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Wall Street Journal
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
John Constable's ‘The Hay Wain': A Landmark Landscape
The National Gallery, London, founded in 1824, celebrated its bicentenary in small exhibitions across the U.K. that brought the museum's most iconic paintings to an even wider British public. John Constable's 'The Hay Wain' (1821), the Romantic artist's best known landscape, revered in his native England as an authentic image of its rural countryside, was among the works acclaimed as national treasures, and is now back in London as part of the recently reinstalled collection. The peaceful, unassuming canvas's radically new technique, its profound redefinition of what landscape painting could be, and Constable's inherently moral approach to the genre's naturalistic representation would preoccupy him throughout his career. Constable (1776-1837) grew up in East Bergholt, a small village in Suffolk along the River Stour in East Anglia. His father, who had inherited the local Flatford Mill, plied his prosperous trade along the river's canals, which afforded his family a genteel country life. Though the artist studied at London's Royal Academy as early as 1799, he often returned to draw and paint the fertile green fields and placid river scenes that viewers recognized even during his lifetime as 'Constable Country.' After his marriage in 1816, however, he moved permanently to London, and was elected associate of the Royal Academy in 1819. Constable also exhibited that year the first of his so-called Six-Footers, the monumental River Stour scenes that were painted in his London studio and were his bid for fame.
Sydney Morning Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
These women were written out of art history. Now their work is getting the recognition it deserves
There are over 200 works on display here, but some of the most sobering thoughts brought about by this exhibition are: what are the works we aren't seeing? What are the works we'll never see? There are the works that were destroyed, there were the works that were reportedly thrown off ships (in response to a debilitating tax that was applied to bringing artworks home to Australia), and there are those that have simply melted into history. In the first room, in a cabinet near Collier's surviving nude is a series of miniatures, including three by Justine Kong Sing, the first professional Chinese Australian artist who went to London. Despite finding success in her lifetime, much of her work has disappeared. 'She exhibited widely in London, including at the Royal Academy. We couldn't find any of her works in the UK, and there's a handful in Australian collections,' says Tunnicliffe. 'We know there's others, because she exhibited a lot – but we don't know where they are.' One of the larger works in the exhibition is A Winter morning on the coast of France (1888) by Victorian artist Eleanor Ritchie Harrison. 'It's the only major painting by her to survive, which we actually tracked down to a house in Sydney,' says Tunnicliffe. Her work was exhibited widely, until her death at the age of 41 from complications of childbirth. For many of the artists on display, even during their lifetime their work was maligned or excluded from Australian art history. 'There was a sense that if you're not painting an Australian landscape, it's not Australian art. If you're outside of Australia, if you're beyond its borders, you're no longer participating in Australian Art,' says Freak. Many artists, she explains, felt they were 'kind of pushed out of the story of Australian art because they were no longer residing in Australia'. The erasure continued even after the artists had left their marks. 'These women, they were high profile in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and after the Second World War, with the return to conservatism which happened after the war, many of these women became written out of Australian art history,' says Tunnicliffe. 'As Australian art history started to be written by male art historians, the woman's role became more and more diminished until they virtually disappeared. And really it was the 1970s when feminist art historians began working this field and reclaiming them, that's when interest grew.' Dangerously Modern is an exhibition overflowing with stories. There's the big picture narrative of a generation of women artists making their way over to Europe to pursue artistic dreams – some made their way easily, others struggled financially. There are the stories of what happened when they got there – relationships they formed and the ways they made ends meet. And there are the stories in the works themselves. One of the most striking works appears about halfway through. Painted by Hilda Rix Nicholas, These gave the world away (1917) is a large-scale painting where the artist has imagined the scene of her husband's death in the Somme Valley. Loading All 50 women in this exhibition left home to pursue their art. Some returned, some didn't. Some became household names, others quietly dropped out of art history. One of the hopes of this exhibition is to, at last, tell the stories that were hidden for far too long. Elizabeth Flux travelled to Adelaide as a guest of Art Gallery of South Australia.
The Age
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
These women were written out of art history. Now their work is getting the recognition it deserves
There are over 200 works on display here, but some of the most sobering thoughts brought about by this exhibition are: what are the works we aren't seeing? What are the works we'll never see? There are the works that were destroyed, there were the works that were reportedly thrown off ships (in response to a debilitating tax that was applied to bringing artworks home to Australia), and there are those that have simply melted into history. In the first room, in a cabinet near Collier's surviving nude is a series of miniatures, including three by Justine Kong Sing, the first professional Chinese Australian artist who went to London. Despite finding success in her lifetime, much of her work has disappeared. 'She exhibited widely in London, including at the Royal Academy. We couldn't find any of her works in the UK, and there's a handful in Australian collections,' says Tunnicliffe. 'We know there's others, because she exhibited a lot – but we don't know where they are.' One of the larger works in the exhibition is A Winter morning on the coast of France (1888) by Victorian artist Eleanor Ritchie Harrison. 'It's the only major painting by her to survive, which we actually tracked down to a house in Sydney,' says Tunnicliffe. Her work was exhibited widely, until her death at the age of 41 from complications of childbirth. For many of the artists on display, even during their lifetime their work was maligned or excluded from Australian art history. 'There was a sense that if you're not painting an Australian landscape, it's not Australian art. If you're outside of Australia, if you're beyond its borders, you're no longer participating in Australian Art,' says Freak. Many artists, she explains, felt they were 'kind of pushed out of the story of Australian art because they were no longer residing in Australia'. The erasure continued even after the artists had left their marks. 'These women, they were high profile in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and after the Second World War, with the return to conservatism which happened after the war, many of these women became written out of Australian art history,' says Tunnicliffe. 'As Australian art history started to be written by male art historians, the woman's role became more and more diminished until they virtually disappeared. And really it was the 1970s when feminist art historians began working this field and reclaiming them, that's when interest grew.' Dangerously Modern is an exhibition overflowing with stories. There's the big picture narrative of a generation of women artists making their way over to Europe to pursue artistic dreams – some made their way easily, others struggled financially. There are the stories of what happened when they got there – relationships they formed and the ways they made ends meet. And there are the stories in the works themselves. One of the most striking works appears about halfway through. Painted by Hilda Rix Nicholas, These gave the world away (1917) is a large-scale painting where the artist has imagined the scene of her husband's death in the Somme Valley. Loading All 50 women in this exhibition left home to pursue their art. Some returned, some didn't. Some became household names, others quietly dropped out of art history. One of the hopes of this exhibition is to, at last, tell the stories that were hidden for far too long. Elizabeth Flux travelled to Adelaide as a guest of Art Gallery of South Australia.
Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The lost Lawrence masterpiece bought ‘by accident' for £3,000
A 'lost masterpiece' portrait of the Duke of York created by one of Britain's greatest artists has been rediscovered after a 20-year investigation by its owners — who bought it 'by accident' for less than £3,000. Thomas Lawrence's portrait of Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany and second son of George III was unveiled at the Royal Academy in 1822 but subsequently disappeared from view. It has now emerged that following the death of the duke in 1827 the portrait passed down through royal households before ending up with the Prince of Hanover, the 3rd Duke of Cumberland, at the end of the 19th century. In 1915 the portrait's true identity became harder to fathom when the Order of the Garter worn by the
New York Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Unlocking the Mysteries of Antony Gormley's Art
The British sculptor Antony Gormley is a native Londoner who has been a fixture on the city's art scene for decades and the subject of many museum shows all over the world, including a 2019 survey at the Royal Academy of Arts. He won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1994 and was even knighted in 2014, gaining enough fame along the way to occasionally get the tabloid treatment from the British press ('Gorm Blimey: Statue by Sir Antony Gormley branded 'hideous' and a 'waste of money,'' read a 2020 headline in The Sun.) 'I'm one of the ones they like to beat on,' Gormley, 74, said with a laugh on a video call in April from his country house in Norfolk, northeast of London. Not that it has scared him from the limelight. Indeed, Gormley likes to talk about his art and its meaning, one on one or to a crowd. His latest show, 'Antony Gormley: Witness, Early Lead Works,' is on view until June 8 at White Cube gallery's Mason's Yard space in London, and he spoke at the Art for Tomorrow conference in Milan last week on topics that included art's origins as a collective enterprise, the importance of collaboration and his own drive to create. 'I don't have a choice about what I do,' he said. The gallery show is a skeleton key that helps to unlock some of the mysteries of his art, and most of the works are not for sale. Although he became perhaps best known for figural sculptures — including the large public work 'Angel of the North' (1998), a stylized, winged figure, which overlooks the A1 highway in Gateshead, England — his art is rooted in the Conceptual art of the 1970s. 'The show starts with five works that were all made prior to using my own body,' Gormley said, referring to a pivot point in 1981 that helped define the rest of his career. 'They deal with found objects in one way or another, but always using the medium of lead.' Those works include 'Land Sea and Air I' (1977-79), which at first glance looks like three stones of similar shape; actually, the forms are oxidized lead cases, one of them surrounding a stone he brought back from Ireland. One is filled with water and one is empty, or 'filled with air,' as Gormley put it. 'This was me investigating the distinction between substance and appearance, or between the skin of the thing and its mass,' Gormley said, adding that at the time it was made, there was widespread anxiety about nuclear proliferation. By using the basic element of life, he said, it was a way of highlighting 'the seeds of a future world beyond potential nuclear destruction.' Artistically, it was a breakthrough. 'I was so excited the night that I made that piece, I couldn't sleep,' Gormley recalled. 'I thought, 'This is where I want to go. This is the foundation of what I'm going to do with my life.'' Jay Jopling, a longtime dealer of Gormley's and the founder of White Cube, recalled his first encounter with the artist some four decades ago. Jopling was only around 20 and studying art history, and he arranged to meet Gormley, whose work he already admired. Over a cup of tea, the young Jopling asked Gormley about the meaning of his work. 'He said, 'My work is about what it means to be alive and alone and alert on this planet,'' Jopling said. 'It was a nice, succinct answer.' As his work was getting critical attention in the early 1980s, Gormley was not alone. Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain, noted that British art of the 20th century has always been particularly strong in sculpture. Farquharson said that Gormley was 'a key figure in a generation of several sculptors who emerged in the early '80s — Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon, Tony Cragg, Alison Wilding and others.' The White Cube show includes several works on paper from the 1980s, and has five lead sculptures from that decade and the following one; they show Gormley's evolution toward his own version of figuration. The sculptures include 'Home and the World II' (1986-96) a striding figure with an 18-foot-long house where its head should be, and 'Witness II' (1993), a figure seated on the ground with its head tucked into folded arms. The materials for both include lead, fiberglass, plaster and air, but they could almost include Gormley himself, given that at the time, he had to be encased in a plaster mold to make them. 'It was really messy,' he said of a process that had him covered in cling wrap for protection, and then plaster, for an hour or two with a hole at his mouth to breathe. Meditation and breathing exercises were employed, skills that he first gleaned on a two-year stint in India that came between his graduation from Cambridge University and his art degrees from Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Art. Some earlier training also helped. 'I had a good Catholic upbringing, so I knew how to be obedient,' Gormley said. Once he was out of it, the completed plaster mold was then covered in fiberglass to 'harden it up,' Gormley said. Finally, the work was covered in thin sheets of lead, which he and an assistant pounded with a rubber hammer, a highly exertive way of making art. Around two decades ago, Gormley began to move toward 3-D scanning. But he said that using his own body was the essential element, not the particular process. 'I wanted to cut out that artist-model distancing device,' he said. 'I've stuck with the idea that my particular example of the universal human condition is good enough for me.' Despite his renown in Britain, Gormley has had less exposure in the United States. But his first solo museum survey in the country will be on view at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas later this year, from Sept. 12 to Jan. 4. 'He's one of the chief practitioners who has expanded how we think about the figure and the body,' said Jed Morse, the Nasher's chief curator. For viewers, the Nasher show will help complete the picture of Gormley's trajectory after the early 1990s, which saw him embark in new directions. In some works at the Nasher, like the Corten steel sculpture 'Model Model II' (2022), Gormley turns his body into a series of boxy forms — in a way that could be seen as Cubist or pixelated, or both. Gormley is constantly working, and drawing is a key activity for him. He pulled out a small notebook from his jacket pocket, full of sketches of bodies. 'I couldn't live without this,' he said. Having his artistic process result in heavy lead sculptures, as seen in the White Cube show, may be even more resonant now, much further along in the digital age than when they were made. 'Sculpture can bring you back to something firsthand and palpable,' he said. 'These are existential objects that hopefully can be used as instruments to investigate your own experience.'
