Tag Archives: painting

Portrayed between lives in a Mayfair art gallery

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FRANCESCO CLEMENTE IS an artist born in Naples (Italy) in 1952. Since 1973, he has been visiting India regularly, and has worked there. He has developed a great interest in Asian religions including Hinduism and Buddhism. The 8 paintings in his exhibition, which is showing at the Lévy Gorvy Dayan gallery in Mayfair’s Dover Street until 27 September 2025, are evidence of Clemente’s interest in these belief systems.

The exhibition is called “Francesco Clemente: Self-Portraits in the Bardo”. The Bardo in the title is a concept of Tibetan Buddhism. It is the state of consciousness during the period between death and rebirth. The artist is depicted in the forefront of each picture. Behind them are fantastic depictions of both the peaceful and the angry deities that are believed to inhabit the Bardo. Whereas Clemente paints himself mainly in shades of grey, the deities are painted in vivid reds, yellows, and black. The artist insisted that the gallery walls be painted purple. This makes these vibrant paintings look even more dramatic.

Hung in a lovely large room with a patterned stucco ceiling, this small exhibition is definitely worth seeing.

Self portrait as a stack of books near London’s Barbican

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THE ARTIST ANDREW Salgado was born in Canada in 1982. He graduated at Chelsea College of Art with a Masters Degree in Fine Arts. He lives and works between London (England) and New Brunswick (Canada). Until 28 June 2025, there is a wonderful exhibition of his imaginative, colourful paintings at Beers gallery in Little Britain, close to the Barbican and Smithfield Market.

The exhibition has the artist’s chosen title “Self-portrait as a Stack of Books”. Several of the paintings on display and one sculpture portray books. Salgado is an avid reader, and he says he has been influenced by some of the authors he has read. Whether they contain books or not, his creations are intriguing and hint at confused imagery of dreams. As to the artist’s intentions in the collection of works at Beers, the gallery’s hand-out noted:

“Asking Salgado about the intentions, symbolism, or directive in this collection of paintings – because it’s obviously ripe with his (now) trademark imagery – he becomes deferential, ambiguous, and almost evasive about everything from idea to technique, to presentation, and even the compelling title piece: a rare venture into sculpture which seems – whether through its books or its chair, or its uncanny, discombobulated human parts – to reference the paintings and even the act of painting itself. But also books. Words. Memory. Fallability. That head at the apex is glass. It’s his.”

It is right that the artist is evasive. He leaves the enjoyment of interpretations of his works to the viewer, and that is admirably democratic.

If you have not come across Beers gallery already, it is always worth visiting their exhibitions. The works they display are often joyfully colourful and never dull.

Three generations of artists in one family

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SIR WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN (1872-1945) was born of German-Jewish parents in the Yorkshire city of Bradford.  His father was involved in Bradford’s textile business. Trained at the Slade School of Art (part of London’s UCL), William became a well-known painter and cultural figure. Between 1920 and 1935, he was director of the Royal College of Art. Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his work “Gitanjali” to William. One of William’s sons, Michael Rothenstein (1908-1993), who was born in Hampstead, became a noted printmaker. He married Betty Mona Desmond Ayers (née FitzGerald; 1915-2017), who was known as ‘Duffy Ayres’. She was an English portrait painter.

Michael and Duffy had two children, one of whom is Anne Rothenstein (born 1949). She is a self-taught artist, who lives and works in London. Until 12 April 2025, there is an exhibition of her paintings at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London’s Cork Street. Her attractive paintings, which seem deceptively simple when compared with those made by her grandfather William, depict portraits, interiors, and landscapes. However, they are far from simple. They are subtle and sometimes dreamlike. And as the gallery’s handout noted, her portrayal of perspective is unusual: the landscapes seem flattened. The paintings on display are oddly compelling and this along with their somewhat muted colouring, enhanced my enjoyment of Anne’s art.

As soon as we entered the gallery and I saw the artist’s name, I wondered whether she is related to the famous Sir William Rothenstein. When the gallery assistant informed us that she is from the same family, I was excited. Already, I knew of William’s connections with Hampstead and that he hosted Tagore, when the great Bengali visited London, but I had no idea that both his son and his granddaughter were artists (although far less well-known than him).

Seeing things from a different perspective at South Kensington

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AN EXHIBITION AT LONDON’S Victoria and Albert Museum, which is showing until 5 May 2025, displays works of art created in the Moghul Empire between about 1560 and 1660, a period in which the Emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan reigned. Apart from wonderful jewels, jewellery, jewel-encrusted swords, and various other luxurious items, the exhibition contains a superb array of painted miniatures. Each one of these meticulously painted images is filled with a wealth of detail, and depict people as well as scenes of (often) courtly life.

The miniature paintings differ from those created in Western Europe (notably in Italy, France, Germany, and the Low Countries) during that period in many ways. One of these differences is the portrayal of perspective. To the eyes of people used to looking at Western European paintings of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Mughal miniatures seem to lack any obvious portrayal of perspective when compared to what was being painted at the same time in Western Europe.

Many of us living in the twenty-first century are accustomed to seeing perspective portrayed in the way it has been done since the fifteenth century, when it was pioneered by the architect and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi, who rediscovered what the Ancient Greeks and Romans knew already. While I was looking at the Mughal miniatures, I wondered whether people who were living in the Mughal Empire at the time when they were painted saw the images in a different way to us, who are used to having perspective ‘spelled out’ or depicted in the Western European way. Did they look at the paintings and understand the perspective, without it having to be emphasised as it is in European art? Did their experience of life, as it was, allow them to understand the spatial relationships of the subject matter depicted in the paintings, or would it have seemed to lack depth as it does when we look at it today? Or was the subject matter more important to them than how it looked in ‘real life’?

Painting scenes of daily life on sheets of mica in colonial India

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ONE CAN PAINT ON paper, canvas, glass, textiles, ceramics, and walls. Until yesterday (9 February 2025) when we visited an exhibition at Bangalore’s Museum of Art and Photography (‘MAP’), I did not know that paintings have been made on sheets of the translucent mineral mica. Mica has been, and still is, mined in great quantities in India.

 

Because of its translucency,  lanterns made with mica, on which images have been painted, have been used in both Hindu and Muslim ceremonies.  Since the eighteenth century artists have been creating paintings on mica, usually using watercolours or gouache mixed with an adhesive to ensure that the colours stick to the mica. Because the colours are on a translucent material that does not absorb any of the pigments, rather than opaque paper that inevitably absorbs some pigment, they appear much more vibrant on mica than on paper.

 

Murshidabad,  now in West Bengal,  was an important centre of mica painting. Initially, artists concentrated on paintings and portraits commissioned by local nawabs and other members of the Indian aristocracy.  With the arrival of Europeans in Murshidabad and other parts of Bengal in the late eighteenth century, the artists began depicting subjects designed to appeal to European customers. Europeans were particularly attracted to the paintings on mica. The subjects included illustrations of daily life and customs. They are therefore an interesting record of life in Bengal (and other parts of India) during the late eighteenth century.

 

The exhibition at MAP consists of a collection of paintings both on mica and on paper. These images were designed to appeal to European visitors (both short- and long-term) to India and are examples of Company Paintings  (East India Company).

 

Many of the paintings on mica depict people who appear to have no faces. Originally, these paintings had faces painted in gouache. However, the faces were painted on a layer of mica placed above that on which the rest of the subject was painted. This was done to give the images a three dimensional quality. Sadly, many of these upper layers have been lost, resulting in literally a loss of face.

 

The exhibition at MAP was well displayed. An extremely informative booklet about the exhibits and mica painting was available free of charge.  I am pleased we visited the show not only because it was both beautiful and fascinating,  but also because we had visited Murshidabad a few weeks earlier.

PS mica painting was done in parts of India where mica was plentiful,  such as Andhra Pradesh,  Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan,  Bihar, and Jharkhand.

An artist who depicts nature only naturally

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AJIT KUMAR DAS was born in 1957, son of a laundry man (washer man). From an early age, he became fascinated with the wonderful  colours of the textiles that his father washed. He became involved with traditional fabric printing and design. Today, Das is recognised as one of India’s foremost natural dye painters.

 

Das paints on cloth using natural dyes, rather than artificially created colours. He uses dyes derived ed from sources such as, for example,  pomegranate rind, turmeric, fermented iron solution, indigo, and madder. He applies them using bamboo brushes and handmade quills. The colours are fixed using alum as mordant. With decades of experience and experimentation,  he is able to use the natural dyes to produce interesting colourful effects.

 

At his exhibition held in a  magnificent gallery in the Kolkata Centre for Creativity, we were able to view more than 20 of his paintings. All of them feature closely observed natural objects, such as foliage, birds, and fish, all arranged in patterns on the textiles. Some of these compositions are naturalistic. In others, Das has arranged the details from nature to produce lovely patterns.

 

We were fortunate to have been at the inauguration of the exhibition, during which the soft-spoken Das discussed his works with a panel of invited guests. From what I could gather, the panellists were more interested in the current state of natural dye crafts than the artist’s works on display. I am pleased that we made the journey from central Kolkata to the outlying district of Anandapur to see the exhibition and to learn a little about the use of natural dyes in traditional methods of textile making.

Kandinsky, Chicago, music, and visual arts

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AT THE EXPRESSIONIST exhibition, currently showing in London’s Tate Modern until the 20th of October 2024, I was suddenly reminded of something that I did in the last three months of 1963. During those months, my father was a visiting academic in the economics department of the University of Chicago. I spent that period as a pupil in the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School. It was in that time that President John F Kennedy was assassinated.

Once a week, we had a lesson during which the teacher played us a recording of classical music – some Beethoven, for example. Each of us students were given a large sheet of white paper and some coloured crayons. While the music was playing, we could draw whatever the music inspired us to do. I cannot recall what I drew, but I do remember these lessons.

Kandinsky and his siblings

Today, the 15th of July 2024, we visited the Expressionist exhibition at the Tate Modern. In one small room, there was music by Arnold Schoenberg playing in the background. There was also a photograph (taken about 1888) of the artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) playing chamber music with his two siblings. Opposite the photograph, I saw a framed painting created by Wassily Kandinsky in 1911. It is called “Impression III (Concert)”. He painted it after hearing a concert of music by Arnold Schoenberg. This painting was his response to the music.

It was seeing this painting by Kandinsky that reminded me of our music-inspired art sessions in Chicago back in 1963.

Not what it appears to be at a country house near the city of Bath

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THERE IS A LONG corridor in Dyrham Park house near Bath. It seems to be extremely long when seen from one end of it, but this is an illusion. The extreme length has been created by putting a troupe l’oeil painting at one end of the corridor. This painting is a work of the Dutch artist Samuel van Hoogstraten (1637-1678), who was one of Rembrandt’s most successful students.

In addition to this trompe l’oeil by Hoogstraten, there is another one placed above a grand staircase at Dyrham House. These two paintings are not the only ones at Dyrham. One of the former owners of the house, William Blathwayt (1649-1717), was a collector of paintings by Dutch masters. Not only did he purchase Dyrham Park, but also, amongst many other achievements, he established the War Office as part of the British Government.

A teacher at school and a painting at Sotheby’s auction house

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This painting on display at Sotheby’s in New Bond Street was created by Sir John Kyffin Williams (1918-2006). He was born in Wales on the island of Anglesey.

When I was a pupil at London’s Highgate School (between 1965 and 1970), Kyffin Williams taught art at the school. He was the senior art master between 1944 and 1973. I was fortunate to have attended a few of the painting sessions He supervised.

In 1968, Kyffin visited the Welsh settlement in Patagonia. After his return to England, he gave a fascinating talk about his trip to us at the school. I attended this, and still remember some if what he related.

A few years ago, we drive to Anglesey to see his work at the Oriel Mon gallery near his birthplace, Llangefni.

Seeing this painting at Sotheby’s brought back happy memories.