Angelica Kauffman by Miranda Miller

 

Angelica Paintress of Minds, my novel about the eighteenth -century artist Angelica Kauffman, was published by The Barbican Press in 2020. Publication was carefully timed to coincide with an exhibition of her work at the Royal Academy. Then Covid happened and the exhibition, together with so much else, was cancelled. So you can imagine how delighted I was when this excellent show opened at the Royal Academy in March. I particularly admire her portraits and self -portraits. 

 
This portrait she did of the great actor David Garrick displays her talent for empathy and warmth. While she was painting it in Naples in 1764, she said he kept trying to make her laugh, his wit and enjoyment of each other’s company led to a flirtation. Garrick sent this verse to St James’s Chronicle:

While thus you paint with Ease and Grace,

And spirit all your own;

Take, if you please, my Mind and Face,

But let my heart alone.


This has been a wonderful year for Angelica Kauffman and for women artists in general. She is one of the stars of a fascinating exhibition at Tate Britain: NOW YOU SEE US: WOMEN ARTISTS IN BRITAIN 1520–1920 (on until October 13th). At last, it seems, women artists are being taken seriously. The exhibition tells the story of their long battle to be allowed to pursue an artistic education. Artemisia Gentileschi and Angelica Kauffman were only able to become painters because they grew up in their fathers’ studios. 

 

This painting of Venus and Cupid inducing Helen to fall in love with Paris shows her gift for presenting mythology from the point of view of women. Kauffman and the botanical artist Mary Moser were amongst the founder members of the Royal Academy of Arts. Even so they were excluded from life drawing classes because it was “indelicate” for a woman to stare at a naked man, and no other women were admitted until Laura Knight was elected to the RA in 1936.

Almost all the paintings in this exhibition are of women as well as by them; it seems that women often preferred to sit for other women. There are some interesting discoveries, for example Frances Reynolds, the sister of Joshua, painted an excellent portrait of Elizabeth Montagu, the leader of the Bluestockings. By the mid-nineteenth century the fight to be valued as artists merged with the wider campaign for women’s rights which is, I think, why this exhibition is so important.

Julia Margaret Cameron was given a camera in 1863, and her photographs are now considered to be some of the finest ever taken. The Slade was founded in 1871 based on a financial bequest from Felix Slade, who became its namesake. It was, and still is, part of University College London (UCL), which had been founded in 1826 as London's first university and the first university in Britain to be entirely secular. The Slade admitted women students on equal terms with men from its founding. The barrier to life drawing was finally broken down. and they quickly outnumbered male students. I was surprised to see that In the First World War there were women war photographers, such as Anna Airy. 

 

Miranda Miller’s ninth novel, When I Was, will be published next March by Barbican Press. www.mirandamiller.info.

Cabinet of Curiosities by Charlotte Wightwick – the Sargon Vase: an enduring story, a fragile vessel

Whenever I go to a museum or exhibition I play a game. What, if I could take one thing home with me that day, would I have? 

What I’ve realised over the years is that it is rarely the most obviously beautiful or valuable item (with some notable exceptions - hello, the Crown Jewels!) that I would choose. Instead I tend to be drawn to the ‘everyday life’ items – the things which produce that moment of sudden, blinding recognition: the people who made this, used this, really lived. Despite the differences of centuries and cultures, they were, in many ways, just like me.

That’s how I felt last week, attending the British Museum’s current blockbuster exhibition I am Ashurbanipal: king of the world, king of Assyria. Following the political history of the Assyrian Empire – which at its largest covered the area from the shores of the eastern Mediterranean to the mountains of western Iran - it covers a huge geographical area and, by providing the background to Ashurbanipal’s rule, several centuries of history. 

Much of the exhibition focuses on the large narrative panels setting out important episodes from the king’s reign. These are beautiful, intricate carvings which do much to illuminate the sophistication of Assyrian courtly life. They show a deep appreciation for nature and beauty, as well as telling exciting stories – primarily Ashurbanipal demonstrating his prowess against the forces of chaos through lion-hunting or by defeating human foes. I was especially taken by poor King Teumman of Elam, who in a battle scene first loses his kingly hat, then manages to get it back, only for the victorious Assyrians to take his head instead. (The curators of the exhibition mixed modern technology and the original objects in a sympathetic and intelligent way to bring out this story.) 

Battle of Til-Tuba. detail. 660-650BC.

©The Trustees of the British Museum

The king’s library, preserved on clay tablets, is also impressive, if largely incomprehensible at first glance to a modern lay audience. There is the occasional more relatable item, such as the tablet which includes both text and a 3-D model of a lung, to act as a teaching aid to three-thousand-year-ago medical students, or the tiny tablet containing royal orders, contained with an equally tiny clay envelope. You can find out more about the Library here: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/a-library-fit-for-a-king/

But it is the smaller, humbler objects which really caught my eye. The nearly three-thousand year old gaming board, with which courtiers may have whiled away their time. Were they simply bored of hanging around at court - waiting for the next lion hunt to start, say - or were they avid gamblers, whose fortunes were won and lost on the progress of the game? They may have played their game seated at tables with feet depicting beautifully realistic deer hooves or lion paws which still survive, long after the main article of furniture has vanished. What of the people who made and used the clam shells, intricately carved and turned into decorative cosmetic containers, the pride of a fashion-conscious beauty’s dressing table?

Decorated shell, probably 630/580 BC

©The Trustees of the British Museum

The final element of the exhibition was, however, the most moving: a section setting out how much of the archaeology of the region, both that in museums and in situ on sites has been destroyed in recent years by Isis/ Daesh. It’s a frightening reminder of how much that we see is but a tiny fraction of the stories that are there to be told, when so much destruction can take place in only a few short years. 

So, what would I take home with me, to take pride of place in my Cabinet of Curiosities? Obviously the answer is - "actually I wouldn’t" - but if I could have one thing, the exquisite Sargon Vase – a tiny glass vessel, made with care and skill in the eighth-century BC and still intact despite nearly three thousand years of warfare, abandonment and yet more destruction, seems a fitting symbol to me.

The Sargon Vase, 721-705BC

©The Trustees of the British Museum

How Vincent Van Gogh Fell in Love with Japan - by Lesley Downer

‘a little yellow house with green door and shutters, whitewashed inside - on the white walls - very brightly coloured Japanese drawings - red tiles on the floor.’ 

A couple of weekends ago I was in Amsterdam to see an irresistible exhibition - Van Gogh and Japan at the Van Gogh Museum. I wondered what Vincent, poor tormented soul, would have made of that vast glitzy museum devoted to his works and memory, with its mobs of visitors and museum shops selling everything from Van Gogh luggage to Van Gogh dog coats. He was not exactly poor. His brother Theo who worked for a Paris art dealer took care of him. But he never found much success either during his life. He only sold one painting to anyone other than Theo.

Sudden Shower over Shin Ohashi, Atake, Hiroshige (L)

Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige), Van Gogh (R)

In February 1886, when Van Gogh was thirty three, he arrived back in Paris after ten years roaming from Ramsgate to the Low Countries. He lived there with Theo for two years and made friends with artists such as Émile Bernard, Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Signac. 

He also became acquainted with the celebrated art dealer Siegfried Bing. Pretty much ever since Japan opened to the west in 1858 the west had been flooded with Japanese arts and crafts. All Paris along with half the western world was afire with Japonisme, unbridled enthusiasm for all things Japanese, and Siegfried Bing had largely cornered the market.

Over the following winter Van Gogh bought up more than 600 Japanese woodblock prints. He planned to sell them. But as he leafed through them he was transfixed by the dramatic designs, compositions, bright colours, strong lines and extraordinary viewpoints, all startling and fresh to western eyes.

It’s well known that Van Gogh was much influenced by Japanese art but this is the first exhibition to bring together so many of Van Gogh’s paintings alongside the prints that inspired them. It also broadens out the picture to reveal how much Van Gogh’s view of life was brightened by what he called these ‘cheerful prints’ - and how they played a part in shaping other aspects of his life.

Courtesan (after Eisen) by Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh’s first forays into Japanese art were to paint copies of three woodblock prints. One was Keisai Eisen’s Courtesan which featured on the cover of a special Japan edition of the magazine Paris Illustré. The others were landscape prints by Hiroshige which he had bought. It’s extraordinary to contrast Van Gogh’s dense impassioned brush strokes with the clean cool lines of the Japanese originals. The images are the same though he’s surrounded his courtesan with Japanese motifs - bamboo, cranes, frogs and waterlilies. But the techniques and mood and final effect are radically different.

He also painted a portrait of his art dealer, Julien Tanguy, against a backdrop of woodblock prints, including Van Gogh’s own courtesan painting.

Portrait of Pere Tanguy by Vincent Van Gogh

After two years in Paris he couldn’t stand the hustle and bustle any longer and in 1888 moved south. It was as if he was besotted with Japan, looking for it everywhere. On the way south he kept gazing out of the train window to see ‘if it was like Japan yet.’ He was sure he would find his dream of Japan there. He took with him a few woodblock prints, not famous or expensive ones but cheerful colourful depictions of landscapes and women.

In Arles, the natural beauty and bright light and cheerful colours recreated Japan for him. The southern light, he wrote, turned everything into ‘Japan’. There was a field of irises there which he painted and described as a Japanese dream. He writes of the landscape of La Crau with its peach trees, ‘Everything there is small, the gardens, the fields, the trees, even those mountains, as in certain Japanese landscapes, that’s why this subject attracted me.’ ‘I’m always saying to myself that I’m in Japan here,’ he said in another letter. ‘That as a result I only have to open my eyes and paint right in front of me what makes an impression on me.’ 

Rock of Montmajour by Vincent van Gogh

Hakone by Ando Hiroshige

In the exhibition Van Gogh’s paintings hang close to the Japanese prints which inspired them. He sought out subjects akin to those which he saw in the prints. There is a dramatic painting of a quarry, The Rock of Montmajour, dotted with trees, of which he writes, ‘You’ll well remember there are Japanese drawings where grasses and little trees grow there and there’. Hung opposite is Hiroshige’s dramatic print of the crags at Hakone with a huge crag, with grass and trees growing out of it, dwarfing the people and hanging at an impossible angle over the water.

 

The paintings Van Gogh did in Arles are very different from his earlier work. ‘After some time your vision changes, you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel colour differently,’ he wrote to Theo. He plays with colour, laying on bright flat areas of intense colour with impassioned brush strokes. He painted The Yellow House set against a flat blue sky almost more solid than the house itself and his bedroom and yellow bed using ‘flat plain tints like Japanese prints,’ with strong outlines, flat colour planes and no shadows. Inspired by the Japanese prints which hung around his studio, he applied thick black contour lines and played with extraordinary perspectives and viewpoints. He painted Almond Blossom, seen from below against a dazzling turquoise sky, in honour of the birth of his nephew, Theo’s son. In The Sower, the dramatic diagonal of the tree trunk cuts across the picture, silhouetted against a huge yellow sun.

Self-portrait dedicated to
Gauguin by Vincent van Gogh

In Arles Van Gogh hoped to enjoy his dream of a Japanese way of life. He imagined humble Japanese woodblock print artists living and working together like monks in a monastery and decided to set up an artists’ colony with his friend Paul Gauguin as the leader. Like Japanese artists, they exchanged self portraits. In the portrait he sent Gauguin he depicts himself as a very un-Buddha-like Japanese monk with a shaven head and intense wild eyes, somewhat slanted.

But as we know it didn’t work out. The collaboration with Gauguin came to an end, the artists’ colony fell through. Van Gogh cut off his ear, checked himself into a hospital and painted feverishly, producing a painting a day. When he couldn’t go outside he painted through the bars of his window.

The last part of this absorbing and fascinating exhibition takes us right inside Van Gogh’s studio, surrounded by the Japanese prints that he had pinned to the wall - unframed, working tools, some torn and paint-stained. He often mentions the cheeriness of the brightly-coloured prints of landscapes and beautiful women. Perhaps he hoped to find peace of mind by surrounding himself with such serene images. But alas, that was the one thing he was destined never to find.

Van Gogh and Japan at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, continues till June 24th 2018.




Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale set in nineteenth century Japan, is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

All Van Gogh images © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

All other images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons