̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Painting

Exposing a Nazi: ̽��ֱ��exhibition destroying a myth

ta385 — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 07:00:00 +0000

In 1941, the Nazis banned Emil Nolde from painting, for life. For the past 50 years, many Germans have viewed him as the persecuted artist but now a major exhibition in Berlin, co-curated by a Cambridge historian, has shattered this myth and sent shock waves through the country.

Seventy years of Indian independence celebrated with summer exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam Museum

sjr81 — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 14:53:16 +0000

2017 is the UK-India Year of Culture, a year of events to celebrate UK’s cultural ties with India. ̽��ֱ��two exhibitions are part of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Museums’ India Unboxed series, affiliated to the UK/India 2017 programme run by the British Council.

From Kabul to Kolkata: Highlights of Indian painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum, showcases a selection of Indian miniature paintings and drawings from the 16th to 19th centuries. Works produced under the patronage of the Mughal dynasty and other princely rulers are included, as well as several acquired by early British patrons and collectors in India.

Religious epic and myth, history, royal portraiture, natural history, music and architecture are all included in the themes of the paintings and drawings on show. A new catalogue exploring the themes of the exhibition has been written by Marcus Fraser, Honorary Keeper of Islamic and Indian Manuscripts and Miniatures at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Elephants, Deities and Ashoka’s Pillar: Coins of India from antiquity to the present explores the history of India through coins produced from the 4th century BC until recent times. Cultural, religious, economic and political developments are richly illustrated by the coins on show. They focus on representative periods of India’s history, ending with a display of banknotes and coins produced since India became independent in 1947.

̽��ֱ��exhibitions are accompanied by a full programme of public events, including handling sessions of historic coins, lunchtime talks, art workshops and family events.

̽��ֱ��Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Tim Knox, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum has a significant collection of Indian miniature paintings and drawings, the majority unpublished and little known. Many of these exquisite, finely detailed works are going on display for the first time. Our coin and medal collections are internationally celebrated and we are delighted to join this important year of Indian culture with some of our finest Indian treasures.”

From Kabul to Kolkata: Highlights of Indian painting in the Fitzwilliam Museum is on show until September 3, 2017 in the Shiba Gallery. Elephants, Deities and Ashoka’s Pillar: Coins of India from antiquity to the present is on show until October 1, 2017 in the Octagon Gallery. Entry to the Fitzwilliam Museum is free.

Two exhibitions and a new book have launched the Fitzwilliam Museum's celebration of the 70th anniversary of Indian Independence. ̽��ֱ��displays celebrate Cambridge’s past and present links with Indian culture with examples from the Museum’s world-class holdings of coins and its rarely-seen collection of Indian miniature painting.

Many of these exquisite, finely detailed works are going on display for the first time.

Tim Knox

̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum

Rama returns in victory to Ayodhya, Pahari (Punjab Hills), Kangra, c.1780-1790

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Man with a Bouquet of Plastic Flowers

amb206 — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 11:12:20 +0000

Bhupen Khakhar’s portrait of a man holding a bunch of roses belongs to the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. ̽��ֱ��painting, titled Man with a Bouquet of Plastic Flowers, captures a keen sense of solitude: the figures and objects it portrays are defined by their separation. ̽��ֱ��man at its centre, dressed in a plain white shirt, looks straight at the viewer, his face shaded and mouth downcast. His crossed arms suggest a containment of emotion. Even the flowers, perhaps a gift, are clasped tight to his body.

Dr Devika Singh, Smuts Research Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies, is a specialist in Indian modern and contemporary art and architecture. Her recent research looks at Indian artists who worked post-independence and pays attention, among others, to those who, like Khakhar, attended the art school at the ̽��ֱ�� of Baroda, an institution that sparked a flowering of new talent. These artists drew on a range of artistic currents and, in creating a language that was uniquely theirs, forged their names on an international stage.

Painted in 1976, Khakhar’s portrait of the man with the plastic flowers borrows elements of Indian popular culture and creates something that is quite startling in its juxtaposition of low and high art. “ ̽��ֱ��man portrayed is anonymous but holds centre stage. ̽��ֱ��setting in which Khakhar places him is taken from so-called calendar prints which often feature famous politicians with scenes telling their life stories. Khakhar upends this visual convention,” says Singh. “ ̽��ֱ��episodes in Khakhar’s painting are under-stated rather than dramatic. They speak of domestic intimacy but also of tension and loneliness. There’s an emptiness to the interiors and the small figures are shown as languid in a way that suggests that they’re disengaged from the outside world.”

̽��ֱ��1960s and 1970s marked a critical juncture in Indian art. After the first phase of post-independence nation-building, these decades prompted a crisis as the country wrestled with the multiple and often clashing influences that permeated society. As in other postcolonial states, Indian intellectuals began to reflect on the shortcomings of the first generation of Indian political leaders. In this context, the late 1960s saw the emergence of the Baroda school, a loosely-knit group named after the university’s Faculty of Arts, where the painter and teacher KG Subramanyan had a lasting influence.

Trained at Santiniketan’s Visva Bharati, the university set up by Rabindranath Tagore, Subramanyan was briefly imprisoned as a young man for his support of Gandhi’s anti-colonial struggle. He later went to work in New York on a Rockefeller fellowship before returning to India to resume his teaching at Baroda. During Subramanyan’s stay in the USA, the renowned American art critic Clement Greenberg visited his exhibition at Chemould Gallery. Greenberg was involved in a landmark exhibition organised by New York’s Museum of Modern Art titled ‘Two Decades of American Painting’ that came to India in 1967 and on whose heated reception Singh has written.

Singh says: “ ̽��ֱ��late 1960s and 1970s was a fascinating period for Indian art which reflected the huge societal upheavals taking place. Irony and individualism seeped into the work of contemporary artists – both are apparent in Man with a Bouquet of Plastic Flowers. ̽��ֱ��politics of the time had a big impact whether it was the countercultural movements or the anti-Vietnam protests, and also took on specific garbs with the rise of the Maoist rebellion known as the Naxalite movement. In addition, the development of Indian art should also be conceived internationally. Indian artists travelled to the USA, UK and beyond, and western artists travelled to India. ̽��ֱ��result was a two-way exchange of ideas.”

Brought up in Bombay, Khakhar trained as an accountant before changing career and finding a voice as a painter. His relatively modest background, and most importantly his unique personality, meant that he was in touch with the vitality of popular culture. At the same time, he was engaged with the high art that was making waves on a global scale. In 1981 he came out as openly homosexual, one of the first well-known figures to do so. From then onwards until his death in 2003, his work spoke explicitly of his sexuality. He and his contemporaries challenged the status quo and found new ways to live and work in a country in which anti-pluralist currents have led to violence and self-censorship.

“Khakhar defies the frameworks that art historians and curators, like me, often use to place artists within a particular context. Some commentators have suggested that he’s a pop artist – but he’s much more. ̽��ֱ��strength of his work, and one of the reasons that it remains significant, is that it’s disruptive and provokes deep questions about society. For instance, he developed new ways of showing the body as a domestic and public object,” says Singh. “His pictures also draw influences from far and wide – from the naïve paintings of Henri Rousseau to Mughal and Italian Renaissance painting. ̽��ֱ��works of the 1970s debunk many nationalist myths, while his later works invite a consideration on the fragility of the human body.”

Friends and colleagues of Khakhar who went on to make their names, include Vivan Sundaram, Mrinalini Mukherjee and Nalini Malani. Their work addresses matters of political, communal and gender identity. Half a century on, these artists have been recognised outside India for their contribution to the unfolding story of 20th-century art. Malani’s work has long been exhibited internationally, including at Documenta in 2012. Yet, the work of Mukherjee, focus this year of a retrospective at Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art, deserves to be better known abroad.

In spring 2016, Tate Modern will hold a solo exhibition of Bhupen Khakhar’s work and Singh will contribute to its catalogue. In June she will co-convene a conference, at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and at Tate Modern, on the history of exhibitions of South Asian art in Britain. Khakhar, whose work was promoted in the UK from the 1980s, contributed to this dynamic history. Says Singh: “This was not a one-way traffic. Influences came not only from Britain to India but also from India to Britain. In the late 1960s and 1970s there were countless alliances between London’s left wing intellectuals and their international counterparts.

By virtue of her academic studies in Paris (Lycée Condorcet), Cambridge (King’s College and Trinity College) and London (Courtauld Institute), and her close connections with India, Singh has met and interviewed many artists and actors of the post-independence art world, some of whom are in their 80s and 90s. In many cases, she has been given access to their personal archives, art collections and correspondence.

Drawing on these experiences, she is writing a book on artistic creation in post-independence India for Reaktion Books. Her research also underpins an exhibition on the history of photography in India that she is co-curating at the Media Space of the Science Museum in London. ̽��ֱ��exhibition will be an unprecedented survey of photography in India from the arrival of the medium in India in the 1840s until today.

“Analysing the creative narrative of 20th-century India is a complex enterprise, as the work of artists is both transnational and deeply embedded in the national politics of the time,” she says. “But it’s certainly an extremely enriching project that attests to the vibrancy of artistic creation in India.”

Inset image: Dr Devika Singh.

Almost 40 years have passed since Bhupen Khakhar painted one of the most iconic paintings in the history of Indian modern art. Dr Devika Singh offers fresh insights into a generation of Indian artists whose work reflects the politics and social turmoil of a fascinating era.

̽��ֱ��late 1960s and 1970s was a fascinating period for Indian art which reflected the huge societal upheavals taking place

Devika Singh

National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

Man with a Bouquet of Plastic Flowers (1976) by Bhupen Khakhar

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Here’s looking at ewe: Samuel Palmer and his watercolour sheep

amb206 — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 08:52:20 +0000

Scroll to the end of the article to listen to the podcast.

̽��ֱ��artist Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) depicted sheep in numerous paintings and drawings. Most famously perhaps, six sheep feature in one of Palmer’s best known works, ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree, an exquisite water-colour in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

This gem of a picture is a reminder that sheep are part of the English landscape and were, for many years, a mainstay of the national economy. Much of the wealth of pre-industrial Britain was founded on wool. Mutton was a mainstay of the diet. Sheep manure fertilised the land. In the House of Lords, the Speaker sits on a woolsack, a symbol of prosperity.

Palmer’s sheep have an almost sculptural quality; he revels in their fatness and roundness. In ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree, as in other paintings, his sheep are clustered together and hunkered down, often under starry night skies. ̽��ֱ��little group of wooly creatures is tended by a shepherd wearing a shady hat and baggy blue trousers. He’s playing a whistle to while away the day.

As art historian William Vaughan points out, Palmer invites us look at nature again and to wonder at the bountiful generosity of its divine creator. Sheep are, of course, in the Christian tradition in which Palmer was steeped, symbolic of Christ’s followers. But Palmer is also a masterful observer of animal character in all its majesty. In ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree, he captures the unfathomable look of sheep’s faces with their Roman noses and up-sprung ears.

̽��ֱ��small painting is suffused with the golden light of late summer and brims over with plenty. ̽��ֱ��central scene is embraced by boughs laden with fruit. In the background, the fields have been harvested and sheaves of corn stand in rows ready for threshing. ̽��ֱ��composition draws the eye towards the spire of the village church which makes a focal point at the centre of the landscape. ̽��ֱ��farming cycle turns, the apples will fall and rot, but God is constant.

As an image of perfection, ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree captures the English countryside as a rural idyll – a paradise of order and fecundity with nature and mankind in blissful harmony. As Vaughan points out, Palmer’s work is grounded in a worldview described by the poet William Cowper: “God made the country and men made the town.” Palmer wasn’t painting a reality but an imagined state of rural bliss: a state half way to heaven, a ‘vision’ of how God would like things to be.

Visionary is the adjective inevitably applied to Palmer’s work. It’s the word that best describes the paintings he produced in the seven-year period when, as a young man, he lived in the Kent village of Shoreham, some 30 miles south east of London. It’s a term loaded with meaning: wrapped up in it are romanticism and those other -isms – pastoralism and spiritualism – that defined much of art and literature in the mid-19th century.

Palmer was a member of a group known as the ‘Ancients’, a loose-knit brotherhood united by their longing to return to the rural idyll of the late medieval period. To mark their rejection of modernity, the Ancients dressed in cloaks and straw hats. Whenever they could, they escaped from London to the countryside of Kent where they captured a way of life they feared was fast disappearing. Palmer’s fellow Ancients, George Richmond and Edward Calvert also sketched sheep and shepherds.

However, ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree was painted in 1830 when rural life was far from idyllic. Low wages, long hours, insecure employment and cramped cottages (often tied to employment) and long hours spelt dismal poverty. ̽��ֱ��summer before had seen a disastrous harvest followed by a cruel winter. ̽��ֱ��year 1830 witnessed the eruption of the Swing Riots, an uprising against farmers who were enclosing land, in order to raise large numbers of sheep, and introducing machinery. ̽��ֱ��loss of common land, and drop in demand for traditional tasks, threatened thousands of jobs.

̽��ֱ��Swing Riots started in east Kent, and by the end of the year had spread across the south of England. Palmer would have been well aware of the politics involved and the plight of agricultural workers. However, he was known to be a High Tory – and deeply conservative. He believed that the “fine old British peasantry” were best served by a paternalistic, hierarchical society which “gave more freedom to the poor and were not morose, sullen and blood-thirsty like the whigs”.

Palmer’s own background was relatively comfortable though he lost his mother when he was 13. He was taught to paint by his father-in-law, John Linnell, who introduced him to William Blake, the poet and painter. Blake (he, too, portrayed sheep in his paintings) became his greatest inspiration.

After his death, Palmer, in turn, inspired others – most notably Paul Nash, Eric Ravillious and Graham Sutherland. Some 140 years after Palmer placed flocks in many of his countryside scenes, the sculptor Henry Moore made delightful pen sketches of sheep grazing in the fields surrounding his studio in north Hertfordshire.

Today Palmer is best known for the bold work he produced in his ‘visionary’ period. His interpretation of natural forms continues to inform the work of artists and illustrators. In Palmer’s own lifetime, the paintings he made while living in Shoreham sold badly and his work was subject to derision by the art establishment which judged his colours crude and garish. To support his family, he returned to London where he adopted a more conventional (and commercial) style.

During Palmer’s London years, ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree lay hidden from view in his studio where it was among the works tucked away in what he called his “Curiosity Portfolio”. ̽��ֱ��painting was given its name by Palmer’s son and first biographer, AH Palmer. Rarely exhibited, due to its vulnerability to light, it proved a star exhibit in the Fitzwilliam’s recent exhibition of watercolours. “Look at those sheep!” said one visitor. “You just want to plunge your hands into their fleeces.”

Sheep crept into Palmer’s work right until the last years of his life. He died in 1881 with his friend George Richmond at his bedside. Two years earlier, Palmer had produced an exquisite etching, ̽��ֱ��Lonely Tower, to illustrate Milton’s poem ‘Il Penseroso’. Huddled under some sheltering trees, and watched over by two young shepherds, is a flock of sheep, the rhythms of their fleecy forms caught by the light of a crescent moon.

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: T is for an animal that is under threat of extinction due to a rare form of transmissible cancer.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree, by Samuel Palmer (Fitzwilliam Museum); A Cornfield bordered by Trees, by Samuel Palmer ( ̽��ֱ��Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology); Pastoral Scene, by Samuel Palmer ( ̽��ֱ��Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology).

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, S is for Sheep and their presence in the evocative, pastoral paintings by Samuel Palmer.

Look at those sheep! You just want to plunge your hands into their fleeces.

Visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum

Fitzwilliam Museum

̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree by Samuel Palmer

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̽��ֱ��“wonderful rubbish” of the Gilf Kebir desert

amb206 — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 07:00:00 +0000

Captured by the camera, she looks enviably elegant with her sketching paper and paint brush. Working in the baking heat of North Africa in 1933 a young German artist called Elisabeth Pauli created meticulous records of the vivid paintings made at least 6,000 years ago in a site known as the Cave of Swimmers in Gilf Kebir, an area on the border of Egypt and Libya famed for its rock art.

On the same expedition out in the Eastern Sahara were the Hungarian aviator and desert explorer László Almásy, the renowned German ethnographer Leo Frobenius, and his colleague Hans Rhotert, who published the results of the expedition in 1952 in the volume Libysche Felsbilder. It was Almásy whose rip-roaring adventures across North Africa and beyond provided the inspiration for the main character in Michael Ondaatje’s prize-winning novel ̽��ֱ��English Patient, made into a film by Anthony Minghella.

̽��ֱ��watercolour sketches that Elisabeth Pauli made, and the striking photographs that show her at work in the Gilf Kebir, belong to the Leo Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt am Mein. Copies of both sets of images feature in an exhibition, Leo Frobenius et L’Art Rupestre Africain, opening today (17 June 2014) at the Goethe Institute in Paris.

̽��ֱ��remarkable discovery of some of Pauli’s original materials in the Cave of Swimmers by a team of Egyptian and Italian archaeologists – among them Dr Giulio Lucarini, currently a researcher at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� - adds an extra dimension to the story of human encounters told by these images.

Shown for the first time at the Goethe Institute are Lucarini’s photographs of the tubes of watercolours Pauli used, and the drawing pins (or thumb tacks) that held the paper on which she skilfully recorded what she saw, in the newly-discovered site which takes its name from the swimmer-like forms of the humans depicted.

“These artists’ materials date from a time when many archaeologists were enthusiastic amateurs and intrepid travellers. Almásy, Frobenius and Rhotert drove across the sea of sand in open cab pickups,” said Lucarini. “In an era before accurate colour photography, Pauli’s watercolours show us with a high degree of accuracy the startling beauty of the human and animal figures painted in the cave.”

In 2010 Lucarini was the Field Director of the Italian Conservation Project in the Gilf Kebir, run by the Italian-Egyptian Cooperation Programme, working on the conservation of the art in the Cave of Swimmers in the first phase of pioneering efforts to preserve a remote rock art site. ̽��ֱ��intervention in the Gilf Kebir was supported and promoted by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the framework of a long-lasting activity that the Italian Development Cooperation leads in Egypt for the protection of threatened areas.

Overseen by Professor Barbara Barich of the Sapienza ̽��ֱ�� of Rome and ISMEO, the archaeologists and restorers were undertaking the delicate task of stabilising an area of cave art that was becoming increasingly eroded. As a preliminary to starting the work, the team cleared the floor of the cave beneath the drawings. Rock art sites have proved a magnet for tourism with its attendant litter and, with no control on access, many have also been extensively vandalised.

“We needed to sweep the floor clear of debris introduced by visitors so that we would immediately be aware of any material loosened from the painted surface in the process of the conservation work,” said Lucarini. “ ̽��ֱ��chief restorer Maria Cristina Tomassetti and I came across a group of items that had lain hidden for almost 80 years just a few feet from the art we were conserving – first I picked up a drawing pin and then a watercolour tube.”

Within minutes, Lucarini was almost certain that he was holding in his hands the watercolour tubes and drawing pins that Elisabeth Pauli had used and discarded in 1933. What could have been swept into a black bin bag, along with the detritus of visiting tourists, for disposal back at Dakhla Oasis, were items that told a poignant story about the history of the exploration of the site.

“ ̽��ֱ��labels on the six watercolour tubes we found have survived and are marked with the name of Dr F Schoenfeld, the founder of a company called LUKAS, which still manufactures artists’ supplies in Düsseldorf. ̽��ֱ��tubes also carry the names of the colours: caput mortuum, ultramarine, Chinese white, brown ochre and raw umber. These shades tally closely with Pauli’s paintings and the predominant colours of the rock and the figures which were made using mainly red and yellow ochre and white kaolin,” said Lucarini.

̽��ֱ��heads of the dozens of artist’s drawing pins that Lucarini picked up in the cave bear the name Günther Wagner with an eye-catching logo of a pelican feeding four chicks. Once he had access to the internet back in Dakhla Oasis, he was able to trace them to the Pelikan company, a firm which still makes writing and craft materials.

He said: “I was thrilled to discover that Pelikan publishes a wonderfully detailed history of its logo on its website. In 1938 the logo was changed slightly and the number of pelican chicks was reduced from four to two which allowed me to date the manufacture of the drawing pins to the time slot that Pauli was working in the Cave of Swimmers."

Also found on the cave floor were two fountain pen nibs, a Haus Neuerburg aluminium cigarette box of the type used by German troops, and a spent soda capsule.

“It would be romantic to believe that the capsule was used by Almásy to make a drink to celebrate his discovery of the cave in 1933,” said Lucarini. “But any idea of romance is eclipsed by the threats faced by Cave of Swimmers and other sites in the Egyptian Western Desert and the whole Sahara that offer us such an immediate and vivid connection with our ancestors.”

̽��ֱ��eight decades that have elapsed since the inter-war years in which Almásy, Frobenius and Rhotert publicised their finds have seen the unfolding of a bitter-sweet story for the priceless artworks of the Eastern Sahara. Gilf Kebir has attracted increasing numbers of tourists whose incursions into archaeological sites are largely unregulated and all too often damaging.

Vandalism by a small number of people determined to destroy and disfigure works of art has become a growing problem with caves and shelters defaced by graffiti. Among the sites affected is the Wadi el Obeiyid Cave, in the Farafra Oasis, which was first investigated by Barich in 1995.

“Archaeological projects working in the Sahara must make safeguarding these sites an absolute priority. Professor Rudolph Kuper and colleagues from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cologne, have been working in the Gilf Kebir for many years and have been pioneers in desert protection programmes,” said Lucarini.

“ ̽��ֱ��only way to safeguard these amazing sites is through extensive and long-term educational programmes that teach local communities, and especially the new generations, about their unique heritage and inform guides and other groups about the importance of artworks not only in the Gilf Kebir but in the whole Sahara."

Lucarini says that the Paris exhibition celebrating Frobenius’s work was the perfect opportunity to reveal photographs of his finds from the Almásy expedition to the public for the first time. “As items I see these artists’ materials as a kind of ‘wonderful rubbish’,” he said. “They are a symbol of early desert exploration and, if they have any role today, it is to help raise public consciousness about the fragility of the desert and about the capacity of humankind to create such magnificent pieces of art.”

Inset images: Elisabeth Pauli copying the rock art paintings in the Gilf Kebir (Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt am Mein), watercolour tubes and drawing pin used by Elisabeth Pauli, rock art painting in the Cave of Swimmers, restoration work in progress (all photos: Carlos de la Fuente, Italian Conservation Porject in the Gilf Kebir).

A chance find in a site known as the Cave of Swimmers adds a colourful twist to an exhibition in Paris celebrating the work of ethnographer Leo Frobenius in raising awareness of the rock art of Africa. ̽��ֱ��discovery by Italian archaeologist Dr Giulio Lucarini, currently at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, underlines the vital importance of safeguarding the heritage of the Gilf Kebir.

We came across a group of items that had lain hidden for almost 80 years just a few feet from the art we were conserving – first I picked up a drawing pin and then a watercolour tube.

Giulio Lucarini

Carlos de la Fuente, Italian Conservation Project in the Gilf Kebir

View of the desert from the Cave of Swimmers

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Whale tale: a Dutch seascape and its lost Leviathan

amb206 — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 11:00:00 +0000

In 1873 the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, was given a number of Dutch landscape paintings by a benefactor called Richard Kerrich. Among these works of art was a beach scene painted by the artist Hendrick van Anthonissen early in the 17th century. Anthonissen depicts groups of people clustered on a sandy beach at the small town of Scheveningen. Other figures stand on the cliffs and, on the shore, several boats have been pulled up on the sand.

For at least 150 years this seemingly unremarkable work of art has harboured a secret. ̽��ֱ��cleaning of the painting has now revealed that a beached whale provided the focus of the original composition. ̽��ֱ��whale explains the hitherto slightly baffling presence of groups of people on the beach, and atop the cliffs, on what appears to be a blustery winter’s day. With the Leviathan now back where the artist placed it, the scene makes perfect sense.

̽��ֱ��hulking shape of the stranded whale was discovered by Shan Kuang, a postgraduate student at the world-renowned Hamilton Kerr Institute, a division of the Fitzwilliam Museum dedicated to the conservation and restoration of easel paintings. Kuang was assigned the painting as part of conservation carried out on Dutch works of art during the refurbishment of the Fitzwilliam’s gallery of Dutch Golden Age painting, which reopened on Tuesday.

̽��ֱ��first inkling that a key feature was missing from the Anthonissen artwork came when Kuang meticulously removed a top layer of varnish and overpaint to reveal a small figure, apparently standing on the sea horizon. “As conservators, we take off the resin varnish that was applied to protect and saturate the paint. ̽��ֱ��varnish yellows and darkens with time,” said Kuang.

“As I worked across the surface a man appeared – and then next to him a shape that looked like a sail. By this time I could also make out an area of the sea which had been painted more crudely than the rest of the ocean. It was a thick layer of repaint covering a large section of original artwork. At the end of the treatment, the whale had returned as a key component of the composition, just as the artist had intended.”

̽��ֱ��man who seemed to be standing on the horizon is, in fact, balanced on the whale’s back where Kuang suggests that he might even be measuring its length. ̽��ֱ��chosen focus of the painting resonates with a surge of public interest in whales: contemporary records show many instances of whale beaching on the coastline of the Netherlands in the first half of the 17th century. While the Anthonissen painting seeks to represent the whale in a realistic manner, some prints from the period portray whales as rampaging monsters of the deep and omens of disaster.

Conservators face difficult decisions when confronted with overpainting. “It’s important that we are true to the artist’s intentions. After establishing that Anthonissen had not made this alteration himself, the decision was made – in conjunction with curators at the Fitzwilliam – to uncover the original paint hiding beneath the repaint,” said Kuang.

“Removing repaint has its uncertainties: you don’t always know how easily the paint can be removed or the condition of the original painting beneath the overpaint. Fortunately, the whale only had a few damages and was overall in good condition. I was able to remove the overpainting by scraping with a scalpel and using carefully chosen solvents. I had to proceed very gently and often work under the microscope to ensure no damage was done to the painting. It was very satisfying to see the whale slowly appearing.”

No-one knows why the whale was painted out of the picture – or when. “Today we treat works of art as entities but in the previous centuries, painting were often elements of interior design that were adapted to fit certain spaces – or adjusted to suit changing tastes. It’s possible that the whale was removed because the presence of a dead animal was considered offensive – or perhaps without the whale the picture was more marketable,” said Kuang.

“According to the documentation, no-one had any idea that the painting featured a whale when it was gifted to the Fitzwilliam. An analysis of the paint suggests the alteration is very old, but not contemporary to when the picture was painted circa 1641. ̽��ֱ��whale was likely overpainted in the 18th or 19th century, before it was given to the Fitzwilliam in 1873.”

Conservators require a thorough grounding in chemistry as well as fine art. On top of that, they need excellent hand-eye coordination and a commitment to detail. Kuang, who took a first degree in chemistry at Yale ̽��ֱ�� in the USA, is in her second year of a three-year course that will lead to a Postgraduate Diploma in Conservation of Easel Paintings. “As students at the Hamilton Kerr we are extremely privileged to be able to work, under close supervision from tutors, on the conservation of important works of art. To have made a discovery like this – and bring an element of the composition back to life – is just wonderful,” she said.

View of Scheveningen Sands by Hendrick van Anthonissen is on permanent display in the Fitzwilliam Museum. For information and opening times http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/

For more information about this story contact Alexandra Buxton, Office of Communications, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673 or communications@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 332300

Earlier this year a conservator at the Hamilton Kerr Institute made a surprising discovery while working on a 17th-century painting owned by the Fitzwilliam Museum. As Shan Kuang cleaned the surface, she revealed the beached whale that had been the intended focus of the composition. ̽��ֱ��artwork is now back on display in the Fitzwilliam's newly-refurbished gallery of Dutch Golden Age painting.

As I worked across the surface a man appeared – and then next to him a shape that looked like a sail... At the end of the treatment, the whale had returned as a key component of the composition, just as the artist had intended.

Shan Kuang

Whale

Fitzwilliam Museum

View of Scheveningen Sands by Hendrick van Anthonissen

Yes

Innocent landscape or coded message? Artists under suspicion in the First World War

amb206 — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:53:59 +0000

Last month the government announced an initiative to commemorate the First World War with a programme of cultural events called 14-18 NOW. Through Arts Council England, it will fund commissions by leading artists from Britain and around the world “to create works that reflect on the impact and legacy of the First World War”.

Art has long been at the mercy of politics. Research by art historian and broadcaster Dr James Fox reveals that a century ago the present government’s predecessor in the shape of Asquith’s wartime cabinet was convinced that art posed such a threat to the security of the nation that it made painting out of doors illegal around the country.

Fox, a Research Fellow at Gonville & Caius College and known to public audiences for his BBC documentaries, first came across the subject while researching his PhD about art and the First World War. He explained: “I kept finding strange passages in which artists confessed to being abused, interrogated and arrested while painting and sketching outdoors. Virtually nothing had been written about the reason for these bizarre experiences, so I set about trawling newspapers, government reports and police records in search of clues. What I discovered was astonishing.”

Fox’s findings were first published in the British Art Journal in 2009. A more extensive discussion of the same topic will form a chapter in his forthcoming book, Business unusual: British art and the First World War, 1914-1924.

With the outbreak of the First World War, the British people – who had only recently become obsessed with spy novels and films – grew paranoid that undercover German agents were infiltrating the nation. “ ̽��ֱ��public became suspicious of almost everyone who didn’t fit in. Of the many groups who suffered from these suspicions, some of the most adversely affected were artists,” said Fox.

̽��ֱ��notion that artists might be spies drew some of its credence from none other than Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the scouting movement. Fox said: “In his book My Adventures as a Spy, Baden-Powell revealed how he and other British spies on the continent had posed as artists and disguised their plans of forts, harbours and industrial areas as innocent sketches of stained glass windows or ivy leaves.

This was one of the reasons why, with the declaration of war in August 1914, artists quickly fell foul of emergency legislation. ̽��ֱ��Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) imposed a regime of draconian censorship on artworks. It also made it illegal to make “any photograph, sketch, plan, model, or other representation of any naval or military work, or of any dock or harbour, or with the intent to assist the enemy, of any other place or thing”.

̽��ֱ��effects were significant. As one artist explained: “No sketching whatever is allowed within four, and in some cases, seven miles of the coast... Even though the subject of the sketch may be a group of trees, a cathedral or a paintable cottage, the rule applies strictly.”

As a result of the legislation, many artists were challenged or arrested: in Scotland the society painter and Royal Academician John Lavery was arrested for painting the Fleet at the Forth Bridge; in Dover the renowned landscape painter Philip Wilson Steer was accosted by “some blighter [who] comes up and wants to see my permit which is very upsetting in the middle of laying a wash”. Reporting from the west coast of Ireland, the post-impressionist Augustus John poked fun at the nation’s panic with the account that “around the harbour… if one starts sketching one is at once shot by a policeman”.

Those most severely hit by the restrictions imposed on painting included the artistic communities based in Cornwall, a county where fears about German invasion were strongest. Artists in the clusters at Newlyn, St Ives and Lamorna felt the restrictions keenly at a time when wartime austerity was already depressing art sales. In Newlyn, the figurative painter Laura Knight wrote that “even to write a perfectly straight line might be interpreted as a sinister act”. In Lamorna, Alfred Munnings (famous for his paintings of horses) remarked that he “dared not be sketching out of doors in the country at all”.

Fox said: “As the war progressed, art itself began to be perceived in an increasingly negative light, downgraded from merely pointless or unnecessary activity to one that was improper and immoral, encouraging selfish and profligate behaviour when selfless sacrifice was what counted. Artists were bracketed together with other alien identities – Jews, pacifists, profiteers, foreigners, newly naturalised Britons.”

Bohemianism itself signalled a lack of patriotism. When a British artist-couple rented a cottage in the West Country, there were immediate suspicions that they were German agents. ̽��ֱ��villagers’ vendetta against them prompted the police to call one of the artists in for questioning. He was soon released. ̽��ֱ��local schoolmistress exclaimed: “If he is not a spy, why does he wear a hat like that?” In London the sculptor Jacob Epstein, with his modernist work and German name, found his studio ransacked.

Fox’s research reveals that in the first month of the war, some 9,000 cases of espionage were reported, yet during the four years of the conflict just 29 spies were convicted. “Hundreds of artists were arrested and questioned, an experience that must have been deeply distressing. But only one of them was found guilty. ̽��ֱ��Norwegian painter, Alfred Hagn, was sentenced to death after invisible ink was discovered in his hotel room in London, but was extradited after going on hunger strike,” said Fox.

̽��ֱ��case that made the biggest impression on the public was that of Philip de László, a famous society portraitist who was Hungarian by birth. His naturalisation as a British subject in 1914, and his easy access to the powerful elite, put him under suspicion. ̽��ֱ��patriotic newspaper John Bull wrote: “ ̽��ֱ��distinguished character of M. de László’s clientele would have afforded him fine opportunities for obtaining first-class information if he had really been desirous of getting it… Cabinet Ministers… are such busy people that they frequently go on working while the artist plies his brush… King George… walks about the room and dictates to his Secretaries while he is “sitting” for his portrait.”

De László was arrested and interned. He was condemned in the press for being one of “the most dangerous spies” of the war, and many called for him to be executed. “After several years imprisoned without charge, De László, rightly, was exonerated. But it had a huge effect on his career, and it took a long time for him to recover,” said Fox.

̽��ֱ��treatment of artists during the First World War seems, with the benefit of hindsight, laughable. Indeed, the notion of middle aged artists being arrested by over-zealous officials while painting pretty watercolours out in the countryside was lampooned in the press at the time. But Fox reminds us that things are not so different today.

“In recent years the government’s attempts to combat terrorism has led to new legislation that authorised police officers to stop and search anyone who appears to be photographing or filming sensitive locations. ̽��ֱ��medium might have changed, but the principle is the same. We remain innately suspicious of images”, he said.

During the First World War artists were widely believed to be spies and, around much of the country, painting became illegal. Research by art historian and broadcaster Dr James Fox reveals how deeply artists were affected, not just by the government’s ban but also by a surge of public paranoia.

̽��ֱ��public became suspicious of almost everyone who didn’t fit in. Of the many groups who suffered from these suspicions, some of the most adversely affected were artists.

James Fox

̽��ֱ��Illustrated War News (7 October 1914)

'An Apparently Innocent Landscape'

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Five paintings by Stanley Spencer accepted in lieu of tax and allocated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge

sj387 — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 12:05:46 +0000

Stanley Spencer is recognised as one of the most important British painters of the 20^th century. Born in Cookham, Berkshire in 1891, at the age of 17 he went to study at the Slade School of Art in London. ̽��ֱ��group of five works allocated to the Fitzwilliam were formerly in the collection of wood engraver Gwen Raverat, grand-daughter of Charles Darwin, who first met Stanley Spencer when they both enrolled at the Slade School in 1908. They became life-long friends, Gwen dubbing Spencer ‘Cookham’ in recognition of the affection Spencer held for his home village.

John Donne arriving in Heaven was painted by Spencer when he was still at the Slade aged 20. It was one of the most important works of his early career and was shown at the second Post Impressionist Exhibition (1912) where it was hung in the same gallery as works by artists including Matisse and Picasso. Spencer shows the poet crossing Widbrook Common; he passes four figures, each praying in a different direction to express the all-encompassing nature of Heaven. Spencer regarded the picture highly saying it came ‘more directly from my imagination than any I have ever done.’ It is one of the first works where he sets a religious event in an English rural setting, a concept that would be a hallmark of many of his later great masterpieces.

Scrubbing Clothes and Making a Red Cross were painted in 1919 when Spencer had returned from the war. Originally he had been commissioned by the Ministry of Information to work up these war studies into paintings, but instead they inspired part of his decorations for the Sandham Memorial Chapel. Scrubbing Clothes depicts men of Spencer’s Field Ambulance Unit washing their clothes on boulders in the River Struma. Making a Red Cross shows the unit laying out a cross made of broken tiles and rocks as a recognition signal to aircraft. Both studies show his natural sense of design.

In 1932 Gwen Raverat proposed that Spencer paint decorative panels for two 10-foot semi-circular spaces over the doors of the Reading Room of the new ̽��ֱ�� Library, then under construction in Cambridge. Unfortunately Syndics of the Library could not afford the project; the sketch Builders of the Tower of Babel and the small oil painting Making Columns for the Tower of Babel were all that remain of this suggested commission.

̽��ֱ��five paintings join the Fitzwilliam’s fine collection of early 20th-century British paintings, which already includes eight paintings and four drawings by Spencer. ̽��ֱ��collection features some of Spencer’s most famous canvases; Love among the Nations (1935-36), Self-Portrait with Patricia Preece (1937), Self-Portrait (1939) and Love on the Moor (1949-1954). ̽��ֱ��institution is one of the most important places to study the artist outside London.

̽��ֱ��works have been acquired for the nation through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme, administered by Arts Council England from the estate of Gwen Raverat and allocated to the Fitzwilliam Museum. Tax of £167,883 was settled by their acceptance. As their total value exceeded the liability on the estate, the Fitzwilliam Museum made good the difference of £308,117 with the help of generous grants from the Art Fund, the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Tim Knox, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum commented: “ ̽��ֱ��five works by Spencer that have been added to the Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection greatly enrich our holdings of this interesting and very English artist. Moreover, they also have a strong Cambridge connection. We are grateful to the AIL Scheme for allocating these works to the Museum, and to the generous donors who supplied the additional funds needed to secure them.”

̽��ֱ��new acquisitions are now on display with other 20^th-century British works in the recently refurbished Gallery 1 at the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Sir Peter Bazalgette, Chair of Arts Council England said: “That these five works have been offered in lieu of inheritance tax and can now be permanently accessed by members of the public, means that important parts of our own history, society and identity are not lost, hidden in houses, but are part of an institution’s collection, open to interpretation and educating and inspiring people.”

Stephen Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund, said: “Stanley Spencer is one of the greatest British artists of the 20^th century and it is with great pleasure that we support the Fitzwilliam Museum's acquisition of this group of exceptional works. It is another example of the benefits of the government's Acceptance-in-Lieu scheme to UK museums, galleries, and their visiting public.”

̽��ֱ��five paintings are - John Donne arriving in Heaven (1911), Scrubbing Clothes (1919), Making a Red Cross (1919), Builders of the Tower of Babel (1933), Making Columns for the Tower of Babel (1933)

Five works by Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) have been accepted in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. They include one of his most significant early paintings and two preliminary sketches documenting his experiences of World War I. ̽��ֱ��works were acquired through HM Government’s acceptance in lieu scheme with additional support from the Art Fund, ̽��ֱ��V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of the Fitzwilliam.

̽��ֱ��five works by Spencer that have been added to the Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection greatly enrich our holdings of this interesting and very English artist

Tim Knox

Stanley Spencer/Fitzwilliam Museum

Making Columns for the Tower of Babel (1933)

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Yes