George Bellows at the RA.

To British art lovers George bellows is an almost unknown painter, and yet in the USA he is extremely popular. He was a member of the so-called "Ashcan School", who tried to show every day living in the USA and particularly in New York. other members of this group included William Glackens and Robert Henri, who are also little known outside the USA. They were contemporaries of the far more well known Edward Hopper. They painted in a lively impressionist inspired style , which to me is much more exciting than Hopper's rather dead paintings.

Bellow's had a rather short career as he died at the early age of 42, but in that short time he painted some very vivid depictions of life in and around New York.

This vivid depiction of two boxers slugging it out is probably his best known painting. Boxing at the time was illegal, and fights were held only in private clubs with little regard for the rules.  This painting captures the brute force and excitement of the onlookers very well.

Another subject that captured bellow's imagination was the development of New York as shown in this view of the building of Penn Station.

His landscapes also included some winter scenes set in the countryside around New York, such as this beautifully painted landscape called "Rain on the River".

They also portrayed more affluent New Yorker's enjoying the snow, as in this delightful scene called "Love of Winter"

He also painted some very exciting seascapes which seem to show the influence of possibly the greatest American painter of the sea, Homer Winslow. His paintings of the sea certainly capture the power of the waves,as in this painting called "West Wind"

Like Winslow Homer he also showed the hard conditions under which fishermen worked.

Towards the end of his life he adopted a more surrealist approach, and though his work is still very powerful I feel that it lacks the realism that epitomises his earlier work. This one is called "The Fisherman's Family"

 
I found his painting quite exciting and more reminiscent of earlier painters like Manet and  Van Gogh, than of his European contemporaries like Picasso and Matisse. This is an exhibition which is really worthwhile visiting, giving you a very good introduction to an important American painter, who deserves to be far better known over here.

The Sailing Mug

This is recently done still life in oils on paper . The main subject is a mug, that I have with a broad base, so that it can be used on a sailing boat. in the background is a vase of flowers and a painting.

Lichtenstein at Tate Modern

To many people Lichtenstein was just a painter of large paintings based on popular comics, and has been called " the worst artist in the USA. However this the first major retrospective of his work sets out to show that he was really one of the finest painters of the 20th century.

It starts of by showing some of his early work in which he parodied the abstract impressionists, by carefully painting brush strokes.

We then moved onto his first experiments with dot paintings in 1962/3, when he painted everyday objects using the techniques which he borrowed from cheaply printed comic books and his first use of a Mickey Mouse comic book picture.

He developed his dot technique by painting every day functional objects, such as this car tyre. As  well as being representations of these objects these paintings also have an abstract quality about them.

This took us into the first big room which was devoted to the paintings which he is best known by, depicting love and war, and taken from comic book pictures. These were extensively worked over to improve the composition and give more artistic impact.

The first example is called " The Kiss" and is very typical of the big blown up extract from a comic book picture.

This is possibly his most famous painting called "Wham" it covers two large canvases.

Between 1964 -1967 Lichtenstein painted some very simple landscapes using his dots to produce landscapes which in a way were just horizontal abstract  compositions, but still capture the feeling of landscapes.

He also explored art deco shapes which he called " Cubism for the home". These abstract shapes were produced both as paintings but also as some very striking brass sculptures.

We then moved into another large room entitled Art about Art, which to me was the most exciting part of the exhibition, and introduced me to works which I was not at all familiar with. In this room were some of the paintings which could be called either parodies or tributes to artists , whom Lichtenstein admired, particularly Picasso, who he considered " the greatest artist of the 20th century".
Lichtenstein took well known works by such artists as Monet, Mondrian and Picasso and reworked them in his own style.

This work is based on Picasso's Woman of Algiers ( the top painting), and in some ways I think he outdoes Picasso, as he also did in this painting based on Mondrian's work.

The next room showed his tribute to Matisse's  Pink and Red studio paintings. In one of these he added a direct reference to Matisse's The Dance.

 Mirrors featured some very minimalist  paintings of mirrors, which actually looked like mirrors, being sort of "trompe l'oeil reproductions of mirrors.

The Perfect/Imperfect series of paintings show Lichtenstein experimenting with pure abstraction. he drew a line following it along the canvas and then filled the spaces with areas of flat colour , dots or diagonal lines. In a way he was parodying abstract painting, as he said " It seemed to be the most meaningless way to make an abstraction".

In the mid-1990's Lichtenstein explored the field of painting the nude female figure. However unlike most artists who use live models, he again explored his library of comic images, and then undressed them, before making these nude paintings of them. Even though you would think that this method would produce bland paintings, they are in fact full of sensuality  and intimacy.

Finally we come to his Chinese landscapes. he was fascinated by the simplicity of Chinese Art and and in 1995 he produced more than 20 landscapes. Using different sizes of dots he was able to get the atmospheric quality and subtle depth of the original Chinese paintings. I thought that these works were amongst the finest of his work, and really captured the atmosphere of Chinese painting as yoou can see in "Landscape with Fog".

I really enjoyed this exhibition. It made me realise that what I had thought at an earlier Lichtenstein exhibition, that he was a really good painter , was correct. I did not realise however that he was so inventive in the scope of his paintings, and that so much could be portrayed through what looks so simple a technique, but is in actual fact a very time consuming process, taking a great deal of planning and execution.

Do not miss this show. I am sure that you will be impressed.

Two Nudes

Here are a couple of drawings in charcoal that I have done recently at the Dulwich Art Group regular Wednesday afternoon sessions.

Two oldish still life paintings.

Having a clear out the other day I came across these two still life paintings that I did sometime last year. Both are oil on paper 355 x 250 cm in size.

This one is called " Soup"

  and this one " Cup Cakes"

Two new Still Life Paintings

These are two new paintings completed over the last few days.

The first entitled "Vases and Tangerines" is oil on masonite. It is 12" x 14"

Price £100.00.

The second painting is  10" x 10" oil on paper called "The Sailing Mug" . The mug in the foreground is one made for use on a sailing yacht, with a wide base so that it will not fall over.

Price £50.00

The Brown Tabby

I did this small watercolour as an experiment in trying to paint a cat. It is based on a photo of one of my sister's cats.

 Not that good, but one has to start somewhere.

Two lake paintings.

Here are a couple of small water colour paintings that I have done recently. The first one was done from my imagination, but I gort the idea from a TV program about the Norfolk Broads. It is called Three Boats on Barton Broad.

The second small painting was based on a black and white photo that I took many years ago, whilst on holiday in Lausanne. It shows a paddle steamer on the lake.

A couple of railway paintings.

Though one of the first oils that I painted was slightly railway oriented, I have not tried any other railway paintings. However recently I have done two small railway paintings. The first was painted from a model locomotive that I have. It is a small narrow gauge works engine, called Gamecock. This was the one and only kits that my company produced when I was in the model railway business.

The second one is taken from a German photobook that I have called " Der Liebe alte Bimmelbahn". It is a scene on the Ybbsbahn, a narrow gauge railway in Austria.

The Herring Fleet.

I have always liked the red sailed fishing boats that sailed out of various ports all around the British Isles. This little 12" x 8" watercolour painting is based very roughly on the boats that sailed out of Inverness.

Two new Geometric Abstracts.

Here are two new Geometric Abstracts done on  25cm x 30 cm boards in acrylics.

Back to my old style.

 Coming to the conclusion that my painting was becoming rather stiff and not really my sort of thing , I decided to go back and paint like I used to. I primed a couple of largish pieces of paper, got out my acrylics and did these two still life paintings.

They are both approximately 36 x 56 cm.















Jug ,Mug ,Mug and Fruit.                                          Melon,Peppers and Limes.

I must say that I really enjoyed doing them, and will probably continue in the same manner. It is very nice not to worry to much about "the rules" but just to paint as it gets you. I must try a landscape in similar style and see how it goes.

Who is Leslie Hunter ?

The Scottish Colourists are a group of Scottish painters from early in the 20th Century who are gradually becoming more well known for their colourful paintings. Peploe and Cadell are probably the best known of the foursome, but George Leslie Hunter is less well known. An exhibition at the Fleming Gallery in Berkely Street tries to correct this, and in my opinion succeeds rather well.

Hunter's family emigrated to San Francisco  in 1892, but only stayed for a few years, however Hunter stayed on and started his artistic career there. Unfortunately his first exhibition coincided with the great San Franciscan earthquake of 1906, and he lost all his work in it. He therefore came back to Scotland and resumed his career. His early paintings from this period show him still using dark backgrounds in a very traditional manner. he worked on a farm during the 14-18 war, and again lost most of his work which was put on a bonfire.

After 1919 he travelled extensively in France , where he moved to in 1927. There he gained a great admiration for Matisse's work and a solid grounding in more contemporary styles.

 His palette brightened up considerably and he made a considerable number of works in ink and crayon, which to me are very reminiscent of Dufy's work of the same period, and in some cases are superior.

 He painted a lot in Provence, before returning to Scotland where he produced some of his finest work, both still lifes and landscapes. The French government purchased on of his canvases of Loch Lomond in 1931, which caused Peploe to exclaim" That is Hunter at his best and is as fine as any Matisse".

Intelligent and driven Hunter, lived for his art to the exclusion of anything else including his health. He died an early death in 1931 at the age of 54.

The exhibition gives a very comprehensive selection of his work, from the dark early paintings, through the ink and crayon sketches to his very colourful and lively later work.

The exhibition goes on until 9th February, and in my opinion is well worth a visit.

Cotman Exhibition at Dulwich gallery.

Cotman is regarded by many as one of  England's greatest water colourists, equal to Turner. However if you go this exhibition expecting to see a good selection of his finest watercolours you will be a trifle disappointed. Not only are there only a few of his watercolours on show, but there are many works by other artists who were contemporary  with him. In fact the majority of works on show are mainly drawings.

In fact it is still a very good exhibition, and well worth going to, but in my opinion it is mislabelled.  It really should have been titled "Cotman and his Contemporary's in Normandy".

The first room is really an introduction and shows watercolours and drawings by Cotman in England, including a really superb painting of Durham Cathedral painted in 1805, and as a sample of what is to come a fine drawing of Beccles and Bungay.

We then enter the next room, where all is revealed. It appears that Cotman and his friends generally did not paint on their visits to Normandy, but only drew there, and used these drawings as the basis for paintings and etchings when they returned to England. There are a few watercolours, including some of Turner's sketches and a lovely watercolour of Mont St.Michel,

 but most of the exhibition is taken up by superb drawings done by Cotman and his contemporaries. The main exceptions are some superbly executed watercolours by Samuel Prout, a new name to me, but a great painter of extremely detailed town scenes.

It is not till you get to the last room that you see the results of these visits, with some fine Cotman watercolours, which are based roughly on both his own and other peoples drawings.

The exhibition is really well worth going to see for the extremely fine drawings on show, but as I initially said in my opinion is misnamed.