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.

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

More adventures in museum and exhibition gift shops...

1) NAKED MAN STANDING (1505-6?) - Michelangelo

Although this postcard is published by the Louvre I have an idea I bought it at the British Museum in 2010 for their Italian Renaissance Drawings exhibition.

Michelangelo's pen and ink sketch wonderfully conjures solidity and muscle out of thin air; even The Louvre are unsure of exact dates for the drawing or what it might have been a sketch for.

2) THE ARTIST'S GARDEN AT GIVERNY (1900) - Claude Monet

I bought this at the Royal Academy's 1999 exhibition MONET IN THE 20TH CENTURY which made me appreciate Impressionist painting for the first time as I was exposed to room after room of Monet's remarkable works.

A bed of vibrantly painted Irises lead you away from the painter to the seclusion of the tree-lined path by his house; another painting I just want to jump into!

3) LILY POND TABLE (1913) - Duncan Grant

The table design is attributed to Duncan Grant and I bought the postcard at The Courtauld Gallery's 2009 exhibition "Beyond Bloomsbury: Designs of The Omega Workshops".  It was a poor excuse for the actual table itself but I would have had difficulty hiding it under my coat.

This lustrous design really stood out against all the other exhibits and suggested the dark cool water beneath the lovely greens and oranges of the lily pads.  Roger Fry set up the Omega Workshop in Bloomsbury to give younger artists the opportunity to make art (and money) by designing and making objects for the home, surrounding yourself with beautiful furniture as well as paintings on the wall.  Along with Grant, artists who worked on and off for Omega in it's six years of trading were Vanessa Bell, Carrington, Paul Nash and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

4) DAVID TRIBUNE (1501-4) - Michelangelo

Another postcard from the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence where Michelangelo's epic David stands in solitary majesty.  As you can see I do love a Michelangelo bloke in the nip.

DAVID was originally placed in the Piazza della Signoria beside the Palazzo Vecchio.  It stayed there for 369 years until it was moved to the Galleria in 1873.  One of the most famous bums in art.

5) PORTRAIT OF JEANNE KÉFER (1885) - Fernand Khnopff

I bought this a while ago at the Royal Academy's exhibition IMPRESSIONISM TO SYMBOLISM: THE BELGIAN AVANT-GARDE 1880-1900.  I love the charming delicacy of the painting of little Jeanne Kefér, dressed in her best to go out. The subdued colours of Khnopff's palette gives the picture an oddly luminous quality.

Five year-old Jeanne was the daughter of Khnopff's pianist friend Gustave; his positioning her in front of the large front door, along with her pensive expression, emphasizes her hesitancy in facing the outside world.

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

I haven't done one of these for a while...  more postcards from exhibitions and galleries...

1) ELLEN TERRY (1889) - John Singer Sargent

I bought this at the National Portrait Gallery after seeing the wonderful exhibition of Singer Sargent's portraits. In a room filled with other larger-than-life portraits of the rich and famous, Ellen Terry's ruled them all with the intensity and majesty invoked.

Capturing Terry in her role as Lady Macbeth which she played aged 42, you can see how Singer Sargent has captured lightening in making you aware of both the power and the incipient madness that must have been conjured by Terry's performance.  The portrait is all the more remarkable in that it is pure imagination as there is no such scene in the play.  Singer Sargent has painted her in an extended, larger-tan-life pose to show off the heavy medieval costume, jewelry and accessories and those enormous plaits!  But what arrests the viewer is the intense look on Terry's face, her eyes unfocused and lost in a reverie of power

2) MONA LISA (1503-6) - Leonardo de Vinci

Well... how can you not buy a postcard in the Louvre where Lisa del Giacondo stares out at you from anything and everything.  Started by Leonardo when she was 24, Lisa Gheradini had been married at 16 to (gasp) Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo, a silk and cloth merchant.  It is believed that he commissioned the portrait of his wife but Leonardo never delivered it to the couple and worked on it over the years until it was found in his possession when he died in Paris in 1519.

I wonder did Lisa ever entertain thoughts of becoming well-known, possibly when her husband became a Florentine official in 1499.  But as the mother of five she probably thought she would be known only to family and friends.  I wonder how she would feel to know that her face is one of the most famous in history?  As you cannot get close to the painting in it's bullet-proof shrine, really the only way to study it up close is though the postcards, books, posters, prints, tea-towels, fridge-magnets...

3) VERGINE ANNUNCIATA (1528) - Jacopo Pontormo

How many surprised Virgin Marys does one see in Florence?  This postcard was bought when we visited the church of Santa Felicita in Florence which boasts several works by the Renaissance painter Pontormo.  In this fresco of The Annunciation, Pontormo gives us a restrained version of the event as Mary turns to look behind her at the arrival of the Angel in her bare whitewashed room.

It reflects a Mannerist influence where the bling and emotionalism of Renaissance painting is stripped back to a clear, restrained version of the story.  The light shining on her face could be from an external source or from the Angel's radiance and it highlights her pale colouring, blond hair and the simple colours of her robes.  I think it's rather lovely.

4) THE GREAT DAY OF HIS WRATH (1851-3) - John Martin

I bought this in 2011 when we visited the John Martin exhibition at Tate Britain.  Odd how things trigger memories... we came out of this and I remember getting some very sad news so that is what stays with me when I see Martin's extravagant painting of the Apocalypse. I remember walking round the exhibition and wondering what the Victorians thought of his huge panoramas of sturm und drang. To me, they seemed to be early incarnations of the Biblical epics of Cecil B. deMille; massive palaces with huge empty terraces spotted with 'extras', or as here, huge set-pieces come alive with huge visual effects.

Two huge mountains of earth rise up to be crashed to earth with a zig-zag of lightning cracks across the sky to hit the tiny house raised high off the ground.  At the bottom of the painting, tiny figures cower in terror as the end approaches... and all lit by a sickly, glowering deep-red sunset.  This painting was one of a triptych that Martin painted about the end of days and they actually toured around theatres in England and America, presented like a sound-and-light show with music and lights to scare the bejesus out of the audience!

5) BANKS OF THE SEINE AT CARRIERES-SUR-SEINE (1906) - Maurice de Vlaminck

I bought this at the Courtauld Gallery which boasts a wonderful collection of both Impressionist and  Post-Impressionist paintings, and one of them is this vibrant landscape by Vlaminck.  I love his Fauvist world of reds, blues and greens; the year before he painted this, he did a town landscape called "Restaurant de la Machine a Bougival" and whenever I see it I just want to leap into it and live there.

Vlaminck's painting of the banks of the Seine in a town to the north of Paris glows with life and the joy of painting.  The whole painting moves with the breezes that swirl the branches of the trees and bushes.  The houses on the far side of the Seine offer solidity and community - but on this bank all is life, nature and vivid colour.

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

I am going to do this as an occasional blog...

Usually for me it kicks in about halfway round an exhibition... that's when I start thinking "I wonder if they have this picture as a postcard in the shop?"  Indeed I remember going to the Royal Academy's 1991 Pop Art exhibition with a friend, Jacqui Tomlinson, who *raced* around the gallery barely looking at the Warhols, Lichtensteins and Johns'.  When I caught up with her I asked did she really dislike it that much and she said "No, I just want to get to the shop quicker".  I thought Andy Warhol would have found that particularly funny.

Of course once I get to the shop, I usually start my usual rant: "Why don't they have a postcard of THAT picture??  Why are there only 4 postcards for such a big exhibition - and why are they all the SHITE ones?"  I have yet to get a proper answer to that one...

But we buy the postcards they have - and in a very special case, the catalogue - but what do you do with yours?  Mine tend to sit in various boxes, waiting to be looked at again... so let's get them on here!  I shall put up a few at a time and give my memories of when and where I saw them.

1) CARNATION, LILY, LILY, ROSE (1885-6) - John Singer Sargent

I bought this after seeing the glorious 2015 Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which included the luminous painting of an artist friend's two daughters lighting Chinese lanterns in a twilight garden.  The postcard doesn't exactly do Sargent's colours justice but it's a lovely painting, giving a nod to impressionism but with Sargent's careful staging.

2) EL FINAL DEL NUMERO (1900-1) - Pablo Picasso

I think I bought this at the Courtauld's exhibition BECOMING PICASSO in 2013 which focused on 1901, one of the key years in the artists life. I love his use of pastels in this vivid moment of a singer taking the applause of her audience.

3) MRS HERBERT DUCKWORTH (1867) - Julia Margaret Cameron

 I bought this at the National Portrait Gallery exhibition of Cameron in 2003.  Cameron's niece Julia Jackson posed for this photograph aged 21 and her austere beauty could almost be a personification of Victorian femininity.  Later that year she married the barrister Herbert Duckworth and was left widowed 3 years later with 3 children.  Eight years on she married the writer Sir Leslie Stephen who already had a daughter from his first marriage.  The Stephens would go on to have four more children together before Julia's death at the age of 49.  Her daughters would later rebel against their mother Julia's Victorian values through art (Vanessa Bell) and literature (Virginia Woolf).

4) DAWN, TOMB OF LORENZO DI MEDICI, DUKE OF URBANO (1520-34) - Michelangelo

I bought this in the Medici Chapel in Florence where Michelangelo's monumental tomb for Lorenzo, Duke of Urbano is. The Duke of Urbano was one of the lesser Medici, dying at the age of 26 but his daughter Catherine de Medici would go on to fame as the controlling Queen of France at the time of the Huguenot massacres.  Michelangelo's nude allegorical figure of Dawn however is a glorious statue of weary majesty.

5) SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST (1320) - Giotto

I bought this at the Musée Jacquemart-André, a favourite museum in Paris which usually has interesting exhibitions and an even more interesting restaurant, perfect for déjuner avec un grand patisserie.  This was part of their 2015 exhibition FROM GIOTTO TO CARAVAGGIO and is a fine example of Giotto's skill in humanising his figures, his John The Evangelist is an old man whose kind and wise face is suggested by the lines around his eyes and forehead.  I like the gold trimming on his blue gown and pink shawl... John obviously liked his colours.  I have been told by Owen that "Giotto invented art" and I'm glad he did.

More soon...