London

LondonAuthor(s): Keith RobertsSource: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 118, No. 883 (Oct., 1976), pp. 716-719Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/878578 .

Accessed: 17/12/2014 14:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto The Burlington Magazine.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Wed, 17 Dec 2014 14:36:41 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=bmpl

http://www.jstor.org/stable/878578?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


THE LITERATURE OF ART

ever, whatever their quality, it is certainly of great value to all students of Turner's work to have this unrivalled corpus of reproductions of water-colours and drawings in the Turner Bequest available for reference. From that point of view these books are easy to use for they follow the Finberg Inventory. In his work within the Bequest Mr Wilkinson has quite correctly spotted some of the Inventory's short- comings, but though published sixty-seven years ago, it remains the only valid catalogue.

The 'Introduction' to the first of the two volumes noticed here has a useful illustrated survey of Turner's development between 1802 and 1820, but nothing of the kind is to be found in the earlier or later volumes. Indeed there are many variations of approach and presentation between the three volumes, not least among them being the fact that the third differs in shape and size from its two pre- decessors. One consistent factor is the very personal approach throughout the text, which includes such a passage as: 'At the Academy his new instalment in the wide- screen epic illustrating his Fallacies of Hope was The Golden Bough. Unusually, perhaps because it was especially sicken- ing, it was sold.' On the whole the text is lively, and it does incorporate a great deal of factual information as well as numerous challenging observations. However, the overall air of informality tends to become tedious, and at times seems better suited for the ephemeral text of a television commentary.

It is difficult to gauge the public at which Mr Wilkinson and his publishers are aiming. It cannot be the uninformed general public, for the whole approach demands a considerable prior knowledge of the life and work of Turner, as well as of current literature about him. At the other extreme these books cannot be (and are not) claimed as works of scholarship. Per- haps it is fairest to consider them as the unclassifiable result of enthusiasm, and we must be grateful to that enthusiasm for providing a permanent and usable visual record of nearly 5% of the vast amount of material in the Turner Bequest.

LUKE HERRMANN

Art in Vienna x898-x9g8; Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and their contemporaries. By Peter Vergo. 256 pp. + 215 ills., including 15 in colour. (Phaidon, Oxford), L?7.95. In the history of this important period

of Austrian art, some of the things that did not happen are as important as what did take place. It was the shabby treatment of Engelhart and H6rmann, two artists who had had French training, that led to the break away of the Secession. Similarly it was only long after Gerstl's suicide in I9O8, and indeed long after the period in question that the first exhibition devoted to him took place in 1931. A book then, that relies on written statements and con-

temporary criticisms must inevitably men- tion the more obvious and successful events. Hormann and Engelhart are mentioned fleetingly and each is represented by a portrait reproduction. In the case of Gerstl there is little material available until Dr Breicha's monograph finds a publisher. The source book method is to the advantage of Klimt, and we find the programme of the Beethoven frieze, on which Dr Vergo has done some important and original research, and Klimt's speech at the opening of the I9o8 Kunstschau. There are plenty of documents available on Loos and Schiele, and the former is well covered, for he was a writer as well as architect. There is a mass of material available on Otto Wagner, and he is well discussed, with perhaps too much empha- sis on his engineering feats. Important artists like Andri, Kurzweil and the graphic artists suffer, except through their appearance in illustrations to Ver Sacrum.

Ideally a study which contains so much quoted material would be easier to follow if the long quotations were set in, should the use of a different type prove too expensive. It is extremely difficult to check where Dr Vergo's comment begins and where the long extracts from documents end.

Dr Vergo's documentary study will be a useful tool for the student that requires a general survey of the period, and the little-known Von Kleehoven archive in the Osterreichische Galerie has been put to good effect. The illustrations of the Secession exhibitions are well chosen and give a good idea of the general effect.

The drawing on plate 6 by Orlik is not of Dr Freud. The outside of Plecnik's Heiliggeistkirche is almost more revolu- tionary than the interior, and shows the use of concrete even better than the interior. In many ways the interior of Wagner's Steinhof church is more important than the exterior. And now that it has been completely restored inside, it should be the first place of pilgrimage for anyone interested in Viennese Jugendstil. Olbrich's Haus Dr St6hr- in Sankt P61tenr still exists and has also been restored, while his Villa Bahr has not been 'des- troyed'. It still stands though the decora- tion, admittedly an integral part of the whole, has disappeared. It would be interesting to know the whereabouts of the little Schiele sketch of 1915 on plate 21 I. The book is not intended as a topo- graphical guide, however, but as a survey of style, and in this it succeeds.

NICOLAS POWELL

London First, a reminder about two excellent

exhibitions that are still to be seen. 'Landscapes from the Royal Collection' is open at The Queen's Gallery until I2th December and, with very good examples in a variety of media by masters from Leonardo to Gainsborough and Stubbs, is absolutely delightful. Equally memorable is the anthology of Henry Moore's 'War Drawings', at the Imperial War Mus- eum until 31st October.

At the National Gallery, the recently acquired Perronneau portrait of Jacques Cazotte has now been cleaned and placed on view. It turns out, as expected, to be in very good condition. The handling of the pink suit reveals a relaxed mastery com- parable with Gainsborough at his best, while the liveliness of expression, at once witty and teasing, and the easy naturalism of the pose, make the portrait a perfect mid-century complement to the colder and more rhetorical Rigaud of the I720's pur- chased last year. Jacques Cazotte has been hung next to the Perronneau Girl with a Kitten and is so markedly superior in tech- nique as to raise the old doubts about the pastel's authenticity.

From i9th October until 6th November, the Alexander Gallery at 45 Sloane Street, is showing an exhibition of forty- six paintings and forty-three photographic exhibits (albums as well as single prints) on the theme of Victorian life. Sketches and reduced versions abound. Frank Holl is represented by a small version of No Tidings from the Sea, his 1871 Royal Academy success bought by Queen Vic- toria; while C. B. O'Neill's Manning the Navy is a reduced replica of the Academy painting of 186o (Greenwich). There is also a small sketch (replica?) of Richard

716

Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions Calendar Exhibitions, Events, Museum Publications & Acquisitions, etc. Basle, Gallery Art & Antiques. Eng-

lish Paintings exhibition. I7th Septem- ber-9th October.

Edinburgh, The Fine Art Society Ltd.

Bakst. Mainly loan exhibition of 124 items. Illustrated catalogue; until 9th October.

London, Tate Gallery. 'George Stubbs: Anatomist and animal painter'. Exhi- bition showing together finished drawings and preliminary studies for The Anatomy of the Horse; with material from Worcester, Mass. Until 3rd October.

London, John Mitchell & Son, 8 New Bond St. Loan exhibition of flower and still-life painting of the seventeenth century. Elaborate catalogue planned. 27th October-i3th November.

Manchester, City Art Gallery. Adolphe Valette (1876-1942): retrospective loan exhibition, including a remarkable series of Impressionist views of Edward- ian Manchester (Fig.54).

Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery. 'Landscape in Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the I7th Century': loan exhibition from the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Illustrated catalogue. 14th October-15th December.

New York, Pierpont Morgan Library. 'William Morris and the Art of the Book'. Until 28th November.



ibell

i•:!•'i,'•ii•:i'•;'•ii

1:!

48. Amerika is Devouring its Children, by an unknown 49.

Birds disturbing the Sleep qf a Town, by Bryan Wynter. Signed and dated I948. Gouache, e.32"5 by 53 cm (Miss

artist. 1970. Silkscreen, 56 by 38

cm. (Exh. E. Mitchell and MissJ. R. Taylor Collection; exh. Hayward Gallery, London).

Institute of Contemporary Arts, London).

*? ?

SJ ... .......

WI~Im i

~.::i_-:~i~:ii.';. l

I Ii'- ::i: -!•ii

.....

. ,4 .'.

S

. .. .. ....

..... !d

5o. Untitled, by an unknown artist. 5970. Silkscreen, 36 by

56 cm. (Exh. Institute of Contemporary Arts, 5i. Girl with Plants, by William Coldstream. 1975-76. Canvas, 5025 by 6I cm. (Exh.

London). Ansbony d'Offay, London).



52. Self Portrait, by George Richmond. Signed and dated 1853. Canvas, 54 by 41 cm. (Exh. P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd., London).

53. Dante in Meditation, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Signed with monogram. c. 1852. Pen and black ink and pencil, 20-5 by 18 cm. (Exh. P. & D. Colnaghi & Co. Ltd., London).

. York Street Leading to Charles Street, by Adolphe Valette. Signed. (Exh. City Art Gallery, Manchester).

55. Columbia Market, by John MacVicar Anderson. 1870. Canvas, 53 by 88-5 cm. (Exh. Alexander Gallery, London).

56. Westminster, by William Coldstream. 1974-75. Canvas, 63-5 by 76-2 cm. (Exh. Anthony d'Offay, London).



CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Redgrave's The Outcast, which was his Diploma Work, a seminal image of the 'out, out, into the snow' type of melo- drama epitomised by Way Down East.

Anna Elizabeth Blunden's The Seam- stress (signed and dated 1854) shows a poor girl staring out of a window at the dawn sky, after working all night, and is one of a whole series of mid-century pictures and drawings (Watts, Millais, et al.) that high- light the wretched life of exploited working girls and the temptations into which desperation might lead them. This par- ticular canvas may not be so very elo- quent, as a work of art, but it is an interesting document. Among the topographi- cal material in this rewarding exhibition pride of place must go to John MacVicar Anderson's moonlit view of the Columbia Market (Fig.55). It dates from 1870 and is a suitably romantic tribute to Baroness Burdett-Coutts's ill-fated philanthropic enterprise, described by Pevsner as 'one of the great follies of the Victorian age.' The market was demolished between 1958 and 1966.

Until 31st October, Colnaghi's are showing approximately I 15 English drawings, water-colours and paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There are two Wright of Derby portraits, Anna Ashton as a Shepherdess and Miss Bentley holding a Rabbit (Nicolson, I, pp. 177 and I8o respectively); a charming, small and very early Gainsborough landscape; and some good George Richmonds acquired from the family, including a very fresh water-colour of Margate and a self- portrait of 1853 (Fig.52). The Pre- Raphaelite material is also interesting. Married for Love is one of the well-known series of drawings by Millais of 1853. Dante in Meditation holding a Pomegranate (Fig.53) is a recently rediscovered study in reverse for Rossetti's 1852 water-colour of Giotto painting- the Portrait of Dante, now lost but known in an unfinished version in the Fogg. The new study may have belonged to Ruskin. There is a beautiful double-sided late Turner water-colour from a sketchbook and that increasingly rare item, a genuine Samuel Palmer. In fact, there are two: A View from the North Downs near Sevenoaks, which is a little faded, and The Towered City (Old Water- colour Society, 1868, No.93).

Sir William Coldstream is evidently a slow worker and he does not exhibit very much. Fourteen of his pictures, produced over the past five years, can be seen at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, 12th Oct- ober-I2th November. Coldstream's pre- occupations remain the same: informal urban landscape, portraiture and the female nude in a domestic environment. The style, too, is as reticent as ever, a deeply pondered form of analytical naturalism that goes back, 'via the Euston Road', to Cdzanne. Compositions are also relatively traditional. The View of West- minster Abbey (Fig.56) is composed like a Pissarro, while the study of the girl beside a house plant (Fig.5 I) ultimately goes

back to Degas. The new pictures are admirable; they are painted with great tact and delicacy and no part of them is either slack or fudged. They are about the problems of painting itself as much as a response to the subject, but they never seem dry or mannered. And yet one somehow holds back. They are good, even very good, but they lack some final ele- ment, a quality, perhaps, of imaginative attack. One wishes, simply, that they were a little more exciting.

One of Coldstream's recent landscapes was included in the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of purchases made over the past year by the Arts Council for its permanent collection. The annual purchasing grant is now 65,000oo. It was an interesting and very varied collection, with everything from examples of the new meticulous realism to free (and I mean free) constructions. The Hayward have also been showing, simultaneously, two other exhibitions. 'The Human Clay' was the title given to a group of works chosen by R. B. Kitaj for Arts Council purchase: an interesting anthology, heavy on repre- sentational art, going back to a Richard Carline nude of 1914 and including good things by Bacon, Dine, Freud, Golding, Gowing, Hockney and Moore. The third show was a retrospective devoted to Bryan Wynter (b.I915). I must be frank and confess that, while enjoying some of his '40's landscapes (Fig.49), I find most of his abstracts, which are sometimes reminiscent of Tobey but more hectic, rather uncongenial.

Until ioth October, the I.C.A. is showing 'Images of an Era: The American Poster I945-75', a large travelling exhibition sponsored by the Mobil Oil Corpora- tion (a gesture apparently unwelcome in some quarters - see Simon Wilson's Biennale review, p.723) and already seen in Washington, Houston, Chicago and New York. There is an unusually lavish catalogue with 257 plates, mostly in colour. Even from the catalogue - all that was available at the time of going to press - it is easy to see that this is a fascinating show. Just as Voltaire is remembered for Candide rather than his five-act tragedies in verse, future genera- tions may well come to value the poster as a more vital contribution to twentieth- century art than much of the alleged high art. The poster is art with a purpose, and purpose brings out wit and invention. The need to get through to the public makes artists flexible and stimulates their sense of parody, whether it be of Goya (Fig.48) or the American flag - a favourite target at the time of the Vietnam War (Fig.50). This is an exhibition about art, with contributions from Ben Shahn, Stella, Dine, Avedon, Lichtenstein and many more, but it is, first and foremost, about communication, about visual psychology as well as aesthetics. That is why it is so lively, so entertaining and so rewarding.

KEITH ROBERTS

Spencer and Lowry The current exhibitions devoted to

Stanley Spencer and L. S. Lowry are well timed. The Royal Academy's large scale Lowry show (until I2th November) was planned well before the painter's death, but his demise has brought the popularity and growing appreciation of his work into an especially sharp focus. Stanley Spencer died in 1959 and his art was soon consigned to that limbo, compounded of boredom and reaction, that seems to shelter most famous artists for a decade or two after their deaths. It is only recently that serious interest in his work has revived.

The Lowry exhibition is the largest mounted since the Art Council's travelling show in the autumn and winter of I966- 67 (see review in January issue, 1967, p.43). There were 171 catalogued items then; at the Academy there are 328, and it is too much. Although sensitively juxtaposed, they do not look as well on the cavernous walls of Burlington House as they did in the more severe and discreet setting of the Tate's special exhibition area. But at least nearly everything of im- portance has been included; and there is a well-illustrated catalogue.

The Spencer exhibition, the first major survey since the Tate's 1955 retrospective and the 1963 memorial display at Ply- mouth, has been planned by the Arts Council as a travelling show: having been on view at Brighton, it can now be seen at Glasgow's Art Gallery and Museum (until ioth October); at the City Art Gallery, Leeds (23rd October-21st No- vember); and finally at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (4th December- 9th January 1977). The exhibition has been selected and catalogued by Duncan Robinson, who is responsible for a short essay on the Burghclere Chapel and the introduction to the sound catalogue, which also contains good pieces by Richard Carline (recollections), Carolyn Leder (in- fluences on the early work), Antony Gormley (the 'sacred and profane' in the art of Stanley Spencer) and Robin Johnson (the 'Shipbuilding on the Clyde' series). There are fifty-one paintings and forty-three drawings. At the Tate in 1955 there were eighty-three paintings, including several of the very large-scale canvases, which have inevitably been excluded from the present 'portable' anthology.

Unlike Lowry, Stanley Spencer was nothing if not ambitious in a very traditional kind of way. He painted one chapel ('What ho, Giotto' was his immediate reaction to the Burghclere commission), planned another, and often conceived his paintings as altar-pieces, even down to the predella. His favourite Old Masters were the early Italians; Ruskin's essay on Giotto and his works in Padua made a great impact on him and even inspired Joachim among the Shepherds. Paul Nash, who was at the Slade with him (other contemporaries included Nevinson, Gertler, Roberts, Bom- berg and Carline) dubbed him a 'Pre-

719



London

Documents

Transcript of London