More viewings

My picture fest continued in London with 2 visits to the Royal Academy and a view of the pictures on view at the Richard Green Gallery.

I visited the Summer Show at the RA.

In trying to reposition themselves for a younger audience, standards have dropped and most of the pictures –  garish in colour – would not have been out of place in Bayswater Road.

I returned the following day  for the Late Constable exhibition.

I could not see a huge difference between the Early Constable of The Hay Wain and the later Constable featuring some of his Brighton pictures, notably the Chain Bridge, where he dwelled in later life as he thought the air would be beneficial for his consumptive wife Maria Bicknell.

The odd thing about Constable was they he never travelled abroad but his agent Arrowsmith displayed The Hay Wain at the Paris salon in 1830 where it was much admired, not least by Eugene Delacroix.

Indeed he is the nearest we have to the landscapists across the Channel like Poussin, Claude and Corot.

In common with most British painters he eschews vivid colours for earthy russets, greens and browns.

Still there is a peaceful tranquillity which did not seem to reflect the turmoil of his later years when Maria died of tuberculosis and he had to bring up their 7 children on his own.

Furthermore he was not admitted to the RA until he was 52. He died 8 years later.

A chance encounter in Bond St with Penny Marks, sister of Richard Green, elicited an invitation to their gallery.

There was a gloriously uplifting and colourful Bouquet d’Ete by Marc Chagall, a Boudin and a Bonnard which I could view in splendid isolation.

I’m always interested to hear what the art market is doing and Penny tells me that L.S. Lowry is selling well.

Artists need a niche market and Lowry has cornered the northern working class one though I am a big fan of the earlier northern painter Atkinson Grimshaw.

 

What have the museums I have visited this past week in common? Their permanent collections are all free