The People’s Art

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

The deaccessioning of collections is very much in the air at the moment, what with the city of Detroit attempting to declare itself bankrupt, and thereby opening the possibility that the contents of the Detroit Institute of Arts could be sold off to defray the losses of the city’s creditors.

Caravaggio, Martha & Mary Magdalene, c.1598, Detroit Institute of Arts

This shocking idea (to many) has been played down since May, probably because of the outcry that arose on its emergence. On a rather smaller scale, Croydon Council has decided to auction part of a collection of antique Chinese ceramics (the most valuable part), in order to refurbish an arts centre.

A mid-16th century Jiajing saucer, Museum of Croydon

This proposal hasn’t been mitigated, in spite of opposition from the Museums Association and the Arts Council, and Croydon Council has skated around the conditions its own website acknowledges, under which the collection was bequeathed provided that it was never split up (Martin Bailey, The Art Newspaper, 248, July/Aug.2013, p.14). Again, Northamptonshire Borough Council wants to sell a £2,000,000 statue of Sekhemka, an Egyptian court official, dating from c.2,400 BC, in order to benefit Northampton Museum.

Monument of Sekhema, c.2,400 BC, Northampton Museums & Art Gallery

This is in spite of a deed of gift, signed by the donor (the 4th Marquis of Northampton) and the town clerk in 1880, which accepts the gift and agrees to display it freely in perpetuity.

 Whatever the size, importance and conditions of acceptance of these collections or items, this is a worryingly Gradgrindish attitude towards something so necessary to life and civilization as art.

Victoria Public Library, London, 1904. Photo: Jamie Barras

We may be still in the midst of a world-wide recession, but we are also overall much better off generally than in the 19th  & early 20th centuries, when museums and philanthropists sprang up like mushrooms, libraries were built and endowed, and many of the super-wealthy saw it as their duty to help the less fortunate through the gift of education and also of beautiful and historic objects. The slums and uncushioned want of the 19th century no longer exist; we still have the poor and the unemployed, but we don’t have the abject poverty of 150 years ago. However, we do have a wealthy class corresponding to the Carnegies, Hearsts and Rockefellers, the Leylands, William Grahams and Raes; but many of them don’t seem to be moved in the same way by a Victorian sense of responsibility.

If government can consider the idea of privatization of bits of stuff (within the NHS, education, &c., &c), how much more ought they to be encouraging people to sponsor the arts?

John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888, Tate

And now we have the example of Art Everywhere, to show that anyone who wants to can give £10 or so, and help to bring some of our most loved and famous works out of the galleries and onto the streets, so that even those who wouldn’t normally go into a museum can enjoy them.

Twitter is full of commuters, spotting their favourites and snapping them, and the whole enterprise is full of a summery joyousness which is completely without boundaries or economic limitations.

Willy Van Riet (1882-1927), Girl on the bank of a river, Collecton Mark Mitchell

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Daffodils that come before the swallow dares…

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

The appearance of a flowerpiece by Ludger Tom Ring in Christie’s Old Master & British Paintings Sale on 2 July – ‘one of the earliest independent still life [paintings] in the history of Western art’ – prompts the question, why do we like these things so much? An earlier post touched on the history of the flowerpiece (an extremely long and enduring one), but how exactly is it that these things which we can pick from the garden or bring home from a shop any day of the week have exerted such a continual fascination? Why not have a real bunch of flowers? – a different one every few days?

Ludger Tom Ring II (1522-84), Narcissi, calamine violets & periwinkle in a ewer on a ledge with a sprig of rue, Christie’s

The delicacy and refinement of this extraordinary image might be a clue; its realism is in some senses almost preternatural – if you look at the narcissi petals, for instance, the flower on the right, which is in profile, has a translucency and an apprehension of the fall of light which is breathtaking in its technical accuracy. These are some of the most fragile and ephemeral organisms on our earth; thin as tissue and more easily damaged, they live a few days and then they’re gone. Of course, this made them ideal vessels of symbolic significance – they could stand for earthly vanity or human life, or express qualities such as humility and modesty. For much of the earlier Renaissance, this is what they were doing in altarpieces and devotional works: standing in for the characteristics of the Virgin, the Christ Child or a particular saint. 

 Leonardo da Vinci, The Madonna of the Rocks, from c.1491 to 1508, National Gallery, London

Here, for instance, is a detail showing one of the plants growing in the strange cavernous setting of The Madonna of the Rocks; it is a group of narcissi, painted with similar observational skill and sensitivity to those in the Ring, but here, however, they are more than accidentally or aesthetically chosen as part of the composition – they symbolize the Resurrection. Further into the 16th century, this use of religious symbolism within art was beginning to be tempered by paintings of objects which only have a meaning internal to the work – or even none at all; so that the Ring may depict plants with medicinal qualities, but it is also purely a painting of flowers, chosen for their aesthetic qualities – their delicacy and grace, and their transience.

Alexander Marshall (c.1620-82), The florilegium of Alexander Marshall, Royal Collection: double folio showing the narcissus & Crown imperial

During the 16th and 17th century, the scientific interest in flowers hinted at in the Ring branched off into botanical art, in which the focus was on the accurate rendering of all the different parts of the flower, from root to seed pods, in an effort to categorize and catalogue the vast number of species of plant to which exploration and colonization was rapidly adding. Here the narcissus has no particular aesthetic or symbolic value; it is presented with complete objectivity, devoid of leaves, companions or posed graces. It is still very beautiful, and beautifully painted, but beauty is not the main point of this work.

Jan van Os (1744-1808), Roses and other flowers in a sculpted vase with chicks in a nest, Christie’s, 17 October 2006

 Beauty is certainly the main point of this one… Now, in the second half of the 18th century, the Dutch flowerpiece has established itself as the celebration of flowers par excellence. This is a paean to the ephemeral nature and perfection of flowers – all flowers, from every part of the year, whether they would naturally be seen together or not. Thus the narcissus appears again, alongside primulas, delphiniums, roses, hollyhocks and carnations, in a small walk-on part (although at the very centre of the painting). Even with the best succession houses, it’s unlikely that this could have occurred at this time; what is happening is really the recording and preservation of a transient beauty, in the most attractive way possible, so that those who can afford it, and who cannot – however much they may pay – bend Nature to their desires, may have the perfect vase of flowers (from every season) in their house for as long as they want it.

John Singer Sargent, Still life with daffodils, c.1891-94, Yale University Art Gallery

This is what we understand from the modern still life of flowers: the tension between the lovely fragile thing which lasts for a few days, and the preservation of it for as long as the painting lasts – the almost literal immortalization, which art promises.  This is what so many of us would like to have in our houses, as a reminder that beauty can stay with us, even as time moves on…

Camilla Gobl (1871-1965), Flowerpiece, collection of Mark Mitchell

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Gumming up the works

Posted on June 28, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

Alfred Wallis, Five ships: Mount’s Bay, 1928

The sale of Dan Cohen’s chewing-gum piece recently by Christie’s (for £481,875 – to his own dealer) gives one pause. Bendor Grosvenor has blogged about the vacuity of the catalogue entry accorded a work which – although it looks like a square of 1960s linoleum – is actually a canvas dense with small pieces of gum, each hand-chewed (as it were) by the artist.

John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888

If this piece could bear the weight of the interpretation given it in the catalogue, it would surely not be necessary for the artist’s dealer to purchase it, presumably in order to keep its putative value circling high above the clouds of taste, sense and comprehension.  If not a dealer, do you buy such a thing for its aesthetic charm, its intellectual content, its capacity to make you re-see the world, or its spiritual uplift?  Do you buy it for its ironic comment on the consumer-driven society which hatched it (and on which it surfs), or for its expression of the contemporary, fragmented zeitgeist? Is it actually applied, rather than fine, art – like a wall-hanging – chosen to fit an interior by its unique blend of tone and colour?  Is it a self-portrait of the artist, modelled from spit and shaded with DNA, capable of regenerating him at some point in the scientific future?  What of truth, beauty and the human condition would post-apocalyptic man gain from this canvas if he dug it from an archaeological pit in a thousand years’ time, and how would he differentiate it from the floor tiles or rags of curtain in the pit?

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-52

The Art Everywhere initiative (supported by Tate and the Art Fund amongst others), which aims to show 50 of the nation’s favourite works of art on billboards, bus stops, and as posters all over the country this summer, has been going since mid-May; by 24 June the 5 front-runners of the 50 artworks (chosen for us) had emerged by popular vote as: Alfred Wallis’s Five ships, c.1928; Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott; Millais’s Ophelia, 1851-52; Whistler’s Nocturne in Blue & silver, c.1871, and Turner’s Norham Castle: sunrise, c.1845. So that’s four places for the 19th century, one for the early 20th, and nul points for the YBAs et al. As of 26th June, we are being chivvied to vote for the poor and unappreciated Hirsts and Emins, because sports days aren’t about winning, and if you’ve so much as entered the egg-&-spoon then you’ve done really, really well.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and silver – Chelsea, c.1871

Tate Modern has drawn in vast crowds since its opening, and it would hardly be just or logical to conclude that most of those crowds have flocked to it for the bread and circuses, drawn by the hyperbole of publicity.  On the other hand, you have only to stand for a short while in a gallery to discover that the average time the viewer expends on an individual painting is 10 to 15 seconds, with another 20 or so to read the caption; the National Gallery is promoting events where you go and sit in front of a painting for a sustained period to try to redress this fast art approach.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Norham Castle: sunrise, c.1845

What to conclude from all of this? Well, that people like to visit art galleries and museums, but perhaps not generally in order to submerge themselves in the art they find there; that when they do want to be submerged in publicly-owned art, or when they choose art to fill their own houses, they tend to go for things which would probably be universally acknowledged in any age to be works of art, rather than what sits on the cutting edge of the wave of ephemeral fashion; and that anything in that latter class is accruing much of its status from its transient investment potential, rather than its inherent appeal. Do we want art which has a price, or art which has value?

Roberts D. Greenham, Tango final of British Championship, Blackpool, 1969, 1970

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The charm and power of the flowerpiece…

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

Jan van Huysum, Still life with roses, tulips and peonies, c, 1718, oil on copper, National Galleries of Scotland

The  acquisition by the National Galleries of Scotland of a spectacular flowerpiece by the artist Jan van Huysum is a reminder of just how popular this critically rather undervalued genre of painting has been for hundreds of years (there are Roman frescoes, if not of flowers in vases, then of growing flowers, such as the garden room, Villa of Livia, Palazzo Massimo, Rome).

Floral mosaic, 4th century AD, from the ceiling, Santa Costanza, Rome

Mosaics also show flowers; for example, in the 4th century ceiling of Santa Costanza, where the decorative, informal scattering of flowering branches and birds from pagan Roman designs has been adapted to a sacred form, and introduces the theme of the Garden of Eden in one of the earliest of Christian mosaics.

Anne Boleyn’s Book of Hours, c. 1528, British Library

Books of Hours in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance were ornamented in the margins with beautifully naturalistic flowers, petals, small fruits such as strawberries, and insects. Many of these had symbolic significance, although in a religious and spiritual dialogue with the reader, unlike the 19th century language of flowers with its lovers’ meanings. The rose was the flower of the Virgin Mary, the heartsease and the bluebell stood for humility and the forget-me-not for remembrance.

Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna of the carnation, 1478, Alta Pinakothek, Munich

Leonardo’s Madonna of the carnation contains a vase of flowers, from which the Madonna has taken the carnation she shows the Child; here, the carnation is symbolic of Christ’s Passion, and of His mother’s love. This is an early use of a formal arrangement in a vase: the bouquet, which contains irises (another attribute of the Virgin, and also the symbol of her sorrow), small lilies and blue daisies, is stuffed, rather unconvincingly, into a delicate glass with an urn-like base and long, slender neck. It illustrates the use of internal symbols to expand the meaning of the painted scene, and to provide a shorthand for the virtues which were intended to be suggested to the worshipper.

 

Ambrosius Bosschaert, Flower still life, c. 1614, J. Paul Getty Museum

The Baroque age, when secular paintings began to take over from religious, and more varied genres emerged – peasant scenes and still life – really saw the popularity of flowerpieces increase as subjects in their own right. The Dutch artist, Ambrosius Bosschaert, produced some of the earliest surviving examples: for instance, Flowers still life, of c. 1614 (above).

Juan van der Hamen, Still life with flowers, artichokes and cherries, 1627, Museu de Prado

And the work of Juan van der Hamen, a Spanish artist of Flemish extraction, marries extraordinarily delicate paintings of flowers in fragile vases with a dramatic dark ground and fruit which appears to be packed with a surreal significance. The invention of dining rooms and garden rooms instead of the all-purpose banqueting and living halls of earlier ages meant that these paintings of flowers, as well as game and fruit, were sought-after decorations. The 17th century became the great age of flowerpieces, stimulated too by the Dutch ‘tulip mania’ which elevated a bulb into an unlikely form of investment (just as had happened when the hyacinth was introduced). Important flower artists included Jan Davidsz. de Heem and Willem van Aelst, masters of rhythmically swirling compositions, dramatically lit and coloured arrangements, and combinations of flowers from different seasons.

Jan van Huysum, Still life with roses, tulips and peonies, c, 1718, oil on copper, National Galleries of Scotland

Jan van Huysum learnt from both de Heem and van Aelst, surpassing them with his virtuoso depictions of complex, interwoven bouquets, vividly coloured and highlighted with drops of dew and lovingly detailed insects. Like Juan van der Hamen he used dark backgrounds – at least in his early works – so that the flowers emerge with enhanced brilliance and glamour from the shadowy ground, dramatically sculptural and three-dimensional. In the work acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland, the colours of the flowers are woven through the composition in a sophisticated choreography of reds, pinks, piercing blues and vibrant greens, and the delicacy of the drawing is breathtaking.

This combination of miniaturistic detail, theatricality and opulence is characteristic of the 17th century; 18th century flowerpieces tend to be painted in a lighter key, and to be set against a sunlit landscape or summer skies; they are lighter in all senses, frillier and more Rococo.

Simon Saint-Jean, Flowers & fruit, 1848, Wallace Collection

Similarly, Victorian flowerpieces lack the grander, architectural rhythms and swirling strength of van Huysum’s painting; brighter, blowsier and far more ephemeral looking, they are the sweet face of floral paintings, compared with the grandeur of the Dutch style. Simon Saint-Jean’s flowerpieces sum up this difference, falling far short of the ironic permanence suggested by van Huysum’s ephemeral display.

Charles Swyncop, Still life with white flowers, collection Mark Mitchell Paintings & Drawings

Flowerpieces are still, always, desirable – investments which decorate a home and can be enjoyed for their sheer, sensuous appeal: colour, pattern, texture and composition. Look at Charles Swyncop’s painterly vase of white chrysanthemums, the transparence of glass and water suggested with a swagger, the vibrance of the white cloth beneath the glowing petals…

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William Morris and art for all…

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, London

What tremendous and heartening news that the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow has been declared the Art Fund Museum of the Year, winning £100,000 to keep it going on its starry voyage out of shabbiness, neglect and imminent closure to an award-winning educational nexus of beauty, history, politics and general fascination.

William Morris, who was socialist of the very best kind, intent on giving everyone beauty, art and elegant craft in their homes, and in creating spacious factories overlooking Arcadian riverscapes, is a guardian angel for the arts today. Here is a man who would always rather increase access to art, rather than clip its wings in time of recession; a man who inspired Chris Robbins, the leader of Walthamstow council, to declare heroically, ‘I didn’t stand for office to close things down’ (public libraries, anyone?).

17 Red Lion Square, London; Morris’s home before he started Morris & Co.

Morris was going to be a vicar, like Burne-Jones, until, becoming disillusioned at Oxford, they opted for art, life and women. Burne-Jones studied briefly as a painter with Rossetti, and was inspired to follow him, catalyzing what became the ‘second wave’ of Pre-Raphaelitism; Morris, who was no good at painting, became determined to improve the standard of furniture, carpets, fabrics and stained glass generally in Victorian Britain, finding the meretricious quality of mass-produced articles poverty-stricken and offensive.

William Morris, The strawberry thief, 1863, furnishing fabric, courtesy of the V & A

His radical desire to take art, learning, comfort, beauty to the poorest in society was fierce and passionate; unfortunately the output of Morris & Co. (Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. for its first 14 years), the firm he set up for the production of hand-crafted furnishings, hit the problem of costs, and his wares were sadly only affordable to the comfortably-off; however, the concern ran from 1861 to 1940, and Morris’s designs are still going strong today. They were responsible for starting the Arts & Crafts movement practically single-handed, for hiking up the standards of the goods available to the middle classes, and for playing to a popular love of good and decorative design that is sometimes unfairly disparaged.  Pre-Raphaelitism has a large fan club today; so does the Arts & Crafts Movement; and Morris’s fabric designs soldier on through critical obloquy because people like and want them.

Morris’s novels are an acquired taste; having read both volumes of The well at the world’s end I can only agree with the critic who described it as going on and on and on, like Morris’s wallpaper patterns; his poetry is also a specialist interest. His politics and his strong desire to bring education, the skills of craftsmanship and beautiful surroundings to all, no matter how poor or under-privileged they were, must continue to inspire today – just as the Walthamstow council have been inspired to refurbish the gallery created in his name, and make it the artistic centre of a poor borough.

William Morris Gallery, the garden front, with restored canopy overlooking Lloyd Park

‘History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.’ William Morris.

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Saving the past…

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

Reading The Art Newpaper’s edition for June 2013, it becomes depressingly clear that trying to preserve enough of our historic past to bequeath in fairly good nick to our children is an uphill struggle, consistently undermined (as it were) not only by fire, flood, wear, tear and beetles, but by the efforts of our fellow man.

There on the cover is L’Aquila in Italy, still suffering four years after its catastrophic earthquake from a ruined and deserted centre and a displaced population, the beleaguered government having only managed to scrape together less than a third of the necessary sum for rebuilding and restoration. Underneath is a piece on the looting of the ancient site of Apamea in Syria, and inside an update on the equally outrageous looting of the library in the Girolamini complex of Naples. Recession and near-bankruptcy could possibly excuse to some extent the case of L’Aquila; looting, although heartbreakingly vandalistic and often irreversible, does go hand-in-hand with war; but what are we to think about the Girolamini library?

In January The Guardian reported the ‘premeditated, organized and brutal’ looting of irreplaceable antique books from the library by the very people employed to preserve and maintain it. The director had apparently sold perhaps more than 4,000 volumes from the only partially catalogued collection, including a copy of More’s Utopia from 1518 and works by Gallileo. Now The Art Newspaper reports that the library’s conservator was also involved, along with a dozen other people; the damage is reported to be irreparable, since the library’s stamp had been removed from the books, many of which were then sold at auction, making them very hard to trace. And nearly 40 Old Master paintings from the church and gallery, including a Giordano and school of Caravaggio, were found in, dumped in a bag in one of the chapels.

 What can you say?

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The Hungry Eye: an exhibition of new still life paintings by Stephen Rose

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Mark Mitchell

Open from 22 April – 3 May 2013

and presented by Mark Mitchell Paintings & Drawings

at 17 Avery Row, Brook Street, London  W1K 4BF

Stephen Rose’s work is a wonderfully contemporary take on the classical tradition of still life painting.

He has learnt from masters such as Chardin in France, Cotán in Spain and the 17th century Dutch school, absorbing their technique of elevating mundane and humble articles – fruit, vegetables, plastic wrappings, crumpled paper and foil – into arrangements of transcendent grace and beauty.

Although his models are antique and European, these are essentially British paintings, taking the products and packaging of the modern supermarket, so familiar in our every-day lives, and endowing them with a profound and moving significance. Ephemeral items such as elastic bands and cardboard egg trays are beautifully and lovingly observed, and given the validity of objets d’art; fading leaves and worn possessions are imbued with a poignant realization of transience and mortality.

His backgrounds are enigmatic, set in a vibrating space of atmosphere and light which cannot be read; these are apparently simple still life compositions which evoke a sense of timelessness and monumentality… yet they are also supremely decorative pictures, rejoicing in the sensuous play of colour, the texture of paint and the tooth of the canvas.

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Superb artist – George Weissbort

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Mark Mitchell

George Weissbort (1928-) encapsulates precisely what Mark Mitchell Paintings & Drawings is all about and is the very reason why I set up this company –  to bring back into the spotlight talented and highly trained artists who have often been overshadowed by their more fashionable contemporaries.

The first painting we bought by George,”Still life with cobnuts and a pitcher”(see below), was sold within a week of buying it to an esteemed Fine Art dealer for his very own private collection.


Since then I have been unable to locate anymore works by this artist until quite recently a life long friend of his suggested I should meet him. On arriving at his beautiful countryside house in Gloucestershire, I immediately felt like a small child in a candy shop unable to take my eyes off the walls, for there hung a mesmerising combination oflandscape, figure, interior and still lifes that were painted in a variety of different styles that it was hard to believe they were all by the same artist. I immediately decided to purchase as many as I possibly could, taking the rest on consignment and am now planning to put on a “Still life and Interiors” exhibition with George’s works headlining it this November at our Mayfair gallery (who I share with my father, European antique picture frame dealer, Paul Mitchell). I also plan to take a number of his pictures to the upcoming BADA art fair situated at the Duke of York Square, just off Sloane Square. For anyone who would like to receive tickets / invitations to any of these, please email me on mark@paulmitchell.co.uk

Below are further examples of works by George;

Belgian born, he moved to London and attended the Central School of Art & Design. He was taught by Bernard Meninsky to study the Old Masters  – turning first to artists such as Cézanne and Matisse where their influence is quite apparent in his paintings to then go further back to Masters of the Renaissance; Vermeer, Chardin, Velasquez, Corot and Titain.

He’s exhibited regularly throughout his life at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Fine Art Society.

George is also a serious academic on the subject of art, having written essays on Lucien Freud, Vermeer etc..

For full biography, please visit his pages on my website.

 

 

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New acquisition – Bernard Finegan Gribble (1873 – 1962) ‘Elegant woman in a plumed hat’

Posted on December 9, 2011 by admin

The painting I would like to review this week is the stunning Edwardian portrait we have recently acquired by the late English artist, Bernard Finegan Gribble.

Having recently exhibited at The Winter Fine Art and Antiques Fair at Olympia, this picture received the majority of attention out of the thirty-five works on our stand. Not a surprise to me, for the first time I caught eyes on it I knew I had just seen something very special and bearing in mind this was when it was in a terrible frame that had nothing to do with its period and definitely was not the original. After trying up to twenty-three different models on it, we found the one that you can’t help feeling was made for this portrait. It compliments it superbly.

As noted in the biographical details (which you can view on my website by clicking here), comparisons can be drawn to Sargent in the way Gribble has captured the pose, and direct gaze, with the more finished painting of the face and the bravura impressionism of the dress. I see elements of the Belgian artist Alfred Stevens in this too.

As well as portraits, Bernard Gribble was known for his marine history paintings, which would include pirates, the pilgrim fathers and every imaginable naval battle throughout history. He was chosen to exhibit these at the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of Fine Arts and the Paris Salons.

I welcome anyone who wishes to view this picture to drop by our gallery in the West End.

 

 

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New acquisition – Théophile De Bock

Posted on September 22, 2011 by admin

One our recently acquired works is by the late 19th Century Dutch landscape painter, Théophile De Bock.

THEOPHILE DE BOCK (1851-1904) "A country Lane"

This painting is typical of his landscapes; decorative, restrained in colour, and demonstrating a vision tempered by romanticism.

Born in the Hague in 1851, he trained at the Hague School and then moved to Barbizon in the Forest of Fontainebleau where he was influenced by the works of Corot, Millet and Théodore Rousseau which are evident in this picture.

Life highlights included winning medals in exhibitions throughout Europe including the 1989 Exposition Universille, with works in public collections such as The Hague Museum of Fine Arts, The Tate and The National Gallery.

He was also a close friend of the late still life, figure and landscape painter Vincent Van Gogh and is mentioned in his letters to brother Theo.

Please click here if you would like to view his full biography.

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