Bodleian Treasures and Painting by Numbers

If you're ever in Oxford, as I was on Friday, I urge you to go to the Weston Library on Broad Street Oxford (opposite the Sheldonian Theatre). There are two displays of note involving natural history and botanical artwork from the past.

Bodleian Treasures: 21 pairs and a tropical forest

(Bodleian Treasures: 21 pairs and a tropical forest until 11 February 2018)
This is the first is a periodically rotating exhibition which pairs up two items from some of the best treasures of the 12 million items in the Bodleian Library Collection.

At the moment one of the major displays included covers a Tropical Forest (see below)

Tropical Forests display

It also includes a copy of Audubon's Birds of America

The owl in Audubon's Birds of America

Plus a volume of Robert Thornton's Temple of Flora on display (see below). “The Temple of Flora” is the third and final part of Robert John Thornton’s New illustration of the sexual system of Carolus von Linnaeus. 

I couldn't find a digital copy on the Bodleian website - so here's the version contributed by the Misssouri Botanical Library to the Internet Archive

Double page spread from Robert Thornton's Temple of Flora

In addition, the display included an 11th century Herbal -  translation of a translation of the Herbarius of Pseudo-Apuleius. The plants were drawn first and the text added afterwards.

The Herbarium Apulei was one of the most widely used remedy books of the Middle Ages. Over 60 medieval manuscripts of the text survive.

Copy of the Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius (11th century)
Dropwort is illustrated on the left and Narcissus poeticus on the right

Painting by Numbers

(Painting by Numbers until 9 July 2017) - This is about a Leverhulme sponsored scientific project to decipher Ferdinand Bauer's colour code - used for annotating his sketches made while accompany expeditions around the world. It's explained in this article Bodleian display showcases scientific research into Bauer's botanical masterpieces.
The display is in the main entrance hall - next to the entrance to the Treasures exhibition.

The Painting by Numbers Display

One of Bauer's annotated sketch for the Flora Graeca

Bauer made hundreds of pencil sketches of plants and animals when he explored the eastern Mediterranean in 1786-87.

Bauer's Colour System - a numerical colour code and pigments in mussel shells

There will be a lecture next Wednesday lunchtime (24th May) about Reconstructing Ferdinand Bauer's mysterious colour code by Dr Richard Mulholland, Leverhulme Research Fellow, Bodleian Libraries. Dr Mulholland is an art historian who is usually involved with lots of scientists in relation to the conservation of art from the past.

The project aims to decipher Bauer's numerical code used on one of his expeditions (for the Flora Graeca - also a Treasure of the Bodleian) and identify the numbers back to colours and pigments. (You can see a digital version of the Flora Graeca online)

I'll also be writing in more depth about this project and last Friday's lecture by Rosemary Wise, the botanical illustrator working with Oxford University in Botanical Art and Artists - News next week

"Sketch" 2017 - sketchbook exhibition opens at Rabley Drawing Centre

The 2017 SKETCH Open Sketchbook Drawing Prize aims to promote diversity and the importance to contemporary creative practice of both:

• drawing and 
• the role of the sketchbook

100 artists’ sketchbooks selected for the Prize - selected from over 500 submissions - are now on exhibition at the Rabley Contemporary Drawing Centre and Gallery at Rabley Barn, Mildenhall, Marlborough, Wiltshire SN8 2LW - opening today and on display until 17th June 2017.

The exhibition will also tour to the following venues

• 22 July – 3 September 2017 - Black Swan Arts, Frome, 2 Bridge Street, Frome, BA11 1BB
• 9 September – 6 October 2017 - Plymouth College of Art - Gallery, Tavistock Place, Plymouth PL4 8AT
• 20 November – 15 December 2017 - Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster Arts, Great Hall Complex, Lancaster University LA1 4YW

There are less selected artists than sketchbooks which I guess means some had more one sketchbook selected! The artists who created the selected sketchbooks are listed below. I've highlighted artists I know or know of.

If you want an image of your sketchbook displayed on this page please contact me with an image of your sketchbook and preferred website address.

• Nidhi Agarwal, 
• Nilofar Akmut, 
• Lucy Austin, 
• Peter Avery, 
• Michelle Avison, 
• Naomi Avsec, 
• Richard Baker, 
• Garry Barker, 
• Brian Bishop, 
• Andy Black, 
• Kate Black, 
• Patrick Blower, 
• Julie Bolus - a reportage artist based in Norwich who I know from Urban Sketchers
• Neil Bousfield, 
• Meg Buick, 
• Robbie Bushe, 
• Tom Cartmill, 
• Becca Collins, 
• Eugenia Cuellar, 
• Yael David-Cohen, 
• Mel Day, 
• Anne Desmet RA - an artist who specializes in wood engravings, linocuts and mixed media collages - and a member of the RA
• Clare Dudeney, 
• Cameron Duke, 
• Richard Eastwood, 
• Peter Esslemont, 
• Anny Evason, 
• David Ferry, 
• Coral G Guest - a flower painter I know who now also draws and paints landscapes. I was extremely pleased to get to include her drawings in my book about drawing and sketching

Iceland - Light into Dark by Coral Guest
The page shows a sketch of snow capped mountain in the Thorsmork Valley, Iceland.

• Nikki Gardham, 
• Yolanta Gawlik, 
• Chris Gilbert, 
• Christopher Green, 
• Beatrice Haines, 
• Lesley Hicks, 
• Tracy Himsworth, 
• Eunju Hitchcock-Yoo, 
• James Hobbs - co-founder with me of London Urban Sketchers; my sketches are in one of his books and his sketches are in mine!  [Update: This is his blog post about Sketchbook show opens at Rabley Drawing Centre]

James Hobbs's Sketchbook - double page display

• Louise Holgate, 
• Hilary Owers & Graham Hooper, 
• Laura Hudson, 
• Neil Irons, 
• Lily Irwin, 
• Paul Jackson, 
• Alexander Johnson, 
• Anne Kristin Hages, 
• Karen Lorenz, 
• Christine Mackey, 
• Tony Martin, 
• Patrick Martin, 
• Lynda Marwood, 
• Anna McDowell, 
• Ruth Miemczyk, 
• Julie Moss, 
• Stephen Mumberson, 
• Liz Myhill, 
• Maureen Nathan - wrote to tell me she has two sketchbooks included in the exhibition. An image of one of the pages from one of her sketchbooks can be seen below. She wrote about one of them in Not Moleskine on her blog

Maureen Nathan Sketchbook

• Simon Nicholas, 
• Maureen O'Leary, 
• Alison O'Neill, 
• Beñat Olaberria, 
• Edith Pargh Barton, 
• Simon Parish, 
• Helena Park, 
• Stephanie Parr, 
• Chitra Parvathy Merchant, 
• Caroline Pedler, 
• Howard Read, 
• Chloe Regan, 
• Margot Shores, 
• Julie-Ann Simpson, 
• Serena Smith, 
• Barbara Sykes, 
• Sadie Tierney, 
• Luke Treece-Birch, 
• David Willetts, 
• Melanie Wickham

The panel of Judges were

• Tom Hammick, painter and printer; 
• Peter Randell-Page RA, sculptor; 
• Gill Saunders, Senior Curator (Prints), Word & Image Dept, V&A Museum

Pandora Sellars (1936-2017)

Pandora Sellars, whose paintings played a key role in the resurgence of botanical art in the UK - and across the world - died last week in her home county of Herefordshire.

Pandora Sellars - Blue Water Lily Nymphaea nouchali var. caerulea, (1995), watercolour on paper

For those of you who have previously followed my blogging about botanical art on Making A Mark, you may wish to read my tribute to her which you can find on my dedicated botanical art news blog. See Pandora Sellars - an appreciation of a great botanical artist to learn how much she meant to botanical artists all over the world.

Some of her paintings - including the iconic blue water lily - are currently on display in the British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens until 17th September 2017.

You can read more about that exhibition in my blog post back in March about British Artists in the Shirley Sherwood Collection - an exhibition at Kew

She doesn't have a website. However I will be building a page about her life and botanical art career as part of my section related to the Twentieth Century Masters of Botanical Art on my website.

Adele Block Bauer and 'Woman in Gold'

I've just watched the film Woman In Gold on BBC - about the portrait of Adele Block-Bauer by Gustav Klimt - and had to keep restraining myself from reaching for my iPhone to check what the outcome was. The nuisance of a memory which remembers some facts but not all of them!

Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer (the so-called "Woman in Gold") 1907
by Gustav Klimt
oil, silver and gold on canvas, 140 × 140 cm (55.1 × 55.1 in)
Current Location: Neue Galerie New York

So for those who were equally intrigued here's what I found.

You can see the film, made in 2015, on BBC2 channel on iPlayer (for the next 29 days)

Timeline

• painted in 1907 - and commissioned by Ferdinand Block-Bauer 
• 1925 - Adele Bloch-Bauer died suddenly of meningitis, in Vienna on January 24
• 1928 - lent for an exhibition at the Vienna Secession in 1928 to mark the tenth anniversary of Klimt's death
• 1934 - displayed in London as part of the Austria in London exhibition
• 1937 - lent for display at the Paris Exposition
• between 1938 and 1941: nationalised by the German/Austrian State
• December 1941 - Führer transferred the paintings Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Apfelbaum I to the Galerie Belvedere (now Österreichische Galerie Belvedere)
• 1945 - Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (Adele's husband) died on 13 November 
• 2006: restituted to Maria Altmann, the niece of the Bloch-Bauers by Österreichische Galerie Belvedere
• purchased by Ronald Lauder ($135 million) from Maria Altmann
• transferred to Neue Galerie in New York City from Ronald Lauder

Related Websites

About the portrait

• Portrait of Adele Bock-Bauer I | Wikipedia - about the painting by Gustav Klimt
• Neue Galerie New York (Museum for German and Austrian Art) 1048 Fifth Avenue (located across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold - about the exhibition after the acquisition - includes pictures of the real Adele Block-Bauer and 
• Austrian Masterworks from the Neue Galerie New York September 22, 2016-September 25, 2017 - an exhibition that celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of the Neue Galerie’s founding - which includes both portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907 and 1912)
• Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer Paintings to Be Reunited at Neue Galerie | Artnet News (June 2016) - referencing the exhibition listed above

About the key persona

Pink Floyd's Fabulous Mortal Remains at the V&A

You might wonder why I'm reviewing an exhibition about a band on art an art blog.

There again you might wonder why a band like Pink Floyd is having a major retrospective exhibition at the Victoria And Albert Museum. The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains opens on Saturday (for 20 weeks until 1 October 2017).

Ummagumma repeat x repeat

However Pink Floyd were a very visual band. I don't find this surprising given that three of the band members were former architectural students who were used to thinking in terms of big designs and large structures. Plus right back at the beginning they knew some very smart design people in Storm Thorgeson and Po Powell aka as Hipgnosis (which it turns out was a word written on the wall of their flat by Syd Barrett. Plus they hooked up with some equally smart visual people as they progressed through their albums.

It's also because Pink Floyd were a constant backdrop to my time spent studying in Cambridge in the 70s.

Boyfriend was a big fan; Dark Side came out while I was in Cambridge and of course they are fundamentally a Cambridge band. My digs in my penultimate year were with a don who lived in Rock Road, literally right across the road from the house where Roger Waters spent his childhood and where his mother still lived. Syd Barrett lived just up the road etc etc. (I loved the Pink Floyd map of Cambridge!!)

I suspect The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains might just become one of the most popular exhibitions ever at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

this exhibition will be an immersive, multi-sensory and theatrical journey through Pink Floyd’s extraordinary world

The first three days sold out within hours of tickets opening for sale.

Before you read on, you need to understand that I am one of those people who got a ticket fast. It's been pinned on my wall above my desk for months and months!

I'll be back there on Monday to see the exhibition with my ex-boyfriend and his wife. Meanwhile I'll be emailing him to say he might want to go and buy himself another ticket - because I think the real fans are going to want to spend HOURS in this exhibition!

Not just because of the subject matter - but also because of how the exhibition has been put together.  That and the fact hard core fans never just go to a concert once.....

I wrote on Facebook while I was sat in the recreation of the Live 8 concert.

Just reached the end of The Pink Floyd Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.It's one of the most visually and aurally creative exhibitions I've EVER been to. It will take fans HOURS to go through. A retrospective with non-stop music on your headphones which changes automatically and constant visual stimulation. Absolutely amazing!

It satisfies on so many levels:

• it's a retrospective based around the albums and there are masses of detail and memorabilia associated with each - some of it quite extraordinary.

The Early Years and first albums

Syd Barrett wall

• the sound is constant. The audio is extraordinarily clever. The thing they give you for the headphones works out PRECISELY where you are in the exhibition and plays the music or audio interview which goes with what you are looking at. I've got a four page explanation about all the sound. Suffice to say it is AMAZING!
• the visuals are quite overwhelming at times - right from the entrance through a giant version of their original van, past the Hipgnosis covers, via the 'unusual photography' and animations, past the huge blowups of the schoolmaster and Pink from the Wall, and Battersea Power Station - complete with Pig through to the end, where you can relive the miracle of the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park in 2005 when the band became four again - and the music plays with visuals on all four walls in a large room which is going to be packed as soon as the exhibition opens.