COVID-19 & ART #8: Video Binge - Raphael in Rome

A major exhibition about Raphael opened at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome four days before the Italian lockdown began.

Raphael of Urbino (March 28 or April 6, 1483 – April 6, 1520)

Raffaello opened on 5th March and was due to run until 2nd June 2020. It marks the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance artist’s death and includes important loan.

A monographic exhibition with over two hundred masterpieces among paintings, drawings and comparative works, dedicated to Raffaello on the 500th anniversary of his death, which took place in Rome on April 6, 1520 at the age of just 37 years old.

The exhibition, which finds inspiration particularly in the Raffaello's fundamental Roman period which consecrated him as an artist of incomparable and legendary greatness, tells his whole complex and articulated creative path with richness of detail through a vast corpus of works, for the first time exposed all together.

Self portrait (crop) by Raphael 1499
Ashmolean Museum

Very many loans from premier art galleries around Europe and North America contributed paintings and drawings by Raphael on loan to the exhibition. These included:

Italy

• the National Galleries of Ancient Art, 
• the National Art Gallery of Bologna, 
• the Museum and the Real Bosco di Capodimonte, 
• the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, 
• the Brescia Museums Foundation

Outside Italy

• the Vatican Museums, 
• the Louvre, 
• the National Gallery of London, 
• the Prado Museum, 
• the National Gallery of Art in Washington, 
• the Albertina in Vienna, 
• the British Museum, 
• the Royal Collection, 
• the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, 
• the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

Videos about Raphael and of the exhibition

Major efforts have been made by the museum, via its YouTube channel,to ensure people can see the exhibition online.

Below are some videos about the exhibition. They're in Italian - but the first has English subtitles.

Raffaello Principe delle arti (Raphael Prince of the arts)

Una passeggiata in mostra (A walk in the exhibition)

This video - of a walk through the exhibition -  has been watched by nearly half a million viewers in the last few days! (see Take a virtual tour of once-in-a-lifetime Raphael show in Rome that closed after four days due to coronavirus)



According to Wikipedia and its sources

Raphael painted several of his works on wood support (Madonna of the Pinks) but he also used canvas (Sistine Madonna) and he was known to employ drying oils such as linseed or walnut oils. His palette was rich and he used almost all of the then available pigments such as ultramarine, lead-tin-yellow, carmine, vermilion, madder lake, verdigris and ochres. In several of his paintings (Ansidei Madonna) he even employed the rare brazilwood lake, metallic powdered gold and even less known metallic powdered bismuth.

Digital Resources for Teaching and Learning about Portraiture

The National Portrait Gallery has some useful learning resources for young people who are being home schooled during the present coronavirus pandemic - or at any time.

Young People's Guide to Self Portraiture 

 This is the Young People's Guide to Self Portraiture
 

The website allows online access to various videos explorting themes related to self portraiture.

Digital Resources for Learning

These Digital Learning Resources related to Portraiture include:

• downloadable PDFs, audio and web-based resources 
• which support school-based learning around 
• Portraiture
• the Gallery’s exhibitions
• the Gallery's Collection.

David Hockney: Learning Resources

These are written for school groups visiting the exhibition and include practical drawing tasks and discussions points to explore and have fun with!⁠
⠀

David Hockney Portraits: Life Love Art

• Exhibition Teacher's Notes (PDF)|

Teachers’ Notes: Information and Activities for Secondary Art Teachers
These notes focus on particular aspects of Hockney’s portraiture and on a small number of interconnecting themes developed over Hockney’s career. They are intended to help students look at Hockney’s work and enable group discussion. They can be used to assist teaching in the gallery as well as in the artroom. Each image has questions and talking points that can be adapted to meet students’ needs. The suggestions for activities are designed to lead on to further areas of research into portraiture.

Davi Hockney: Drawing from Life

Very sadly this exhibition was only open for a very short time before it had to close

• David Hockney: Drawing from Life teaching resource

For Teachers and Parents
The National Portrait Gallery's teachers’ resource for David Hockney: Drawing from Life helps students look critically at Hockney’s work. The questions, discussion points and activities are aimed at Key Stage 3-5 Secondary Art, but can be adapted for younger age groups.

Review: Semi-Final of Portrait Artist of the Year 2020

This is a rather different review of the semi-final of the Portrait Artist of the Year 2020.

The sitter and the artists from the back of the Hall

In this discombulated world we're living in at the moment, I'm hearing from artists who can't paint. I've also been affected in terms of long posts - hence the very long delay before this review has been posted.

It all seems so very disconnected from real life.

Even more so given that although the semi-final was on television two weeks ago - as the coronavirus thing hit hard - in reality and in my head, it had all taken place in Battersea 11 months ago!

I vividly remember watching it with Tom Mead - one of last year's finalists - and discussing with him which artists we thought were going to be the finalists.

So here's the review. It covers:

• Profiles of the Semi-finalists - with their self-portraits
• Observations about the Semi-Final (the reality and the programme)
• what the Judges are looking for
• The Heat Paintings
• Backgrounds
• Nerves
• The Set-Up 
• Go Big or Go Home
• Time Management and Speed
• The use of technology
• What the judges liked and disliked
• What I liked  
• The Finalists

Semi-finalists in Portrait Artist of the Year 2020

The artists in the semi-final were all the Heat Winners. They are listed below in order of the broadcast Episode - with an image of them with their own self portrait submission.

The semi-finalists survey the set-up for the semi final of Portrait Artist of the Year 2020
- and a very theatrical blingy background for the sitter

EPISODE 1

Charles Williams - Professional Artist, writer, lecturer, illustrator and Venice Biennale participant (Facebook | Instagram)

• Graduated with a BA from Maidstone School of Art, then graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 1992 and has a PhD on drawing 
• now teaches in the Painting School of Canterbury Christchurch University Fine and Applied Art degree course in his native Canterbury.
• a founding member of the Stuckist art group and has written two books about drawing and painting
• elected to be a member of both the New English Art Club (1996) and the Royal Watercolour Society (2010)
• spent a month working in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 

(From: Review: Episode 1 of Portrait Artist of the Year 2020)

Charles Williams with his self portrait - head, upper torso and hands

As he did in the Heat Charles knocked out several quick watercolour sketches learning about the person and working out the best approach to the sitting before tackling his oil painting.

 EPISODE 2

Chris Longridge (Instagram | Twitter) - Amateur artist because he's got "a proper job".

• Loved the bit during the episode where he confesses to being a TV journalist!! He's currently the Associate Editor of Digital Spy (and prior to that was a Senior Editor of Heat for six years).  
• He has a really interesting take on the similarities between interviewing celebrities and teasing out their characteristics and personality when painting their portrait. 
• There again he does have a degree in social anthropology from the LSE! 
• No art website that I can find. (He should get himself one - he's good!)

Chris Longridge with his self portrait submission - with cropped hands

EPISODE 3

Inge Du Plessis (Facebook | Instagram) Professional artist

• This is a link to her self-portrait The Woman who Stood Still for Too Long (90 x 55cm) - about her turning 50.  
• Originally from Cape Town, South Africa she moved to the UK in 2009 and now lives in Maidenhead in Berkshire. 
• Completed a Fine Art Honours Degree and have been painting professionally since 1999 - after many years working as a cabinet maker and running her own design and manufacturing business. 
• Previously participated in PAOTY 2016.

Inge du Plessis with perhaps the most "look at me" self portrait of the competition

COVID-19 & Art #7: Selling art online (Mall Galleries)

It's interesting to see how artists and art galleries are continuing to sell art during the current health emergency.

Providing opportunities for art collectors / fans to continue to purchase work during lockdown allows artists to continue to generate an income stream from sales and hence continue paying their rent and feeding themselves!  In other words, pretty basic and important stuff!

I'm going to be looking at different examples of how people are selling artwork online over the coming weeks/months/however long.

Today I'm looking at how a national art society sells the art which was supposed to be on exhibition to the public - on the walls of the Mall Galleries right now.

The 2020 Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours should have opened to the public this morning at 10am on the first day of its exhibition.

Instead - like all other art galleries in the country - the Mall Galleries has had to close (although it took the decision to do so, in advance of the government instruction, in order to protect both staff and visitors). The planned exhibitions are all currently postponed.

Images below are from my past sketches of past RI Annual Exhibitions at the Mall Galleries.

Sketch of the RI Exhibition at the Mall Galleries ten years ago - in April 2010
See RI Exhibition at the Mall Galleries (2010)
This sketch appears on page 103 of my book Sketching 365 
available via a link in the side column or from all good art bookshops
© Katherine Tyrrell

Selling art via the Mall Galleries

The one major advantage that the Mall Galleries has is that it had already developed its own online platform for selling to the public.

Their platform allows them to:

• create virtual exhibitions of all the national art society annual exhibitions held in the Mall Galleries
• sell art on an ad hoc basis by artist members of the national art societies that are Federation of British Artists
• enable buyers to use the national Own Art system - which is only available to accredited galleries. This allows art buyers to use an installment system for payments (See How to own art)

I'm going to look at each of these in turn and use the 2020 Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours as an example.

Private View of the 199th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour
11" x 16", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils
© Katherine Tyrrell

Sales from a Virtual Exhibition

The work selected for exhibition by the RI back in January is online in a virtual exhibition. (SCROLL DOWN this link).

In fact it's been online for some time - as the galleries's practice now launches the virtual exhibition in advance of the actual exhibition. This provides

• a boost for sales once the exhibition opens at the preview and/or to the public as a number of works already sport red dots because they sold in advance - and red spots generate red spots!
• the capacity to create virtual exhibitions and extend the marketing time for the art - both before and after the exhibition - is greatly helped via a submission process which has moved to using digital images of all paintings.

I rather think artists will realise during this health emergency why having a good quality digital image of your artwork gives you a significant advantage over those artists who depend on their work being shown in art galleries which are not encessarily internet savvy. They're certainly not open right now....

So how does the sales process work?

Basically, sales for the RI Watercolours exhibition work exactly as they usually do. The same process is then followed whether buying at the desk or online - as detailed below....

Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours - 208th Annual Exhibition and Prizewinners

Today should have been the Private View of the 208th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.  Instead of which, due to the coronavirus crisis, everything is carrying on - ONLINE!

There's a possibility that the show will be shown at the Mall Galleries on a later date in 2020 - subject to the timeline for the Coronavirus crisis.

RI 208th Annual Exhibition

You can:

• review the paintings selected for the 2020 RI Exhibition ONLINE (SCROLL DOWN)
• take a look at what painting and which artist won which prize - SEE BELOW for the names of the prizewinners and links to their artwork online - plus comments on what prompted the painting
• Paintings are also being sold online - about which more tomorrow

RI Prizewinners 2020

Be Still by Deborah Walker

I'm assuming all the prizewinners were selected when the paintings were selected by the RI Panel for the exhibition.

The Mall Gallery has done blog posts about the prizewinners - in four parts. Click the links to see the prizewinning paintings

Prize Winners Part One

• George Butler  - The Winsor & Newton Award: £3,000. I recognised his work as soon as I opened the blog post!
• Day Bowman - The Winsor & Newton Product Prize: £1,000 worth of Winsor & Newton art materials
• Suzon Lagarde - The Leathersellers' Prize: £1,000 awarded by The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers to an artist aged between 18 and 30 years old
• David Howell PPRSMA - The James Fletcher-Watson RI Memorial Award: £500 for the best use of watercolour in the exhibition - includes a Soundcloud podcast about his painting
• Deborah Walker RI RSMA - The Megan Fitzoliver Brush Award: A trophy, named The Pipe Fish, awarded for a work that most inspires a connection with the natural world. (see above)

The inspiration for 'Be Still' is from such a place near to my home in Staffordshire. I like to walk at the end of my working day, to breathe and clear my head. It's a quiet time.

• Claire Sparkes RI - The Anthony J Lester Art Critic Award: A certificate of commendation for an outstanding work chosen by the art critic and broadcaster Anthony J Lester - VERY IMPRESSIVE in my opinion.