by Silvano Levy (Paul Holberton Publishing)

Surrealism of Angst explores the extraordinary work of Emmy Bridgwater (1906–1999), the British Surrealist artist who has long been unjustly overlooked. Born in Birmingham, Bridgwater became associated with the Birmingham Surrealists in 1937 and joined the London Surrealist Group three years later. Her haunting imagery—sinister birds, savage cats, scenes of mutilation and violation—forms a visual language of disquiet and emotional intensity. This book reclaims Bridgwater’s place in the Surrealist canon, revealing a profound and often unsettling vision that is as innovative as it is affecting.

And Emmy Bridgwater’s art will be included in an exhibition “Surreal Solihull” at the Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham from 24 Oct 2026 to 10 Jan 2027.

Greetings!

I hope you will be able to join us

on Friday 17th April, 11.30am (for about an hour)

at The Beaumont, Barchester Care, 15 Cannon Hill, Old Southgate, N14 7DJ

to further explore the life, times & art of Peter Lanyon (1918-1964), one of the foremost artists of the post-war St Ives School who combined abstraction with landscape, portraying his native Cornwall in rich brushstrokes of colour and texture. Today we’ll look at his paintings for what I’ll call “ghostings” – the generative accumulations of events, history and myth that lie on and under the surface.

Landscape with Cup (Annunciation) [1946; private c/o Christie‘s; and note the essay on Sotheby‘s]

There’ll be lots to look at and discuss – I hope you’ll be able to come along!

*

The discussions are for everyone, whether residents or local community. Please note a £3 on-the-door request to cover the cost of coffee and biscuits. With all thanks to Barchester Health Care.

*

Notes:

Very interesting books:

***

I hope you will be able to join us on

Saturday 28th March, 11.15am (for about an hour & a half)

at The Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend-on-Sea.

as we continue our research into the ‘long decade’ of 1950s Britain, from the end of World War II to Pop Art.

This month we’ll focus on the post-war Neo-Romantic painters inspired by artists such as Paul Nash, John Piper and Graham Sutherland like John Craxton, Keith Vaughan and others who – remembering the work of Samuel Palmer and The Ancients a century before – sought an imaginative, visionary, even nostalgic art of landscape.

Greek Fisherman by John Craxton [1946; Pallant House Gallery]; A Path in the Woods by Graham Sutherland [1957; Norfolk Museums Service] Walking Figure by Keith Vaughan [1958; Jerwood Collection]

There’ll be plenty to see & discuss as always!

Tickets are £10 (cash) on the door and include coffee & a biscuit at The Jazz Centre afterwards.

Looking forward to seeing you!

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Notes:

There’s a very good short over-view essay on the Pallant House Gallery website on British Neo-Romanticism by Gerard Hastings here: https://pallant.org.uk/a-different-light-british-neo-romanticism/

Also, both online and at the John Swarbrooke Gallery, Fitzroy Square until 15th March, the exhibition A Paradise Regained: Neo-Romanticism in Britain; see https://privateviews.artlogic.net/2/12ac8f93e419afa9873e58/

***

Greetings!

I hope you will be able to join us

on Friday 20th March, 11.30am (for about an hour)

at The Beaumont, Barchester Care, 15 Cannon Hill, Old Southgate, N14 7DJ

to explore the life, times & art of Peter Lanyon (1918-1964), one of the foremost artists of the post-war St Ives School who combined abstraction with landscape, portraying his native Cornwall in rich brushstrokes of colour and texture.

Silent Coast [1957; Manchester Art Gallery; artuk.org]

There’ll be lots to look at and discuss – I hope you’ll be able to come along!

*

The discussions are for everyone, whether residents or local community. Please note a £3 on-the-door request to cover the cost of coffee and biscuits. With all thanks to Barchester Health Care.

*

Notes:

Very interesting books:

***