269 – A – Z (II) – William Nicholson was an Artist

William Nicholson, A was an Artist, from An Alphabet, published by William Heinemann, 1897. UK Government Art Collection.

A few weeks back I wrote a post From A – Z playing on the idea that the letters were Anders Zorn’s initials. I hadn’t remembered at the time that one of the earliest independent works by William Nicholson – whose brilliant paintings, prints, theatre designs and book illustrations I will be discussing this Monday, 2 March at 6pm – was an illustrated alphabet. Today I want to introduce the exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery by looking at the first image from the sequence – the letter ‘A’. However, the following talk, on 16 March, will also be A – Z (II), or rather Anders Zorn (Part II) – a second chance to enjoy the rich colour and painterly splendour of Sweden’s great artist. A friend and colleague of both John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla, his art is every bit as brilliant as theirs. The talk will be perfectly self-contained for anyone who couldn’t be there for Part I, and will include completely different, but equally fabulous images for those who could.

This will be followed on 23 March by a second visit this spring to The Courtauld for their hit show Seurat and the Sea. If you want to see the exhibition in the flesh, I’d book now. I was planning to go this week, but it’s sold out until the second week of March – so I’ve booked then, in plenty of time for the talk. However, I won’t get to see the other exhibition there for a while, so on 30 March I will talk about Tate Modern’s Tracey Emin retrospective. There will be more on that in the diary soon.

If you do book any of these events, Tixoom will send an email with the ticket – effectively a link to the talk – within seconds. If it doesn’t arrive within 24 hours, do let me know and I’ll try and sort it out: it would be easier to do it then than 5 minutes before the talk! You should then get reminders 24 hours and 15 minutes before the talk, and these will also include the link.

This year’s trips with Artemisia are rapidly booking up, but there are still a few places left to visit Strasbourg from 5-8 June. As well as the city itself, with its rich history, one of France’s most beautiful cathedrals and a notable collection of old master paintings, we will have a day trip to Colmar, a truly picturesque town and home to Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, one of those remarkable renaissance paintings which really should be seen in the flesh.

Today we have a print – a hand-coloured woodcut on paper. It is the first in a set of 26 – the entire alphabet – all of which are included in the exhibition I will discuss on Monday. Admittedly this isn’t a great photograph – it’s one I took in the exhibition, complete with reflections, but we’ll get to better ones. I wanted you to see the full size of the paper, with a wide, white border around the printed image, and Nicholson’s signature floating below. Often a print like this would be framed with a mount covering most of the border, leaving only the imagery visible – but here the whole extent of the sheet can be seen. In many ways I think it is preferable, as it shows the balance of positive and negative space that Nicholson intended, allowing the bold, powerful imagery to be read clearly. This has then been sympathetically framed in a simple black, which echoes the printed frame around the imagery of the woodcut itself. The red at the outer edge is the colour of the wall in the gallery. The first two letters of the alphabet are displayed on one wall, with the remaining 24 on another. They appear together like this:

Why haven’t they hung them in alphabetical order, though? I always get hung up on little (and probably irrelevant!) details like this. I suspect this choice was made because it is pictorially more satisfactory to have the two figures looking in towards each other: it makes the ‘composition’ of the hang look more contained. But it is also relevant that these two prints are separated from the rest of the sequence because they are both portraits. ‘A’ is a self portrait, while ‘B’ is Nicholson’s friend, former collaborator, and brother-in-law, James Pryde. ‘Beggar’ might appear to be an odd choice for an illustrated alphabet, let alone a friend, but not if you know a bit more about these two artists. They were students together at Hubert von Herkomer’s Art School in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and their friendship was strengthened when Nicholson married Pryde’s sister Mabel – also an artist – in 1893. From 1894 the two men collaborated to design posters for theatrical productions and other advertisements. Notice that the beggar is holding a staff. Rather than using their own names, the pair took their collective title from one they saw – and were apparently amused by – printed on a sack of hay: Beggarstaff. As J. and W. Beggarstaff, most of their surviving work was produced in 1895 and 1896, and, although other designs are documented in later years, most are lost, and their appearance unknown – but they don’t appear to have collaborated after 1900.

Is it a coincidence that An Alphabet was Nicholson’s first major independent commission, and that, if placed in alphabetical order, the two turn their backs on each other? Or that Pryde is cast as the beggar, with an uphill struggle ahead of him? These days, Pryde’s work isn’t nearly as well-known as Nicholson’s, and, as his Wikipedia entry states, ‘He is principally remembered as one of the Beggarstaffs’. However, it’s not as if Nicholson looks entirely positive about his own artistic future, given the intriguing caption – A was an Artist – but more of that later.

The boldness and clarity of conception of this image is what helps to make it memorable. Both colour and line are kept to a minimum, with a matt black background in the upper half, and a grey/beige colour for the floor. These limited means show the influence of Japanese woodblock prints, very much in vogue in the second half of the 19th century, and collected by artists such as Monet and Van Gogh. If you think about it, the composition of today’s print is not entirely dissimilar to that of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers… Japanese art was also an influence on many other artists, including Whistler, whom Nicholson greatly admired. Indeed, it was Whistler who had introduced him to another William – William Heinemann – who published An Alphabet in 1897. The limited colour range of A was an Artist is also typical of Whistler – just think of Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (see 151 – Mommie dearest).

The artist (a self portrait by Nicholson, as I’ve said) sits on the ground with his knees to one side and his feet towards us, resting his left hand on the ground on another print from An Alphabet. The label in the exhibition says that ‘Nicholson depicts himself as a pavement artist’, but I’ve always thought that the term ‘pavement artist’ refers to someone who draws – with chalk, usually – on the pavement itself. I’m not sure about its application to a man who has laid a print on the pavement. This reminds me more of the people who hawk prints at tourist destinations, or along the park fences on Piccadilly and Bayswater Road in London. Another print is propped up on the right-hand side, but cut off by the bold black frame.

Nicholson shows himself in profile, which makes the image less personal, but also stronger. His black hair is apparently brilliantined, with the shine created by bright patches of white paper in the black ink, suggesting the reflection of light. A woodcut is a relief print, meaning that areas which are not to be coloured are cut away. It is the top surface, the original surface of the block, which takes the ink. The reflections of light in the hair were made by cutting into the block so that the ink wouldn’t reach them. Thin lines, like the wrinkle in between Nicholson’s nose and cheek, or the folds on the scarf and waistcoat, are especially bravura examples of cutting, as they are made by thin ridges of wood standing away from the rest of the block which was cut away all around them. It would be so easy to take them out with one slip of the chisel or gouge, and impossible to replace.

Nicholson’s head is upright and his chin held high, suggesting a certain pride, even if he is seated on the ground, and dressed in his shirtsleeves. Yes, he has a waistcoat, but without a tie or jacket this outfit would read as working class, suggesting the subject is a humble street trader.

This reading is confirmed by the rolled-up sleeves – a real sense that Nicholson is at the ‘coal face’ of making, entirely down-to-earth, but proud of his honest labours. To the left of the knees we can see what is effectively the ‘horizon’ – the join between the ground and the black background. To the right, the horizon would appear to be lower – but that is the result of Nicholson’s shadow cast on the ground: the light is coming from the left. This shadow has the same intensity as the shadows in the folds of the trousers and the background itself, all of which are therefore unified into one area of black. This lack of variation in tonal values is another of the features which makes the image so clear and so striking. Oddly, the left arm, resting on the floor, does not cast a shadow – but that is presumably to simplify the composition. It also helps to draw a parallel with the image propped up on the right: Nicholson’s left arm reaches out behind him, and rests on the floor, in a similar way to the figure in the print marked ‘D’, whose right arm reaches forward and rests on a stick. There is some form of symmetry, or echo, between these two figures, which implies that the selection of this print is relevant to the interpretation of the image as a whole. The flesh tones of Nicholson’s arms may have a pink wash, but I might be imagining that – or it might have faded. However, the clothing of the figure in the print on the floor is coloured red.

The print of ‘P’, like ‘A’, has a grey-beige floor and plain black background. We’ll see below what these images were, and consider what relevance they have to Nicholson himself. However, what most intrigues me is the choice of the word ‘was’ in the caption, A was an Artist. What was Nicholson thinking? Why not A is an Artist? He was only just starting his career, after all. He was 25 when this print was published, with another 52 years to live (not that he was to know that). Is it a sign of insecurity, not knowing if he could make it on his own without the help of James Pryde (on whom he has, nevertheless, turned his back, and who he has imagined as a beggar)? Or is it the opposite? Maybe Nicholson had supreme confidence in his legacy, and knew that people would still be looking at this woodcut in the future – as indeed we are in 2026. The print reminds us that we are looking at a portrait of an artist who was working in the past, and a self portrait, at that. As such he could have used the image to illustrate a different letter: I was an Artist. This works as a statement, even if it doesn’t function in the standard terms of an Alphabetical sequence. W was an Artist would also make sense, as would N… Whatever the explanation, the phrase is strange, and it is the only print out of 26 in which he uses the word ‘was’. Elsewhere we have the format of B for Beggar, which is one of sixteen uses of the word ‘for’ on its own. There are eight examples of ‘is for’, and one where it is just the letter and the word (X Xylographer – a man cutting a woodblock). ‘A’, though, is where the alphabet starts, and where Nicholson starts – and where he all but suggests he is already finished!

I said above that these are ‘hand-coloured woodcuts’ – but what does that mean? Compare and contrast the next two images.

The one above is a detail from a version in the British Museum, while the other is a detail of the print in the UK Government Art Collection – the one in the exhibition that we have been looking at. I hope you can see that the basic composition, printed in black, is exactly the same: it was printed from the original block. However, the red colour on the print is applied differently. In the BM version (top) the red goes all the way down to the hem of the man’s garment, with a slightly darker brushstroke over the chest. The face is also consistently pink. In the Government print (bottom) there is less colour on the face, the paint does not go down to the hem, but does colour some of the sleeve over the right shoulder. They are, simply, hand-coloured: Nicholson took each individual black and white print, and added colour to the robes of the figure with a brush and watercolour paint. He also added a grey wash to the clothing of the self portrait and grey-beige to the floor. This technique was highly personal, making each print a unique ‘original’, but it was enormously time-consuming. When the sequence was re-released, it was reproduced via lithography: the edition was more consistent, and cheaper to produce.  

But what are the two prints he appears to be selling? And how relevant were they to his personal life, and his career as an artist?

D is for Dandy would turn out to be entirely relevant. One of the aspects of Nicholson’s life and creativity that the exhibition explores – and which I will touch on this Monday – is his self-presentation. Like many artists, he was one of his own best creations, and was always dressed to the nines, whether formally in public, or informally at home – his dressing gown was notorious! He also loved the precise shade of yellow which this Dandy is wearing. Not only did he use it in the costume designs for one of Noël Coward’s earliest plays, but he also had a favourite waistcoat in this shade: in a family portrait by William Orpen (which is in the exhibition) he is wearing it underneath the dressing gown…

Notice how, being a print, in A was an Artist the pose of the Dandy is reversed, a mirror image of the original. However, he has made sure that the letter ‘D’ is the right way round, and appears at the bottom left of the image, as it does in the original – it is a deliberate choice to make sure that the ‘D’ is seen – a confirmation that the identification of the subject is relevant. Unlike ‘A’, D is for Dandy has a white background and floor, with a single thin line for the horizon. Nicholson omits this line in the version seen in A was an Artist, presumably for simplicity’s sake.

There are minor variations in P for Publican. The long, sleeveless coat is maroon, rather than the reddish pink used in Artist, and the front panel of the coat is completely and consistently coloured. Although the image is reversed (with a simplified, and shorter, pipe), he has made sure we can read the ‘P’, but has left it in the bottom right, its position in a mirror image. While the choice of this character alongside his self portrait might appear strange, it is – surprisingly perhaps – another autobiographical reference. When he married Mable Pryde in 1893 it was without her parents’ permission, or even knowledge. They eloped, married in Ruislip, and went to live in a former public house, the Eight Bells in Denham, Buckinghamshire. Shortly afterwards James Pryde came to visit for a couple of weeks – but stayed for a couple of years. They were, indeed, at home in the pub. Or, put another way, they were the publicans…

As it turns out, the basic elements of this composition would serve Nicholson well. In several of his still life paintings, and at least one portrait, the main subject rings out against a profoundly black background. The difference with the later works – as we will see on Monday – is that these subjects are brilliantly detailed, almost mesmerically so. However, the flashing, flashy highlights we can see in the slicked-back hair of this print have their own life in Williamson’s virtuosic application of oil paint which became a hallmark of his portraits and still life paintings. A was an Artist who started as a printmaker.

Freudian (time) slip

Lucian Freud, Painter and Model, 1986-7. Private Collection.

When I first published this post I suggested that it was an unacknowledged sign of ageing that I am increasingly aware of a succession of artists’ retrospectives. For example, there was the exhibition to celebrate Lucian Freud’s 80th Birthday at the then relatively-recently renamed Tate Britain in 2002. Or the 90th Anniversary exhibition in 2012, the year after his death, at the National Portrait Gallery. Then it was the celebration of the centenary of his birth at The National Gallery in 2022… Nevertheless, with each iteration I have seen something new, and something which has come as a surprise. This time, it is the extent and variety of his works on paper – I had no idea that he drew so much. I will talk about this more thoroughly this Monday 23 February at 6pm when I introduce the exhibition Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting which has just opened at the National Portrait Gallery. Yes! They are having another Freud exhibition, so soon after the last one! However, the ‘last one’ at the NPG was 14 years ago. How does that happen?!

The week after (2 March) I will talk about William Nicholson, whose career spanned numerous genres and techniques. I always used to think of him as the overly ‘Academic’ father of arch-modernist, and leader of the St Ives School, Ben. However, he was far more than that, as the current exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester shows – but then, their exhibitions are always superb. I will return to Sweden for Anders Zorn (Part II) on 16 March. The talk will make perfect sense for anyone who wasn’t able to join me for Part I. There will be many superb paintings from across his career – a result of the way that the exhibition was structured in Hamburg – and there will be plenty more luscious colour and effortless brushstrokes to enjoy, not to mention some even more spectacular painting, for those who did see Part 1. This will be followed on 23 March by a second visit (this year) to The Courtauld, to see what promises to be a truly sparkling exhibition exploring the relationship between Seurat and the Sea. A while back I had suggested a third talk about a Courtauld exhibition, but I’ve decided that it would be a better idea to see the exhibition in question before deciding if it would be a good idea – so keep your eyes on the diary for more information.

If you missed my talk on the Wallace’s exhibition Caravaggio’s Cupid I have recently given an expanded version as a study evening for ARTscapades, and as they have the facilities to record their talks (unlike me) you can catch up with the recording if you book on that link. Today, though, I want to re-post my thoughts about a painting in which an artist gets to grips with the nature of painting itself.

Called Painter and Model, we see a woman standing on the left wearing a brick-red painting smock, covered in paint, and holding a paintbrush between both hands. She is effectively in profile, looking down towards the bottom right corner of the painting, with her pale face standing out against a dark wardrobe which occupies the back left corner of the space. On the right is a battered leather sofa, the colour of which is strikingly similar to the woman’s smock. Lying on it, on his back, is a naked man. If her head is framed by the wardrobe, his is placed against the far arm of the sofa, and is seen full face, rather than in profile. Binaries, and contrasts, are always an important aspect of Freud’s work. The man’s left forearm lies along the back of the sofa, while the right rests on the seat, with the hand just sticking over the edge. His right leg, extended, stretches down so that the heel of his right foot is resting on the floor. The lower half of this leg, and the foot, cast intense, dark shadows on the meticulously detailed floorboards. His left leg is bent, and leans against the back of the sofa. His left foot is tucked up behind the near arm, and can’t be seen. Lying on the floor in the foreground is some of the paraphernalia of painting – tubes of paint, and paintbrushes of different sizes. The walls are in an appalling state of repair – painted yellow, but re-plastered with pink plaster, which has not yet been repainted. However, it still seems to be showing signs of damp, presumably the initial cause of the repairs. A blind has been pulled down over the window, and crumples untidily as if in need of replacement itself. The top of the walls are deep in shadow, but brightly illuminated further down, with the boundaries marked by uneven half shadows, probably cast by an uneven lampshade.

Lucian Freud was renowned for making what might seem to be unreasonable demands of his models. Once his career was established, he became a man of habit, and would paint regularly, either during the day, in natural daylight, or after nightfall, in artificial light. This is clearly a night-time painting – the stark shadows tell us as much. He would work on more than one painting at a time, with the daytime models making way for those arriving in the evening. They would return every day at the allotted time for weeks or months, or even, in some cases, for years. In order for him to discover something ‘unexpected’ and create something new, he would often pose the models in unusual positions, or in surprising relationships to one another. It might seem that he was being entirely controlling, making the models obey his whim. And yet, of course, they didn’t have to be there. Often they were friends or family, but above all, they were people in whom he was interested. If he wasn’t interested, he couldn’t paint. Nevertheless, as a substantial number of his models were women, and, moreover, women who were naked, he was sometimes criticized as a voyeur. I’m sure this painting was intended to confront this claim, as it turns the idea of ‘the male gaze’ on its head.

In terms of the title, Painter and Model, it is surely clear which is which. The woman on the left is the painter, the naked man is the model. In this one bold gesture Freud manages to subvert the whole history of the Western European nude, in which, we imagine, a fully clothed man paints a naked woman, and in the process, he objectifies her. In this painting it is the man who becomes the object, subject to the whim of the female artist. She is standing, upright and secure, whereas he is supine, passive and vulnerable – apparently a complete reversal of gender stereotypes. Of course, it’s a little bit more nuanced than that. Or, to put it in other words, it’s nowhere near that simple. I’m intrigued, for example, that the painting is called Painter and Model rather than Artist and Model, but paint is clearly of the essence. And, whether Painter or Artist, is the woman really the one who is in control? One of the problems for women over the course of Western European Art History was the nature of the female gaze, because, quite simply, it wasn’t allowed. ‘It’s rude to stare’, as I’m sure many of you were told by your parents, and it was particularly rude for women to stare. You were supposed to stand with your hands politely held in front of you, and look modestly down. And if you’re looking ‘modestly down’ all the time, then you can’t look at things to paint them. Women weren’t allowed into life drawing classes until the 20th Century (on the whole): for them to look at a naked man was considered to be inappropriate. But in this painting we see Freud reconsidering the whole issue. Or do we? Maybe we should have another look at the painting. Even in this detail, although more pointedly if we look at the whole image (above and below), it becomes clear that the woman is standing in precisely that appropriately ‘modest’ feminine way, hands held in front of her body, and her face looking down towards the floor. She is not staring at the man, not even gazing at him, despite his unabashed nudity. Indeed, the male gaze is still fully active, but it is the naked model in the painting – the man – who is gazing – even staring – at us. The model seems to be more in command, and more commanding, than the painter.

It becomes more complex when you realise that, given the title of the painting, the woman on the left is both painter and model. Although she holds a paintbrush, she is modelling for Freud as a painter. And she is painted – in more ways than one. First, she is one of the subjects of the painting, one of the models that Freud has painted, but second, her smock is covered in paint. She appears to have used the fabric to clean her brushes in between different brushstrokes, as Freud used to, either on the walls of the studio or using the rags which can often be seen lying on the floor in the background of his paintings. So, Freud has painted her, and she has ‘painted’ herself. Look again, and you will see her smock covered with the same yellow as is used for the walls, the light greys of the damp and of the window frame, and the darker shades of the wardrobe and of the shadowed areas of the sofa, with the smock itself more or less the colour of the sofa. Indeed, the smock is effectively Freud’s palette, an inchoate mass of paint which is surely not unlike whatever palette he used to form this image.

We add yet another layer of complexity when we realise that both models were also artists. On the right is Angus Cook – described as ‘model and artist’ in the National’s 2022 exhibition, or ‘artist and filmmaker’ at the NPG currently, although I can find little about his work online. One source describes him as a poet, and there are also some of his texts about art. Above all, he was part of a nexus of friends and lovers, several of whom feature in Freud’s work. On the left is Celia Paul, a respected artist in her own right. She came to Freud’s attention as a student at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he was a visiting tutor. They went on to have a ten-year relationship, with Paul often modelling for Freud, as she does here.

In the bottom half of the painting we can see five feet – three human, two sofa. It’s a sort of game, and one that Freud played in different ways in different works. Each foot has a different relationship to the floor (and Freud was always interested in relationships). The two carved wooden feet are connected by the sharp line of shadow cast by the edge of the sofa which, together with the glints of light on the curving bulges of these feet, reminds us that this was a night-time painting. Cook’s right heel rests on the floor, while his left foot remains unseen. Paul’s two feet, on the other hand(!), are firmly and securely planted, the toes turned out a little from the heels. And yet, how secure are they?  A curious detail suggests that something might be awry.

Whose paints are these? Stop and think about it: have you seen an easel, or even a canvas? If Paul is the painter, what is she painting, and where, exactly, is the painting itself? Or is she just posing as a painter, for Freud? Are these her paints or his? And look – her right foot is planted on one end of a tube of paint. A tube of green paint. You can see that: the lid was not put back on the tube, and some of the green paint (more brightly coloured in the original than in this reproduction) is squeezing out. Am I wrong in seeing some form of sexual connotation here? Would I be right in going so far as to say that it seems a little bit, well, Freudian?

In case you didn’t know, Sigmund was Lucian’s grandfather. This must have had an impact on the boy, but more so on the student, and, as he came to a fuller understanding of the world, and of the significance of his grandfather’s work, on the adult artist. Both spent a lifetime analysing people lying on couches, for one thing. On Monday we might just find that there were other things that they had in common.

268 – Martini, shaken… and stirred

Simone Martini, St John the Evangelist, 1320. The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham.

I’m really looking forward to talking about The Barber in London this Monday, 9 February at 6pm and I can’t wait to go back to the museum itself. The Barber Institute is part of the University of Birmingham, and I’ve only actually visited once, but it does have the most fantastic collection. However, there is no point going there now, as the building is being renovated, which is why some of the best paintings are currently on loan to The Courtauld. There aren’t a huge number, so we should be able to look at each one in some depth. However, there are paintings by Bellini, Gossaert, Hals, Rubens, Van Dyck, Poussin, Claude, Vigée Le Brun, Reynolds, Turner, Whistler and Monet – among others – so there will be more than enough to see!

I will then talk about two British artists who both painted portraits – although I think that the first, Lucien Freud, who I will look at on 23 February, was really only interested in portraiture to the extent that a face was part of a human being as a whole. The current exhibition of his work– at the National Portrait Gallery – is called Drawing into Painting, and is the first to focus on works on paper. The following week, 2 March, I will turn to William Nicholson, who started life as a printmaker, became successful as a portraitist, and today is best known (perhaps) for creating some of the most exquisite Still Life paintings of the 20th century. His work can currently be seen in a superb exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.

If you weren’t able to make last Monday’s talk, my enjoyment of the Anders Zorn exhibition in Hamburg – which will open soon in Madrid – was such that I gathered enough material to put together two talks. I am hoping to deliver the second, covering the most spectacular portraiture, etchings, the nude and Zorn’s homeland, on 16 March, but I’ll have to wait for a few things to settle down before I can be sure of that – so keep your eye on the diary. I’m hoping that subsequent talks will include Seurat and the Sea, Michaelina Waultier, Tracey Emin and possibly even an introduction to the Canaletto and Bellotto exhibition in Vienna… but more on them soon.

If you do book any of these events, Tixoom will send an email with the ticket – effectively a link to the talk – within seconds. If it doesn’t arrive within 24 hours, please let me know and I’ll try and sort it out: it would be easier to do it then than 5 minutes before the talk! You should also get two reminders, at 24 hours and 15 minutes before the talk, and these will also include the link.

Today, though, I want to look at a painting from The Barber Institute which is not currently at The Courtauld. However, it’s not far away: it’s in the Sainsbury Wing, at the other end of The Strand, in Room 58 of The National Gallery. It travelled to London for the Siena exhibition, which ended on 22 June 2025, and has yet to return to it’s Birmingham home… It probably won’t get there before 28 June 2026, though, as that is when The Courtauld’s exhibition ends.

At some point during last year’s Siena exhibition at the National Gallery I was talking about Simone Martini, and mentioned today’s painting – one of the treasures of the Barber Institute in Birmingham – and the next comment, from someone else, was that it wasn’t an especially significant example of his work … or words to that effect. When I wrote about Simone Martini before (last February, as it happens – see 243 – Our most delightful Simone) I started by saying how, as an undergraduate, I and my fellow students held Simone in the highest regard. I wanted to write about this painting today to explain why, however ‘significant’ or otherwise it is, it is still a remarkably beautiful image, and also why, even if there doesn’t appear to be much to say there is still a lot to see, a lot that we can still enjoy, if we slow down and take the time. Yes, it is a relatively simple painting, a single male figure, half length, wearing a blue robe and red mantel, with his hands clasped – but that’s not all it is. That someone has considered it to be significant at some stage in its history is demonstrated by the fact that, framed as it is, it has also been set within an outer, black ‘box’ frame that is lined with red/pink velvet – matching, more or less, the figure’s mantel – which makes the painting itself ring out like a valued jewel mounted in a well-crafted, but not obtrusive, setting.

As originally painted it had – and still has – an engaged frame. Either the flat wooden panel and surrounding frame were carved from a single piece of wood, or the frame was fitted to the panel before the painting began. The whole surface – panel and frame – would have been sealed with size, a fish-based glue, and then covered with a fine linen fabric, the weave of which can be seen on the outer, flat element of the frame where the subsequent layers have worn away. This would have been coated with several layers of gesso, made from gypsum (calcium sulphate), a bit like plastering a wall to create the smoothest of surfaces on which to paint. The initial design would have been drawn onto the white surface, and then the whole frame and all of the background – the areas which were to be gilded – would then have been painted with bole, a red, clay-based paint. This would enhance the orange colour of the gold leaf, which was then applied, burnished, and tooled (patterned with small metal shapes tapped lightly onto the surface with a tiny hammer). This whole process means that the frame is firmly attached to the painting, and the surface of the gold is continuous from one to the other. However, on the left-hand side there are holes in the frame (which you can’t see in this photo, as they are on the side) telling us that this panel was originally attached to another with hinges: this man is looking to our left towards an adjacent figure in what is generally assumed to have been a triptych, or three-panelled painting.

The subject has a halo, so is a saint, and is clean-shaven – the most common way of suggesting that a man was young. Wearing a pinkish-red over blue, the most likely identification is St John the Evangelist, always said to be the youngest of the apostles, and no one has ever doubted this identification. But why would we assume this was part of a triptych, rather than just a diptych? Quite simply, because of his attitude, or mood – one of intense, but suppressed, grief, lamenting the death of Jesus, who was presumably depicted in the panel to the left of this one. At the far left, in the third panel, would have been the Virgin Mary. I can’t find an equivalent as a triptych, but overall the effect would have been similar to the following painting from the Brera in Milan by Giovanni Bellini, dating from about 1460.

The other two panels by Simone Martini – showing Mary and Jesus – have never been located, but then it is surprising that anything has survived from 1320, over 700 years ago. Even this panel shows signs of damage, particularly around the frame – hence the fact that we can see the linen weave, not to mention a number of dents and cracks. Nevertheless, it is still possible to see that the gilding on the frame was itself tooled with a series of circles and dots of different sizes. The flat gold background is also tooled, and is framed by bands containing quatrefoils (four-leafed shapes) which are themselves built up from leaves and flowers surrounded by small circles. St John’s halo appears to sit in front of the tooled frame. However flat we might consider gold ground paintings to be, Martini creates space behind the Saint. The frame is three dimensional, but then if the halo is in front of the tooled framing, and St John’s head is in front of that, then he is being pushed into our space, thus making him look three dimensional, a real presence, standing just in front of us and worthy of our devotion.

The halo is a circular band slightly wider than the tooled frame of the background, and contains similar quatrefoils as well as larger leaf shapes, or hearts. The inner circle of the halo is just wider than St John’s head, which would therefore originally have been encircled by a thin band of flat, burnished gold. Sadly, much of this has been worn away, with the result that in places we can see the reddish bole which would originally have been under the gold. This additional framing element would have helped to make the head stand out just that little bit more – remembering that, as well as patterning the surface, the tooling was also designed to reflect flickering candlelight: the halo itself would have flickered around the more evenly illuminated head. When seen this close we realise how carefully Martini has controlled the level of John’s grief. The brow is just slightly furrowed, the eyelids narrowed (as they always are with Simone), and the eyes looking out of the far corners – as if he cannot bear to look at the dead Christ full on, but has his head turned slightly away. The mouth is also puckered, tight together at the centre but parted on either side, trying to keep his mouth closed, but on the verge of giving way to intense sobbing. However, as the ‘collar’ of his mantle falls around his neck it casts shadows. The deep red space that this creates is like a gash, suggesting a crying mouth, or open wound. The hem of the garment is folded over, revealing an intricate pattern in mordant gilding (gold leaf which has been stuck on top of the paint). The top of this band corresponds to the level of the Saint’s mouth, and the lower edge to the base of his head: every detail has been carefully planned and precisely measured.

The tooled frame of the gold background continues down either side, but does not get to the bottom of the image, which is crossed by what appears to be a parapet with an inscription on it. However, this parapet is not as deep as the tooling is wide: I get the feeling that the tooling is ‘supposed’ to continue to the ground, framing the full length of the standing figure, it’s just that we can’t see it because the parapet gets in the way, and anyway, the painting doesn’t go that far down. The tooling can barely be seen on the right of the painting, and is hidden by John’s right elbow (on our left), where the mantel loops around the blue sleeve.

The parapet itself is marbled – it is clearly supposed to be made of stone. The parallel with the Bellini example is coincidental, but may have a common meaning. Bizarrely perhaps, in the Bellini, the Virgin and St John appear to be standing inside Christ’s sarcophagus, the top of the edge of which can be seen far more than the very thin strip at the front. However, there is still space for an inscription, an elaborate, but stirring, signature: “When these swelling eyes evoke groans, this work of Giovanni Bellini could shed tears”. Simone Martini, on the other hand, has simply written “Anno Dni MCCCXX” – ‘the year of Our Lord 1320’. But then, there were two other panels which could have include his name… and potentially something else. I’m intrigued that St John stands behind this parapet though. Does it imply that he and the Virgin were conceived as being in the sarcophagus, as they are in the Bellini? Or does it relate more to the later tendency, in portrait paintings by Jan van Eyck among others, to show their subject behind a similar structure. Parapets like this work in a contradictory fashion, both separating us from the subject, but also forming a bridge towards them. Practically speaking, it also justifies the half-length image: what is the point of painting the legs if they are behind a parapet? Were images like today’s painting the origin for the use of such structures in early Renaissance portraiture? I’ll have to keep thinking about that!

Simone does make the draperies unnecessarily complicated – although that only adds to my enjoyment of the painting. I love the way that the curve of the mantel around the elbow echoes the equivalent curve of the blue sleeve, and also how the sleeve parallels the continuation of the hem of the mantle from left to right as it emerges from behind the sleeve. I’m also intrigued by the way in which John’s right sleeve has been rolled up. We see the left sleeve (on our right) at full length. There is a deep shadow within the opening, framed just to our left by the vertical fall of the mantel, which also casts shadow. On our left, the right sleeve has been folded back, and then back out again, thus revealing the top of the embroidered gold band.

Great care has been spent on the interleaving fingers which create arcs curving from right to left and then back again, almost like a bridge going over the hands. Martini has even tried to show the thumb of John’s right hand, and even if this is not entirely successful, no one else at the time was getting this close to a naturalistic depiction of hands. There is something about the rhythmic play of the fingers, the different ways in which they overlap, and the arching backwards and forwards, that expresses to me the movement inherent in the wringing of hands. They sit neatly against the blue background, while the right arm, bent at the wrist, also echoes the upward curve of the lining of the red mantel, which appears to be marginally lighter than the outer side. This detail somehow captures the reflection of light from the gilding of the hems rather beautifully, hinting at the magical effect that illumination by flickering candlelight in a dark setting must have created. At John’s left wrist the gold embroidered hems of both the blue sleeve and red mantel emerge from behind the arm at the same point. While the embroidery on the blue sleeve is fully visible as it falls, that on the red mantel flares out and folds back, with the hem undulating to the bottom of the painting. Meanwhile, the very edge of the mantel continues upwards from the same point behind the wrist. I find all of these delicate coincidences, the echoes, the concentric curves and flowing folds astonishingly beautiful – and remarkably expressive.

The hem of the mantle is mapped carefully as it rises in front of the chest and then falls again just below the level of the shoulder. The lighter lining is delicately trimmed by one edge of the embroidered gold, defining its journey around the upper arm in broken curves with a nervy, tentative quality. In a few places the ‘outside’ of the mantel is partially revealed, with different widths of the embroidered gold band becoming visible, glowing out of the darker shadows to our right of the figure. Most of the tooled frame of the background is hidden here, and there is even the suggestion, at one point, that the mantel has actually fallen outside the frame, and so into our space. St John is present, in front of us. Originally, the Virgin would have joined him in lamentation over the dead Christ, in front of whom we must imagine ourselves standing. John is undoubtedly shaken by everything that has gone before, his emotions are stirred, but under control. Nevertheless, the depth of his feelings are made clear in the subtle turn of his head, the angle of his eyes, the pursing of his lips and the delicate, detailed sensitivity of the fall of light and shade, and in the flow of every line. I’ve quoted from the opening speech of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night more than once recently, and I’m going to do so again – but not the first line, this time. I’m more interested in the fourth today: That strain again! it had a dying fall… Orsino is talking about the emotive power of music, but I’m seeing that ‘dying fall’ in every line of this painting. It is a wonder. I am so glad that it can currently be seen at the National Gallery, an introduction, at some remove, to the rest of The Barber in London.

267 – From A – Z: All about Zorn

267 – From A – Z: All about Zorn

Anders Zorn, Zorn’s London Studio on Brook Street, 1883. Zornmuseet, Mora.

I would love to say that I planned this, but I really didn’t. Last week I was talking about Anna Ancher, who was born on 18 August 1859, and this week I’m moving on exactly 6 months, to Anders Zorn, born on 18 February 1860. Both Scandinavian, they were born far from the capital of their respective countries, Denmark and Sweden, but both trained in the capitals – Copenhagen and Stockholm – and both travelled widely… though few travelled as widely as Zorn. So today I’ve called the post ‘A – Z’, which you can read as Ancher to Zorn, or simply as the latter’s initials. This would make sense, given that I’m writing about a painting that, despite its female protagonist, is really all about Zorn. This Monday, 2 February at 6pm I will talk about the exhibition of his work that I saw in Hamburg a couple of weeks ago, which unfortunately has just closed. However, it is transferring to Madrid (19 February – 17 May) in what I believe will be substantially the same form, although with the addition of a subtitle: Anders Zorn – Travelling the World, Remembering the Land. If you like John Singer Sargent and/or Joaquín Sorolla I really recommend that you join me: Zorn’s work is every bit as colourful, exuberant, and painterly as theirs, and sits in the same area of ‘Realism influenced by Impressionism’ that they – and Anna Ancher – all inhabit. The following week, 9 February, I will look at The Barber in London, the paintings from the Barber Institute in Birmingham which, thanks to the refurbishment of their usual home, are currently on display at The Courtauld. The Barber really does have an astonishing array of masterpieces, including paintings I love by artists I don’t always like.

I’m then going to turn to two British artists who are often associated with portraiture, even though this was only really a minor interest. The first is Lucien Freud, who is being celebrated at the National Portrait Gallery with Drawing into Painting, the first exhibition to focus on his works on paper. I’ll introduce that exhibition on 23 February, and then on 2 March I will turn to William Nicholson. His work can currently be seen at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester in the next of their superb series of exhibitions looking afresh at unjustly neglected British artists.

I’m entirely convinced that Anders Zorn was one of those artists who not only loved what he did, and never took a break, but who always knew exactly how to present himself. The result of this was that, from the very beginning of his career, people took him entirely seriously. Born in Mora, a little over 300km northwest of Stockholm, he studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of the Arts from 1875 – when he was only 15 – until 1880. He arrived intending to study sculpture, but before long switched to a focus on watercolour, at which he excelled – as we shall see on Monday.

At the Academy’s annual exhibition in 1880 he exhibited a watercolour called In Mourning to great acclaim, and he built on this success by producing several versions of the same subject in the following years. Along with the acclaim, the painting also brought numerous portrait commissions from local wealthy families. However, not satisfied with success at home, he decided to try the international market, and headed to London in 1882. This could so easily be the story of an ambitious young artist (he was still only 22) starving in a garret, but it really isn’t – far from it. He got in touch with the Swedish Embassy to be assured of some good contacts, and after a few months in Richmond, he took an apartment in Brook Street in the heart of Mayfair. He also ordered expensive suits, tasteful calling cards and quality furniture, setting himself up with all the appearance of a successful artist, even if he hadn’t yet had the time for a career. By doing this, though, he was able to present himself as exactly the right, classy, artistic outsider that the great and the good of London would seek out in order to be portrayed. He might have chosen Paris, which was considered the ‘centre of the art world’ at the end of the 19th Century, but he headed to London because it was in England that watercolour first became a Fine Art rather than just a desirable accomplishment for amateurs – thanks to Turner as much as anyone – and he wanted to hone his craft. It is Zorn’s position in London that is celebrated in today’s painting.

At first glance it might not appear to be about Zorn at all – even if we can assume, given the title (Zorn’s London Studio on Brook Street), that this woman has come to look at Zorn’s paintings. We could also assume that all the images in this room are by the Swedish artist – however, there is one exception. It is a well-appointed room – richly decorated with brick red walls and a fitted carpet patterned with brick red and black. We don’t see any of the ‘quality furniture’ I mentioned above, but there is a warm glow coming from the fire, so there is no economising on fuel. Given that the top of the frame of the highest exhibited painting is not visible, we can also tell that there is a high ceiling. This is a large room, warm and comfortably appointed: Zorn shows us that his lifestyle is very far from the romantic idea of a starving young artist. He also shows us how productive he is. Even in this corner of the room nine of his works can be seen, framed or unframed, on the wall or on the floor. A fashionably-dressed woman, clad in black, has arrived to look at the work, and is standing with her back to us, looking to her right so we just see her face, her gaze encouraging us too to look at the pictures on display – she is, effectively, a repoussoir.

These are all details from photos I took in Hamburg, and sometimes the lighting is not ideal. In places you can see light reflecting off the textured oil paint. Details like this are a reminder that, despite being a two dimensional art form, a painting is, in itself, a solid, three dimensional object. This fact is often disguised by official, ‘professional’ photographs. Although Zorn truly was a master of watercolour, the art-loving public would expect to see oil paintings from any self-respecting master. However, this is oil on wood – an oddly old-fashioned support for the 19th century – and this might reflect Zorn’s relative inexperience with the oil medium. Wood provides a harder, less flexible surface, and so it can be useful for painting small details: this isn’t a large work (38.9 x 29.6 cm).

The woman wears a black hat with a very broad maroon ribbon wrapped around it – or a headdress that is mainly built up from this ribbon (…I’m not a milliner!). Her head is beautifully framed by a painting in a flat, broad, gilded frame, and painted sky can be seen around her hat. The ‘profil perdu’ – or lost profile – stands out brightly against what is probably dark vegetation in one of Zorn’s many early landscapes. The visiting woman is looking at a painting of another woman, who also wears a black dress, but with a large white collar, almost like a ruff. This painting is not framed, and two white dots in the top left and right corners tell us that it is a watercolour, on paper, which is pinned to the wall. Two other images have been placed over it. The bottom left corner is covered by another broad, flat, rectangular frame, containing an image of a young man (probably…) looking down. The top right of the watercolour has a Japanese fan (… or at least a Japanese-style fan) propped in front of it. This is the one image I mentioned that is not by Zorn. It shows him to be a member of the avant garde: artists such as Whistler, and others in the Aesthetic Movement, who were strongly influenced by Japanese art. The peacock feathers which are in front of what I assume is a mirror are another feature connecting Zorn to the latest trends in British art: the Aesthetes would swoon.

Sitting on the mantelpiece is a small white box with a red ribbon: little flashes of red like this are almost a signature motif for Zorn. If we tone this colour down to the maroon of the woman’s hat, we can see the same colour echoed across the painting. It is used on the fan, in the watercolour (between the woman’s wasp waist and her arm), and in the painting on the far left. It isn’t that different to the brick red colour of the wall, all of which adds to the sense of a warm, harmonious setting. At the top of the painting is an oval image in a flat, gold frame. It shows a veiled woman looking down to our left. Anyone who knew Zorn’s work – or his reputation – would have heard about this painting. You have too: I mentioned it above.

In the lower half, there is another watercolour pinned to the wall. As far as I can see it shows two women walking arm in arm, the one on our left wearing a long lavender-taupe skirt, and on our right a long black dress and a broad, pale-coloured hat. She may also have a furled umbrella over her arm… Light comes into the studio from a window behind us, to the right, and casts the visiting woman’s shadow onto the patterned carpet – the pattern built up over black with short, painterly strokes of the brick red paint. The woman’s outfit includes a cinched black jacket, which falls below the hips, vented at the back. There are two yellow buttons at the top of the vent, one side of which is turned back to reveal a yellow lining. The skirt is gathered beneath a form of tail, which hangs down below a bustle, and there are two more layers of the skirt further down (and yes, I know as little about describing dresses as I do about hats). The painting of the young man appears to look down towards the fire, and beneath it is a narrow, portrait-format painting which is probably also a watercolour. It has a broad, olive-coloured mount (usually used for works on paper) and a narrow frame, and, judging by the sheens of pale paint which cover the surface, it is also glazed. The greens and yellows in this painting – together with a splash of red – suggest that it is an image of a garden. There are some fire irons lying on the floor in front of this framed, glazed watercolour, and they lead our eye into the room from the bottom right corner of the painting. The glow of the fire, illuminating the interior of the fireplace and the edge of the mantel, is a deliberate contrast with the daylight shining into the room. The framed watercolour, resting on the floor, casts a shadow on the wall. I think Zorn is showing off his ability to paint different types of light, even in these small details.

The painting at the top that I said people would have known about is none other than In Mourning, the watercolour that made Zorn’s name at the Royal Swedish Academy of the Arts in 1880. The one depicted in the studio is presumably one of the later versions which he is using as a form of calling card in London. The version on the right is the one I saw in Hamburg – the original – which now belongs to the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. What won people over was the extreme delicacy of the depiction – both in terms of technique and emotional involvement. Particularly admired was the transparency of the veil: extraordinary skill for someone who was only just graduating. Zorn’s ability to articulate the subject’s neck is also commendable. Not only is her head tilted to her left, but also twisted round towards us slightly. As a result, as she looks down, she appears to be looking at the ground in between us and her – a modest, averted gaze meant to disguise the extremity of her loss, but which, artistically speaking, also encourages empathy in the viewer. The gossamer collar is another remarkably virtuosic detail, while the broad wash of colour, in bold strokes at the bottom left, is a clear reminder that this is a painting – a performance of skill. For his whole career Zorn’s paintings are always performative: he is always reminding you precisely how brilliant he is, although in an entirely charming way.

However, the idea that the woman In Mourning is looking at the floor in between us is determined by the context, when we are only looking at her. Where does she appear to be looking when hung high on the wall in Zorn’s studio?

I am entirely convinced that he has set up a trail, a series of shared glances to lead our eye around the painting. In the small oil version we cannot see the position of the mourning woman’s eyes, but the position of her head suggests that she is looking towards the painting below her to the left. There are flashes of red and yellow in this latter painting, which make me think that it is one of the images painted during his first visit to Spain at the age of 21. It appears to show a woman looking to our right – so effectively towards the visitor in the studio. The visitor is also looking to our right, at the woman with the large white collar in the watercolour, who is looking down. It’s not just the visitor looking at her: the figure in the Japanese fan is facing to our left, and so also looking at the woman with the white collar. The latter’s neck is strongly tilted downwards, as are her eyes – as if she were looking towards her feet.

In the broader context she could even be looking at the painting below her – as could the young man in the small, framed image, who I previously suggested was looking towards the fire. If we follow their gazes we can see another face – but it isn’t a face in a painting: it appears in front of the olive mount, and so must be one of the reflections in the glass.

It is, in fact, a full-length reflection of a man in a dark suit with a white collar. His hair is dark, and his eyes are seen as pools of dark shadow. The edge of his nose catches the light, but his mouth also appears to be shadowed: it looks like he has a moustache – as Zorn did. Half-way down the right-hand edge of the garden scene we can see the reflection of a hand and a bright flash of white cuff. Who else could it be but Anders Zorn, watching over the visitor’s shoulder, offering information and advice, on hand to take a commission to make her look just like the woman with the large white collar? The fire irons lead our eyes into the painting, yes, but specifically they lead us to the glazed image bearing the reflection of the artist, a self portrait which is effectively looking out towards us. The fire irons lead us to his image, and they are balanced in the bottom left hand corner by his name, the signature on the patterned carpet. This really is all about Zorn – his studio, his works, his image, his name… his visitor.

His technique is superb, his understanding of the craft unparallelled, and his ability to promote himself, frankly, second to none. If In Mourning was the starting point of his career – the ‘A’, if you like, then ‘B’ is for Brook Street. On Monday we will see the rest of the journey, taking us all the way to the ‘Z’ for Zorn.   

266 – A Room of One’s Own

Anna Ancher, Evening Sun in the Artist’s Studio at Markvej, after 1913. Skagens Museum, Skagen, Denmark.

Over the next two weeks I will be giving two talks about Scandinavian artists. This Monday, 26 January I’m starting with Anna Ancher, the wonderful but relatively little-known (as far as the UK public is concerned) Danish artist. Her exhibition is on at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until 8 March, and so still accessible to many of you. The following week, Monday, 2 February I will talk about Anders Zorn, whose work I have just seen in Hamburg. The exhibition I visited closes this Sunday, which doesn’t give you much notice. However, it is travelling to Madrid, so if you like what you see – which I’m sure you will, if you like either John Singer Sargent or Joaquín Sorolla – you will have several months to get there (19 February to 17 May). A week later (9 February) I will introduce The Barber in London– the selection of masterpieces from the Barber Institute in Birmingham which are currently on loan to The Courtauld. Further events will be listed in the diary as soon as I have pinned them down, but should include introductions to the National Portrait Gallery exhibition Lucien Freud: Drawing into Painting on 23 February and to the William Nicholson exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester on 2 March.

If you do book any of these events, Tixoom will send an email with the ticket – effectively a link to the talk – within seconds. If it doesn’t arrive within 24 hours, do let me know and I’ll try and sort it out: it would be easier to do it then than 5 minutes before the talk! You should then get reminders 24 hours and 15 minutes before the talk, and these will also include the link.

One of the glorious things about the paintings of Anna Ancher is that they are so simple, so straightforward, and so easy to understand. And yet there is nothing banal about them: she got to the heart of a scene and saw the beautiful in the everyday. Admittedly this particular painting is not entirely typical of her work – but it does include many elements that are. It was never formally exhibited in her lifetime, and was only found, in her studio, after her death. This is why it is exhibited without a frame: the photograph shows it against the buttercup-yellow wall on which it is currently hung in Dulwich.

The painting is like a character study, preparatory for a more fully thought-out work, but it is the character study of a room, and of a specific time of day. It is an exploration of light at a particular moment, when, as the sun heads towards the horizon, light refracts across a tangent of the earth’s surface and only the orange wavelengths reaches us – or, in this case, reach the far side of the room opposite a casement window. The city of Bath, in the South-West of England, can look especially beautiful at this time of day. The orange light enhances the already-warm colour of the Bath Stone – a ‘honey-coloured oolitic limestone’ – from which most of the city is built. The glow is enhanced when seen against its complementary colour, the darkening blue of the sky. But that’s Bath, in England, and this is Denmark, and the very north of Denmark at that. This is ‘evening’, and in Skagen, where Ancher was born, where she grew up and where she worked, evening could come within a 7-hour range, according to the time of year. The sun sets at 15:30 in the depths of winter, and 22:23 at Midsummer, when the day is 10 ½ hours longer than it would be in December… but then, it’s only slightly further North than Aberdeen, in Scotland, or at about the same latitude as Sitka, Alaska…

Born Anna Kirstine Brøndum on 18 August 1859, her parents ran Brøndum’s Hotel in Skagen, a coastal town at the very Northern tip of Denmark which saw an influx of artists keen to explore the light of this coastal fishing colony. The 19th century saw many such ‘retreats’, including St Ives in Cornwall (visited by Anders Zorn, whose work we will enjoy next week). There was also Cullercoats, just North of Newcastle (frequented by the American Winslow Homer), and Staithes, in Yorkshire (where Laura Knight lived for a while) – and these are just the ones I’ve mentioned in my talks. I say ‘retreats’… They may have been a chance to get away for the artists, but for the local residents their remoteness, and the harsh climate they had to endure in order to eke out a living, was anything but a choice. For Skagen, it was a new phenomenon in the 1870s, with the first two artists staying at Brøndum’s Hotel in 1872. More came the following year, and in the summer of 1874, there was a young artist from the island of Bornholm, South East of Copenhagen: Michael Ancher. Anna was on the verge of turning 15, but the two bonded over art, with the older man offering tuition to the younger girl. They were engaged three years later, and married on Anna’s 21st birthday, 18 August 1880, at which point they moved into the Garden House of Brøndum’s Hotel. In 1884 they moved into a larger house in a street called Markvej, ‘Field Road’ or ‘Way’. Michael was extremely supportive of his wife’s career – they collaborated, and exchanged ideas (as we will see on Monday) – and yet she didn’t have her own studio until an extension to the Markvej property was built in 1913. This very studio is the subject of today’s painting: a room of her own (precisely what Virginia Woolfe said a woman needed to be a successful writer). Given that the extension was built in 1913, this painting is dated ‘after 1913’.

However, I do wonder if this is actually 1913 itself: the room is so tidy, to the extent of being empty. But then, Anna Ancher seems to have had a habit of putting things away. In the 1960s, when the Markvej house became a museum dedicated to the work of both Anna and Michael Ancher, thousands of sketches were discovered. Anna had, apparently, ‘hidden her oil studies away in drawers, cupboards and closets’, according to the catalogue of the exhibition. I’d be interested to know why the think the studies were ‘hidden away’ rather than just ‘put away’ – in order to be tidy… Either way, this sketch is not something Ancher had exhibited. Maybe she was just trying to capture this phenomenon, this effect of light, in order to be able to use it elsewhere, or maybe she was using the study as a tool to look more closely at the subtle variations of colour and light, and to practice her ability to paint them. Alternatively, she could have been worried that, as a painting in its own right, it might not have been received well – or even, understood – unpeopled as it is, and devoid of narrative. For its day, it is remarkably innovative, especially given the more conservative attitudes prevalent in Denmark at the time. Things have changed, though, and studies such as this are now key to our understanding of Anna Ancher’s work. And despite what I said, this room is not empty: it is full of light – and colour. And it is, of course, the colour of the light that affects everything else we see.

This is the very top of the painting, with the sunlight glowing somewhere between orange, amber and peach on the right-hand wall. We do not see the ceiling of the studio at all, and in the dim light of dusk, at the top of the painting the corner of the room cannot be distinguished. However, at roughly the same level as the top of the patches of orange light, the corner comes into sharp focus. The right-hand wall is slightly lighter, while the wall facing us takes on a marginally darker shade of lavender.

This differentiation in tone is even clearer if we look lower, seeing the full extent of the patches of sunlight. The darker area on the opposite wall reaches from the sharply-defined corner past irregular, diagonal strokes to bolder, horizontal marks. Gradually, as the contrast between the lit wall (on the right) and the wall in shadow becomes less significant, these get lighter: further from the corner the opposite wall is, of course, closer to the window itself.

If you have the opportunity to get even closer to the paint surface, the way in which the golden glow is established seems remarkable – even incredible. There are small, tentative dabs of the brush in subtly varied shades – orange, amber and peach I have suggested, but I would add salmon, terracotta and a deep buttercup yellow as well (although the perception, and naming, of colour is notoriously personal). The rectangles of light are only loosely defined, separated by sections of the apparently-lavender wall. However, the framework of the window itself, projecting the light and shade onto the wall, does not seem regular. This is presumably due to obstructions to the sunlight both inside and outside the room. There could be trees in the garden, and often – and we know this from other paintings which we will see on Monday – Ancher arranged plants on her window sills. The irregularity of the brushstrokes implies a sense of movement, though, as if the sun might be shining through leaves which are rustling in the breeze.

The furnishing of the studio is spare – although of course it could be that clutter has been cleared, and space has been created, simply to allow the artist to paint a study of space. However, the arrangement of objects looks spontaneous, rather than the controlled composition of so many still life paintings (you could, however, argue that this painting is exactly that: a Still Life). Two canvasses lean against the right wall in the back corner. The further one is built up with extreme economy of means – two vertical strokes of paint framing several loosely-applied horizontals. The nearer canvas has a cream-coloured frame, and a darker, taupe or mushroom-coloured surface – presumably a ground, as there is no visible imagery. The bottom of the frame stands away from the wall, and the canvas casts a triangle of shadow behind it – or rather, almost a triangle, as the wall has substantial wainscotting which affects the fall of the shadow. The contrast between the pale lavender of the wall on the right, and the darker tones of the opposite wall are particularly clear in this detail.

Closer to us, in the corner of the painting, are a small, circular console table with a slender stem supported on three curving legs, and what looks like a bureau or desk – it appears to have a roll top. On the far right, coming down the edge of the canvas, there are black details – but I’m afraid I haven’t been able to work out what, if anything, they represent. The edge of a curtain, hanging in the corner, perhaps?

This detail is taken from a different photograph to the one I started with, and I think the colours are slightly closer to the original – although I’m not convinced it is possible to remember exact colours. What is clear is that, around the bottom left of the patches of sunlight, the wall looks more blue. The wall may not have been ‘coloured’ at all, though. In all probability it would have been painted white, or off-white. One of the phenomena that Ancher was investigating is the way in which we experience colour. Not digitally, in an absolute sense, but by comparison. Blue and orange are opposite each other on the colour wheel – they are colour opposites, or complementary contrasts. It is the orange light that makes our mind read the colour of the wall as the absence of orange – or the opposite of orange: blue. This was an essential element of Impressionist Colour theory, and it’s worthwhile remembering that the Impressionists were contemporaries of Anna Ancher, if from an oldeer generation. She first met her future husband in 1874, the year of the first Impressionist Exhibition. However, her first visit to Paris, with Michael, was not until 1885. The 7th Impressionist Exhibition had been in 1882, and the 8th – and last – was in 1886, so she didn’t get to see them. However, in 1899 the couple settled in Paris for 6 months: they would have had more than ample opportunity to see the work of Claude Monet, for example, to whose experiments with light and colour this study comes closest. But then, she could also have seen his paintings in Copenhagen.

Getting closer still the precise forms of the furniture become clearer – as does the way in which Ancher has put them together. The rim of the circular tabletop is defined by two, maybe three curving brushstrokes, and the stem by three or four which splay out as they rise. Of the two objects – boxes, or books? – on top of the table, one is formed by small, overlapping parallel strokes, while the other has a few bold, straight lines. Maybe this is actually her palette! Both objects, together with the roll top of the desk, catch orange light reflecting from the wall. The left side of the tabletop is lighter than the right, the light reflecting from the wall being shadowed from the side that is closer to us by the lower object.

Stepping back again, the way in which the darkness of the opposite wall is affected by the light on the right becomes clearer now, I hope – the patch of deeper lavender coloured brushstrokes seems to spread from the corner at a level with the sunlight, the colours being subtly modulated across the surface. Close up we see the material of the paint itself, the brushstrokes and the subtly modulated tones and hues. From a distance we see the light of the setting sun, like a solid entity hovering, immeasurable, just in front of the wall.

Above all what Anna Ancher painted was a precise, compassionate observation of the way people lived. However, far rather than being banal, mundane, or down to earth, she lifts these situations out of the particular into the timeless and universal. She captures the beauty of everyday life, relishing the calm, the space, and especially, the light. One day I would love to make a ‘pilgrimage’ to Skagen, but am glad that, until 8 March, I can see these paintings in Dulwich. I do hope you can make it, too. If not, maybe you could join me for the talk on Monday?

265 – Dance of Death

Pablo Picasso, The Three Dancers, 1925. Tate Modern, London.

Last year, Tate Modern was 25 years old, and Picasso’s The Three Dancers, painted in 1925, was 100. This has inspired an exhibition of Tate’s entire collection of works by the Spanish master – something which was notably lacking when the museum first opened. Indeed, as I remember it, today’s painting was the only work of his to go on show. As you may have noticed, people love to complain about things, and the absence of most of the work by one of the 20th century’s unchallenged geniuses meant that the new institution was instantly awarded a black mark by many observers… Still, they are all on view now (well, almost all), and I will be talking about the resulting exhibition, Theatre Picasso – staged truly dramatically by artist Wu Tsang and curator Enrique Fuenteblanca – this Monday, 12 January, at 6:00pm.

After this I will give two talks about Scandinavian artists, responding to exhibitions of their work. The Danish Anna Ancher, who I will talk about on 26 January, is currently being exhibited beautifully at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Anders Zorn is on show in Hamburg – and if you can’t get there before it closes on 25 January, you will be able to catch the exhibition later in Madrid… I will talk about him on 2 February, so you’ll be able to see if its worth a trip (spoiler alert: it is!). A week later (9 February) I will introduce The Barber in London – the selection of masterpieces from the Barber Institute in Birmingham which are currently on loan to The Courtauld. Further events will be listed in the diary as soon as I have pinned them down.

If you do book any of these events, Tixoom will send an email with the ticket – effectively a link to the talk – within seconds. If it doesn’t arrive within 24 hours, do let me know and I’ll try and sort it out: it would be easier to do it then than 5 minutes before the talk! You should then get reminders 24 hours and 15 minutes before the talk, and these will also include the link.

At first glance the relationship between this painting and its title is entirely straightforward: we can see The Three Dancers clearly. All three stand on one leg, with the other raised and bent at the knee. The central dancer raises both hands, holding those of the other two. They in turn hold hands behind the central figure’s back. And that – for me at least – is our first ‘clue’: something is going on behind someone’s back. They are all inside, dancing next to a pair of French windows which open onto a balcony. The right door is partly open, with the head of the central dancer framed against the sky, shown as darker blue when not seen through glass. The balustrade, made of thin metal balusters and an equivalent thin rail, can be seen behind the figures through the windows. The wall on either side is decorated with patterned wallpaper. It seems a surprisingly mundane, domestic space for such a performance to be taking place, even if the sight of three people dancing together might be familiar. One reasonably famous example would be the Three Graces in Botticelli’s Primavera (c. 1480, Gallerie degli Uffizi).

The formal similarities are clear: three people dancing, each holding hands with the other two, some arms raised, some lowered, and even a suggestion that the dance might, in some ways, involve a circular, twisting movement. At least two of Picasso’s figures appear to be female – at least, they have breasts – but that might be deceptive. In 1924, the year before this was painted, Picasso designed – and staged – the ballet Mercure for Count Étienne de Beaumont – a rival of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, for whom the Spanish master had previously been working. The piece was choreographed by Léonide Massine, with music by Erik Satie. One element of the performance involved three male dancers cross-dressing as the Three Graces, with sexually specific characteristics made out of crudely cut cardboard – hence the ambiguity about what we might be looking at here. Before I take this any further, though, I wonder if another painting – more recent than Botticelli – could have been a source for Picasso. If these are two women and one man (which is possible), then, once they have finished dancing, they might go out onto the balcony and sit down. If they did, they might end up looking like Manet’s The Balcony (1868-9, Musée d’Orsay). Or maybe this is just a result of both artists living and working in Paris at the time, where such balconies were commonplace.

But why do I think that at least one of the dancers might be male? It comes down to a statement Picasso made in 1965 to the British Surrealist artist (and collector) Roland Penrose, who was arranging the sale of the painting to the Tate Gallery (as it was then known) at the time. Picasso suggested that, rather than The Three Dancers, the painting should have been called The Death of Pichot – and this has led art historians to try and work out what the relevance of that event to the painting might have been.

The mention of Surrealism is not coincidental. Picasso was always his own man. He never wanted to be part of a group – however much the Surrealists themselves might have wanted him to join them. He employed so many of the same tools, after all – notably the fact that anything can be read in more than one way. Like the multiple viewpoints of Cubism, which fragment the picture surface and layer the imagery, the interpretation of art can also involve seeing things from different points of view. Visual imagery can be read in more than one way: not so much double entendre as double voir… The different ways in which Picasso uses this slippage between one thing and another helps to build up both the meaning of the painting, and the different characters of the individuals depicted. To be honest, I’m not sure how much of what follows is written down elsewhere, it’s not something I ever remember reading about, apart from the basic idea of who the three dancers might be. It is an interpretation I developed working for the Education team at Tate Modern from May 2000, when the museum opened, to 2008, when I ran off to join the ‘circus’ (again).

Ramon Pichot was, like Picasso, a Catalan artist: they met in Barcelona, and both travelled to Paris in 1900, together with a third man, Carles Casagemas. After the First World War Pichot went back to Spain, but returned regularly to Paris. On one of these visits he died suddenly, and unexpectedly – even though it had been known for some time that he was ill. The date was 1 March 1925, and Picasso was painting The Three Dancers, inspired, no doubt, by the Three Graces in Mercure. Technical analysis shows that he changed his original ideas, though – possibly as a result of Pichot’s death. The figure on the right can be read in a number of different ways. I find the main profile more ‘masculine’ than that of the other dancers, but I don’t think there is any real measure to justify that. You could, however, argue that it isn’t really a profile at all, but a shadow. There are two faces here: a small, brown one, with an angular profile and a black eye, and a larger, black one, the forehead and the nose defined by the pink arm of the central dancer, with the lips and chin delineated by the sinuous black outline curving against the blue sky. This face has a small, pale dot of an eye near to the brown face’s nose. As the black outline continues behind the figure, it could represent the shadow of the smaller person. Or maybe this dark, looming presence, more substantial than the small brown face, expresses Pichot’s death. His left arm, painted white, is raised above his head, where his hand meets the pink equivalent belonging to the central figure. In both cases the fingers are defined by the black lines between them, which terminate in small dots. However, as these lines start at the black head, they could also be read as the black profile’s hair. I wouldn’t worry about ‘either/or’ with these interpretations: ‘both’ is usually closer to the mark.

The dancer on the left is more complex. Arched over, its head tipped back, and with a leg kicking up behind, this is the most energetic figure. It is also, apparently, the most clearly gendered: there are breasts. As to how many breasts there are – well, that is open to question. I’d argue for four, seen from multiple view-points, expressing the energetic nature of the dance, as if they have been seen at different times from different angles. One looks like an eye – or at least a black ‘eye’ shape containing a pink circle with a black dot in the centre. Above and to the right of it is the corner of another black ‘eye’ shape, but with a rounded breast and very protuberant nipple in solid black seen ‘in profile’ at the base of the arm. To the left of that is another pink shape, more like the naturalistic profile of a breast, in pink, but edged with black on our left and white on our right. This dancer holds the white hand of ‘Pichot’ with her pink right hand, the black lines – the fingers – intertwined. The curving arm looping away from the torso leaves a circular gap through which the sky can be seen, as can the top of the balcony, and a section of one of the balusters. But there is also a red circle, with white lines, apparently floating in space. Given Picasso’s tendency to read anatomical details in terms of geometry, I have little doubt that this blue circle can be read either as a gap, though which we see the sky, or as an alternative (blue) breast. This superfluity of anatomical detail shouldn’t surprise us: this woman has two faces, after all. One is like a crescent moon, looking to our right, with a blank, vertical black oval for an eye and a profile showing her nose and slightly parted lips, a concave forehead and rounded chin. It has an innocent, awe-filled expression. The other is more animalistic, violent even, with blood-red lips on either side of an open, downturned mouth bristling with the sharpest of teeth. The ear, at the top of the head, appears to belong to this face, as does the vertical black eye containing a white dot for a pupil. Who is this two-faced woman? And is the term ‘two-faced’ relevant in the way that the English would use it: someone who is dishonest in some way, doing something behind someone’s back (that’s the second time I’ve used that phrase)?  Or is it just a hangover from Cubism? Before I answer that question, though, let’s have a closer look at their dance.

Although there was never a doubt that these dancers are, indeed, dancing, their activity is confirmed by the position of their legs. They are all standing on one foot, and not all of them in a position that would be stable were they still. The woman on the left raises her right foot behind her, bending the leg at the knee. Notice how the toes are defined in the same way as the hands at the top right of the painting: black lines, terminating in small dots, in between each. This helps to create some of the unity of the painting: however disparate the different elements may appear, they do all belong together. The central figure appears more poised, the weight born on the right leg, with the left bent up behind it. The figure on the right – Pichot – raises his left knee, keeping the weight on his straight right leg (notice how the black shadow comes down behind the white leg, spilling onto the floor as a rectangular pool).

At the top of this detail you can see the circular element of sky – or breast – with the dancer’s arm curving around it. A similar section of blue sky, with the black bar of a baluster, can also be seen, inexplicably, in the middle of the diagonally-striped skirt. Could this be another sexual reference? Another part of her anatomy? Picasso was capable of being remarkably crude.

In my interpretation of the painting, I think it is entirely relevant that the face of the central figure appears against the deep blue sky. The window on the left is closed, that on the right is partly open, and in the space between we see the head of the central figure. This may appear to be another woman – the circle could be one breast, the curving black line around the pink and white form another. However, I think this figure represents a man: knowing that the ballet Mercure had three men cross-dressing as the Three Graces could be relevant. Why do I think that it’s a man? Well, for one thing, the position of the arms. Both are raised on diagonals going away from the torso. For those with a knowledge of Italian art, this won’t mean much, but if you are more familiar with Spanish painting – as, let’s face it, Picasso was – the gesture may be more familiar. Compare it, for example, with this painting from the Prado by Diego Velázquez.

Spanish artists are more likely to show the crucified Christ in this way – but why would it be relevant to the Three Dancers? If one of them is Ramon Pichot, who are the other two? As I’ve said, Picasso arrived in Paris in October 1900 in the company of two other artists: Ramon Pichot, and Carles Casagemas. Both Picasso and Casagemas got to know a woman called Laure Antonie Gargallo, also known as Germaine, who had married the sculptor Vital Florentin in 1898 – this marriage was short lived. She worked as a model for both Picasso and Casagemas, but Casagemas wanted more. He fell desperately in love with her, even asking her to marry him – but his love was not requited. In his desperation he even tried to shoot her – but only succeeded in grazing her temple. However, he then turned the gun on himself, with greater success. His suicide is often cited as triggering Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’. This didn’t stop Picasso himself having an affair with Germaine between 1901 and 1903. And then, in 1908 (or 1906, sources on the internet are contradictory) she married Ramon Pichot, staying with him until his death in 1924.

Casagemas died in 1901, and Pichot in 1925. Germaine, however, lived on until 1948, and so was the only one of the three still alive when The Three Dancers was completed. This is why I can’t help seeing this painting as a Dance of Death, with the windows representing the passage to a world beyond the one we are in. The window on the right is partially open, with Casagemas, crucified by his own obsessive love, seen against the open sky. Pichot is next to the open door, and is the next to pass on, his looming, black, shadowy profile in front of the sky seen through the glass. Germaine, however, is still in the room, her head – her faces – seen against the wallpaper. And, looking at the wallpaper, I’ve realised something today that I should have noticed before: the pattern is made up of three vertical strokes bound together, like The Three Dancers tied together – forever – by their tangled relationships.

I don’t know if this interpretation is what Picasso had in mind, but it makes sense to me. Maybe it all came from Picasso’s subconscious. Or maybe it is just a coincidence. I know that the dance we see doesn’t express their precise relationships, but it does at least allow for connections which evolved over time. Other people – most people, apparently – interpret the figure on the left as Olga Khokhlova, Picasso’s first wife, a dancer with the Ballets Russes. They married in 1918. I can’t see that this image would represent Picasso’s feelings towards her in 1924, but then I don’t know what they were. Their son Paulo had been born in 1921, and his affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter didn’t start until 1927… but that’s another story. There are many other stories, and some of them will come up on Monday. I’ll leave you to think about this one, though.

The End of the Rainbow

John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, 1830-31. Tate Britain, London.

Happy New Year! I’m looking forward to getting going straight away, and even before Christmas has officially ended. On 5 January 2026 at 6:00pm (which is the 12th Day of Christmas) I will be talking about Tate’s superb Turner & Constable exhibition, which is worth seeing for a superb selection of works from both artists, including many which haven’t been seen in the UK for decades, if not for more than a century. It is also worthwhile for the exploration of the ways in which the careers of thee two artists intertwined. I find it astonishing that there has never been a large-scale exhibition looking at the relationship between Turner and Constable before: they had so much in common, and yet were so remarkably different, they were colleagues, and rivals, and yet, also… but we’ll talk about that on Monday.

This will be followed by another Tate exhibition, Theatre Picasso, on 12 January. I will then give two talks on Scandinavian artists. The Danish Anna Ancher, whose works are currently exhibited so beautifully at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, will be on 29 January, and the great Swedish painter Anders Zorn will be the following week, 2 February. An exhibition of his work is just about to close in Hamburg, but as it is then travelling to Madrid (where his stylistic relationship to Joaquín Sorolla will become all the more clear) it will still be topical!

In the spring I’ll be giving three talks related to The Courtauld, and the first will be on 9 February, covering the superb selection of paintings from the Barber Institute in Birmingham which are on loan to the former – as The Barber in London – while the latter is being refurbished. But back to Turner & Constable – well, Constable, at least. It’s an old blog, as you know, but edited considerably while still retaining references to the days of lockdown.

I originally wrote the post in May 2020 as Picture of the Day 47 – Salisbury Cathedral, and reposted it in January 2022 as Return to the Rainbow, partly because I needed to correct a mistake I had made, which was all the more embarrassing because somewhere, in an admittedly obscure publication, I had committed the error to print. I’m posting it for a third time because it has become relevant in a whole new way…

Sometimes a painting is asking to be talked about. I heard on the radio, shortly before I originally wrote this, that the foundation stone of Salisbury Cathedral was laid on 28 April 1220 – 800 years before the post. This, in itself, made me think about today’s painting, but then I had been reminded of it the day before while writing about the Pathetic Fallacy (Day 46 – Psyche III). Having said that, it was already in my mind. The preceding week I had been challenged to include three words in my blog – ‘crepuscular’, ‘vicissitudes’ and ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’. I succeeded with the first two in POTD 41 and 42. This is the only painting I can think of for the third.

On October 23, 1821, Constable wrote to his friend, John Fisher, saying that, ‘It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment’ – by which he meant that the sky would set the emotional tone of the painting. This is, as close as you could reasonably want, a statement acknowledging something that would not be named for another 35 years: the Pathetic Fallacy. It was defined, and discussed at length, by John Ruskin in the third volume of his Modern Painters, published in 1856. We use the word ‘pathetic’ in such a different way now. Back then it was related to feeling, as in pathos, and not to being weak. It was a mistake, or fallacy, Ruskin said, to attribute feelings (pathos) to inanimate objects – such ideas would be the imaginings of an unhinged mind. However, he did go on to say that, poetically speaking, this was not a bad thing, as long as the emotion it produced was genuine: ‘Now, so long as we see that the feeling is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight, which it induces’. Even if it gets the name of an error, the Pathetic Fallacy is one of the essential tools of the artist’s – and poet’s – craft.

It came into play a decade after Constable’s letter, when he worked on this particular painting. His wife Maria had died in 1829, and Fisher wrote to him suggesting that he might want to paint Salisbury Cathedral as a way of occupying himself during his grief – effectively a form of therapy – saying, ‘I am quite sure that the “church under a cloud” is the best subject you can take’. 

Before I go any further, I should clear up a potential source of misunderstanding. Constable had two friends called John Fisher, one of whom was also a patron, and both of whom lived in Salisbury. One, the patron, was Bishop of Salisbury, and the other, with whom Constable corresponded more regularly, and in whom he confided, was the nephew of the Bishop, and was an Archdeacon at the Cathedral. This can only have led to confusion in the 19thCentury, and it still does today.

Constable’s letter of 1821 had been written after a summer of ‘skying’, as he called it – going out onto Hampstead Heath and painting the sky, so he could get better at it, and it would become easier, and more natural for him. He was already familiar with the weather. He was the son of a corn merchant who owned mills, and young John often had to man them himself. You need to know when a storm is coming, because if you don’t disable a windmill it could be destroyed. As a result he was entirely adept at reading the weather. By the autumn of 1821, he was also adept at painting it. He favoured a contrast of light and dark, of blue sky and cloud, so that the ground itself would be a patchwork of sunlight and shadow. But the sky in today’s painting is more than usually stormy: he really does seem to have taken Fisher’s suggested title, the “church under a cloud” to heart. Indeed, so bad is it, that lightning is striking the roof of the North Transept – the part of the church to the left of the crossing if you are looking at the High Altar.

Is this an autobiographical reference? I would say ‘yes’, particularly given that Fisher had suggested this very subject in his letter of August 1829. But other things were going on at the time, things in which both Johns – Constable and Fisher (Jr) – were particularly interested. In 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed, and both thought this might pose a threat to the Church of England, the Established Church. Not only that, but debates were already underway for what would become the Reform Bill of 1832, one result of which was to give the vote to a large number of nonconformists. Another threat, perhaps, to the Established Church. Indeed, one subject for debate was that the church should actually be disestablished, a notion strongly contested by both Constable and Fisher, who were both ardent supporters of antidisestablishmentarianism. The church was under more than one cloud. In the painting it appears as a physical storm, with lightning striking the roof of the church. Constable himself was undoubtedly going through ‘Stormy Weather’ after the death of his wife. And ‘The Church’ as a whole – not just this building – was going through its own political storm, a result of changes in political thought. Would the Established Church survive? 

The answer would seem to be given to us by the rainbow. As we saw in POTD 37 – Noah, the rainbow is a symbol of hope and optimism, given to Noah as a sign of God’s covenant that he will never again destroy the earth, as he had with the deluge. Constable acknowledges this symbolism, and with it, tells us that not only will he personally be alright – he will survive his grief – but also that he knows that the church will ride the political storm. However, the rainbow was not part of Constable’s original plans for the painting: it was not in his first sketches. It is an idea which came to him later on. It is certainly not something he witnessed first hand. No one ever has – nor ever could. [Or that’s what I thought when I first wrote this post – and I’m going to leave the next paragraphs so you can see what I said first time around…]

How can I be so sure? Well, it comes down to the geography of the church, which is, as churches should be, orientated: the altar faces the East (POTD 38). The North Transept sticks out to the left of the building – where we see the lightning strike – and the façade of the Cathedral that is so clearly visible (Constable was a master at manipulating light) is at the West End. The rainbow forms an arc of a circle (following the science of optics it cannot do otherwise), which appears to stretch from Northeast to Southwest, given that it cuts across the Cathedral on a diagonal. I don’t know if you know this, but you only get a rainbow when it is both rainy and sunny, and if you are looking at a rainbow, then the sun must be behind you. The sunlight travels over your head into the rain, and the light reflects back from the back of the raindrops. As it enters and leaves each raindrop it is refracted, each wavelength of light being refracted by a different amount, thus splitting white light into a rainbow. The light then comes back towards you, and makes it look as if the rainbow is in front of you. Here’s a diagram, thanks to the Met Office:

So, if we are looking at the rainbow as Constable has painted it, the sun must be behind us, i.e. in the Northwest. But Salisbury, and indeed, the whole of Europe, is in the Northern hemisphere, and so the sun never gets anywhere that is not South. It is impossible to see a rainbow in this position. But that doesn’t matter. This isn’t science, this isn’t a photograph, this is art – and the rainbow expresses hope. After all, the spire of the Cathedral passes in front of the darkest area of cloud and then up into the light. Again, this is a symbol of optimism.

Nowadays Salisbury Cathedral has gained something of a reputation as the must-see building for any self-respecting Russian spy, and they are not wrong – it is a fantastic building. The spire is the tallest in the country, and the cloister and cathedral close are also the largest in the land. The main body of the church is remarkably coherent stylistically, having been completed in a mere 38 years – not long for a building of this size that was started 800 years ago. It is well worth the visit, and, once we can travel again, I would recommend that you go. We are all “under a cloud” at the moment, but like Noah, like Constable – and like Salisbury Cathedral – we will get through it. 

By the way, Constable was not being careless when he chose to paint the rainbow here. It’s worthwhile remembering that other myth about rainbows – that there is a pot of gold at its end. Even if this is, in itself, unscientific (were there no ground in the way a rainbow would form a complete circle, and so it wouldn’t have an ‘end’) there isn’t gold at the end of this rainbow, but lead. Or rather, a house, called Leadenhall. Which is precisely where Archdeacon John Fisher lived. I’ve said it before: art is alchemy, turning base metal into gold. Constable is not only showing us his gratitude to Fisher, he is also reminding us where true value lies. The gold at the end of the rainbow is friendship.

OK – so that’s what I said back in April 2020. But compare and contrast the following:

When I set up these blogs I see the images in a certain way, but I know that sometimes they shift: I do hope you are seeing them side by side. I am incredibly grateful to Brian Plummer – a resident of Salisbury and one of the trustees of the Salisbury Museum – who both took and sent me the photograph on the right. Clearly Salisbury has changed a bit in the last two centuries, but this is the cathedral seen, if not from exactly the same place, at least from almost exactly the same angle. To the right of the lamppost, and just above the trees, you should be able to see the very tops of the pinnacles of the façade, which is in the same relationship to the spire as it is in the painting… and a rainbow can be seen very clearly arcing around them. I still can’t entirely explain how this is possible! The physics are right, and the Met Office diagram confirms the fact: if you are looking at a rainbow then the sun should be behind you. Or rather, if you are looking at the centre of a rainbow while facing it flat on, the sun must be behind you. But you could then turn away from it, and still look over your shoulder to see it… the sun wouldn’t be behind you then. That’s not a very good explanation, but it must be something like that. We humans don’t exist as infinitesimal points in space, after all, and we also have a tendency to move around and look all around us as we go. It is probably relevant that a rain drop is a small sphere – so maybe the ‘behind you’ idea of the sun can relate to a wider arc… Whatever the explanation, it doesn’t get away from the fact that Constable would never have stood outside painting one of his ‘six footers’ in the rain, nor does it take away from the idea that the rainbow in his painting is primarily a symbol. He may well have seen a rainbow here, or hereabouts, and then adjusted it to curve so beautiful around the other forms in the composition to land on Fisher’s house…

However (and this is me coming back to the painting in 2025), it is worthwhile pointing out that even if rainbows can, and do, occur in this geographical location, this particular rainbow is impossible in Constable’s painting: the sun is in the wrong position to create it. The light is coming from the upper right corner of the painting, and the sun might even be too high for a rainbow to form. I’m not the only person to say that – here’s a link to an article in The Guardian from about 11 years ago, in which John Thornes, an emeritus professor of applied meteorology at Birmingham University, says as much. However, I have recently learnt (and probably should have known before) that the rainbow was only added after the painting was first exhibited in 1831. This idea is expounded by a Tate Research Publication from 2017, in an introductory essay by Amy Colcannon, the main curator of Turner & Constable. To make things clearer, I’m just going to quote from that:

The absence of any mention of the rainbow in descriptions by critics reacting to the painting on its debut showing in 1831 – critics who, as detailed below, fixated on the ‘chaos’ of Constable’s sky – as well as our knowledge from Constable’s correspondence that he reworked the painting after its debut, point towards the possibility that the rainbow was a posthumous tribute, added after Fisher’s death on 25 August 1832.

The painting has a very important place in the current exhibition as Constable himself chose to exhibit it in the same room as a painting by Turner in the Royal Academy’s Annual Exhibition of 1831. The critics had a field day, as the comparison between the two paintings summed up everything they had always said about the two artists, with one of them referring to ‘Turner’s fire and Constable’s rain’ while another talked of ‘Fire and Water … the one all heat, the other all humidity’. But of course, it is comparisons like this that we will be discovering on Monday – so I do hope you can join me!

264 Caravaggio: If music… (b).

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, The Musicians, 1597. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

The two one-painting exhibitions in London at the moment have a lot in common, and so do the artists who are represented. Apart from anything else, music and love are major themes, and in my blog last week I quoted the opening of Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night – ‘If music be the food of love…’ The same quotation is relevant today, so… play on! However, in Caravaggio’s Cupid, currently on show at the Wallace Collection (the subject of my talk this Monday 15 December at 6pm) love triumphs over music – and everything else, for that matter: omnia vincit amor. This is my last talk for 2025, but I’ll be back in the New Year to introduce Tate Britain’s superb show tracing the relationship and rivalry between Turner & Constable. That will be on Monday 5 January, and I’ll visit Tate Modern the following week (12 January) to explore Theatre Picasso. This truly lives up to its name: it is the most dramatically staged exhibition I have seen for years. I’ll be going to Hamburg shortly after to see the Kunsthalle’s exhibition dedicated to Swedish master Anders Zorn. He was one of a triumvirate of painterly, impressionist-inspired masters, perhaps not as well known as the other two, John Singer-Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla, but equally brilliant: I’m really looking forward to it, and to telling you all about it on 2 February. Before that, though, I want to look at another Scandinavian artist, Anna Ancher, to give you more of a chance to see her marvellous, calm and colourful paintings which are currently on show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. I saw the exhibition earlier this week, and was completely won over. I will be talking about her on 26 January, and will get more information onto the diary as soon as I can!

Today’s painting is typical of Caravaggio’s early work, depicting half-length, contemporary figures clearly and crisply, using rich colours, and often including beautifully detailed still life elements. His subjects were cardsharps and fraudsters, fortune tellers and gullible youths, boys offering food and wine, performing or being out-manoeuvred: the vulnerable and the manipulative inhabitants of the low-life world he had come to occupy in Rome. He settled in the Eternal City in 1595 at the age of 24, having first arrived there a few years before. In this particular work there are four youths who seem more interested in us, or in what they are doing individually, than they are in each other. They are closely, almost claustrophobically arranged, a compact composition in which the figures overlap and interlock, thus making them, of necessity, a ‘group’, even if they are not currently interacting. This is demonstrated most clearly, I think, if we try and focus on the individuals. In the details that follow, I have cropped the image to include everything that we can see of each of the four figures – and have added other details in between.

Most prominent is the lutenist. While music is clearly a major theme of the painting – these are, after all, The Musicians – no music is being played. This boy, or man – it is hard to pinpoint his age – is currently tuning his lute. His left hand turns one of the tuning pegs, while his right thumb plucks a string, the tips of his fingers resting on the teardrop-shaped soundboard. Rather than looking at his instrument, he gazes out towards the viewer – towards you – his eyes half closed and his mouth half open, a face that is totally relaxed, and either seduced or seducing. His auburn hair contrasts with dark, arching eyebrows, creating an appearance that is both unusual and arresting. We know that this is one of the first paintings – if not the first – that Caravaggio made for his patron and host the Cardinal del Monte when he became part of the prelate’s household, the Palazzo Madama, not far from the Piazza Navona. As well as being interested in the visual arts, del Monte was also an active patron of music, providing financial support for the training and performance of young castrati, the male sopranos who were an essential feature of the musical culture of the time. If this musician was one of their number, it might explain why his appearance is so arresting, and why his precise age is hard to pin down.

Technical analysis shows that his right arm was painted first, and then the full, red drapery which encompasses it was added on top. The brocade cloak, or shawl, flows over his elbow and frames his hand, its curve echoing the arch of his wrist. It fills out the figure, and broadens the form, and it is this, as much as anything else, that gives the lutenist his prominence. From his shoulder the brocade crosses his body on a diagonal, in opposition to the neck of the lute. Together they form an ‘X’ in front of his chest, the top ‘V’ of which helps to frame his sultry gaze. His left elbow is hidden behind the unclad arm of the boy on the right, while his head tilts towards that of the figure at the back.

The sculptural form of the lute is precisely defined. The soundboard catches the light entering the room from the top left, while the back, or shell of the instrument is cast into shadow, with the exception, perhaps, of the top ‘rib’. However, there is not much detail, and we can’t see all the strings. Sadly, despite its wonderful appearance, the painting is not in a very good condition. After the death of the Cardinal, the painting passed into the hands of a French collector, and was later briefly owned by another Cardinal, the famous (or infamous) Cardinal Richelieu. However, by 1675, we know it belonged to the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, as it is mentioned in an inventory of her collection. By then the canvas had been stuck to a wooden support, from which it was later removed. At either stage this may have resulted in losses to the surface, and could, consequently, explain the lack of detail in some parts of the painting (I’m indebted to Keith Christiansen’s 2017 catalogue entry for this painting on the Met’s website – you’ll have to scroll down and click on their ‘catalogue entry’ button – and, while I’m about it, I’d also recommend his Instagram feed: @keithartnature).

Despite the damage, details have survived – the subtle variation in the angles of of the fourteen pegs, and the light catching the strings passing over the end of the fingerboard, for example. There is even a beautiful and delicate arabesque formed by a long, untrimmed string, spiralling away from one of the pegs and over the lutenist’s brightly illuminated chest.

The figure at the back is also a musician: he holds a cornett, or cornetto. In case you are, like me, unfamiliar with this baroque instrument, I have included an image of a 17th century version – from the Museu de la Música in Barcelona – which I have rotated to be in a roughly equivalent position (however, they do come in many different lengths and forms). If you want to know how a cornett is played, and what it sounds like, there is a good video on YouTube made by The Academy of Ancient Music (apologies for the ad – you’ll be able to skip it after a few seconds).

The cornett player in our painting, like the lutenist, looks out towards us with his mouth slightly open, and has similar dark, arched brows – although they are a better match with his hair. Being in the background he is also more in the shade – helping to create what limited depth in the painting there is. This is enhanced by the darkness of his hair, and the black fabric which is draped over his left shoulder (at the back) but not, it seems, his right (the shoulder closer to us). We can see the curve of this shoulder outlining the hand tuning the lute, not far from his own right hand, holding what must be a fairly short, so high-pitched, cornett. We also see the hint of a white sleeve – but that could be either around the cornett player’s right wrist, or the lutenist’s left forearm. This apparent elision of forms brings the two figures together, as does the mutual lean of their heads, tilting towards each other on the picture plane, even though one figure is closer to us than the other. The implication is that these people are in harmony with one another, even when they are not playing. I was about to say ‘even when they are not performing’, but they are definitely performing – either for us, or for Caravaggio – turning to to look at us with their mouths open and those ‘come hither’ eyes. They might conceivable be singing, but I think sighing would be more likely. Having said all of that, you may recognise the cornett player, as the same model occurs in paintings throughout Caravaggio’s career.

It is universally accepted as a self portrait. These two images may not look identical, but it’s worthwhile remembering that the artist was 26 when he painted the image on the left (although I can’t help thinking that he was flattering himself somewhat – making himself look more like ‘one of the boys’), whereas Ottavio Leoni’s drawing, a detail of which is on the right, dates from 1621, eleven years after Caravaggio’s premature death at the age of 39, when he had lived through at least a decade of difficulty. Why he should choose to put himself into this composition is not clear – although it would undoubtedly have placed him at the heart of the Cardinal del Monte’s establishment, thus making him look both cultured and sophisticated: he clearly knows about music… and love. You could even argue that he was trying to show us that he had risen above the low-life… although we know that he himself hadn’t, and wouldn’t. His paintings, however, did, becoming predominantly Christian in subject matter, and he would later show himself as an onlooker at many religious events, and even, sometimes, as a participant, as we saw last April with 221 – Caravaggio: the witness witnessed.

If we move on to the third character, the way in which all four are interlocked and indivisible is especially clear. Although I have cropped the detail to include everything we can see of this boy, and nothing more, we can still see all of the self portrait – cornett included – and half of the lutenist. Caravaggio painted directly onto the canvas from the live model, rather than relying on preparatory sketches, whether drawings or painted studies (none of either survive). This was one of his most remarkable innovations. However, it would be a mistake to think that he had all four people in front of him at the same time. They appear to have sat for him individually, and the precise, controlled composition slots them close together like a well-cut jigsaw. Precisely how these four figures could have occupied the three-dimensional space is not entirely clear: if this were a real space, there might not even be enough room for all of their limbs. However, until we start to question this, it is not a problem, especially given that the patterning of the surface is so good. In some ways, the composition is not unlike another form of composition: music. Primary and secondary themes play off one another, with melodies interlocking and interweaving just like these people. The character of each is distinct, although not necessarily thoroughly developed. This boy in particular is a bit of a mystery: we don’t know what he looks like, even if we can see ‘more’ of him: he appears to be wearing the fewest clothes. If we hadn’t realised before, what becomes clear from the figure in white is that, if this is a scene from contemporary life, then these models are in costume: no one has ever dressed quite like this in everyday life. He appears to have a sheet slung over his right shoulder, which crosses his otherwise naked back (which is accurately, subtly and brilliantly modelled) on a diagonal. It is tied around his waist with a thick, dark, plum-coloured sash. The boy is sitting on the edge of a box, or table, slightly higher than the lutenist, and looks down at a musical score in what I read as calm, focussed preparation.

However damaged the surface of the painting, we can tell how brilliantly crafted this manuscript was. The music cannot be read, but we can tell the difference between the thick, pinkish cover of the book and the darker edges of the pages, and then see the light catching the corners, where the top page has curled up, casting its own corner, decorated with a large letter ‘B’, into shadow.

This book is just one of the still life elements in which Caravaggio both delighted and excelled in the earlier stages of his career. Another score sits on the table with a violin resting on it. They are so brilliantly conceived that I will show you more details below. The sash is tied in a bow, the ends of which appear to caress the white fabric beneath them. Bows like this occur more than once in Caravaggio’s oeuvre, and here, as in other places, it is as if we are being invited to tug on the end, and release the bow, or to toy with the loops, or the knot – but that’s probably an idea that I am transferring from another painting, Caravaggio’s voluptuous, seductive Bacchus in the Uffizi. If you don’t know it, click on that link! In our painting, the white drapery forms a turbulent swirl just beneath the belt, and wraps in numerous folds around the boy’s thigh. There is clearly enough fabric to cover his knee, but enough leg is visible to prove a point: these models are wearing less than they would normally.

This manuscript is an especially bravura piece of painting, with one page curled up, catching the light on one of the battered corners at the top, and casting shadow on the page beneath. The curl of the page mirrors the curl of the drapery next to it, and forms a counterpoint with the folds behind. Again, the music is illegible – which it may always have been – although this section was so badly damaged that a fair amount has had to be reconstructed, apparently.

The still life continues to the left with the violin – we have just seen its bow resting on the shadowed page. Caravaggio is known to have owned both a violin and a lute, and both appear in the Victorious Cupid currently on show at the Wallace Collection which we will be looking at on Monday. However, it seems too small to be a violin, certainly when compared to the lute. It could be a violino piccolo – a feature of baroque music – but it might simply be that, like the models, Caravaggio was looking at the instruments at different times, and adjusting the size according to what would work for the composition.

The still life extends to the bottom left corner of the painting, where we see vine leaves just catching the light, extending from the perfectly painted bunches of grapes above them. In between them and the end of the violin is the knee of the lutenist, who, like the boy with his back to us (is he the violinist? Or a singer?) has an uncovered knee, so close to the front of the painting that you might even think that it is in easy reach. Close to his hand resting on the soundboard – the hand that will pluck the strings – are two more hands plucking grapes.

These belong to the figure who takes up the top left corner of the painting. We see almost the full length of his right arm – a vine leaf gets in the way of his wrist – and just the ends of his left fingers. We can also see his shoulders and some of his chest, but there is no evidence that he is wearing any clothes at all. But then he does have wings: is this Cupid, or another performer dressed up as Cupid? His quiver hangs over his right shoulder on a very thin thread, with the sharp points of five or six arrows projecting from behind his right arm. Apart from this very thin strap, there is no sign of any other attachments: he is not ‘wearing’ the wings, so they must be part of him. This tells us that it is the God of Love himself, Cupid. He echoes – and transposes – the pose of the figure on the right. One of them is turned towards us, the other is turned away, but each has an unclad arm fully visible, and both look down, intent on what they are doing. Both also convey a sense of innocence, in opposition to the open-mouthed worldliness of the companions they are framing.

But why grapes? One suggestion is that, if this is Cupid, then we are clearly in the world of allegory, and while the other three are musicians, they are also a representation of the idea of ‘Music’ – which is what an allegory is. Most artists at this time, when painting an allegory, would have turned to the textbook, Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia. Published first in Rome in 1593, I would suggest that this may just be too early for it to be entirely familiar in 1597. In 1603 a second edition included illustrations, which were often more influential – and we are definitely to early for that. As a feminine noun, La Musica, like so many other personifications, was seen by Ripa as a woman – but Caravaggio was never one to follow the party line. As it happens, Ripa does mention a lute and a viol (an early form of violin, which the latter ‘eclipsed’ in the 17th century) and an open score, but he also says that music should be shown with wine, ‘perche la musica fù ritrovata per tener gli animi allegri come fà il vino…’ (‘because music was found to keep the spirits cheerful like wine does’). Maybe we’re getting in there early with the grapes, which Cupid is plucking in preparation. This was Caravaggio’s first Cupid – young, innocent, busy. A few years later, and painting for Vincenzo Giustiniani, his next major patron (who lived just round the corner from del Monte), Caravaggio would produce a very different image, brash, bold, and inherently destructive. It is that Victorious Cupid which we will be talking about on Monday.

263 – Vermeer, playing with your imagination

Johannes Vermeer, The Love Letter, about 1669-70. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

My next two talks are dedicated to single works by two artists who had a lot in common – and yet were completely different: Vermeer and Caravaggio. They both worked in the 17th century painting religious subject matter and genre scenes, and both produced relatively few works. They died young, and were all but forgotten soon after their early deaths, only to be rediscovered in the 19th and 20th centuries, reaching an unparalleled level of popularity in the 21st. As a result, every painting by them is fascinating – and the arrival in London of even a single work associated with either of these masters is something to be celebrated. This Monday, 1 December (how is it December already?) we will start with Seeing Double: Vermeer at Kenwood. We will explore the Guitar Player in depth, taking it as a stepping-off point for a consideration of Vermeer’s career as a whole, and compare it to a remarkably similar, although by no means identical painting which is on loan to Kenwood House from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Two weeks later, on 15 December, I will turn my attention to Caravaggio, as his remarkable Victorious Cupid will be on display at the Wallace Collection: it has never been shown in public in the UK before.

The New Year kicks off with talks introducing two Tate exhibitions, Turner & Constable at Tate Britain on 5 January and the following week (12 January), Theatre Picasso at Tate Modern. After that my sights will be set on Scandinavia, with the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s exploration of the richly coloured paintings of Danish artist Anna Ancher. At the moment I have this planned for 26 January. Just before then I’ll be heading to Hamburg to see an exhibition of the great Swedish artist, Anders Zorn. Despite giving a couple of talks about his work around five years ago, and a few visits to Stockholm, I’ve seen very few of his paintings – so I can’t wait! He was a contemporary of, and equivalent to, John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla. Like them, his works are highly painterly, with full, lush brushstrokes, and, like Anna Ancher, his paintings are vibrantly coloured with a richness that contradicts the dark and brooding notion of ‘Scandi Noir’. That talk should be on 2 February, but I’ll post more details in the diary in the New Year… if not before. Today, though, I want to look at a painting by Vermeer which has some features in common with Kenwood’s The Guitar Player. Music is one of its themes, and yet it goes by the name of The Love Letter.

Vermeer manages to give us the impression that we have stumbled on something we should not see. We’ve arrived at a doorway to witness a scene which appears to invert the standard social order – a maid lording it over her mistress. Not only that, but neither has been doing what they should, judging by the appearance of the outer room – dark, dirty and messy – not to mention the inner room, which may be well appointed, but is nevertheless showing signs of neglect.

A curtain has been drawing back – and maybe it shouldn’t have been. There is a real sense of theatrical revelation though, a bit like someone sharing the gossip: ‘look what I’ve just seen…’. It is a curtain that very probably belonged to Vermeer, and he used it in other paintings, notably The Art of Painting. It’s also worthwhile remembering that some paintings were covered by curtains on rails – in part, to keep the dust off them – and sometimes artists even painted trompe l’oeil curtains to make what was being revealed appear more real, and to remind you that it was a valuable work of art by an esteemed artist. The curtain also has a classical reference, but I won’t go into that now. In this case, Vermeer is playing with both ideas – what is being revealed in the back room, and the suggestion that this is a painting that is worth looking after. On the left wall of the entrance hall – or whatever the room is – there is a map, a reference to the world outside this house. Vermeer may well have owned several maps (although I can’t see any in the inventory of his belongings), but he could equally well have borrowed them, choosing them sometimes for their significance, and sometimes, simply for their appearance. Here, I think it is a reminder that we are coming into the story from ‘elsewhere’, but also that whatever is going on in these rooms is in some way connected to the world outside this house – which is where the letter that the lady is holding must have come from.

Although drawing back the curtain has revealed the inner room, the lower half of the painting is, in some ways, more revealing. For one thing, our point of view becomes apparent. On the right is a chair, upholstered in red velvet with gold trims. It is facing directly towards us, so that the front of the seat is parallel with the bottom of the painting. Our view is cut off just below the tassels along the front of the chair. The bottom of the painting probably coincides with the threshold of the adjacent room. This implies that our viewpoint is relatively high, with our supposed eye-level demonstrated by the perspective. The bottom edge of the map, and the diagonals of the diamond floor tiles, create orthogonals which continue to the vanishing point of the painting, just above and to the right of the brass ball on the chair back. Looking at the bottom of the map, though, what is most striking is the state of the wall – dark muddy drips staining the light paintwork. This is the only painting by Vermeer that I can think of in which something is actually dirty – and this is just one of the signs of neglect. The messy, crumpled paper on the chair itself, and the objects in the doorway, are others.

A broom leans against a wall behind the door, and two slippers are left on the floor. Between them they take up the full width of the doorway. They are not in their proper place, and nor are they put to their proper use. The household chores – and the management of the household – are apparently being neglected. The maid would be responsible for the former, and the lady of the house the latter. Maybe the lady of the house has other things on her mind… Not only that, but once you get close enough you can see that the crumpled paper on the chair is actually sheet music. Even though what is written makes no sense, musically speaking (Vermeer seems not to have been worried about that), the implication is that the harmony created by well-played music has been set aside. This might have a bearing on the state of the household: there may be discord, and disorder.

Having negotiated these obstacles to get into the room, we are in the presence of a finely dressed lady and a maid – presumably her maid. The difference in status is marked by their clothing. Whereas the lady wears a yellow satin jacket trimmed with broad bands of fur, as well as a pearl necklace and earrings, the maid has a plain brown top over a chemise, plain blue skirts, and no jewellery. However, the maid stands over her mistress, dominating her. Not only that, but her left arm is ‘akimbo’ – a pose almost always adopted in 17th century Dutch portraits by men rather than women (although there are a few exceptions). You could see this as an equivalent of contemporary ‘manspreading’, allowing the men to take up more space and so look more important. Not only that, but the maid’s headdress is quite tall, and catches the light brilliantly, thus enhancing her importance within our visual field. Nevertheless, there seems to be a good relationship between the two. We do not know what has happened – and that is one of the great strengths of Vermeer’s art. He gives us so much of the evidence we need to work out what is going on, but not everything: we can tell our own stories through his paintings, and they can all be different. The lady is holding a letter, which appears to be unopened. She looks round, and up, towards her maid – who has presumably given it to her (although we have no way of proving that she has) – and the maid looks back, her face slightly lowered, with the hint of a smile. The lady is clearly concerned, the maid, somewhat amused. Her stance is down to earth, matter of fact, though: whatever the contents of the letter (and how could she know?), it clearly isn’t going to affect her that much. However, the two are pictorially bound together. Quite apart from the fact that they are perfectly framed by the door, the top of the maid’s white apron, which we see above the blue overskirt which has been hitched up, continues along the line of the white fur trim of the lady’s jacket, tying them together visually. The upper edge of the brown sleeve on the maid’s left arm also leads to the top of the lady’s head, and the inside of the crook of her elbow is level with the top of the gilded leather panel we can see through her arm. Both coincide with the lady’s right eye: everything in Vermeer’s compositions was always very precisely planned, and extremely specific. Notice the placement of his signature at the bottom left of the detail above, for example – not stuck away in a corner at all, but conveniently close to the action.

Given the title the painting has now, how do we know it is a love letter that the lady is holding? The musical instrument is one of the clues – as is the crumpled music we have already seen.

It is a cittern, as you can see by comparison with this example (from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford), which was made in Italy around 1570, and is attributed to Girolamo Virchi. Citterns tend to have a flat back, as opposed to the rounded back of the lute, and the strings are made of metal, as opposed to the gut, which is used for lutes. As a result, they sound very different. In the interpretation of Dutch 17th century paintings this difference is important for a very specific reason: the Dutch word ‘luit’ was used as slang for the female genitalia – which can have implications for any woman holding a lute, or any man playing one anywhere near a woman… Nevertheless, the cittern is still a musical instrument, and given that we are in the 17th century, and that Shakespeare probably wrote Twelfth Night around 1601-02 at the beginning of the century, it is well worth remembering that the play opens with the lines,

If music be the food of love play on
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

So, as likely as not, given that the woman is (or was) playing music, we are probably being invited to think that she is in love. The paintings in her room support this suggestion.

Not only has drawing back the curtain allowed us to see what is going on in the inner room, but, as this detail shows, it has also revealed most, but not all, of the upper of two paintings. I’m sure there’s not much we can’t see, as the curving line of the fabric traces the height of the distant trees: all that is hidden must be sky. This could be a version of a real painting. As we will see on Monday, it was quite common for Vermeer to use paintings he knew. Some were in his mother-in-law’s personal collection, some were by artistic associates – members of the Guild of St Luke in Delft – and some might have been passing through his hands as an art dealer. However, he would often edit them, taking just one detail, or changing their scale, according to the composition he was working on. I don’t know if anyone has ever found a source for this particular image, but I’m sure the trees have been edited to fit the curve of the curtain. It is a landscape (though in a portrait format, but this isn’t unusual), with a path or track leading towards us in the bottom right corner. There is a single figure, which I see as a man walking towards us – his two legs are distinct (a woman would be wearing a full-length skirt). I’m assuming he’s walking towards us as that was a reasonably common occurrence in Dutch landscape paintings. He is, arguably, the last thing to be revealed by drawing back the curtain, leading us to ‘dis-cover’ (quite literally) a man approaching us. This may well relate to the contents of the letter, which might inform the lady that a man is returning from the outside world.

The lower painting is another common genre in Dutch 17th century painting: a seascape. Billowing clouds are seen against a clear blue sky, and are lit at the top by bright sunlight – fair weather, if windy. There is a single sailing ship approaching us, listing to port (OK, I don’t know ships well enough to tell if it is approaching us or going away – but it makes sense to me that it would be approaching, in which case I can at least tell it is listing to port… or, leaning towards the left in the direction of travel). Notice how the maid is so overtly associated with this painting: her shoulders are painted against the lower edge of the frame, so that her head is framed by the ebony surround. Her tall, rounded, white headdress catches the sunlight coming through the window of the inner room in the same way that the clouds catch the light in the painting.

Seascapes can refer to many different journeys – our journey through life, for example, or the status of a relationship: ‘Stormy weather, since my man and I ain’t together’, to quote Ted Koehler (1933). Here the sky is blue, the clouds are fluffy, and even if the sea must be rough because of the wind (the bottom of the painting is not at all clear) it does imply that the person on the ship is making a speedy journey. The two paintings suggest – to me at least – that someone is on their way home and making good time. I’m assuming it is the lady’s lover… It is not clear whether she is married or not, though. And is she really the lady of the house, or one of the daughters? Is this an accepted relationship, or a secret between her and her maid? Again, Vermeer gives us all of the clues – but doesn’t draw any conclusions. We are left to decide, and then, if we so choose, to moralise.

There is no doubt that this woman is a member of a wealthy household, though. It’s not the art – most members of the merchant classes in the Dutch Republic (who were, after all, the ruling classes in the 17th century) had paintings, and many paintings, on their walls. But the brilliant illumination implies large windows, which implies a lot of glass, which implies a lot of money. The gilded leather panel also suggests wealth, even if it wasn’t especially expensive: this example was one of Vermeer’s studio props, and also appears in his Allegory of Faith. The mantel piece was also a way of showing off your wealth, with carved columns supporting a projecting shelf. It could be carved from wood or stone, or, for the richest, fine marble. To be honest, it’s hard to tell what this one is made of – it could be painted wood, or it could be stone, but not, I think, marble: this isn’t the richest of houses. There is also a dark green satin pelmet around it to make it look more refined. One of the things that is not as expensive as it appears is the lady’s jacket, which is the same as the one worn by The Guitar Player. The original probably belonged to Vermeer’s wife, and is mentioned in the inventory drawn up in 1676, the year after the artist’s death: a ‘yellow satin mantle with white fur trimmings’ – it was kept in the ‘groote zael’, or great hall. For those of you familiar with ermine, the fur worn by members of royalty, you will realise that this doesn’t look quite right: the black spots are too large and irregular – and don’t look like the tips of tails. This is a cheaper white fur (possibly rabbit) which has been died with black spots – to look like ermine. This is the sort of information you can find in what is my go-to source for Vermeer – Essential Vermeer. People often ask me what books I recommend, but I think this website beats everything for the amount of information it covers, the detail it includes, and the number of different approaches to Vermeer and his art that it explores. I’ll see you in 2027 when you’ve finished reading it all…

Whatever its material, the mantelpiece is profoundly rectilinear, with the vertical column supporting a horizontal mantel. The paintings, too, emphasize horizontals and verticals, and are framed by the vertical door jambs. This allows us to measure the movement of mistress and maid – the former leaning to our right, the latter tilting her head to our left. Notice how these movements echo the forms of the two highest billowing clouds in the painting behind them, and how the lean of the lady echoes that of the ship, as if she too is listing in the wind.

As I’ve already suggested, neither is doing what they probably should be doing. A laundry basket has been placed on the ground in what I presume is the groote zael of this house – which I imagine is not the right place for laundry. The maid could have plonked it there while delivering the letter. Next to it is a blue sewing cushion – and sewing, which implies occupying yourself in a focussed manner to put something right or to make something good, was commonly seen as indicating domestic virtue, something that every good woman should aspire to. And yet, the sewing cushion has been put aside, left on the floor (not even on a table), while the lady sits and strums. But then, If music be the food of love…

Despite the blue sky in the painting, maybe things are stormier than we think – it’s not plain sailing. The dark, dirty streaks on the wall beneath the map could have told us as much – and despite the brilliantly illuminated interior maybe the outlook is not as bright as it might appear: there could be clouds on teh horizon. But remember, this is just one interpretation – there are many others which could be equally (or more) valid. And, as we shall see on Monday, that is one of the things that keeps bringing us back to Vermeer.

262 – Stand well back

Joseph Wright of Derby, The Annual Girandola at the Castel Sant’Angelo, 1775-76. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Wright of Derby: From the Shadows – the exhibition at The National Gallery which I will be talking about this Monday, 24 November at 6pm – is one of those exhibitions which takes a small slice of an artist’s life and covers it both beautifully and thoroughly. It’s not a large exhibition, but it is very rich, and there is more than enough to look at and think about to make a visit to Trafalgar Square worthwhile even if you do nothing else. The paintings look superb, the design is perfect, and the lighting is both evocative and appropriate. To avoid cutting further into that ‘small slice’ – which in some ways I did in August with 254 – Joseph Wright, changing your point of view – today I will look at a superb painting by Wright which falls outside the range of the works in the exhibition. Nevertheless, it does use many of the techniques the artist had learnt from the ‘candlelights’ and ‘moonlights’ which are the subject of From the Shadows.

The following week, 1 December, my starting point will be the first of two exhibitions in London this winter which focus on one loaned painting, Double Vision: Vermeer at Kenwood. The second will follow two weeks later, on 15 December, when I will look at – and around – the Wallace Collection’s Caravaggio’s Cupid. These two talks will be followed in the New Year with two more which will introduce exhibitions at Tate – Turner and Constable (Tate Britain) on 5 January, and Theatre Picasso (Tate Modern) on 12 January. More news is bound to follow soon in the diary.

At first glance you might wonder if we are looking at a natural – or manmade – disaster. In the dark of night the most enormous explosion seems to have taken place, an eruption of fire amid sizeable buildings. Fortunately, though, we are at a safe remove, with two tall umbrella pines acting as a screen, letting us know how far away we are from the fire, the smoke and all the sparks: we are definitely standing well back. A dark row of buildings marks the edge of a town, or city, with the furthest building – as far as we can see so far – being a large church with a notable dome. To one side of it, palaces are lit up with the golden glow of the conflagration, and facing it a round building is all-but enveloped by smoke. Sparks fly up into the sky in all directions.

Looking closer, though, the sparks might seem a little too ‘tidy’ to result from an uncontrolled fire. It may have been obvious to you before, but all this heat and light is the result of a firework display. The concentrated energy of the upward motion of the sparks allows us to track their origin to what appears to be an open space in front of the church. As the sparks rise their colour shifts from yellow to orange as they lose their energy – both in terms of movement and heat – and their parabolic trajectory starts to be noticeable. However, there is more than one type of firework. The main column of sparks, which opens out rather like a display of tall flowers in a narrow vase, is clearly bursting up from the ground, but there are also rockets which, in this detail at least, shoot along diagonals behind the trunks of the pines. The smoke which envelops the circular building would also appear to have developed from the base of the firework display.  

Getting closer still another thing becomes more obvious (although to some, again, it may have been obvious before). We are in Rome – or near Rome, at least. The church is none other than St Peter’s, and the round building in front of it the Castel Sant’Angelo. To the right of St Peter’s is the ‘Loggia di Raffaelo’, decorated by the great renaissance master, but almost completely inaccessible to the public today.

The top floor is open, supported by a row of columns (although it has now been glazed, to protect the frescoes), whereas the floor below has an arcade, with each arch framed by pilasters. Compare and contrast the above: I think it’s fair to say that Joseph Wright has been pretty accurate in his depiction – although he has heightened the drum of Michelangelo’s dome.

Accurate, that is, until you think about the relative locations of St Peter’s and the Castel Sant’Angelo. The latter is far closer to us in the painting – so it should appear to be far larger, potentially even blocking our view of the basilica, given the distance between them. However, Wright clearly wants us to see both: he wants us to know where we are. Given the angle of the rockets, they would appear to be flying out from the Piazza San Pietro, inside the enclosing arms of Bernini’s colonnades. However, the title of the painting tells us that this is not the case – the girandola was taking place at the Castel Sant’Angelo. Apart from the rooves of this structure, and the land immediately around it, there wasn’t much more open space in this part of Rome in the 18th century: the dramatic avenue leading from the Castel Sant’Angelo to the Piazza San Pietro – the Via della Conciliazione – was only started in 1936 on the orders of Mussolini. It involved the destruction of a row of buildings between two narrower streets to create the impressive width of the avenue, which wasn’t completed until 1950. There is no evidence of these buildings, or of the distance between the castle and the basilica, in Wright’s painting, though: this is a topography that depends on the ‘symbolism’ of notable buildings rather than on geographical accuracy.

The same is true further to the left. What stands out is the dome of the Pantheon, resting on its cylindrical walls. Standing a little closer to us is a column, with specks of light reflecting from its surfaces, suggesting that they are highly decorated with sculpture. This must be one of the two columns in Rome with spiralling reliefs. The assumption, in the texts that I have read, is that it is Trajan’s Column, probably because it is the more famous of the two (just to make the point, there is a plaster cast of the entire thing in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London). However, the Column of Marcus Aurelius would make marginally more sense. Looking from the right place on the Pincian Hill the Castel Sant’Angelo would appear to be to the left of the façade of St Peter’s, and the Pantheon would be off to the left – but far further off than Wright has suggested. You might even be able to find a place where the Column of Marcus Aurelius appears in front of the Pantheon – but it wouldn’t be the same place: this may be an amalgam of different views from the Pincian, with the buildings out of scale to allow them to be identified, and visible. However, this suggestion is thrown out of kilter by a building that could be a church with an octagonal ‘dome’ – although the structure is really a broad lantern with sections of a sloping roof. I think this is the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia. Again, compare and contrast:

On the façade Wright has painted the standard tripartite division of a church, whereas the building is divided into four – an early Renaissance ‘error’ in the revival of classical architecture, perhaps. It could be that he was making assumptions about the way in which such a gable-ended building is usually structured. I don’t know any other buildings in Rome with this sort of octagonal lantern, although they may have been altered, or hidden, since the 18th century. The gothic tracery of windows of the Ospedale’s lantern do seem very close to what Wright has depicted. If this is the Ospedale, though, it is at the Tiber end of the Via della Conciliazione – Mussolini’s 1930s avenue – and so not far from the Castel Sant’Angelo. It is nowhere near the Pantheon or either of the two columns. What Wright has painted is not an accurate cityscape, but a genre of painting known as a Capriccio – an imaginary landscape (or cityscape) ‘cutting and pasting’ known buildings – or invented ones – into a ‘capricious’ arrangement. It is a fantasy, a scrapbook of known monuments. However, the occurrence he is depicting – La Girandola – was a matter of historical fact.  Here’s another, more topographically accurate version of a similar occasion – or possibly even the same one – that Wright painted at about the same time (1776), which is now in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery: Firework Display at the Castel Sant’Angelo.

The Girandola of the title was a mechanism for mounting fireworks. They were set into a circular structure, and aligned in such a way that the force of the rockets firing out of it caused the entire thing to revolve – like a Catherine wheel, or pin wheel firework, but on a far larger scale. It took place annually – as the title of the painting suggests – on Easter Monday, but there could also be a girandola to celebrate the inauguration of a new pope. Wright left England on his own version of the Grand Tour in 1773, and was in Rome from 1774 to 1775. He would have been there for the conclave which elected Pope Pius VI in February 1775, but it seems far more likely that he witnessed the girandola of Easter 1774. On returning to England he would have used sketches he made in Rome, together with his memories of the event, to complete the paintings, adding in more or less artistic license along the way.

In both cases – the paintings in Liverpool and Birmingham – he paired the image with an equivalent of Vesuvius erupting. Although he did travel south to Naples to see the volcano, which was going through what is termed an ‘eruptive sub-cycle’ in the 1770s, it is very unlikely that he witnessed a ‘major’ eruption – although you wouldn’t know that from the paintings. He was an artist, after all. The pairing was quite deliberate – fireworks from the earth compared with handmade eruptions, or, to put it in his own words, “The one the greatest effect of Nature, the other of Art that I suppose can be”. Both would have been considered manifestations of the Sublime, defined by Edmund Burke in 1757 as the experience of encountering something that inspires awe, terror, and astonishment, producing the strongest emotions the mind can feel, saying that ‘whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime’.

Fireworks are, of course, dangerous, hence the instruction I remember from my childhood to ‘light blue touch paper and stand well back’. I suspect that the people operating the girandola may not have been given this luxury – nor was ‘health and safety’ a consideration for the people lowered by rope from the lantern of the dome of St Peter’s to light all the candles you can see illuminating it in the background of the Birmingham painting. The candlesticks are still there: you can see them if you look over the balcony of the lantern of St Peter’s to this day (but only on the side facing Rome).

In both paintings, though, Wright clearly was standing well back. For the Liverpool version he imagined himself to be far enough away to allow him to include the two umbrella pines – even if experience would suggest that he probably invented the entire foreground landscape. As I said above, the pines create a dark screen against which the strength of the brilliant illuminations can be measured, and they also allow us to trace the almost random path of the rockets – one of which has exploded, illuminating the edges of nearby clouds. They also encourage us to look into the depth of the painting, thus acting as a form of repoussoir.

And yet – as this detail suggests – even this far away may not be far enough: a rocket is landing at the foot of the pines, in the foreground of the painting. This would surely induce anxiety in the minds of anyone physically present – but safe as we are at home, looking at our screens, or in the comfort of the art gallery, it need not concern us too much. This too is part of the experience of Burke’s ‘Sublime’ – the knowledge that such awe and terror exist, and yet, we need not be afraid: we get the thrill, but not the danger. It even allows us a space to enjoy the fear – not unlike watching a thriller on T.V. The British, in particular, seem to love a good murder – just think about Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle – maybe (just ‘maybe) this is the heritage of the Sublime gradually bubbling away… The paintings in From the Shadows are, on the whole, more domestic, and might not, at first glance, appear to produce that much of a threat. But the size and scale of the solar system, or the inevitability of death, are nevertheless bound to present an undeniable sense of awe… as we will find out on Monday.