Art

The Impartiality of Love/Hannah Rothschild

This is a novel of many parts, most of which do not work. Above all it reveals the amoral ruthlessness of the art world after a woman called Annie, a cook who is unlucky in love, discovers a lost Antoine Watteau called Improbability of Love in a junk shop. This develops into a chick lit romance, an [...]

August 6, 2019 // 0 Comments

Fake or Fortune

It’s good to see Fake or Fortune back on our screens – not on Sundays at 8.00pm but Thursday evening at 9.00 pm. Its formula of the investigation into whether a painting is genuine or not clearly attracts the viewing public. It’s a bit contrived with the informal chats between presenter [...]

August 3, 2019 // 0 Comments

Take a look at this one

As Rusters and indeed “any fule no” [(c) Nigel Molesworth circa 1955], on this organ we do lists. I need say no more. Here’s another one worth considering, courtesy of a feature spotted overnight on the website of – THE [...]

July 7, 2019 // 0 Comments

Adventurers of modern art

I chanced upon this Sky Arts programme about Paris and its contribution to art and writing from 1900-50. This period produced artists that shaped modern art: Picasso, Miro, Chagall, Braque, Andre Breton (the father of surrealism) and the better known artist he loathed Salvador Dali, Cocteau, Chaim [...]

June 27, 2019 // 0 Comments

A VISIT TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY

Yetserday I attended a tour of the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery curated by our art teacher at the local adult learning institute. She kindly invited me though I did not enrol on her course of Women in art. I regarded this too narrow. Last term, on British Art in the Twentieth [...]

May 29, 2019 // 0 Comments

Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum/Van Gogh Museum

Yesterday was the raison d’etre of our trip – a visit to the Rijksmuseum for “all the Rembrandts”, a retrospective to celebrate the 350th year of the Netherlands’ most famous artist. Although it was heralded as the biggest collection ever of Rembrandts, his Night Watch was in [...]

May 22, 2019 // 0 Comments

Jason Bowyer

I was shocked to learn, in reading the brochure of the forthcoming New English Exhibition, a group of which he was once President and founded its Drawing School, of the death of Jason Bowyer. I knew Jason for most of his life and his oil painting of Walberswick is hanging on my wall as I write [...]

May 14, 2019 // 0 Comments

Musee des Beaux Arts

The Musee des Beaux Arts is a handsome building not far from the Negresco. Unlike the other well known museums in this region if reflects more the artists that made Nice their home. Two of the most famous Raoul Dufy and Henri Matisse were well exhibited here. Both were born in the north west of [...]

April 24, 2019 // 0 Comments

Matisse, Chagall , Leger and Picasso museums

Yesterday I visited the above local museums as part of the prep for a bigger visit of Bob’s friends in 10 days time. We started at the Matisse museum in the north of Nice in the Cimiez area. This was once popular with Brits. Queen Victoria would stay at the imposing Hotel Regina – as did [...]

April 4, 2019 // 0 Comments

Harold Gilman/Pallant gallery

I cannot disagree with the negative review posted by Francesca on the above exhibition – Gilman review – even though warm interiors in the style of Eduard Vuillard and Gilman’s mentor Walter Sickert are definitely my bag. The problem is that there are several Sickerts in the permanent [...]

March 25, 2019 // 0 Comments

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My sporting weekend

August 19, 2019 // 0 Comments

Unusually for me I did not have a tickle all weekend though I had some golf bets in the week. Sometimes I just want to watch sport free of angst. I started with the Bledisloe [...]
Truth as a commodity and other issues

August 19, 2019 // 0 Comments

I don’t know whether I’m ga-ga, delusional, or even turning into a hard line, “hang ‘em and flog ‘em” right-wing Tory, but over the past couple of years, on the [...]
A memorable day at the Test

August 18, 2019 // 0 Comments

The Saturday of a Lords Test is always special, an Ashes one very special, but yesterday can only be described as very, very special. I cannot remember a more absorbing day [...]
A bit of a damp squib

August 18, 2019 // 0 Comments

For my sins – despite the ‘Phoney War’ nature of all these Rugby World Cup warm-up games – yesterday I made a point of watching Channel Four’s live coverage of [...]
The Tanner report: Huddersfield 1 Fulham 2

August 17, 2019 // 0 Comments

I had the utmost respect for those Fulham diehards on a very wet night – when the match was televised – who made it up to the Smith Stadium and were rewarded by a [...]