at The Beaumont, Barchester Care, 15 Cannon Hill, Old Southgate, N14 7DJ
to discuss the development of artists’ colonies in Scotland in the late 19th century and their interconnections with European art movements.
James Guthrie: Hard At It [1883; Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC); artuk.org]
Meeting a community of artists along the way, we’ll explore the significance of artists’ colonies and their broader impact. 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.
on Saturday 22nd February, 11.15am (for about an hour & a half)
at The Beecroft Art Gallery, Victoria Avenue, Southend
to explore the influence of Japanese art on European artists in the late 19th century, including among others Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh in Paris, James Abbott McNeill Whistler in London and George Henry of The Glasgow Boys group.
It’ll be a feast for the eyes, with lots to see and much to discuss – do come along if you can, it’s open to everyone! Please note a £10 request on the door to cover Lecture Theatre hire costs as well as tea/coffee/biscuits at the Jazz Centre downstairs afterwards.
Greetings! It was fabulous to see so many people at The Beecroft on Saturday to look at the art of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). As we were saying, it was essentially an introduction – Sargent created an enormous number of extraordinary and diverse artworks from grand ‘society portraits’ for exhibition to more relaxed paintings of friends and family who travelled in Europe with him. So I thought it might be useful to flag up some of the books on Sargent for further reading:
I’d especially recommend that first book pictured, the Tate’s “John Singer Sargent” by Elizabeth Prettejohn:
This fascinating introduction explores the life and work of Sargent, contextualising his practice within the times he lived. Beginning with his cosmopolitan childhood in Europe and studio training in Paris, it charts his rise to fame and establishment as a leading portraitist internationally, up until his final works during the outbreak of the First World War. Touching on his travels, his friendships and the personal connections that influenced his practice, this a true celebration of an extraordinary artist and his paintings, which continue to captivate today.
A number of recent exhibition catalogues are available at Southend Central Library, including “Sargent and Fashion” which explores the dynamic relationship of painting and dress — from portraits and performance, gender expression and the New Woman, to the pull of tradition and the excitement of new ideas.
Of note, too, is that there is going to be an exhibition of Sargent’s work this year at Kenwood House, Hampstead from 16th May to 5th October:
Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraitswill gather together, for the first time, eighteen magnificent portraits of women once dismissively known as the “Dollar Princesses”. A war-time nurse, a helicopter pilot and the first sitting female MP among them, the exhibition will reveal the often-overshadowed lives of these fascinating American women who crossed the Atlantic to marry British aristocrats in an exchange of money for titles.On the centenary of his death, the exhibition will be a salute to John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), the most admired and sought-after portraitist of the Gilded Age on both sides of the Atlantic. These portraits represent some of his most glamorous and powerful works. In addition to full-length oil paintings, masterful charcoal portraits will also feature, depicting their subjects in a candid and perceptive light.Heiress: Sargent’s American Portraitsis curated by English Heritage with the charity drawing upon the expertise of Richard Ormond CBE, renowned Sargent scholar and the artist’s great-nephew who is exhibition consultant.
and it is worth noting that Devon Cox has a biography of Sargent coming out – apparently, hopefully – towards the end of the year “Beyond Beauty: A Portrait of John Singer Sargent” (although there are few details as yet).
As always, a good place to start for images is artuk.org which represents paintings in public collections across Britain:
also searching on Christie‘s and Sotheby‘s is always rewarding as they often have a detailed Lot Essay about individual works.
Hoping this is useful, and please let me know of anything else you come across on John Singer Sargent that you think I should share and I’ll add it in. Happy researching!
on Friday 21st February, 11.30am (for about an hour)
at The Beaumont, Barchester Care, 15 Cannon Hill, Old Southgate, N14 7DJ
to discuss the late-19th century artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing in France. Our guide will be John Lavery (1856-1941) who stayed at the colony through 1883-4.
Meeting other artists along the way, we’ll explore the significance of the artists’ colony and its broader impact. 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.
Perhaps one of their most intriguing works, we’ll look at the artists individually, their involvement in the Glasgow Boys art group, and the collaborative inspiration that led to The Druids painting.
This is a gentle discussion open to everyone, both residents and from the local community.
A £3 charge on the door covers coffee and biscuits.
With thanks to Barchester Care for their support. I hope you will be able to join us!
I hope you’ll be able to join us on Saturday 25th January, 11.15am (for about an hour & a half)
at The Beecroft Gallery, Victoria Avenue, Southend-on-Sea
to continue our theme of artists working across the art worlds of late-19th century London and Paris by exploring the paintings of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) from glamorous society portraits to more informal Impressionist pictures and, of course, the extraordinary drama that is:
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth [1889; which is in the Tate Britain collection; image c/o artuk.org]
Lots to talk about! Do come along if you’re able! We’ll be in The Beecroft’s Lecture Theatre. A £10 charge on the door covers room hire as well as coffee afterwards at The Jazz Centre downstairs.
“And it was Christmas Eve or Christmas night that I set him at the top of a long, narrow table of twelve at the dinner I gave for him in the room upstairs at the Rotonde…” writes Nancy Cunard in GM: Memories of George Moore (1) – the “him” of her recollection. For Nancy Cunard the Paris of the 1920s was as refreshing and inspiring as, Anne Chisholm notes (2), 1870s Paris had been for George Moore; both decades of radical literary and artistic change. Moore had been friends with Edouard Manet and the emerging modern art of the Impressionists; Cunard, in turn, was fascinated by Dada and the developments of Surrealism. What a dinner party it must have been!
George Moore had moved to Paris in the 1870s planning to train as an artist, but soon becoming aware he was more of a writer than a painter. Friendships, however, blossomed at the artists’ favourite rendezvous the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes, in particular with Edouard Manet who sketched and painted Moore a number of times:
and Nancy Cunard would inherit a Manet painting “Etude pour ‘Le Linge'”, which she’d loved viewing in his Ebury Street room, on Moore’s death. (This black and white reproduction is from the “Memories”, but I’ve not been able to trace the painting further.)
The second picture here is by another life-long painter friend Jacques-Emile Blanche and shows Moore’s room at Ebury Street: “Le Salon de George Moore” [1910; c/o Jane Robert’s fascinating online catalogue].
“But who were the other diners?” asks Nancy Cunard. She cannot recall exactly, but among them must have been, she thinks, the Dada founder and Surrealist writer Tristan Tzara, Nancy’s lover at the time “…and his fellow countryman… the Rumanian sculptor Brancusi (a fine bearded old shepherd of a face and to my mind one of the great sculptors of all time)…”
Photograph of Nancy Cunard and Tristan Tzara au bal des Beaumont by Man Ray[1924; Pompidou Centre, Paris]; La jeune fille sophistiquée (Portrait de Nancy Cunard) by Constantin Brancuși [1928; Christies]
Other artists Nancy believes may have been there (“They were surely asked.”) included Eugene MacCown, who had also painted her portrait, as well as Nina Hamnett, then living in Montparnasse, her friend from the heady days of London’s Soho bohemia during World War I when they had frequented The Eiffel Tower restaurant.
Portrait of Nancy Cunard by Eugene McCown [1923, The University of Texas at Austin]; The Eiffel Tower (illustration from “The Silent Queen”) by Nina Hamnett.
It must have been an extraordinary gathering from across the generations, linking characters from London and Paris, and indeed beyond – a heady mix, no wonder Nancy couldn’t remember the details thirty years later!
Please join us on Saturday 14th December, 11.15am (for about an hour & a half)
at The Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend on Sea
to explore the French and British artists who associated in 1890s Dieppe which, as an informal art colony, forms a nodal point in the cross-Channel sharings and translations of painterly ideas in modern art and Impressionism.
Walter Sickert: L’Hotel Royal, Dieppe [1894; artuk.org; Sheffield Museums]
Lots to talk about! Do come along if you’re able!
We’ll be in The Beecroft’s Lecture Theatre and a £10 charge on the door also covers coffee afterwards at The Jazz Centre downstairs.
Please join us on Friday 13th December, 11.30am (for about an hour)
at The Beaumont, 15 Cannon Hill, Old Southgate, London N14 7DJ
for a festive discussion looking at paintings of the Three Wise Men as they follow the Star to worship the new-born Jesus in Bethlehem with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Detail from: The Adoration of the Kings by Carlo Dolci [1649; National Gallery, London]
With thanks to Barchester Care. Residents and the local community are all welcome. Please note there is a £3 charge on the door to cover coffee, tea & biscuits. Looking forward to seeing you.
A very quick note to say that Sebastian Smee’s new book “Paris in Ruins: The Siege, the Commune and the Birth of Impressionism” has just been published and, if you are looking for a good art/history read, I’d highly recommend it!
Paris, January 1871 – the final, agonising days of the Franco-Prussian War. As the German army cements its advantage, shells rattle through the Left Bank. It is a bitterly cold winter; there is no fuel, no medicine, no food. The city’s poorer citizens have long turned to eating rats, cats and dogs. France has been brought to its knees. Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas are trapped in the besieged city. Renoir and Bazille have joined regiments outside of Paris, while Monet and Pissarro fled the country just in time. Out of the Siege and the Commune, these artists developed a newfound sense of the fragility of life. A feeling for transience – reflected in Impressionism’s emphasis on fugitive light, shifting seasons, glimpsed street scenes, and the impermanence of all things – would change art history forever. [Oneworld publishers]
What’s especially interesting perhaps for our Art, Books & Culture Research Group is the relationship – political, social and artistic – between Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, and Sebastian Smee gets us as close to ‘hearing’ their conversations as possible; it’s a fantastic insight into time, place and artistic inspiration.
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