Cedric Morris at Philip Mould Gallery

I gather that a number of people have now been to see "Garden to Canvas - Cedric Morris and Benton End" at the Philip Mould Gallery at 18-19 Pall Mall (immediately opposite the Reform Club!) until 18th June 2025 - and liked it very much!

Garden to Canvas - Cedric Morris and Benton End

I saw it on Tuesday morning this week. The oil paintings are well worth viewing in terms of an artist who loved his plants and loved painting them. They also have enormous impact.

Benton End - his house and garden were also home to the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing established in 1937, which Lucian Freud joined in 1939.

Guest-curated by James Horner, Head Gardener at Benton End, the exhibition brings together works that have played a key role in the revival of Morris’s historic Suffolk garden.

Benton End, a sixteenth-century house near Hadleigh, was the home of Morris and his lifelong partner Arthur Lett-Haines (1894–1978). From this remarkable setting, the pair ran the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing – a place where art, horticulture, and community thrived side by side. With its free-flowing spirit, open-minded ethos, and rejection of academic conventions, Benton End became a haven for creative freedom. Many artists, including a young Lucian Freud, acknowledged that it was here where their true artistic identities first took root.

The works to revive the garden have been ongoing for some time and there's about another year to go. We have mentally made a date to visit Benton End - now a subsidiary of the Garden Museum - in Spring 2026 when hopefully the garden renovation will be complete and the irises will have returned and blooming again. Plus also see where Lucian Freud started out on his artistic career.

More oil paintings of flowers from the garden of Cedric Morris at Benton End

I'm putting an album of my photographs of the paintings in the gallery on Facebook and will come back and insert a link when I've done that

However I highly RECOMMEND that you download the excellent catalogue from the website and salivate over the paintings and the story of Cedric Morris in front of your computer.

CLICK HERE to download the exhibition handbook

See also 

• Benton End House & Gardens – Garden Museum
• Facebook - Benton End
• Instagram - Benton End

PS You can also see drawings and paintings by some early 20th century artists in the display in the basement - including 

• a wonderful painting of Tenerife by Cedric Morris (who will have been there for the plants!)
• a drawing by Augustus John. A snip at ££38,500

Review: Lucian Freud - Plant Portraits at the Garden Museum

I went to see Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits at the Garden Museum in Lambeth this afternoon. It's an exhibition I've been meaning to go and see for ages. I even got there just after New Year - only to find they were having an extended seasonal break.

The exhibition is on until 5th March 2023 and the Garden Museum is open Monday – Sunday 10am – 5pm - and has an ace cafe! Entry to the Museum - which includes entry to the exhibition varies by status. I used my Art Fund pass and got in for £7.

Mostly small - but some larger artworks

Anyway, for those who like Lucian Freud here's a summary of the exhibition:

• It's not a big exhibition
• most of the artwork is either small or medium sized - but there are some larger paintings
• However it displays a good range of the artwork he produced in relation to plant
• produced at different ages
• in different media
• of different plants

For those who'd like to know more I did a VERY long post about Lucian Freud - paintings of plants and gardens back in 2018. This includes an inventory if all the paintings - in a timeline - with

• notes about their context and location
• links to where you can see them and
• quotes by people - including Freud himself - about his paintings of plants and why he did them.

Below I've posted 

• some more of the pics I took of the exhibition - with comments
• videos made about paintings in the exhibition
• links to more of my blog posts about Lucian Freud and his paintings / past exhibitions and [a

These are the childhood drawings of plants that he produced. His mother used to save all the artwork he produced as a child. It's amazing how some of the characteristic way he portrayed objects can be seen even at a very young age.

Childhood drawings and paintings

The next part of the exhibition, you can see in the first image above. This part includes a very fine but small painting of bananas on a tree.

Bananas by Lucian Freud
on loan from Southampton City Art Gallery

This was painted from life at Goldeneye, the home of Ian Fleming in Jamaica. Freud spent the tip painting banana trees on the estate.

Bananas is acutely observed and painted in precise, naturalistic detail. Freud said that the subject was a welcome release from portraits: "I noticed I switched away from people when my life was under particular strain...Not using people is like taking a deep breath of fresh air". Bananas was first exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1954 in a joint exhibition with Ben Nicholson and Francis Bacon.

You can see more of his paintings of plants from Jamaica online - such as this one Plants in Jamaica which was sold at Sotheby's (but is not in the exhibition). 

This is a closeup of the one very large painting called "Two Plants".  Below it are the quotations I used in my 2018 post plus a video about the painting.

The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame: 1968-2011

The New Yorker published a wonderful article last week - prompted by the recent publication in the USA of the second and final volume of the landmark and official Biography of Lucian Freud by William Feaver.

The article is titled Lucian Freud and the Truth of the Body by Adam Gopnik.  It's a RECOMMENDED jolly good read (or you can listen to it - see podcast link near the top). The article

• discusses the way in which Freud for a long time didn't 'fit' the American art scene - but how that changed over time. 
• comments on how this volume covers the 'School of London' painters who were a group of artists who socialised with one another and continued to pursue figurative painting during the 1970s. As such it's also an account of a particular time in art history in London.
• explores Freud's approach to painting his models and how this changed over time
• provides an abridged commentary on the life of Freud - including some of the creepier aspects.

Below you can find out more about 

• the second volume of the biography
• my past blog posts about Freud

The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame: 1968-2011

The second volume of the much anticipated second volume of this biography is titled The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame: 1968-2011. (592 pages, Bloomsbury Publishing). 

Freud trusted Feaver with this project because he was convinced Feaver had no interest in his notorious private life. Here are now in total some 1,200 pages to prove him wrong. The Lives of Lucian Freud by William Feaver — lust for life | Financial Times

In September 2020 it was long listed for the £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction.  

It was also chosen as 'book of the year' by The Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, the Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, New Statesman and the Spectator. It was also the Sunday Times Art Book of the Year.

The first volume - The Lives of Lucian Freud: YOUTH 1922 - 1968 - was shortlisted for the same prize in 2019.

Fame follows Freud at the height of his powers, painting the most iconic works of his career in a constant and dissatisfied pursuit of perfection, just outrunning his gambling debts and tailor's bills. Whether tattooing swallows at the base of Kate Moss's back or exacting a strange and horrible revenge on Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger, Freud's adventures were always perfectly characteristic. An enfant terrible till the end, even as he was commissioned to paint the Queen and attended his own retrospectives, what emerges is an artist wilfully oblivious to the glitter of the world around – and focussed instead on painting first and last.

The biography was researched through daily conversations with Freud over many months - and some reference him as a recorder of detail rather than a biographer in the normal sense of the word i.e. it is not a critical and fact checked endeavour with evaluation from an independent perspective. Rather it is a record of what Freud told him - and events Feaver witnessed during the period when he was Freud's friend. So official rather than authoritative.

Other articles about the book include:

Exhibition on Screen - on television - in 2021

For many of us, there's going to be an innovation in how we see art exhibitions during the Pandemic 

My copy of the Sky Arts Press Pack for programmes planned for broadcast over the autumn and winter tells me that many people new to Sky Arts 'free to view' broadcasting will now be able to see films about art exhibitions in a different way - via our television.

Sky Arts are continuing their collaboration with Exhibition on Screen to bring a selection of exhibitions to the new 'free to view' Sky Arts Channel.

A cinematic immersion into the world’s best loved art, accompanied by insights from the world’s leading historians and arts critics. 

Upcoming premieres in early 2021 include the following although no dates are yet available. 

• Lucian Freud: A Self Portrait
• Frida Kahlo
• Leonardo: The Works

They will be free to view when broadcast on Sky Arts but only subscribers to Sky and Now TV will be able to watch them on demand.

Lucian Freud: A Self Portrait

Lucian Freud: A Self Portrait has a running time of 86 minutes

For the first time in history the Royal Academy of Arts in London, in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, is bringing together Lucian Freud’s self-portraits.

The exhibition will display more than 50 paintings, prints and drawings in which this modern master of British art turned his unflinching eye firmly on himself. One of the most celebrated painters of our time, Lucian Freud is also one of very few 20th-century artists who portrayed themselves with such consistency.

Spanning nearly seven decades his self-portraits give a fascinating insight into both his psyche and his development as a painter, from his earliest portrait painted in 1939 to the final one executed 64 years later.

This was the the Guardian review of the exhibition in 2019-2020 at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Frida Kahlo 

Frida Kahlo has a running time of 90 minutes.

Art from the BBC Archives - a retrospective

The BBC has been having a rush of art to the BBC4 programme controller's brain. Moreover it is raiding the BBC Archives as a way of making television programmes about art while spending very little. Or as the programme makers put it

Delving into the BBC Archives to reveal a colourful, surprising and rounded portrait of how television has chosen to portray the world’s most famous artists and artistic movements over the last 60 years.

This post is about:

• another new series of programmes about art - on Sunday night (which started last night)
• a BBC Archives website Collection of various Art Programmes

Art on the BBC

The series or four programmes (4 x 60 minutes) about "Art on the BBC" comprise:

• 2nd February 2020: The Story of the Nude (now available on iPlayer)

Humans have been drawing nudes for almost 30,000 years. Kate Bryan explores six decades of BBC archive to discover how television has influenced our understanding of the nude.

• 9nd February 2020: The Many Faces of Picasso - a television history of Picasso who the BBC term "the controversial godfather of modern art" - curated by David Dibosa (pictured) 
• 16th February 2020: The personality of Michelangelo - curated by Sona Datta
• 23rd February 2020: Constable - pushing the boundaries of landscape painting - with Rose Balston

It follows on from a programme in 2018 (repeated in 2019) about The Genius of Leonardo. The video below gives you a sense of the approach of these programmes.

ART ON THE BBC_THE GENIUS OF LEONARDO_CLIP1 from Alleycats Films on Vimeo.

Art from the Archives - The Art Collection

You can also go direct to a BBC Archives website Collection of various Art Programmes and view the various programmes from the Archives which are available to view on iPlayer.

These include:

• Omnibus: Lucian Freud (1988)  - I've watched this one and will no doubt view it again (Available for over a year)

For over 40 years, the artist Lucian Freud has allowed his paintings to speak for themselves, but in this week's Omnibus he talks for the first time about his work and ambitions.

'The greatest living realist painter' is critic Robert Hughes' description of Lucian Freud, whose major retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery earlier this year, brought together the paintings of a lifetime. The exhibition was seen as a revelation, just as it had been in Washington and Paris. 

• LS Lowry at work (17 July 1957 short 3 minute extract) - The artist LS Lowry discusses his painting technique, in a documentary about his work. Originally broadcast 17 July 1957 . I don't think I've ever heard his voice before

"The buildings always come before the figures"

• Rossetti - Sex, Drugs and Oil Paint (2003) - Andrew Graham-Dixon considers the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the painter and poet who reinvented the Victorian ideal of female beauty... and who dug up his wife's coffin to retrieve poems he had buried with her. 

available on iPlayer

• Release: Pop Goes To The Hayward (5th July 1969) 

On July 9 London's Hayward Gallery becomes host to one of the largest exhibitions of Pop Art to be seen in this country. In the words of one of its exponents, Pop Art is ‘young, witty, sexy, glamorous, and big business’. It is an instant art form and has had instant success. Robert Hughes talks to leading pop artists in New York amid the ad-mass living that inspires their art. Artists featured include Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, George Segal and Andy Warhol. 

Lucian Freud - new books and exhibitions (Autumn 2019)

More on the famous painter Lucian Freud - this blog post covers

• two books - about his plants and early life
• two book reviews - of the latter
• an article in today's Observer by William Feaver his biographer 
• a talk at The London Library by William Feaver on 24th October, and 
• an exhibition of self-portraits at the Royal Academy of Arts opening 27 October 

In fact a perfect surfeit for Lucian Freud fans!

Lucian Freud Herbarium

Lucian Freud's Herbarium by Giovanni Aloi - Published last week by Prestel

Yesterday I received a copy of Lucian Freud Herbarium from the publishers.

I've long been a HUGE fan of Freud's paintings of plants. The book reveals that's painted a lot more than I've seen and includes some of my absolute favourites - of which more when I review it on my Botanical Art and Artists News blog later this week

UK Book Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Prestel (5 Sept. 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 379138533X
• ISBN-13: 978-3791385334
• Product Dimensions: 25.7 x 2.3 x 31.4 cm

The Lives of Lucian Freud by William Feaver

I've been waiting since Lucian Freud died and the announcement that William Feaver would be publishing his biography for news of the book's publication.

Well it arrived last week - and it's not book but books - with a series title of The Lives of Lucian Freud. The subtitle for this first volume changes between the UK and the USA. In the UK it's called "Youth" and in the USA, I think they reflected on the fact it takes him up to the age of 50(!) and they've sub-titled it "The Restless Years".

We now have the first edition of what is obviously going to be a work of multiple volumes - and I have an addition to my birthday present list for "he who must not be bored".

Here are two reviews of the book:

UK Cover

• The Lives of Lucian Freud by William Feaver review – youth: 1922-1968 | The Guardian
• The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth by William Feaver, review: a gossipy guide to the artist's wild years | The Telegraph (5 stars)

I've not seen it, I can't tell you anything about it - but do know that it's:

• based on very many discussions between Lucian Freud and William Feaver (on most days) since 
• full of the "voice of Freud" - which is unsurprising given the tale of how he gathered his material - revealed in the article below.

BUY THIS BOOK (UK)  The Lives of Lucian Freud Youth from Amazon UK:

UK Book Details

• Hardcover: 704 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing (5 Sept. 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1408850931
• ISBN-13: 978-1408850930
• Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 6.6 x 24.1 cm

USA Cover

ORDER THIS BOOK (USA): The Lives of Lucian Freud: The Restless Years, 1922-1968 from Amazon.com

USA Book Details

• Hardcover
• Pages: 704 Pages 
• Product Dimensions:  6-1/4" x 9-1/4"
• ISBN 9780525657521
• Published by Knopf / Penguin Random House
• Publication date: Oct 29, 2019
• Price: $40.00

UPDATE: After finishing and publishing the blog post I learned (from the FT) that there is also a THIRD new book - of photographs of Lucian Freud - due to be published next week titled Lucian Freud: A Life Edited by Mark Holborn and David Dawson.

There's a great article about it on the FT - Looking at Lucian Freud: photographic portraits of the artist - with LOTS of photos!

Book Details

• Lucian Freud: A Life - ORDER/BUY from Amazon UK | from Amazon.com
• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press; 1 edition (12 Sept. 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714877530
• ISBN-13: 978-0714877532
• Product Dimensions: 28.4 x 3.6 x 36.3 cm
• Price: £150 | $200

Article by William Feaver (his biographer)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: ‘I was Lucian Freud’s spare pair of eyes’ by William Feaver  | The Observer 8 September 2019

This is an absolutely fascinating article which tells the story of how Feaver first met Freud and how come he's writing his "authorised" biography - in the sense that he was banned by Freud of publishing anything in his lifetime - but could do after he was dead.

I guess it is also something of a taster for the first volume of Feaver's biography of Freud which was published last week.

I've saved it for reading again and referencing it in the future.

William Feaver on the Lives of Lucian Freud

Based on the above article, I've also just booked my ticket for the talk by William Feaver at the London Library on 24th October (6.45pm - to 8.30pm)

Check out Eventbrite for more details
William Feaver on the Lives of Lucian Freud 
Date: Thu, 24 October 2019
Time: 18:45 – 20:30 BST
Location: The London Library, 14 Saint James's Square, London SW1Y 4LG

Non-members are £15 per ticket

Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits

This autumn there is an exhibition of self portraits by Lucian Freud at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Crop of "Self Portrait, Reflection" (2002) Lucian Freud

I have on my iMac a wonderful folder full of the photos I took at the press preview for the retrospective exhibition of portraits by Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery in 2012.

As an exhibition it had the major advantage of:

• having been organised in close collaboration with the late Lucian Freud (these sort of exhibitions take years to come to fruition) 
• focusing on paintings of the artist's lovers, friends and family, referred to by Freud as the 'people in my life' - as well as self-portraits
• including 130 works from museums and private collections throughout the world, some of which have never been seen before.

It was an amazing exhibition - and one which has remained inside my memory.

Hence I'm rather puzzled as to why the Royal Academy of Arts is hosting a second exhibition - within 7 years of the first.

However I do suppose its focus on his self-portraits does provide some sort of justification.....

When asked if he was a good model for himself Freud replied, “No, I don’t accept the information that I get when I look at myself, that’s where the trouble starts”.

.....were it not for the view of Lucian Freud that all or most of his paintings were, in effect, autobiographical

'My work was purely autobiographical. It is about myself and my surroundings. It is an attempt at a record. I work from people that interest me and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know.'

Lucian Freud: The Self-Portraits is at the Royal Academy, London, 27 October to 26 January 2020

Interestingly if you put "Lucian Freud portraits" into Google, the NPG microsite for their exhibition (see above link) outranks the RA Exhibitions microsite!

Films about artists - an Omnibus interview with Lucian Freud

The lovely thing about looking for past posts on this blog is I come across ones I've totally forgotten about....

....such as Lucian Freud - on film, in words and ink - which includes my efforts to draw him while he talks - and moves!

still from Lucian Freud on Omnibus by the BBC

It's well worthwhile highlighting the Omnibus interview with past master Lucian Freud conducted by jake Auerbach on the occasion of his exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1988. That's over 30 years ago - when he was 66. (It's on BBC iPlayer which means that it can be seen by viewers in the UK only)

As Auerbach says on his own blog post The first one....

It is a filmed conversation with Lucian Freud recorded at the time of his exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1988.

The filming took place during two early (6.30AM) sessions at the Gallery itself and was followed on each occasion by breakfast at the Quality Chop House (Quality Chop House)… which looked similar to today… if a little dirtier… but was then a cafe for the Royal Mail sorting staff from across the road; served great porridge and had fresh kippers from the down train from Scotland which arrived at Kings Cross station at 5.45 each morning.

Omnibus: Lucian Freud - available on iPlayer

More About Lucian Freud 

For those who want to know more about Lucian Freud, here is a list of past blog posts about him

• Lucian Freud - paintings of plants and gardens (2018)
• Lucian Freud Archive of Sketchbooks and Drawings gifted to the nation (2015)
• "Lucian Freud Drawings" - a life in line (2012)
• VIDEO: WSJ review of "Lucian Freud Portraits" + BBC2 programme (2012)
• Other Current Exhibitions of Work by or about Lucian Freud (2012)
• Review: Lucian Freud Portraits at National Portrait Gallery (2012)
• David Hockney on sitting for Lucian Freud (2012)
• Video: Sue Tilley talks about modelling for Lucian Freud (2012)
• Lucian Freud (1922-2011) - an appreciation (2011)
• Lucian Freud: the Painter's Etchings - at MOMA (2007)
• On Portraiture: Chuck Close and Lucian Freud (2007)
• Lucian Freud - on film, in words and ink (2007)

RA Friends Annual Subscription vs. Paying for Exhibitions you want to see

Every year, round about this time, I ponder on my continued Friends Subscription to the Royal Academy of Arts.

When I retired I made a point of taking out the annual subscriptions to various art galleries and museums - the Royal Academy of Arts (which I was already a Friend of) plus the National Portrait Gallery, The Tate and the National Art Fund (along with various ones associated with Heritage and Gardens!) . I do so in part to show support for these institutions not because I expect to exploit my membership / Friends status for every organisation.

However I have begun to feel in recent years that I have been financing the build of the RA development for its 250th anniversary.

The Entrance to Burlington House - home of the RA

Let's look at the numbers - which is interesting of itself - because I don;t recall receiving clear reminders about how much the subscription goes up by every year - and what the new direct debit figure is.  I think there are rules above changes to direct debits and I'm not sure the RA is compliant.

All I can say that the RA Friends Subscription has way outstripped inflation - and every other indicator going - re the increase in the subscription fee since I retired.

So the options for me are as follows

OPTION 1: PAY £130 per year 

For that I get

• Free entry to exhibitions for you and a family guest
• Previews to our exhibitions before they open to the public
• Exclusive extended hours to select exhibitions
• Priority booking to all RA events, including in our new Lecture Theatre
• Private views and exclusive Friends events
• All-day access to the Keeper's House
• RA Magazine and a weekly email newsletter
• 10% discount in the RA shop

Burlington House Courtyard - Summer Exhibition 2019

The reality in recent years is that 

• I simply haven't been to every exhibition - and wouldn't want to go to some.  They've been making some very curious choices in recent years
• For very popular exhibitions Friends now need to book in advance to get their free admission and that for me loses the crucial point of being a Friend - of being able to turn up when you felt like it
• The Summer Exhibition was awful this year and I feel less and less like going. Indeed I only go because I can for free. (Although I would have cheerfully paid for Grayson Perry's curation last year)
• Previews are nice - but they are now so very crowded. There's a point when promoting Friends can work against the Scheme!
• Plus many of the activities are of no interest to me. Of those Friends Events that are, the members who seem to know when the new events are publicised have already booked all the tickets and the events are already sold out.  I was absolutely amazed that I got in to a talk about the RA Library recently
• All day access to the Keeper's House is of no consequence since I don't use it.

However

• It is nice to be able to go to the good exhibitions more than once - but the number that tempt me to do so are few and far between (I went to the Hockney Landscapes 4 times - including the very last night - see Review: David Hockney RA - A Bigger Picture)
• The RA Magazine is good - but I can read it online without being a member - if I could just remember how!

RA Friends in April 2010

I always used to say that the reason I was a Friend were the black leather Chesterfields in the Friends Room which were a wonderful way to relax after a long time spent viewing an exhibition. Plus I used to sketch in there all the time.

RA Friends September 2011

However the powers that be decided that Friends need to sit on hard chairs and the Chesterfields had to go. Plus the Friends Room got busier and busier to the point where I now take myself over the road to Fortnum & Mason for tea or lunch or gossip with friends who I've not seen for ages - as it so much more relaxed, civilised and comfortable!  Plus I now arrange to meet Friends in the National Dining Rooms which are much more civilised in terms of being able to stay sitting at your table for ages if you time it right!

The RA also upgraded the Members Room and made it into the clubbable bit - for which you now need to spend an extra £400 to get access. 

No way!

Plus I haven't sketched in the Friends Room for ages. Indeed I can't remember the last time I had a cup of tea in there.

It basically feels that the Friends Membership has been downgraded - and what I used to be getting for being a Friend now comes with a huge price tag attached.

Option 2: Pay for art exhibitions as and when 

This is the considerably cheaper option. It means 

• I lose out on previews (no big deal since I stopped covering exhibitions religiously)
• I can't have a Pimms at the Summer Exhibition Preview - but then I went this year and the Pimms Bar had disappeared in any case to be replaced somewhere else by a botanicals gin thingie.
• I can't use the Friends Room - but as explained I've already switched to Fortnum & Mason for better food and more comfort!
• I don't get the Magazine - which is not a big deal for me
• I can still book for events which are not exclusive to Friends 

Plus I have to pay (say) £18-20 admission for some of the exhibitions (i.e. the ones I want to see such as - in 2019-20

• Lucian Freud Self Portraits (Sackler Galleries - 27 October 2019 — 26 January 2020) - cost £18 - but since Friends have to book a timed ticket as well there is no bonus to being a Friend other than saving the cost of the ticket.  (Besides which I saw the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2012 and I doubt I'm going to see anything new - see Review: Lucian Freud Portraits at National Portrait Gallery
• Picasso on Paper (Main Galleries 25 January — 13 April 2020) - cost £18-22 - no current proposals to require bookings by members presumably because it will be in the Main Galleries which are much bigger

MUST BOOK A TIMED TICKET TO GO FREE!!!

I can go to both exhibitions twice and still be "quids in" compared to the cost of a Friends Membership.

Writing this out has been very therapeutic. I'm now off to cancel my direct debit!

The Royal Academy of Arts 2019 Exhibition Programme

The Royal Academy of Arts have announced their 2019 programme of exhibitions. There seem to be more than usual - however I guess the redevelopment created extra space!

The star of the show for me is the exhibition of self-portraits by Lucian Freud in just over a year's time

Lucian Freud, Reflection (Self-portrait), 1985.
Oil on canvas, 56.2 x 51.2 cm.
Private collection, on loan to the Irish Museum of Modern Art
© The Lucian Freud Archive / Bridgeman Images

This is the listing. It doesn't include the exhibitions in smaller spaces - but it does include:

• one  blockbuster by a contemporary painter (I predict)
• one 'likely to be very popular' overview of a major theme of the Renaissance
• two solo exhibitions for Royal Academicians - and one shared with Michelangelo's drawings
• two exhibitions of artwork by two lesser known European artists
• two annual events

Lucian Freud - paintings of plants and gardens

Lucian Freud painted plants and gardens as well as people and animals.

I was reminded of this last Friday when I saw Two Plants at Tate Britain.

Two Plants Lucian Freud

Today I decided to review the paintings of plants and gardens by Lucian Freud as I'd never looked at them all.

Below you can find an inventory - in a timeline - with

• notes about their context and location
• links to where you can see them and 
• quotes by people - including Freud himself - about his paintings of plants and why he did them.

In between are my photos of the above painting after I gave it my usual nose to canvas inspection..... I found the way in which he applied paint to very interesting.

All we need now is an exhibition dedicated to his paintings of plants and trees. There's certainly a lot of paintings to pick from!

Paintings of plants and gardens by Lucian Freud

"The subject matter has always been dictated by the way my life has gone. I noticed that when I was under particular strain, I didn't feel so like staring at people or bodies all day." It was at times like these that the palm, the Egyptian Book, thistles, cyclamens, buttercups, substituted for sitters. Seeing through the skin

You can see his plant paintings in The Lucian Freud Archive.

The links below are to

• either Bridgeman Images which represent his work for licensing purposes.
• or where paintings can be viewed in Galleries (if possible)

All are oil paintings unless otherwise indicated

The ones I know about are:

• 1939 - Still Life with Cactus and Flowerpots - two cacti
• 1944 - Palm Tree - a drawing - pastel chalk and ink on paper
• 1944 - The Painter's room - features what looks like a yucca
• 1944 - Quinces - sold at auction by Sotheby's but not in the Lucian Freud Archive
• 1946 - Daffodils and celery
• 1946 - Man with a Thistle (Tate) - a self portrait with a thistle stem
• 1946 - Unripe Tangerine (Pallant House Gallery) - not included in the archive
• 1947 - Lemon Sprig - two lemons and a sprig leaves
• 1947 - Small Zimmerlinde - foliage
• 1947 - Quince - Drawing conté, coloured pencil, pencil and ink on paper
• 1947 - Still Life with Green Lemon a leaf, a lemon and a slice of a Freud profile
• 1950 - Strawberries - in a box with some leaves
• 1951 - Balcony Still Life - Looks like a very dry neglected yucca; maybe the plant from the Painter's Room putting in a reappearance?
• 1951 - Interior in Paddington (Walker Art Gallery) - includes the figure of Harry Diamond (1924 - 2009); the yucca is now bigger and older and makes sense of the slightly odd appearance in Balcony Still Life (See article about the painting)

"one of the most memorable potted plants in the history of modern art"Lawreence Gowring about the Yucca which appears in Freud's paintings

• 1953 - Bananas (Southampton City Art Gallery) 
• 1953 - Plants in Jamaica - meticulous observation of exotic Caribbean vegetation at the Goldeneye villa of Ian and Ann Fleming on Jamaica, where Freud stayed during a visit in 1952-1953. Sold for £481K in 2011

For Freud, Jamaica's relaxed and vibrant island culture represented a welcome escape from the turmoil surrounding his private life back in London. This was reflected in the two paintings that he produced whilst he was there, Bananas(Collection of Southampton City Art Gallery) and Plants in Jamaica; both of which were conspicuously devoid of any human presence. "I noticed I switched away from people when my life was under particular strain," recalled Freud. "I preferred working in complete isolation. Not using people is like taking a deep breath of fresh air" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Venice, Museo Correr, Lucian Freud, 2005, p. 35).

The tropical beauty of the verdant Caribbean landscape provided Freud with a fresh and fertile source of inspiration for his painting. Perhaps more importantly, the painting en plein air that it required brought to his work an unprecedented immediacy and technical vitality that Freud developed over the course of the next ten years into an altogether more fluid approach to both subject and technique. 
Sotheby's Catalogue note for Plants in Jamaica | Auction 2011

Intimately observed down to its smallest, naturalistic detail, the all over composition of Plants in Jamaica is delicately articulated in modulating tones of radiant greens and browns. Using the finest sable brushes, in this work, Freud provides a mesmerizing visual manifestation of his renowned proclamation that: "The picture in order to move us must never merely remind us of life, but must acquire a life of its own, precisely in order to reflect life." (Lucian Freud, Some Thoughts on Painting, July 1954)

• 1955 Cyclamen - a stem, a flower and three leaves on a wall at Coombe Priory bought by and his second wife, Caroline Blackwood as a place where she could stay when he was in town. One of only two Freud murals now in existence (see Wall Flower and next item)

Lucian Freud Archive of Sketchbooks and Drawings gifted to the nation

A Lucian Freud Archive of sketchbooks and drawings has been gifted to the nation by The Estate of Lucian Freud in settlement of £2,940,000 Inheritance Tax following the artist's death in 2011. 

The Archive comprises

• 47 Sketchbooks spanning his career from the mid-1940s up until his death
• additional drawings; 
• a collection of 162 childhood drawings and 
• a collection of letters from Lucian Freud

A Sketchbook Drawing from the Archive of Lucian Freud
allocated to the National Portrait Gallery, London,
as part of the Arts Council England’s Acceptance in Lieu Scheme
Copyright: The Lucian Freud Archive

The Freud Archive's permanent home will be the National Portrait Gallery which hosted a fantastic exhibition of his portraits in 2012 - Lucian Freud Portraits. It became the Gallery’s most visited ticketed exhibition. 

See my blog posts about the 2012 posthumous exhibitions about Lucian Freud which all opened in London in February 2012

• Review: Lucian Freud Portraits at National Portrait Gallery 10 Feb 2012
• Video: Sue Tilley talks about modelling for Lucian Freud 08 Feb 2012
• Other Current Exhibitions of Work by or about Lucian Freud 11 Feb 2012
• "Lucian Freud Drawings" - a life in line 16 Feb 2012

I now know what the "very exciting exhibition" next year that the NPG staff could not tell me about last week! The National Portrait Gallery plans to:

• make the archive, which has never been published or exhibited, accessible to the public.
• display a selection of representative items from the archive in early summer 2016. 

The Lucian Freud Archive

Lucian Freud (1922 – 2011) was one of the most important and influential artists of his generation. 

The importance of the Archive is that it will:

• invaluable insight into his working practice - several drawings show the beginnings of portraits, such as Lord Goodman’s, often starting with the nose and eyes before developing outwards.
• how he used his sketchbooks - he apparently used them as they came to hand rather than in any chornological or or thematic sequence. One of the sketchbooks – originally an 18th Century ledger – contains drawings of Caroline Blackwood that relate to Freud’s early masterpiece Hotel Bedroom, 1954. 
• be a major resource for the study of his work - they enable researchers to trace the evolution of Freud’s portraits from the stage of initial conception.
• extend its understanding of the artist’s portrait work - the archive includes numerous studies which relate to major works by Freud now in significant collections. 
• give added context to the two works by Freud in the Gallery’s Collection, a 1963 self-portrait in oils and a charcoal drawing of Lord Goodman. 
• compliment the Gallery's portraits of Lucian Freud including 
• a FrankAuerbach etching; and 
• an extensive collection of photographs by David Dawson, Bruce Bernard, Cecil Beaton and others.

The Childhood Drawings

The collection of childhood drawings by Freud date back to when lived in Germany, before his family fled to England in 1933 when Hitler came to power. 

His mother used to keep and archive all his childhoold drawings which she then annotated with a date to indicate his age at the time he drew them and a place to remind where they were living at the time. I saw a number of them in the exhibition of his drawings at the exhibition of Lucian Freud Drawings opens at Blain|Southern Gallery - and was extremely impressed. They're absolutely fascinating - and you can see some of them in my review of the exhibition

The Acceptance in Lieu scheme

The Acceptance in Lieu scheme (AIL) is administered by Arts Council England. 

• The Acceptance in Lieu Panel advises on whether property "accepted in lieu" is of suitable importance and offered at a value which is fair to both nation and taxpayer. 
• AIL enables taxpayers to pay inheritance tax by transferring important works of art and other important heritage objects into public ownership. 
• The taxpayer is given the full open market value of the item, which then becomes the property of a public museum, archive or library. 
• In the last five years (2010 -14) the scheme has bought objects to the value of £150m into public collections (see the Cultural Gifts Scheme and Acceptance in Lieu Report 2014)

Making A Mark notches up 2 million visits

Last week Making A Mark notched up 2 MILLION visits and has very nearly achieved 3 MILLION page loads.  

However I was about to succumb to the nasty cold/flu bug for the third time(!) and hence missed the moment!

Making A Mark - Statistics as at 7th April 2013

However I knew more or less when it happened so took a look at the early morning stats on Thursday 4th April and picked out a referring blog which has been a regular friend of this blog.

I'll be writing to Jana Bouc (Jana's Journal) - whose blog regularly sends visitors to my blog - and will be sending her an Amazon voucher for 'making her mark' and generating the two millionth visitor to Making A Mark!

I've introduced Pages to the blog (see top) since the last big review two years ago (Making A Mark notches up 1 million visits). When reviewing the most popular posts, I found it interesting this time that some of the most popular posts are actually the Resource Pages at the top of the blog.

• Did you know that most of the visits to my blog are actually accessing the archives?  The trick to generating traffic is to promote accessible archives about information which is of perennial interest!
• If you've not yet considered using the Pages function in Blogger you might want to give it a thought.  I use it to enable people to access recurring themes on this blog. 

Here are some of the most popular posts (and pages) those two million visits have been to.   

Artists making Art

• Van Gogh: Drawing media and techniques
• Contemporary Drawing Practice 
• Artists and illustrators drawing in pen and ink
• The influence of Japanese Art 
• Making A Mark Art Blog Awards (a page rather than a post)
• Make your own art!
• Gold medal art - lessons from the Olympics for Artists
• Flowers in Art... and Charles Rennie Mackintosh
• Flowers in Art: William Morris - herbals, flowers and making patterns
• How to paint miniature portraits

Don't copy any style at all, but make your own; yet you must study the history of our art...William Morris

Art Business & Marketing

• How to sign an art print
• Henry Moore Sculpture - a very poor precedent for public art
• How to use an iPad as your artist's portfolio
• The 1,000th Postcard from Provence
• Art Business Resources (a page not a post)

Art Competitions

• Major Art Competitions in the UK in 2013 (the competition pages have been very popular each year - so I'm giving you the most up to date page!)
• 20 tips for entering art competitions 
• 2011 Sunday Times Watercolour Competition - selected artists
• RHS Botanical Art Show & Five Gold Medal Winners
• BP Portrait Award 2010: List of Exhibitors and Brian Sewell

Art Education

Mixing Complementary Colours Using Coloured Pencils
sample by Katherine Tyrrell

• 10 Tips for How to Sketch People
• How to critique art 
• Colour Schemes: Split Complementaries, Triads and Tetrads
• Complementary Colours and mixing neutral colours
• Composition - The Elements of Design
• Composition - Principles of Design
• Which are the best books about oil painting? (see also the website which resulted - The Best Books about Oil Painting)
• The Best Art Books (this is a page rather than a post)
• Which are the best art books about watercolour painting? (see also the website which resulted - The Best Books about Watercolour Painting)
• Resources for Artists (this is a page rather than a post)

Art Exhibitions 

• Review: Lucian Freud Portraits at National Portrait Gallery
• "Lucian Freud Drawings" - a life in line
• How to make labels for an art exhibition
• RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2012 - Selected artists & artwork
• Review: Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition 2011 (Part 1)

Techies

I find it really sad that in the last year people have had to become so protective of their images following the advent of Pinterest.  I think I was one of the first to take a stand and say it doesn't need to be like this - hence the popularity of the following posts round about this time last year

• How to do a reverse image search
• Pinterest: How to prevent your Blogger images from being pinned
• How Pinterest removed all my pinned images in minutes (#1)
• Takedown: How Pinterest moved fast to remove my pinned images (#2)
• Pinterest revises TOS and addresses copyright issues: a Primer

PS I wrote about a post back in 2010 called Now we are 5! (12 Top Tips for being a Long Term 'Daily' Blogger).  

That should provide the answers to any questions about how I keep going!

Life Drawing with Sue Tilley at the National Portrait Gallery

It's a long time since I posted any life drawings from a model.  However last Friday I had the opportunity to draw Lucian Freud's model "Big Sue" Tilley (see Benefits Supervisor Sleeping) as part of the events associated with the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

It was rather odd to have a theatre full of people - on a steep rake - all drawing one model.   However it worked really well as we all had an excellent view!  No peering around easels!

Sue chatted and answered questions about what it was like to model for Lucian Freud and what he was really like as a man and as a painter - absolutely fascinating!

So here are my drawings , although  I've left out the quickies at the beginning.

Sue Tilley - 15 minute pose
11" x 8" Moleskine Sketchbook

"Lucian Freud Drawings" - a life in line

Lucian Freud fans can indulge their love of his drawings as well as his portrait paintings as from tomorrow.

Lucian Freud Drawings opens at Blain|Southern Gallery in Hill Street (just off Berkeley Square).  This is the most comprehensive survey - over the last 70 years - of Lucian Freud's works on paper that has ever been staged by any gallery.

Lucian Freud

The Painter's Mother, 1983
Charcoal and pastel 32.4 x 24.8 cm (12.76 x 9.76 in)
©Lucian Freud

This provides a really great complement to the Lucian Freud Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.  If you're coming to London to see the exhibition I do urge you to try and make time to see this one too.

Planning for it took about the same amount of time - and work started on it six years ago - with the full involvement of Freud himself - up until his death last year.  That's because this exhibition like the one in the NPG has well over 100 works of art by Lucian Freud.

'It's obviously a question of making a good choice', said Lucian Freud when we began thinking about this exhibition six years ago
Lucian Freud Drawings - an essay by William Feaver in the catalogue of the exhibition

The exhibition draws upon a number of works in both institutions and private collections. A number of the drawings have never been seen in public before - making this a very special "must see" exhibition.

The exhibition opens tomorrow Friday 17th February 2012 and closes on Thursday 5th April 2012.  Entry is strictly limited to those who have tickets (find out below how to get tickets)

The exhibition will then travel to the USA where Lucian Freud Drawings will be exhibited by the Acquavella Galleries, New York between 1 May – 9 June, 2012.

In total there are 130 works in the catalogue - although some will only be seen in London and some will only be seen in New York.

In London there are 108 drawings - in pencil, charcoal, ink, crayon; etchings; paintings in watercolour and gouache and a smoked copper plate which he was working on before he died last July.

There is also a second exhibition - Lucian Freud Drawings Archive - in the Blain|Southern Gallery in Dering Street - which I have yet to see but I'm sure it's going to be a treat.  Freud's numerous graphic illustrations are presented accompanied by the research books that interested the artist, rare interviews, past exhibition ephemera and documentary film materals.  This includes the documentary made by William Feaver and Jake Auerbach for Omnibus.  This I have seen and it's an excellent film.

Lucian Freud Drawings - at Blaine Southern Gallery, Hill Street
on the left are two studies of artist and friend Francis Bacon in crayon and chalk  (1951 and 1961)

Below you can find out more about the exhibition, see more images on display and find out how you can get to see it.