Mrs Delaney (1700-88) is an inspiring example for old age; also a reproach to those who think ‘upper class’ a term of abuse and that women have only recently had a life. Mrs Delaney (1700-88) is an inspiring example for old age; also a reproach to those who think ‘upper class’ a term of abuse
Spectator readers will know that Andrew Lambirth is a romantic, a force for the literary and poetic approach to art criticism, so he is an admirably empathetic guide to Hoyland: In England the subversive underground Romantic spirit has never run dry, it consistently nourishes art in this country and erupts forth in strange and unexpected
Michael Heathcoat Amory inherited Chevithorne Barton in Devon from his grandmother. She had experienced the unimaginable loss of her husband in the First War and their three sons in the Second, including the author’s father. Creating a garden at Chevithorne was a consoling distraction. Michael Heathcoat Amory has done her and his family proud, transforming
This is the tribute of a child to a parent, especially commendable when the very concept of fatherhood is threatened; rarer still, the co-authors are themselves artists in their separate fields. Peter Mann is responsible for the pleasing design and photographs, and Sargy Mann has answered his son’s questions to provide an autobiographical text which
With more Poles in Britain than at any time since the second world war, when the 17,000 remnant of the Polish army arrived after the fall of France, this book could not be more pertinent. Nor could it have been written by anyone better. Douglas Hall (b. 1926) was the first Keeper (indeed the Alfred
As a former winner of Britain’s most prestigious award for painters, the John Moores prize (other winners include Hamilton, Hilton, Hockney, Hoyland), a new show by Andrzej Jackowski should not be missed, especially not these notably small but powerful paintings in his latest exhibition at Purdy Hicks. The phrase ‘depth charge’ is used in the
Did you know that the first person to cage a budgerigar was John Gould, the 19th-century English artist/naturalist? Or that the word ‘penguin’ is derived from the Welsh words ‘pen’ (white) and ‘gwyn’ (head)? Or that there is no scientific (in other words fossil) evidence that the dodo ever existed? These are just three informative
Percy Wyndham Lewis 1882–1957, Design Centre, Rugby School, until 8 December In the 1915 Vorticist Manifesto, published in the movement’s magazine Blast, Wyndham Lewis (he dropped Percy) wrote: Lewis is one of them, as this first-rate exhibition at his alma mater — he was a pupil for two years from 1897 — amply demonstrates. It
Ever since he burst on the scene in the 1960s Michael Sandle RA has been the rogue elephant of British art. At Ludlow Castle, a perfect venue for work whose subject is war, both metaphorical and actual, his artistic power is irrefutable. This is a superb show. John Powis, who owns the castle, should be
The enlarged, updated and now undivided Sainsbury Centre has reopened with the most comprehensive selection of Polynesian art ever assembled; and yet, shamefully, it has received not a single review. It would be a waste of space to wonder why, better to state that the stunning Pacific Encounters, curated by Dr Steven Hooper of the
This handsome and scholarly book is a catalogue of a selection of pictures of Ireland, all, remarkably, collected over the past 30 years by Desmond Fitzgerald, 29th Knight of Glin, for his famous country seat in west Limerick, where his family have held sway since 1350. It whets the appetite for the next major publication
In his old age John Ruskin lamented, ‘I have made a great mistake. I have wasted my life with mineralogy, which has led to nothing. Had I devoted myself to birds, their life and plumage, I might have produced something worth doing.’ Here are two bird books which have been eminently worth doing. Both are
It is difficult to place oneself in the position of the pioneers of graphic art shown at the Estorick Collection: their extraordinary leaps of the imagination have become the standard vocabulary; the shift from old to new they represent now distant history. Born in the 19th century when 90 per cent of human understanding came
For pure delight you must away to Northampton and see this admirable celebration of the centenary of Denys Watkins-Pitchford (1905–90) — amazingly, the first ever solo show of his pictures. Watkins-Pitchford was born and lived in Northamptonshire; he went abroad only a couple of times but he travelled extensively in Britain. Watkins-Pitchford and BB were
A tragic love story lies behind the jovial title to this delightful exhibition, which unveils the David and Liza Brown Bequest, the largest ever received by Southampton City Art Gallery. In 1967, David Brown was one of Britain’s most distinguished veterinary surgeons, the world authority on the cattle disease rinderpest, and newly appointed federal director
It is not Robert Frank’s fault, but one might think from the hype — ‘arguably the world’s greatest living photographer’, etc. — that he had invented documentary photography. When Humphrey Spender, who did for Mass Observation and Picture Post in the 1930s and 1940s what Frank did for social documentation in the 1950s, was similarly
This is the first in a series of short sharp shows devoted to leading British artists which Tate Britain proposes to stage over the coming years. According to Stephen Deuchar, Tate Britain’s director, Rego was easily the most popular choice, and little wonder. It is a sign of true quality that in a 50-year career
How welcome it is to find a book published by a small private concern in this age of conglomerates; the more pleasing when one knows that the Perpetua Press is the creation of the poet Anne Ridler’s husband Vivian, former Printer of the Oxford University Press, and that it is still run from their Oxford
John McEwen applauds the ‘Age of Titian’ in Edinburgh, and other Festival treats Sir Timothy Clifford celebrates the completion of the Playfair Project, uniting the 19th-century architect William Playfair’s two art temples on Edinburgh’s Mound, with an exhibition that is both a witty deceit and appropriately self-congratulatory. The Project gives Edinburgh an ‘exhibition complex’ that
Two things about this book — the first on the artist for over a century — are immediately off-putting: intermittent mustard-coloured pages, which make it look like a magazine, and the insistence of Robyn Asleson, a fledgling American historian, that Albert Moore’s paintings transcend words. Nonetheless she manages to hold the reader’s attention, despite the