Articles by Alice Mansfield

About Alice Mansfield

A graduate of the Slade, Alice has painted and written about art all her life. With her children now having now grown up and departed the nest, she recently took up sculpture. More Posts

Inventing Post Impressionism/Charleston

Yesterday I went to Charleston near Lewes for the exhibition Inventing Post Impressionism. The connection between Charleston and Post Impressionism is the art critic Roger Fry who invented the term. Charleston was the home of Vanessa and Clive Bell and the Sussex outpost of the Bloomsbury Group. [...]

March 27, 2025 // 0 Comments

A Woman Bathing In A Stream/Rembrandt 1654

You might have thought radio is not the best medium to present an art programme but I always enjoy Moving Pictures on Radio 4 presented by Cathy Fitzgerald. The picture subject matter is on the programme website but I prefer to consult my Works of Rembrandt by the publisher Taschen which had a [...]

February 6, 2025 // 0 Comments

The Atlas of Art Crime/Laura Evans

Laura Evans subdivides her engaging review of art crime into three categories: 1) Theft 2) Vandalism 3) Forgery In regard to theft you have to have quite a lot of chutzpah to steal a painting to enter a gallery, church or museum and appropriate a picture. The motivation is normally financial but [...]

December 26, 2024 // 0 Comments

Two art books: Rogues and Scholars/Don’t Tell Sybil

Rogues and Scholars, penned by the ex-chairman of Sothebys – James Stourton – is a fairly comprehensive and balanced assessment of the London art market from 1945 to 2000. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the author centres on the two main players – the auction houses Christie’s and [...]

December 11, 2024 // 0 Comments

Auction houses v Art dealers

Yesterday I spent the whole of my afternoon following the Christie’s auction of Modern British and Irish Art. The famous auction house has adapted to the digital age by holding auctions online. It attracts a more global audience but I felt some of the bidding tension one experiences in the room [...]

October 18, 2024 // 0 Comments

3 art views

I’m sometimes asked whether I have visited any of the big art exhibitions in London right now – the Van Gogh at the National Gallery, the Francis Bacon at the National Portrait Gallery and the Claude Monet at the Courtauld. The answer is an emphatic “No” as these block buster [...]

October 16, 2024 // 0 Comments

Fake or Fortune/Helen MCColl

Unlike Stefano (Ursolini) I watched Fake or Fortune and thoroughly enjoyed it. Indeed I would say last Thursday’s episode was the best I have ever seen. Typically the programme – now in its fourth series – would feature a picture by (allegedly) a master and the presenters Fiona Bruce [...]

October 6, 2024 // 0 Comments

Fake or Fortune (new series BBC 1)

Fake or Fortune is back on our screens and last night I watched a rather disappointing episode in a series I both enjoy and admire. The subject painting was a depiction of a white chrysanthemum by the celebrated Dutch abstractionist Piet Mondrian. Most artists have painted flowers and – [...]

September 29, 2024 // 0 Comments

Art appropriation

Looting of artworks existed long before the current cultural appropriation movement. Napoleon was probably the biggest looter in history. Still under 30 when he conquered Italy, he never actually occupied Venice but one of of his art commissars drew up an inventory of art works to hand over [...]

August 1, 2024 // 0 Comments

All That Glitters/Orlando Whitfield

This is an account of the friendship between two art dealers – Orlando Whitfield and Inigo Philbrook – who met at Goldsmiths College. After an internship at the White Cube Gallery of mega-successful art dealer Jay Jopling, Inigo Philbrook made a fortune as a dealer in the secondary [...]

June 23, 2024 // 0 Comments

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Sussex on top

April 22, 2025 // 0 Comments

Sussex now sit atop Division one after predicting being at the other end of the table after platyng Warwickshire, Somerset and three time champions asurrey achieving 2 draws [...]
The Tanner Report: Fulham 1 Chelsea 2

April 21, 2025 // 0 Comments

Fulham missed the opportunity to do the double over their SW6 rivals. We simply do not have the spending power of Chelsea and that shows on the bench. Fulham introduced Tom [...]
Everyone Brave is Forgiven/Chris Cleave

April 21, 2025 // 0 Comments

This book came recommended on A Good Read. Presenter Harriet Gilbert opined that it’s essentially two novels – one a plotted novel – and the other a World War [...]
The Tanner Report: Bournemouth 1 Fulham 0

April 16, 2025 // 0 Comments

Once again Fulham lived up to their billing of beating a big boy (Liverpool) but falling short to a team below them (Bournemouth). The home side got off to the best possible [...]
The Masters

April 15, 2025 // 0 Comments

Since the media will be full of Rory’s Masters and joining the elite group of 4 Major winners, I feel free to give an independent view point on what was a magnificent [...]