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).
[1917; The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds; c/o artuk.org]
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