Exit Through The Giftshop - Postcards at an exhibition....

Another selection of postcards that have grabbed my eye at exhibitions and galleries...

1) HANGING LAMP (1905) - Francesc Berenguer

Bought at Parc Guell in Barcelona, this monumental hanging light is in the Casa Museu Gaudi, the impressive house where Gaudi lived, now a museum.

The architect Francesc Berenguer designed the four storey house within Parc Guell, as part of the hoped-for garden city in north Barcelona envisioned by industrialist Eusebi Guell and architect Antonio Gaudi, but the project stalled in 1914.  The park and the houses are, of course, essential viewing in Barcelona.

2) The HONOURABLE MRS GRAHAM (1777) - Thomas Gainsborough

I bought this in the Scottish National Gallery where Mrs Graham stands in splendid isolation, it was bequeathed to the gallery by Mr Graham on the proviso that it never leaves Scotland.

Gainsborough painted the 20 year-old Mary Graham, who had married a Perthshire landowner aged 17, in the height of expensive fashion as she gives some serious side-eye in the usual Arcadian landscape.  Sadly Mary died aged only 35.

3) A CONVERSATION (1916) - Vanessa Bell

Another Courtauld Gallery purchase!  This was to tie-in with their 2009 exhibition "Beyond Bloomsbury: Designs of The Omega Workshops".  I love this painting!  

Three women sit closely together ignoring the delights of the sunny garden outside to have a good gossip, I suspect someone's ears are burning somewhere.  Virginia Woolf said of her sister that while she was a remarkable painter, that she was also "...a short story writer of great wit and able to bring off a situation in a way that rouses my envy."

4) LA TENDRESSE MATERNELLE (1786) - Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

This magnificent work of self-promotion by Madame Le Brun shows her with her beloved daughter Julie aged 6, showing that despite being a portraitist to the ruling classes, she was still a loving mother (and a fine calling-card if you wanted a similar portrait) 

This was bought at the Louvre where Elisabeth and Julie are on display to all, Three years after painting this, the French Revolution drove Le Brun into exile with Julie.  In the ensuing 12 years, she moved from Italy to Austria to Russia, surviving on her talent and the good graces of their ruling classes through her reputation as Marie-Antoinette's unofficial painter.  She finally was allowed to return to France and died 40 years later, aged 86.  What a woman!

5) LE RADEAU DE LA MÉDUSE (1819) - Théodore Géricault

 

 

This was bought in the Louvre where the painting is on permanent display, Géricault's powerful epic still has the power to move and appal.  Originally called Shipwreck Scene when Géricault painted it aged only 27, he based his painting on a real incident in 1816 which was still fresh in the collective memory in France.

The frigate Medusa, carring 400 people, ran aground off the coast of West Africa and only had space for 250 people in it's lifeboats.  A raft was cobbled together and 147 attempted the 60 mile journey to the coast but when finally rescued, only 15 people were found. They told of the horror of survival: the others had fallen or been thrown into sea, and those that had starved to death on board had been cannibalised.  Géricault captures the moment when a ship is spotted on the horizon, the panicked attempt to attract it's attention is shown in the sweeping triangular movement up to the waved material, meanwhile those in the foreground are beyond help.