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The Herald Scotland
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Coronation artwork commissioned by King seen for the first time
Charles followed a long-held tradition and commissioned five artists to capture significant events from the coronation weekend, with four of the creatives being former students from his Royal Drawing School. Artist Eileen Hogan's oil and wax painting, The Homage by Richard Ivey Fraser Scarfe was outside Buckingham Palace and Gideon Summerfield at Trafalgar Square, Phoebe Stannard was inside Westminster Abbey, and artist and illustrator Shana Lohrey was invited to Windsor Castle to capture the atmosphere, crowds and ambience of the coronation concert. Eileen Hogan, an Emeritus Professor at the University of the Arts London and a Royal Drawing School trustee, was commissioned to paint the coronation service – the first woman to be given the role. Ms Hogan said: 'When I was appointed to paint the coronation from Westminster Abbey, I was very aware that I was the first woman to be appointed in this historical role, and then I thought 'What details could a painting bring that modern-day TV cameras could not?'. Saluting the Crowds, an acrylic and oil painting on wooden panels by Fraser Scarfe. The Royal Drawing School 'The more I thought about it, my conclusion was that the stillness of a painting really isolates and intensifies significant moments, and emphasises meaning; whether that be ritualistic, spiritual, or simply extremely human.' The coronation was held on May 6 2023, and Charles saw the finished pieces, now part of the Royal Collection, last September during a presentation at his Clarence House home. Mr Scarfe, who is the Royal Drawing School's head of education delivery, was commissioned by Charles to capture images from his recent state visit to Italy and became the first official tour artist to create images digitally alongside traditional methods. The Coronation – Back to The Palace by artist Gideon Summerfield. The Royal Drawing School He said: 'There were so many incredible moments during the day. 'For me, the real standout moment was the moment when Their Majesties went out onto the balcony and the crowds were able to come and stand in front of Buckingham Palace and celebrate the coronation. 'And it was that moment that I thought really stood out to me; the joy of the people; the mass of people waving flags; and coming through to cheer and celebrate was such a special moment, and that's really the moment I felt I should focus my largest work on.'
New European
26-04-2025
- General
- New European
Edvard Munch, beyond The Scream
But there is more to Munch than one painting, or the narrative of a loner beset by his own demons. He was prolific, successful and supported by a network of family and friends. Many of this network feature in the more than 400 portraits he created during a six-decade career. They form the basis of an impressive exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. The Scream is the one the world knows; the agonised face caught beneath a raging orange sky. Its infinite howl affirms our view of Edvard Munch (1863-1944) as an artist wrecked by mental torment, the man who wrote in an undated notebook that 'sickness, insanity and death were the black angels that guarded my cradle and have since followed me throughout my life'. Munch's family tree is filled with creative relatives who were painters, writers and poets. Each had an influence on his art and life. The paternal side of his family included the neo-classical painter Jacob Munch, who co-founded the Royal Drawing School in Kristiania (Oslo); Peter Andreas Munch, Edvard's uncle, was a respected scholar who wrote the classic History of the Norwegian People. The painters Frits Thaulow, Edvard Diriks and Ludvig Ravensberg (1871-1958) were all related to Munch. In Kristiania, the family of his mother, Laura Bjølstad, were seafarers with an artistic trait. Munch had everyday contact with art through the paintings and portraits on the walls of his family home. One family heirloom was a pair of wall paintings of his great-grandparents by Peder Pedersen Aadnes. These accompanied each house move that Munch's father, Christian, a military doctor, and his wife made. Later, Edvard would inherit the paintings and place them on the wall of his home alongside his own portraits of family and friends. Munch was the second of five children. His older sister Johanne Sophie was born in 1862, his younger brother Peter Andreas in 1865 and younger sisters Laura Cathrine and Inger Marie born in 1867 and 1868. The latter saw their mother's death from tuberculosis at the age of 46, when Munch was five. The loss was traumatic. Munch's father became a melancholic near-recluse, but living with them was Karen, their mother's younger sister, who took over the household and the children's welfare. Adding to their trauma, Sophie died of tuberculosis in 1877, aged 15, a harsh blow to Edvard and his siblings. Munch's father planned a career in engineering for Edvard, and for Peter Andreas to become a doctor, like his father, which he did. However, Edvard Munch's focus was on graphic art and painting, and Karen, a talented artist, encouraged him to practise drawing when he was unable to attend school through illness. In 1880, after his aunt had extracted him from technical college, a 17-year-old Munch enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design in Kristiania under the mentorship of Christian Krohg and Felix Thaulow, leading realist painters. He wrote in his diary, 'It is my decision now to become a painter.' He would win three art scholarships. At the art school and afterwards, he mixed with a group of affluent middle-class radicals, artists, writers and political activists, nicknamed the Kristiania Bohème (Kristiania Bohemians) who met in local cafes, their debates and arguments aided by a desire for change, and alcohol. It led Munch to alcohol dependency and increased his stress, but mixing with like-minded people who believed in personal freedoms steered him to create expressive work informed by his feelings and experience. He called it 'soul art'. Another friendship group were intellectuals, affectionately referred to as The Mycenaeans. A third group encompassed all his male friends and were nicknamed The Guardians. These promoted him in published essays, wrote excellent reviews, placed his work in galleries, bought his paintings, sat for portraits, proclaimed him as a national icon, and looked after his reputation. Munch referred to them as 'my soldiers, my warriors, my battalions, the Guardians of my art'. Munch lived in Scandinavia (Norway separated from Sweden in 1905), in Paris and Berlin. He networked, creating contacts across Europe. He was an astute businessman, forming useful friendships for patronage. At home, Munch's life-support was his family, and loyal relationships. At times, through nervous exhaustion and alcoholism, his mental and physical strength collapsed. In 1908, he was hospitalised in a private clinic in Copenhagen for two months, under the care of Dr Daniel Jacobsen. He had suffered a mental breakdown in Berlin, not helped by regularly drinking a bottle of port for breakfast. On recovery, his friends encouraged him to return to Norway, to begin again. Now rarely drinking alcohol, he succeeded, becoming one of the most prolific and successful painters of his time. During a six-decade career Munch created over 1,700 artworks. Four hundred were portraits of family, friends, lovers, patrons, collectors, artists and writers, and himself. In an era of Jung and Freud, contemporary critics continuously searched for a psychological underbelly. In 1890, the German art critic Franz Servaes had stated: 'A painter like Munch is rooted in the psychological with all his fibres. He cannot even depict a landscape without making its soul his own. For the same reasons, he is also a highly sensitive portrait painter.' Munch's portraits had a potency that gave insights into his relationship with the sitter. At times the sitters did not like the portraits he painted of them. Munch's self-portraits – there are many – were created throughout his life, depicted as himself, or staged as an alternate ego. In many he is portrayed with a palette and brushes, a traditional painter's portrait. In another, he is dead, undergoing dissection. Kristian Emil Schreiner, Munch's doctor and friend, was a professor of anatomy who took him to a morgue so that Munch, at his own request, could watch a dissection. In the lithograph The Anatomist Schreiner 1 (1928-29), Munch replaces the body of an old man under dissection with a body-portrait of himself under the anatomist's knife, on the autopsy table. The exhibition's curator, Dr Alison Smith, has put Munch's mental health to one side to study his art. What shows through is the naturalness of his approach to composition and painting, each work exploring the inner psychology of the sitter. In Christian Munch with Pipe (1885), his bearded father looks down to light his pipe, in a gentle portrayal. There is a remarkable portrait of Munch's friend, the anarchist political activist Hans Jaeger (1889), quietly seated on a sofa, his eyes fixed on Munch; and the writer Jappe Nilssen (1909), portrayed full-length in a city suit. Jappe Nilssen, Edvard Munch, 1909. Oil on canvas © Munchmuseet. Photo: Munchmuseet / Juri Kobayashi Thor Lütken, Edvard Munch, 1892. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. Photo: Munchmuseet / Sidsel de Jong. The lawyer Thor Lutken (1892) is seated with the sleeve of his jacket along the bottom edge doubling as a moonlit landscape with two figures, a picture within a portrait. Did it have a hidden meaning? The couple are similar to figures in an earlier painting of lovers by Munch. The portraits of the physicist Felix Auerbach (1906), Munch's doctor and patron, and Dr Daniel Jacobsen (1908), his doctor, all reveal their view of Munch through facial expressions. There is no repetition, each work is a stand-alone pictorial account of the sitter. As a successful artist, Munch had several houses, and his staff were often asked to model for him. Sultan Abdul Karim was employed as a chauffeur. A half-length portrait portrays him dressed in clothes for winter temperatures with a large green scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. Munch also dressed in a similar fashion, and this mirroring effect appears in his self-portraits. Less familiar perhaps are Munch's visions of his workers, including Karim naked. Knowing this brings a curiosity to studying the portraits on display. Was it his analytical vision of the sitters, or the reality? The majority of Munch's portraits are of male friends and associates. The women were primarily family and close friends. His sister Sophie appeared posthumously in Munch's famous work The Sick Child. Exhibited in Paris in 1886, its content caused a sensation. Munch, with his commercial eye, made further copies to sell. Evening (1888) is a profile portrait of his sister Laura, painted by a lakeside when the family were on holiday. Laura suffered from mental illness and was sectioned for life in an asylum. She stares fixedly ahead, in isolation. In The Brooch, Eva Mudocci (1902), Munch portrayed his dear friend, the English violinist Eva Mudocci, in a sensual headshot lithograph. Other women were not so lucky, particularly those who had encountered destructive personal relationships with him. Those he disliked could be given malicious portrayals. During his life, many of Munch's portraits remained with him, propped against his studio walls, as if to surround himself with friends. He died of a severe cold on January 23, 1944 at the age of 80. His last work was inevitably a portrait lithograph of a friend – Hans Jaeger, based on the much earlier portrait of 1889. Even at the end, Edvard Munch did not scream alone. Edvard Munch Portraits is at the National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London until June 15
Daily Mail
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Madonna's son Rocco Ritchie rejects nepo baby label after forging his own career as an artist and takes swipe at 'uninteresting' celebrity offspring
Rocco Ritchie has admitted he struggles with his nepo baby status as he shared his brutally honest views on other celebrity offspring, privilege and men's poor taste in fashion. The artist, 24, who is the son of Madonna and Hollywood director Guy Ritchie, has held six exhibitions to date - including most recently in Paris, with the support of Giorgio Armani - and counts Stella McCartney and Donatella Versace among his famous collectors. Technically a nepo baby by definition, Rocco has made it clear what his views are on the concept as he referred to them as 'they' rather than 'we'. Speaking in the new issue of Fantastic Man magazine he explained he's unsure where he fits on the nepo baby spectrum because, despite having famous parents, he's carving out his own path. So intent was he on making his own way in the art world, he kept his professional identity secret at first, using the alias 'Rhed'. But he ditched the pseudonym in 2022, and the following year, held an exhibition in London curated by Lucian Freud's old studio manager, David Dawson. He explained: 'I always think it's funny that back in the day, some of the most beautiful cathedrals that were ever built would be built by generation after generation of the same family.' 'And now, if you are born from a family - and I'm not saying this is wrong - you start looking at nepo babies and they are not the most interesting bunch, are they?' As well as trying to reject the nepo baby label, Rocco admitted he never felt comfortable mixing in privileged circles growing up - preferring to socialise with skateboarders in London's South Bank. 'Straight away, I was like, this is the place. Best years of my life,' he said. 'I mean, how much fun are upper-class people? Not that much fun.' He dropped out of prestigious London art school Central Saint Martins - where a tutor had criticised his paintings for being 'too masculine' - after one year. 'I think he was trying to say it was vulgar. And I didn't think it was vulgar,' he reflected. 'I was 18, doing shitty figurative paintings; my work wasn't even developed enough for anyone to have opinions on it back then.' He transferred to the Royal Drawing School in Shoreditch, where he finally felt at home. As well as trying to reject the nepo baby label, Rocco admitted he never felt comfortable mixing in privileged circles growing up - preferring to socialise with skateboarders He said: 'There, all my dreams came true. I just needed a school that would teach me to draw and paint. I signed up, went in and spent basically a year and a half, seven hours a day, just drawing. They didn't ask for homework. You just shut up and draw.' Known for his distinctive style, Rocco - who loves wearing tweed and three-piece suits, just like his dad - also delivered a withering review of how men dress today. 'Menswear... I don't even want to give that word the power it has. It's so different from what it used to mean. I always see on Instagram people popping up and saying, "This is my outfit!" 'People really like to show what they're buying and how they're dressing. First of all, who cares? Second of all, this is s***. I mean, who am I to judge? But... 'There's a difference between someone walking in a room and you going, "Whoa, who's this swaggerer over here?" Or they walk in the room and you go, "What are you wearing?" 'I feel like it's a very thin line - a very not-distinct line. I mean, I don't want to sound like a little s***, but most men do not dress well.' He adds: 'I think Savile Row is a dying situation. It's really hard to sell in this day and age. It's expensive and it takes a really long time. Do you really want to go and spend £5,000 on a suit that takes eight fittings and will be ready in a year?' Madonna, 66, started dating Guy Ritchie, 56, after meeting at a party hosted by mutual friends Sting and Trudie Styler in 1999. They married in 2000 but split eight years later. They also share son David Banda, 19, whom they adopted from an orphanage in Malawi in 2006.
BBC News
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Ex-Horncastle chippy worker 'amazed' to be royal sketch artist
A fish-and-chip shop worker turned official royal artist said accompanying the King and Queen on their recent tour of Italy was an amazing experience – and it was "very nice to be asked". The King has personally selected artists to attend overseas trips for the past 40 years, and he invited Fraser Scarfe to document the four-day trip in 38-year-old from Lincolnshire has built a successful career as a painter, author and teacher but he spent his teenage years in a very different role."I had a good few years in my teens and early 20s serving chips. I think I could still wrap a portion of chips from memory now," he said. Mr Scarfe used an iPad to sketch the royal couple."It allows me to work very quickly," he said. "I can take that sketch back to my studio and work it up into a painting or a drawing later on if I want to."He sketched scenes from major state events such as the visit to the Colosseum and moments among the crowds who gathered to see the King and the Queen."I will have a few months now to reflect upon the work I made and to try to work some of those sketches into more finished paintings or drawings. I have got free rein," he Mr Scarfe has finished his work, the collection will be presented to the King for viewing, and one or more of pieces may end up as part of The Royal Collection. The artist's ability to draw quickly and on the spot was brought to the Royal Family's attention in 2023 when he was asked to record the Coronation. His work from that occasion is in the Royal Collection. Mr Scarfe, who used to work at a fish-and-chips shop in Horncastle, trained at the Royal Drawing School in London, which was founded by the King in Scarfe now works at the school and exhibits his creations regularly in Lincoln and London."I didn't have much access to arts and culture when I was growing up, and didn't have a particularly creative community around me," he said."To have been involved in the events for the past few days [is] a real pinch-me moment because you never in your wildest dreams imagine that you might end up doing something like this." Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
The Independent
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Ex-chip shop worker becomes first digital royal tour artist
A former fish and chip shop worker has become the first official royal tour artist to document a state visit using an iPad. Fraser Scarfe, 38, said joining the King and Queen on their four-day state visit to Italy this week as the official royal tour artist was 'a real pinch-me moment'. The artist created digital and physical artworks of Charles and Camilla's engagements in Rome and Ravenna. Mr Scarfe, who worked at Mantles chip shop in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, before pursuing art, used an iPad to capture much of the visit, marking the first time digital art has been used in the long-running tour artist tradition. 'I didn't have much access to arts and culture when I was growing up, and didn't have a particularly creative community around me,' he said. 'To reflect upon my beginnings, and to have been involved in the events for the past few days, it's a real pinch-me moment, because you never in your wildest dreams imagine that you might end up doing something like this.' A royal tour artist has been personally selected by the King since 1985 to accompany overseas visits. Mr Scarfe is the 42nd artist to undertake the role. 'It's a huge privilege,' he said. 'Everything that Their Majesties do is documented so well by the press and the media, but I think having an artist allows a different approach and a different way of capturing things. 'You are able to capture the big moments, but there are a lot of things in between that you can record and document, and I think that's really important.' Mr Scarfe trained at the Royal Drawing School, founded by the King in 2000, where he studied on the fully funded The Drawing Year programme. He now teaches at the school as its head of education. Mr Scarfe was also commissioned to capture scenes from the coronation, with those works now held in the Royal Collection. The artist added that the King had long shown his support for the arts and the creative industries. 'I know how important it is to His Majesty to support artists and to be engaged with the creative industries,' he said. 'And I think for him, this is an important way of marking these occasions and historic events and creating a permanent record in a different form. 'As a painter himself, I think he's always interested to see different artists' interpretations of things like the tour.' During the visit, Mr Scarfe sketched scenes from major state events such as the Colosseum visit as well as quieter moments among crowds gathered to see the King and Queen. 'It was a historic and important visit,' he said. 'I was able to capture not only the important relationship between our country and Italy and some of the important events that took place during the tour but also the really nice moments between the people that had come out to see Their Majesties and the fantastic cultural and historical links between our great countries.'
