To celebrate the museum’s 200th anniversary, famous art lovers single out their favourite work and get to the nub of its appeal
Scottish artist Currie studied at the Glasgow School of Art. He used industrial Glasgow as the subject of his early work, with paintings that were linear in style and modelled in block-like forms. In the early 1990s, Currie was much affected by political and humanitarian events...
Whistlejacket by George Stubbs. King & McGaw has an extensive collection of art prints by established and emerging artists, which are all framed by hand in the UK.
Harald Oskar Sohlberg (29 September 1869–19 June 1935) was a Norwegian Neo-romantic painter, particularly known for his depictions of the mountains of Rondane and the town of Røros. His perhaps most well-recognized painting is his 'Winter's Night in Rondane' from 1913-14. His painting "Fisherman's Cottage" was used as the cover of a book by John Burnside called "A summer of Drowning"; one of the sections of this book is called "Fisherman's Cottage". A DEEPER LOOK. In an obituary, Pola Gauguin wrote that as an artist, Harald Sohlberg was alone and forgotten: "A name which was famous in its day." Now that Sohlberg was dead, Gauguin thought, "the coldness which he helped surround it with, will thaw." Sohlberg's isolation was partly the tragic result of his wholehearted endorsement of the myth of genius as formulated by Romanticism and adopted by the Symbolists. Like Munch, he was obsessively preoccupied with denying that the influence of other contemporary artists had been important to him. He dissociated himself from the discussion about where he belonged in the history of art, relegating the origins of his artistic awakening outside of art to his own psyche. Sohlberg wrote that his form sprang forth subconsciously from his first awareness of the landscape. The difference in texture of the sky and earth gave him a sense of standing on a heavy and firm planet gazing out into boundless space. He attributed the simple forms and great lines of his pictures to this first awareness of the landscape. The point of departure was the personal experience. Thus, the artist's experience of his subject preceded the picture. Sohlberg was preoccupied with the concrete local landscape that surrounded him and his emotional reaction to it. The place, in itself, was charged with meaning. For this reason, where he sought his subjects was important. He experienced the landscape in Norway as nature in strong and intense moods and gave form to the echoes of these moods in his mind. He agreed with many of his generation who, taking their point of departure in Andreas Aubert's writings about Norwegian art, were of the opinion that there existed distinctive, Nordic colors, clear and strong colors created by the clear, intense light of the North. Once artists realized this, it would be possible for an independent Nordic art to develop. Sohlberg believed that, along with the unique construction of the Nordic landscape, local color ought to result in a style of its own. Experience and interpretation of nature determined the choice of colors. For Sohlberg, the main color should assemble the picture and be as strong as possible. The function of line in painting according to him was to express feelings. It could be lonely, down to earth, or melancholy. It could be willful and persevering as required. It should be developed according to the nature of the subject and the artist's dialogue with nature. Because the picture was bound by a perceived reality, Sohlberg paid tribute to reality by portraying it naturalistically. But his gaze carried with it the legacy of picture formulas that transformed and adapted nature. He was an artist who rarely put a stroke on the canvas before the picture was clear to him in his imagination. As an artist, he was a substitute viewer. What interested him was his own experience and interpretation, regardless of how naturalistic his pictures appeared to be. Ideally everything in the picture was controlled by his will. As an older man, Sohlberg longed for confirmation that the public saw the values he wished to impart: "it is probably true that for simple and naive reasons my works have aroused sympathy. But I maintain that they have by no means been properly understood for the pictorial and spiritual values on which I have been working consistently throughout the years." The quotation contains three words which are keys to an understanding of Sohlberg: "Pictorial," "spiritual," and "consistently." The pictorial is means for expressing the spiritual, and one was obliged to stick to the spiritual values one held true. - From Ivind Storm Bjerke, Edvard Munch, Harald Sohlberg: Landscapes of the Mind
Young Girl Reading, by Jean-Honore Fragonard, c. 1770, French painting, oil on canvas. The girl's dress and cushion are painted in fluid strokes of broad unblended bands of color: saffron, lilac, and magenta
Ways to Adapt Art Lessons for Classroom and Cart!
A very evocative painting, by Frederick William Burton. ‘The Meeting on the Turret Stairs’ is one of the better-known works of Frederic William Burton. The theme comes from a medieval Danish ballad which describes how Hellelil fell in love with Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland, one of her twelve personal guards. Her father orders his seven sons to kill him. They stood at the door with spear and shield: ‘Up Lord Hildebrand! out and yield!’ He kissed me then mine eyes above:- ‘Say never my name, thou darling love’ Out of the door Lord Hildebrand sprang; Around his head the sword he swang. Hildebrand kills her father and six brothers before Hellelil intercedes to save the youngest. Hildebrand dies of his wounds and Hellelil herself dies shortly afterwards. Burton did not choose a violent episode and instead freely interpreted the story, placing their farewell on the turret stairs and leaving the reason for it to the imagination. His invention of the kiss on the woman's outstretched arm and the lack of eye contact adds to the poignancy of the painting. Explanatory text from the National Gallery of Ireland, via the Clare County Library and the Art Blog. (BTW - interesting use of "swang" for the past tense.) Addendum: A hat tip to "C," who notes that this painting has recently been voted "Ireland's Favorite Painting." A public vote promoted by RTÉ’s competition to find the nation’s favourite painting over the past five weeks found that the Frederic William Burton piece, which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland, polled most preferences. One in five of those who voted (22 per cent) went for the romantic 19th century depiction of a young soldier stealing an illicit kiss from his beloved as they pass on a turret stair. Burton was from Corofin, Co Clare. The other paintings in the competition are posted here. Addendum #2: Lots of information about the painting in the Sept/Oct 2012 issue of History Ireland, e.g.: All the preliminary studies show a medieval tower as the setting for the picture; the direction of the stairs is accurate in being clockwise, like an Irish tower-house, just as the view is correctly taken from a chamber doorway looking towards the stairs. The artist was vigilant about accuracy, incorporating a late medieval loop window made of a narrow vertical slit in the wall, splayed on the interior so that it could be used by archers... The figure of Hellelil draws especial attention, her elongated back view emphasising the costume, with only a glimpse of the face and outstretched arm. The particular shade of deep blue was also used in Burton’s The Child Miranda (1864). The gown appears made of fine wool, with long hanging sleeves fringed in fur, fitted with a tight bodice down to the hips, creating an elegant outline majestically folding into an extremely full skirt, both the sleeves and gown lined in white fur. The decorative girdle about her waist is of a generic late medieval type, its band interspersed with a sequence of bronze buckles, linked so that it could move with ease on the hips. Wound around her golden hair are mauve ribbons that end with the hair woven into a mauve toggle, tucked into the belt...
Saint Helena, Roman empress who was the reputed discoverer of Christ’s cross.
