Matisse the Master : My Week in View

Matisse the Master : My Week in View

For as long as I can remember Matisse has been, with Picasso, the defining inspiration for creative modern artists. He hovers above us always out of reach as both painter and sculptor of genius. One of my personal claims to fame was that I was alive before he died in...
Whistler in the Darkness : My Week in View

Whistler in the Darkness : My Week in View

I am member of the Chelsea Arts Club, a wonderful institution founded in 1891 by the painter James McNeill Whistler. He is, I think, still an underrated artists who influenced many and fought the battle for modernism, nearly ruining himself in the process. His famous...
Life Class : My Week in View

Life Class : My Week in View

I was taken by friends to the play Calendar Girls this week and in the play the characters have to be semi-naked on stage, which is very brave of the actors, as is all performance in public that calls for revealing the unclothed body. Kenneth Clark wrote brilliantly...
Blue : My Week in View

Blue : My Week in View

Blue is the colour of the gods. Lapis lazuli a semi precious stone, mined since earliest times in China and ground to become Ultra Marine, the finest of Blue pigments, was once so rare that only the most famous artists could afford to use it. Blue is the perceived...
Let there be Light : My Week in View

Let there be Light : My Week in View

Light is the greatest mystery in the universe. We only perceive the world because of light. Painting is captured light, Turner in particular understood this well and the British have a singular obsession with the fleeting light that is so precious in the long darkness...