Inside the National Galleries of Scotland - with the BBC

Here's another perspective on the output from BBC News! You have 6 days left to watch on iPlayer a BBC News programme about the National Galleries of Scotland.  It's not one I've seen - but there's any amount of stunning artwork in the film!

This is Paintings in which....

Matthew Stadlen spends the day with paintings from the Renaissance period to the 20th century.

The National Galleries of Scotland are:

• The Scottish National Gallery 
• the current exhibitions is Town and City | Scotland’s Urbanised Landscape 1700-1900
• there's Easel Sketching in the Gallery - November Thursday, 15th to Friday, 16th November 2012, 2-4pm
• you can search the collection - here's an example of what it contains
• The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art which is currently showing The Scottish Colourist Series: SJ Peploe
• The Scottish National Portrait Gallery - currently showing the BP Portrait Award 2012

11th November 2012 - Who's made a mark this week?

Today is Remembrance Sunday and the eleventh day of the eleventh month - when people all around the Commonwealth remember all those members of the Commonwealth armed forces who have died in the line of duty that others might live.  On Monday last week I watched members of the British Legion hammer small crosses with poppies on them into regimented boxes on the grass outside Westminster Abbey.  Each was for a different part of the armed forces - with the biggest section given over to the unknown soldiers.

However, many of the crosses had names on.

Sometimes the simplest images are the most powerful - although oddly I can find no artwork associated with Remembrance Sunday.

A number of the crosses have names on and messages from loved ones
photographed outside Westminster Abbey

In the USA:

• Vets preserve memories of war with their own art
• in Houson Texas, an exhibition of war photography WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath has opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH).  The FT has a slideshow of images of conflict from 1847 to today
• The National Post reports that Painting Belgium’s battlefields: Wartime scenes part therapy for 93-year-old Second World War veteran

and in Newfoundland, Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) painted and posted a painting of a poppy for Remembrance

Artists and Art Blogs

Who Painted This?

•  My new series of posts is proving to be very popular and everybody seems to be being good and sticking to the rules - because this week nobody has worked it out as yet!  Who painted this? #3 has the answer to Who painted this? #2 at the end of the post and two supplementary clues in the comments

Drawing and Sketching 

• Sadie J Valeri (Sadie J Valeri) has written a short but very pertinent post for those want to learn how to draw - How to draw in 5 steps 
• Pete Scully (petescully) has been participating in nanodrawmo which is 50 drawings in a month - see nanodrawmo 2012 – part 1.  You've still got time to join.  Having a structure as per Pete seems to be the trick to getting 50 drawings done.

Loosely defined goals are for each participant to produce 50 individual works/drawings between Nov 1 and Nov 30. You can always do more than 50 if you've got it in you! That's just the minimum everyone should be shooting for.

Painting

• Stapleton Kearns Stapleton Kearns writes blog posts which, at times, are music to my ears - plus I clap and cheer!  Two such are
• Some thoughts on the challenges facing today's workshop participants
• More thoughts on the challenges facing todays workshops participants.  
• I think of him as the Simon Cowell of professional landscape painting.  You only have to look at the image for the second post to see what I mean!
• Harold Speed - On Painting a Head, and The Science and Practice of Oil Painting on Underpainting
• Sadie J Valeri has also been featured in Dezzy's Amazing Art Finds - see her post Sadie J. Valeri.  Very nice paintings - however a commentary appears to be missing.
• Women in the Act of Painting is described as
  

"an ever-growing collection of fine art images that depict women in the act of making visual art: painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking etc."

and includes one of my favourite paintings of a woman painting - next to a Fountain -
by John Singer Sargent 

The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy by John Singer Sargent

oil on canvas, 714 mm (28.11 in). Width: 565 mm (22.24 in).

Printmaking

• I liked the curated collection of fine art prints on Etsy called Printmaking - Not just another pretty Repro! by Monique from RedTailStudios

Sculpture

• Henry Moore Sculpture - a very poor precedent for public art This is my commentary on the decision by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets to sell Henry Moore's bronze sculpture "Draped Woman Seated".  The implications for public art are very worrying.

Art Business & Marketing

Who painted this? #3

This week's "Who painted this?" is influenced by the announcement of The Derwent Art Prize - as this work would qualify - if the painter were still alive and this work had been produced in the last three years!

Who Painted This #3

If you want to play the game: the rules are:

1. You need to leave your answer as a comment on this blog.  Howls of frustration can also be left while you try and work it out.......
2. In your comment, you must tell me ALL of the following:
• the title of the artwork
• the name of the artist
• the date it was created
• the media used
• where it lives now
• how you know all this eg how did you do your search (note 3 below)
3. This is about using brains not technology - so please do not "cheat".
• PLEASE do NOT use any of the "image matching" technology which exists (eg Chrome or Tineye) - that's just plain lazy! My suspicions will be raised by those who appear to know the answer a bit too quickly!
• You may use Google or any other search engine to search on WORDS in databases of images. 
4. If you're not getting anywhere in the first 24 hours I'll leave a clue as a comment on the post.

The person who in my judgement is the first person to get to the answer by fair means will get a mention in my very popular weekly blog post - along with a link to their website or blog or both.

NEW THIS WEEK:  Please note I'll be reading but won't be publishing any of the comments until somebody gets it - unless it's a howl and/or the wrong answer!

Who painted this? #2 - The Answer

The answer is:

• the title of the artwork - Gourds (click the link to see a larger version)
• the name of the artist - John Singer Sargent
• the date it was created - 1908
• the media used - Transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite on white, thick, rough-textured, wove paper (13 13/16 x 19 11/16 in. / 35.1 x 50.0 cm)
• where it lives now - Brooklyn Museum, New York

Gourds, one of over forty Sargent watercolors in the Museum's collection, demonstrates his virtuosity. In this image of the lush vegetation he encountered on the Mediterranean island of Majorca, Sargent combined vivid colors, bravura brushwork, and a range of watercolor techniques (including transparent and opaque washes, impasto touches, and leaving areas of the paper blank) to create a composition of stunning immediacy and visual richness.

The person who complied with ALL the rules was David Teter (Avid Art).

It would have been Robyn Sinclair (Have Dogs, Will Travel) if she'd just remembered to say where it is now! ;)

I do love the way that Blogger lines up all your answers in date order so I don't have any problem spotting who's the winner.

Henry Moore Sculpture - a very poor precedent for public art

Lutfur Rahman, the controversial/discredited Mayor of Tower Hamlets has ignored the concerns raised by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, a petition, and protests on a wide scale and confirmed his personal decision to sell a Henry Moore sculpture which is owned by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Note that this was NOT a decision of the Council - this was a decision of the Mayor.

Ostensibly the Mayor intends to raise funds for the borough to help address budgets cuts.  However straight after the decision was taken, it was also alleged that he also has plans to give money to local mosques in order to buy votes (see Why Lutfur wants to sell Old Flo).  Doubtless we'll hear more on that score in due course.

Draped Seated Woman (1957) by Henry Moore
Bronze - Currently located within Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The story of "Old Flo"

The sculpture in question is a very large bronze called Draped Seated Woman.

Review: Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012

Jordi Ruiz Cirera
with Margarita Teichroeb in the background

Spanish reportage photographer Jordi Ruiz Cirera (Found on the Road) has won the £12,000 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 with his  photograph of Margarita Teichroeb.

28 year old Jorge is Spanish and has been based in London ever since he came here to do his MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication.

His photograph is one of a series (Menonos) of photographic portraits of the Mennonite community in Bolivia. This series was developed as a reportage project for his MA degree.  The photo was taken on a digital 35mm Canon 5D mkII, using only available light.

I asked him why he chose this particular photograph of Margarita and he told me because it was his favourite photograph of all the ones he had taken (some 30 or so).  He took her picture at the home she shares with her mother and sister in the Swift Current Colony in Bolivia.As a community, the Menonites live with no cars, telephones, electricity or modern utilities and consequently photography is not a normal part of their lives, is usually forbidden and hence most were very awkward and often looked away from the camera.  In this photograph, she sits centre stage and looks directly at the camera - although her shyness comes across with the hand across her mouth and through the expression in her eyes.

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012
First Prize: Margarita Teichroeb
© Jordi Ruiz Cirera

The reason I like the photograph is that for me it tells a story of a person just in that look.  There is both context and character and a backstory plus an overwhelming sense of a real person rather than just an interesting image.

Jorge is currently employed as Photographer in Residence on a year long commission for Historic Royal Palaces.  This year he also won a Deutsche Bank Award in Photography with the University of the Arts London this year.  He plans to continue his career in documentary and reportage photography.

The Prizewinning Photographers