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The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Turner's rarely seen watercolours take centre stage in Bath
It is, says the curator Ian Warrell, a little like peering over JMW Turner's shoulder as he puzzles out how to create the sweeping land and seascapes that made him one of the greatest ever. An exhibition of the artist's rarely seen watercolours is opening in Bath, which includes scenes of the English West Country that he created as a teenager to a series of sketched seascapes when he was a much older man gazing out at storms off the Kent coast. Called Impressions in Watercolour, the exhibition gives insight into Turner's methods and serves a reminder of how important he was as a bridge between earlier landscape painting and the radical abstraction of the 20th century. The first of the 32 Turner watercolours on show at the Holburne Museum from Friday 23 May were painted in the early 1790s when the artist was about 16 or 17. One is a view of Bath from a hill made to look much more craggy than the actual rolling landscape around the Georgian city. Next to it is another West Country view, the romantic ruins of Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire. Both show Turner's interest in the 'theory of the sublime' that came to the fore later in his sea storms and mountain scenes. 'It was all very conventional at this stage,' said Warrell, a Turner specialist. 'But you can see he is ambitious.' A highlight of the exhibition is a series of seascapes that Turner painted as a much more mature artist in Margate, Kent. Warrell said: 'He'd been to Margate as a child because London was so polluted that his family sent him to school there, and then he went back again from the 1820s repeatedly. 'He'd look out from his lodgings out on to the beach and see the sun rising and setting and the boats and all the goings on. Turner said the skies over Margate and that area were the best in Europe, better than the Bay of Naples. The more turbulent the weather … the happier he was. 'All the time he's experimenting. Some of these watercolours are very simple meditations. Some probably would only have taken him no more than half an hour.' Unlike the great Turner paintings such as The Fighting Temeraire, which is viewed by hundreds of thousands of people every year, these pictures are from private collections and are rarely seen or reproduced. They show how he continued to play with and refine themes and feelings. A Steamboat and Crescent Moon was sketched in Margate in about 1845, seven years after he painted The Fighting Temeraire, but a squiggle of smoke harks back to the fiery funnel in the grand oil painting. 'All the time he's doing this, he's training his hand and eye, coordinating, trying ideas that he might use,' Warrell said. 'It's bold and his colour is different to anybody's work at that time. He doesn't always use the widest range of colours but the yellows and blues are very distinctive. He's trying to capture a moment or just the atmosphere of that moment.' Also featured in the exhibition are the artist's contemporaries, including Thomas Girtin, who like Turner was born 250 years ago in 1775, and John Sell Cotman. The exhibition runs from 23 May until 14 September.
The Guardian
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The art of making ‘a little mess' brings Nicolas Party's showstopper to Bath
There was a time when Nicolas Party would be pursued by police for decorating trains and buildings across Europe with his distinctive street art. Now, grand galleries and museums invite him to unleash his visions on their walls. His latest extraordinary piece, a large mural in soft pastel inspired by the works of a 17th-century Dutch artist and an 18th-century British master has materialised at the Holburne Museum in Bath. As the finishing touches were being put to the work, Party said he was thrilled that the Holburne, housed in a late-18th-century building and the custodian of paintings by the likes of Thomas Gainsborough and George Stubbs, was hosting his work. 'It's great to be in a grand place like this.' For his new piece, his first major mural in an English gallery, Party borrowed from a small oil painting in the Holburne's collection, A Brawl Between Peasants, by Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp, a Dutch painter known for his allegorical oil panels and landscapes, influenced by Rembrandt. Over four days he recreated the rather violent image over a whole wall of a gallery, raising an awful lot of pastel dust. He used pastels again for a second, smaller work, this time on linen – a depiction of two horses in the style of Stubbs's horse and lion paintings, with a calm, ghostly human face between them. The second work was then hung at the centre of the mural, obscuring much of the action. Party's mural is called A Brawl Between Peasants, After Benjamin Gerritsz, 2025. The second, smaller piece is Portrait With Two Horses, 2025. The artist said he was drawn to the Dutch painting because he liked the 'grim, funny' subject matter. 'It's not a portrait or a sweet landscape, it's more unusual.' The mural is a close copy and Party said the addition of the second element – the horses and face image – made it his work. It didn't worry him that the most dramatic part of the mural was hidden behind the smaller image, he said. 'I think my work becomes my work when I put the two together.' A chamber had to be built in front of the wall for Party to work in. The wall has to be prepared with acrylic paint, water and sawdust to create a sandpapery texture that holds the pastel. Sign up to Art Weekly Your weekly art world round-up, sketching out all the biggest stories, scandals and exhibitions after newsletter promotion 'So that makes a little mess and the pastel generates a lot of dust. That's why we have to be enclosed.' He then uses both hands, applying the pastel and rubbing it to create textures and colours. 'It's quite tiring so I use both arms.' The piece is the showstopper in an exhibition called Nicolas Party: Copper & Dust, which features two rooms of smaller works including striking landscapes, still lifes and portraits, created out of oil on copper. Chris Stephens, the director of the Holburne, said the gallery was excited to show Party's work. 'With his deep knowledge of the history of art, especially his interest in 17th-century Dutch painting and in 18th-century pastels, both of which feature in the Holburne's collection, Nicolas's art is in a perfect setting.' Nicolas Party: Copper & Dust, runs from 12 May until 31 August.
Telegraph
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Fancy buying some top-notch contemporary art? Head to the country
Head west out of London this month for some inspired exhibitions in unexpected settings to rival anything in the capital. Opening in Bath next Monday is an exhibition of new work by Switzerland's most successful young artist, Nicolas Party, at the stately Holburne Museum, home to a collection of 18th-century portraits formed by Sir William Holburne (1793–1874). The juxtaposition will not be incongruous as Party draws heavily on art historical references in his work, rendered in sharply contrasting bright pastel colours and simplified linear contours. All the works have been supplied by Party's dealer in Glasgow, The Modern Institute, but are not being advertised as for sale. Party's market is difficult to gauge at the moment. In 2022, he achieved a record $6.2 million (£4.7 million) at an auction in Asia and in 2023 became the world's top-selling millennial artist (he is 44). But with the recent decline in speculative interest in the latest contemporary art, his work has been selling below estimate at auction and sometimes not at all. So, a museum show is just the ticket to maintain his reputation during an unfavourable market. Five days later (May 17) and a mere 20-minute drive south to Bruton is where international art dealers Hauser & Wirth converted the semi-derelict Durslade Farm into an arts venue which opens for Myths & Machines, an exhibition that celebrates the centenary of the birth of Jean Tinguely, the leading kinetic artist of bizarre, mechanical assemblages. The exhibition places Tinguely's work together with Niki de Saint Phalle, a self-taught outsider artist whom he married for only two years but worked with for more than 30, and who provides the mythic element to the exhibition. While Europe will be awash with memorial events in museums and institutions, this will be the only one in the UK, and the farmyard setting should set it apart.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
British Model Jade Parfitt's Mission to Bring Fashion to the Masses
LONDON — British model Jade Parfitt is on a mission to take fashion beyond the parameters of London. The model and television presenter will host the second edition of Bath Fashion Festival on June 7 and 8 in Bath, a city in Somerset that's famed for its Roman baths and locations for Netflix's 'Bridgerton.' More from WWD Jisoo, Tomorrow X Together, Han So-Hee: Inside Dior's Star-studded Retrospective Opening in Seoul Art Deco Turns 100: How Will You Celebrate? Craving More Fashion Archives? 10 Corso Como to the Rescue Parfitt founded the festival last year with Mickey Luke, which included talks, fashion shows, interactive workshops, pop-up shops and an exhibition. The inaugural event drew in the likes of Sarah Mower, Anne-Marie Curtis, Erin O'Connor and Sam McKnight to participate. This year's edition returns to the Holburne Museum with similar activations and a lineup that features Ateh Jewel, Caroline Hirons, Alex Box, MAC Cosmetics, NRBY, Albaray, Nicholas Wylde, Neem London and Jodie Kidd. A collection of Giles Deacon's couture and red carpet pieces will be exhibited at the festival and will run beyond the weekend on display in the same room as paintings from Gainsborough, Guardi, Stubbs, Ramsay and Zoffany that are part of the museum's permanent collection. The previous year's display was a corset installation from Vivienne Westwood along with archival Manolo Blahnik shoes. Parfitt will interview Deacon on a panel on June 7. The model first tested the waters for her idea by hosting a charitable fashion event at the Holburne Museum in 2022. 'I know that a lot of people in Bath are ex-Londoners and it's a very creative, vibrant community here. The event sold out and had a waiting list,' Parfitt said in an interview. She used her expansive contact book to create something that wasn't London-centric. 'After I had my first son, I switched gears and learned about the fashion industry from a different angle. I hosted panel talks and charitable fashion events — and one lasting thread throughout my career has been friends or people that I meet asking to tag along to a show or exhibition with me,' Parfitt said. 'I sort of realized that our world, if you're not actually in it, is very hard to break into and be involved in. There's very few consumer-facing events for fashion fans.' Parfitt wants to amplify the city of Bath through the Bath Fashion Festival. Fashion students from Bath Spa University have been invited to stage a fashion show with their designs. 'What we're about is lifting the lid on an industry that can feel very elitist, but it's an industry full of really interesting, creative people that work really, really hard. So many assumptions get made when you say you work in fashion, but this is about diving in deep and actually getting to meet some of those people that have built incredible careers in the industry,' Parfitt said. The model started in the world of fashion at the age of 15, when she won a modeling competition on the British television show 'This Morning' and was awarded with a contract with the modeling agency Models1. Parfitt made her runway debut in October 1994 for Prada's spring 1995 show at Milan Fashion Week. 'My agency were beside themselves, but I didn't really know anything. I'd heard of Chanel, but I didn't necessarily know what Prada was, which sounds mad saying out loud now,' she said. 'For somebody that didn't know that much about fashion, what I did know was that every other model in the room was incredibly famous — there was Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. Suddenly, I really got the fear, I was quaking in my boots backstage.' Parfitt remembers not rehearsing at all for her Prada debut and that initial first steps on the runway were her first ever. 'I looked like a Bambi startled in the headlights. I was so young and I realized one of my arms wasn't moving, it was frozen. I remember being really harsh on myself, but what an incredible honor,' she recalled. Over her decades long career, she has walked in the runway shows of Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Thierry Mugler and Lee Alexander McQueen under his own brand and at Givenchy. 'I certainly didn't think I'd still be in [fashion] at age 46. I've had a lot of time out here and there to have my children and so on, but when I do a shoot or a runway show, it's so lovely to meet all these different people. It's quite intoxicating working with people who are so passionate about their industry,' she said. Parfitt wants to use her Bath Fashion Festival to connect with people. She can see the festival going on the road to places like Dublin, Edinburgh and even London. 'Even in London, it's hard to actually connect with the industry if you're not directly in it. We love Bath and we want it to become part of the annual calendar here,' she said. Best of WWD 14 Cutest Kate Middleton and Prince William's Look-alike Couple Style Moments [PHOTOS] Usher's Style Through the Decades: From the Archives Dior's Creative Directors Through the Years: From Christian Dior to Maria Grazia Chiuri and Jonathan Anderson
