Just in

Art

An excellent piece of television

This is not a regular habit of mine I promise, but earlier this morning – having read the broadsheet reviews of Tuesday night’s television programming in which it seemingly received 4 stars out of 5 all round – I deliberately took up my zapper and negotiated through my cable company’s [...]

December 23, 2015 // 0 Comments

The Rules of the Game

One of the aspects of my work which I most enjoy and as Arthur Daley might say a”nice little earner” is advising on art acquisition. I am sufficiently critical of myself, my clientele and the art world to say there is an element of hypocrisy here. The client may say and will be advised [...]

October 30, 2015 // 0 Comments

Churchill: the artist

When I saw that a programme on BBC 4 about Winston Churchill the artist was to be presented by Andrew Marr, I sighed as I anticipated it would be as much about Marr as Churchill. I imagine as he is one of  BBC’s star turns it was he who insisted on making the programme which was called Marr [...]

August 19, 2015 // 0 Comments

Sickert in Dieppe

On the National Rust we pride ourselves that we bridge sport and art both of which feature prominently. I cannot recall why I became a WBA  fan, it might have been that the first soccer game I watched was the 1968 Cup Final when Dad bought a colour tv and we watched Albion beat Everton 1-0. I [...]

August 14, 2015 // 0 Comments

Lessons learned by a bloody nose

Next week will mark the seventy-third anniversary of the disastrous Dieppe Raid on 19th August 1942 by British and Canadian troops. For some time the Russians had been lobbying Britain and the Allies to open a second front in north-west Europe in order to relieve the pressure they were under from [...]

August 13, 2015 // 0 Comments

Fake or fortune

Fake or Fortune is now in its fourth series and I find it compelling viewing. I do not often like televised arts programmes for much the same reason I do not care for Tudor histories, namely the presenter is less than an interface and more the subject. Fake or Fortune could not be guilty of this as [...]

August 3, 2015 // 0 Comments

Dinner at the Chelsea Arts Club

Last night I introduced Ken Howard the artist to the art historian Martin Gayford. Ken I have known and admired for over 30 years and Martin is well-liked and respected in our world for his art journalism and biographies of John Constable,Van Gogh and Michelangelo. Ken had written to Martin after [...]

July 9, 2015 // 0 Comments

Quality versus commercial success

Sometimes those of us who are content to confess “I know nothing about Art [with a capital ‘a’] but I know what I like …” are condemned for either copping out and/or being Philistines, but that’s life and anyway so what? Personally, for example as regards music I am devoid of both [...]

June 28, 2015 // 0 Comments

The New English Art Club

Yesterday I visited the New English Art Club exhibition at the Pall Mall Gallery. The New English was founded in 1885 by a group of artists working in Paris and has been an important element in English art. In its first exhibition in 1886 George Clausen, Stanhope Forbes, JS Sargent and Wilson [...]

June 24, 2015 // 0 Comments

A la Colthard: Hotel Costes, Paris and Bonnard

The latest National Rust expedition was to Paris, ostensibly to see the Pierre Bonnard at the Musee D’Orsay but also  to enjoy lunch at the uber cool Hotel Costes. My cousin in New York who works for a French bank is the man in the know on what the French call “branche”, [...]

June 5, 2015 // 0 Comments

1 23 24 25 26 27