Latest news with #Courtauld
Telegraph
07-03-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Is this the real face of Lady Jane Grey?
English Heritage claims to have found 'compelling' evidence to support the theory that a mystery portrait is of Lady Jane Grey. The identity of the woman dressed in black and white has been the subject of debate for many years. If proved to be Lady Jane, who ruled England for nine days in July 1553, it could be the only known depiction painted in her lifetime. Lady Jane was deposed by her cousin, Mary I, and was aged 16 or 17 at the time of her death. The most famous image of her is Paul Delaroche's 19th century painting which shows her blindfolded before the executioner's block. Hidden features Research conducted by English Heritage, the Courtauld Institute of Art and Ian Tyers, a leading dendrochronologist, has uncovered previously hidden features in the mysterious portrait. Using infrared imaging, the Courtauld found that the sitter's costume was significantly altered after the portrait was first completed. Where now it is subdued, in the past the dress was embellished, with the imagery suggesting more decorative sleeves and a more elaborate head-dress. The white scarf across her shoulders is believed to be a later addition. 'One line of thought is that these changes were a concerted effort to immortalise Jane as a Protestant martyr after her death with a less ostentatious image,' said Peter Moore, curator at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire, where the portrait is on display. The dendrochronology analysis – or tree ring dating – of the painted oak panels dates them to between 1539 and 1571. A merchant's mark, found on the back, is identical to a mark visible on a portrait of Lady Jane's predecessor, Edward VI, suggesting that the wood came from a merchant who supplied royal portrait artists. Iconoclastic attack Experts also confirmed work undertaken by past scholars which showed that the eyes of the portrait had been deliberately scratched out at some point during its lifetime, the sign of an iconoclastic attack. A posthumous image of Lady Jane in the National Portrait Gallery was damaged in the same way. Rachel Turnbull, senior collections conservator for English Heritage, said: 'While we can't confirm that this is definitely Lady Jane Grey, our results certainly make a compelling argument.' The portrait was acquired in 1701 by Anthony Grey, 11th Earl of Kent, and remained for 300 years at Wrest Park, his family home. When the estate was sold in 1917, the work passed into a private collection. It re-emerged for a 2007 exhibition and scholars debated its provenance, with one historian arguing that the portrait depicted Mary Neville Fiennes, Lady Dacre, a contemporary of Lady Jane. The painting has since returned to Wrest Park on loan. Lady Jane continues to fascinate, Helena Bonham Carter played her in 1986 and she was portrayed last year by Emily Bader in a historical fantasy series, My Lady Jane, based on a young adult novel series by Cynthia Hand. Philippa Gregory, the historical novelist, wrote about Lady Jane in her book The Last Tudor and was given the chance to view the portrait in the English Heritage conservation studio. She said: 'Certainly, the features are similar to those of her portrait at the National Portrait Gallery.' She added that if the portrait is indeed of Lady Jane, it is 'a powerful challenge to the traditional representation of her as a blindfolded victim'.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘Our community deserves beauty': one man's mission to green a UK tree desert
Billy Dasein was born on Rutland Street, Grimsby, in the front room of the house where he still lives. His father was a fitter, and his mother a housewife who also worked in the Tickler's jam factory. He left school at 16 and wound up working at Courtauld's synthetic textiles factory. Rows of terrace houses, constructed for workers in the booming fish industry, are set out in a grid structure by the docks. Life was similar on all these streets: doors left unlocked, kids out playing. Everyone knew everyone. Yet, fishing dried up in the 1970s and Dasein says people's lives have been in decline ever since. East Marsh – the Grimsby suburb where Rutland Street lies – is one of the UK's 'tree deserts', with less than 3% tree coverage. Farnham, in 'leafy' Surrey – home to some of the UK's wealthiest neighbourhoods – has 45%. 'When I was about five I wanted trees on Rutland Street,' says Dasein. 'It was always bloody grey and bleak, there was a harshness to it.' Low tree cover is linked with other forms of deprivation. East Marsh is the 25th most deprived ward out of the 32,844 in England, according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation. More than two-thirds of people on the street live with at least one form of deprivation, related to either employment, education, health or overcrowding. Neighbourhoods with the most trees have 330% less air pollution and are 4C cooler during a heatwave than neighbourhoods where tree canopy is the lowest Woodland Trust research Dasein realised things had transformed on Rutland Street when he came back to look after his dad in 2013 having left Grimsby 15 years earlier, putting himself through university and earning a PhD. The place had 'drastically changed,' he says: people were dealing drugs in the street and everyone he knew had 'buggered off'. In the early 2000s, the council sold off the housing stock. Absentee landlords are now 'tearing the guts out of our community,' he says. There are more than 300 empty homes in East Marsh, half of which have been empty for at least two years, according to council data. Dasein decided to create a community-benefit society called East Marsh United (Emu). High on its list were the trees. 'They slow traffic, are associated with lower crime rates, increase desirability of an area, and foster community flourishing,' he says. 'Trees are just better for our streets and communities.' Over the past two years, he has worked with local people and charities to plant 30 trees in the local park, 96 trees in local schools, and thousands of saplings in woodland and hedgerows. 'No one else is going to do it,' he says, 'so we might as well crack on.' *** In the morning, a cold sea fog comes barrelling in off the North Sea. On Rutland Street some houses are boarded up and cracked paving slabs are strewn around. 'It's very Dickensian in a lot of these houses,' Dasein says. Terry Evans, who lives on Rutland Street, says many of the houses here are at the mercy of bitter cold in winter and brutal heat in summer. Evans used to live in a house 'with every inch covered in black mould' that made his daughter sick. Once, he says, his wife leant on a wall and her hand went through it. During hot summers, the houses heat up in the sun. 'You can put your hand on our windowsill on the inside and it will burn your hand it's that hot. A bit of shade would be good.' Evans says having trees on the street would be 'absolutely brilliant', and could slow the cars down, making the street safer. 'It's going to look better to the people coming into the road – you walk down it and it's dull at the moment, there is nothing to give it any colour, which is a massive shame'. Trees are a crucial part of urban wellbeing. People living in areas with fewer trees have a higher risk of health problems from poor air quality, according to Tree Equity research from the Woodland Trust. On average, richer neighbourhoods have more than double the tree cover per person than poorer ones. Neighbourhoods with the most trees have 330% less air pollution and are 4C cooler during a heatwave than neighbourhoods where tree canopy is the lowest, according to the Woodland Trust research. Modelling by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health found doubling tree cover could cut heat-related deaths in European cities by nearly 40%. *** The government has listed East Marsh as a priority area for planting more trees owing to low tree cover, but some people have said trees would not last in the neighbourhood. In February 2023, Emu organised a planting day to get 36 trees into Grant Thorold Park at the end of Rutland Street, including maples, sweet chestnut and elm. Hundreds of volunteers turned up. 'Every single tree is still here,' says Dasein. 'Someone cycled past us, and said why are you bothering, they'll be ripped out tomorrow,' remembers Tom Noble from Create Streets, who is working with Emu. 'The community proved they could do it in the park and that has won a lot of trust.' Since then they have planted trees in seven schools and 4,500 young saplings in hedgerows with the help of schoolchildren. Related: 'Walking' forest of 1,000 trees transforms Dutch city 'The difference is incredible when you're around trees,' says Carolyn Doyley, who is a community outreach leader at Emu and works with schools. 'Some kids were naming trees. They know we need more trees and they understand the symbiotic relationship. In hot weather they're vital – you can feel the tension in the air as the heat rises.' Yet, planting trees is surprisingly expensive. The government's Urban Tree Challenge Fund provides up to £270 a tree, but the rest must be found from other sources. Planting in a park costs about £400 a tree, but planting in the street costs significantly more, as it means digging up concrete: 30 trees on Rutland Street would cost about £120,000 in total, says Noble. They still need to find about £100,000 to make this happen. In the next year or so, however, Dasein hopes to finally get the 30 trees he wanted on his street. 'For me, if this happens and we see a sweep of trees down here, I will simply think: we've really done something,' he says. 'Our community deserves beauty – arts, culture, the best that civilisation offers – and most of all, nature.' Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
The Guardian
20-02-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘Our community deserves beauty': one man's mission to green a UK tree desert
Billy Dasein was born on Rutland Street, Grimsby, in the front room of the house where he still lives. His father was a fitter, and his mother a housewife who also worked in the Tickler's jam factory. He left school at 16 and wound up working at Courtauld's synthetic textiles factory. Rows of terrace houses, constructed for workers in the booming fish industry, are set out in a grid structure by the docks. Life was similar on all these streets: doors left unlocked, kids out playing. Everyone knew everyone. Yet, fishing dried up in the 1970s and Dasein says people's lives have been in decline ever since. East Marsh – the Grimsby suburb where Rutland Street lies – is one of the UK's 'tree deserts', with less than 3% tree coverage. Farnham, in 'leafy' Surrey – home to some of the UK's wealthiest neighbourhoods – has 45%. 'When I was about five I wanted trees on Rutland Street,' says Dasein. 'It was always bloody grey and bleak, there was a harshness to it.' Low tree cover is linked with other forms of deprivation. East Marsh is the 25th most deprived ward out of the 32,844 in England, according to the Index of Multiple Deprivation. More than two-thirds of people on the street live with at least one form of deprivation, related to either employment, education, health or overcrowding. Dasein realised things had transformed on Rutland Street when he came back to look after his dad in 2013 having left Grimsby 15 years earlier, putting himself through university and earning a PhD. The place had 'drastically changed,' he says: people were dealing drugs in the street and everyone he knew had 'buggered off'. In the early 2000s, the council sold off the housing stock. Absentee landlords are now 'tearing the guts out of our community,' he says. There are more than 300 empty homes in East Marsh, half of which have been empty for at least two years, according to council data. Dasein decided to create a community-benefit society called East Marsh United (Emu). High on its list were the trees. 'They slow traffic, are associated with lower crime rates, increase desirability of an area, and foster community flourishing,' he says. 'Trees are just better for our streets and communities.' Over the past two years, he has worked with local people and charities to plant 30 trees in the local park, 96 trees in local schools, and thousands of saplings in woodland and hedgerows. 'No one else is going to do it,' he says, 'so we might as well crack on.' In the morning, a cold sea fog comes barrelling in off the North Sea. On Rutland Street some houses are boarded up and cracked paving slabs are strewn around. 'It's very Dickensian in a lot of these houses,' Dasein says. Terry Evans, who lives on Rutland Street, says many of the houses here are at the mercy of bitter cold in winter and brutal heat in summer. Evans used to live in a house 'with every inch covered in black mould' that made his daughter sick. Once, he says, his wife leant on a wall and her hand went through it. During hot summers, the houses heat up in the sun. 'You can put your hand on our windowsill on the inside and it will burn your hand it's that hot. A bit of shade would be good.' Evans says having trees on the street would be 'absolutely brilliant', and could slow the cars down, making the street safer. 'It's going to look better to the people coming into the road – you walk down it and it's dull at the moment, there is nothing to give it any colour, which is a massive shame'. Trees are a crucial part of urban wellbeing. People living in areas with fewer trees have a higher risk of health problems from poor air quality, according to Tree Equity research from the Woodland Trust. On average, richer neighbourhoods have more than double the tree cover per person than poorer ones. Neighbourhoods with the most trees have 330% less air pollution and are 4C cooler during a heatwave than neighbourhoods where tree canopy is the lowest, according to the Woodland Trust research. Modelling by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health found doubling tree cover could cut heat-related deaths in European cities by nearly 40%. The government has listed East Marsh as a priority area for planting more trees owing to low tree cover, but some people have said trees would not last in the neighbourhood. In February 2023, Emu organised a planting day to get 36 trees into Grant Thorold Park at the end of Rutland Street, including maples, sweet chestnut and elm. Hundreds of volunteers turned up. 'Every single tree is still here,' says Dasein. 'Someone cycled past us, and said why are you bothering, they'll be ripped out tomorrow,' remembers Tom Noble from Create Streets, who is working with Emu. 'The community proved they could do it in the park and that has won a lot of trust.' Since then they have planted trees in seven schools and 4,500 young saplings in hedgerows with the help of schoolchildren. 'The difference is incredible when you're around trees,' says Carolyn Doyley, who is a community outreach leader at Emu and works with schools. 'Some kids were naming trees. They know we need more trees and they understand the symbiotic relationship. In hot weather they're vital – you can feel the tension in the air as the heat rises.' Yet, planting trees is surprisingly expensive. The government's Urban Tree Challenge Fund provides up to £270 a tree, but the rest must be found from other sources. Planting in a park costs about £400 a tree, but planting in the street costs significantly more, as it means digging up concrete: 30 trees on Rutland Street would cost about £120,000 in total, says Noble. They still need to find about £100,000 to make this happen. In the next year or so, however, Dasein hopes to finally get the 30 trees he wanted on his street. 'For me, if this happens and we see a sweep of trees down here, I will simply think: we've really done something,' he says. 'Our community deserves beauty – arts, culture, the best that civilisation offers – and most of all, nature.' Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage
The Independent
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
A philanthropist's art collection that shows how Goya anticipated Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne
Is there much further mileage in Impressionism? There's certainly no shortage of public interest, judging by the huge response to the Courtauld's recent Monet in London exhibition and the National's just-closed Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers – the most popular show in the gallery's history. But what are the chances of an exhibition of the greatest hits of a single Impressionist collection – however stellar – providing major new insights into this well-trodden territory? At first sight, the Oskar Reinhart Collection (usually housed in Winterthur, Switzerland), feels almost the mirror image of the Courtauld. Both were created in the early 20th century by wealthy businessmen with a philanthropic bent and an obsession with Impressionism. With the former's handsome premises near Zurich under refurbishment, a group of key masterpieces has arrived in London for a show that should perfectly complement the Courtauld's stunning permanent Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collections. If the inclusion of Goya in the show's title feels like a rather clumsy attempt to gild the lily by yanking in another mega-name, a group of early 19th-century paintings at the start of the show proves otherwise as they deftly set up the glories to come. Goya's bluntly matter-of-fact Still Life with Three Salmon Steaks (1808), a mound of oily pink fish against a dead black background could pass for the kind of determinedly mundane still life painting the great Impressionist pioneer Edouard Manet was producing 70 years later. Meanwhile, Theodore Gericault's A Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank (1819), one of a series of haunting portraits of the mentally ill by the great Romantic painter, feels disconcertingly modern in both its subject and unflinchingly direct treatment. And a turbulent seascape by Gustave Courbet, leader of the opposing Realist tendency, compounds the sense that far from being a bolt from the blue, as we tend to imagine, Impressionism was the natural outcome of a number of existing trends. When it comes to the Impressionists themselves, nearly every work seems to offer a surprising twist. We tend to think of Cézanne as a Post-Impressionist who paved the way for Cubism and other 20th-century breakthroughs. Yet his magnificently physical Portrait of Dominique Aubert, with its rich blacks, pinks and whites larded on with a palette knife, dates from 1866, pre-dating Impressionism proper. And I doubt if anyone seeing the large, bold and admirably unfussy Lily and Greenhouse Plants (1864), which gives us, very plainly, exactly what the title says, would imagine it was by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, generally seen as the most soft-centred of the Impressionists. There's a privileged sense of looking in on some of the world's most famous artists before they were Impressionists. While there are no surprises in Monet's The Breakup of Ice on the Seine (1880), the reflections of poplars among shards of ice are so vividly evoked in the sketchiest of paint strokes that you can practically feel the chill air flooding off the canvas. If none of us are currently in need of any more chill air, there's a palpable warmth in the orange-tinged walls and earth in Gauguin's Blue Roofs (Rouen) (1884). The bad boy of Post-Impressionism is captured at the moment when he'd given up his day job as a stockbroker and was evolving his own symbolically charged approach to colour. Cézanne's Still Life with Faience Jug and Fruit (1900), a magnificent example of one of his monumental late still lifes, draws us into the artist's preoccupation with simple objects which is so intensely, even transcendentally focused that it seems to blot out the rest of reality. Yet it's impossible to look at the adjacent painting, Van Gogh's deceptively serene The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles (1889), without it bringing to mind the tragic breakdown that had brought the artist there. While there were a number of these perplexingly tranquil garden scenes in the recent National Gallery show, here we're also offered a rarer work: a view of the interior in The Ward in the Hospital at Arles (1889), showing a group of his fellow inmates slumped around a stove. While the wall texts refer to a sense of 'unease and imbalance' in the upward tilting perspective between the long rows of beds, I was struck more by a sense of heartrending stoicism as Van Gogh seizes one of his last opportunities to record the physical world he loved so much. The show's poster image, Toulouse-Lautrec's The Clown Cha-U-Kao (1895), showing a faux-Chinese nightclub performer arm-in-arm with her girlfriend, provides such a wonderfully vibrant glimpse into the netherworld of the Moulin Rouge that it made me want to punch Baz Luhrmann for making such a caricatured travesty of a film about it. And if Edouard Manet can feel, for all his huge importance as an innovator, a touch stiff and formal as a painter, the bohemian figures in his Au Café (1878) look so tangibly alive you could almost climb into the painting to join them for a beer. This modestly scaled exhibition may be an aside in the greater conversation surrounding Impressionism, but it's one that provides vivid and often surprising glimpses into that now-distant time and world at every turn. It made me fall in love with this great moment in art all over again. 'Goya to Impressionism – Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection' is at the Courtauld from 14 February until 26 May
USA Today
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Portrait of mystery woman found beneath famous Pablo Picasso painting, conservators say
Hear this story Conservators in London, England used infrared and X-ray imaging to reveal a never-before-seen portrait of a woman beneath a popular painting by renowned artist Pablo Picasso. The Courtauld Institute of Art, a specialist college at the University of London that studies the history of art and conservation, said it discovered the mystery woman's portrait by using the imaging technology to further examine one of Picasso's very first paintings from his famous Blue Period. The conservators took x-ray and infrared images of "Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto," a portrait painted by a 19-year-old Picasso in 1901 depicting his Spanish sculptor friend, Mateu Fernández de Soto. The portrait was inspected before being put on display as part of the exhibition, "Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection," which opens on Feb. 14 at the Sammlung Oskar Reinhart Am Römerholz Museum in Winterthur, Switzerland, according to the Courtauld. 'This is truly a picture of great complexity, revealing its secrets over the years," Kerstin Richter, director of the Oskar Reinhart Collection 'Am Römerholz,' said in a news release. "When Oskar Reinhart acquired it in 1935, it was simply considered to be a portrait of an unknown woodcarver. Now we not only know the personality depicted, his significance in Picasso's life after the death of his closest friend, but we can also visualize the artistic development process of the young painter layer by layer.' Who is the woman in the portrait? The infrared and x-ray images beneath the portrait led to the conservators seeing the painting of the woman, which they said was likely created just a few months earlier. The form of the woman's head, her curved shoulders and her fingers can clearly be seen in the portrait. She is also wearing a "distinctive chignon hairstyle," which was fashionable in Paris at the time, the Courtauld said. 'Specialist imaging technology such as that used by conservators at The Courtauld may allow us to see the hand of an artist to understand their creative process," Aviva Burnstock, professor of conservation at Courtauld, said in the news release."In revealing this previously hidden figure we can shed light on a pivotal moment in Picasso's career.' According to the conservators, the woman resembles the women seen seated in several other paintings Picasso made that year, such as "Absinthe Dinker" (located at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia) and "Woman with Crossed Arms" (located at the Kunstmuseum Basel museum in Basel, Switzerland). More research into the painting and a detailed analysis could uncover more about the mystery woman, but her identity may never be found, according to the conservators, who suggest that she may have been a model, a friend or even a lover posing for one of Picasso's paintings. Why was the woman's portrait beneath the 'de Soto' painting? The Courtauld said there's evidence toward the bottom of the painting that suggests that it was a "much-reworked canvas" and that the mystery woman might have been a figure painted in Picasso's "earlier Impressionistic style." The famed artist also would often reuse canvases at the time because he did not have much money, however, he did enjoy the process of painting one work over another, according to the Courtauld. When Picasso painted "Portrait of Mateu Fernández de Soto," it was during a crucial stage in the young artist's stylistic development, the Courtland said. At the time, he was moving away from colorful and impressionistic paintings, and more toward the melancholy artistic style that encapsulated the career-defining Blue Period, according to the conservators. What was Picasso's Blue Period? This Blue Period was inspired in 1901 in part by the suicide of Spanish painter Carlos Casagemas, who was a good friend of Picasso's, the Courtland said. Picasso took over the rooms where Casagemas had lived in Paris and set up his own studio there, the specialist college added.
