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Articles by Alice Mansfield

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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

Singer Sargent Course

Yesterday I attended the first edition of a course on the painter John Singer Sargent. It soon became clear that I had not read the course materials carefully enough – it was actually a drawing course based on the technique and style of Singer Sargent. It’s been many years since I picked up [...]

April 24, 2024 // 0 Comments

Monet (The Restless Vision)/Jackie Wullschlager

This is a comprehensive account of the life of artist Claude Monet (1840-1926). He was born in Paris. As his father Alphonse’s business was supplying ships the family soon moved to Le Havre. As a youngster Monet, known then as Oscar, was a talented caricaturist and – only after meeting [...]

January 30, 2024 // 0 Comments

Great Collectors of Our Time/James Stourton

Published in 2007 and covering the post-War period this is a thorough account of the Great Collectors. Many – like Paul Getty, Paul Mellon,  the Rothschilds and Giovanni Agnelli have huge wealth – others like Peggy Guggenheim a brilliant eye but less funds to acquire, although she was [...]

January 5, 2024 // 0 Comments

John Craxton/Pallant Gallery Chichester

The Pallant Gallery has done – more than any other museum – much to redeem the reputation of many 20th Century British painters. In some cases, like the 1920s society artist Glyn Philpott or Leon Underwood, I wondered why, whereas with others – like Johnny Minton, regarded as the [...]

November 22, 2023 // 0 Comments

Venice: City of Pictures (Martin Gayford)

As one might expect from such an eminent art historian Martin Gayford’s latest work on Venetian art and architecture is a thorough, well-researched study with beautiful images. He covers the ‘Big Four’ of Venetian art – Titian, Tintoretto (the only artist born in and of Venice) [...]

November 11, 2023 // 0 Comments

Marriage of the Arnolfini

Few paintings have generated as much controversy and speculation as The Marriage of the Arnolfini by Jan van Eyck (1424) Little is known of Jan van Eyck. He was the court painter of the Duke of Burgundy whose lands extended to Flanders and the Netherlands. Bruges in Flanders was a thriving [...]

September 27, 2023 // 0 Comments

Symbolism in art

Recently I watched a programme called Decoding Turner in which a mechanical engineer and his wife advanced a theory that in Turner’s famous The Fighting Temeraire, on the prow of the vessel was concealed a picture of Napoleon. The art historian Andrew Graham Dixon peered at the picture and [...]

September 13, 2023 // 0 Comments

Artist talking about themselves

My late father – no mean watercolourist but above all a fine preceptor of humanity – once observed of a painter he knew: “I don’t think he is much good but he is very good at talking about his art “ Talking about art and doing it are two different skills. Picasso mixed with a [...]

August 30, 2023 // 0 Comments

Thunderclap & The Man who made Vermeers

Thunderclap by Observer Art Critic Laura Cumming is the story of the life and death of Dutch 17th century artist Carel Fabritius. In fact much more is known about his death in 1654 when his house collapsed after a gunpowder  depot explosion in Delft. As for his life, he was born in the village of [...]

July 25, 2023 // 0 Comments

After Impressionism

Yesterday I went to the After Impressionism exhibition at the National Gallery and was underwhelmed. Perhaps this was caused by waiting in the rain in the entrance queue; or the fact that I knew virtually every picture so the impact was lost; perhaps I could not see for whom the exhibition had been [...]

July 15, 2023 // 0 Comments

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