Duncan Grant

This Week in London – Impressionists on paper; Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant honoured with a Blue Plaque; new Burnham Beeches history app; and, young artists celebrated on London billboards…

by exploringlondon
Claude Monet, ‘Cliffs at Etretat: The Needle Rock and Porte d’Aval’, c 1885. National Galleries of Scotland.

• A new exhibition exploring how Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists in late 19th-century France radically transformed the status of works on paper opens at the Royal Academy on Friday. Impressionists on Paper: Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec features around 80 works on paper by artists including Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Eva Gonzalès, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Odilon Redon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent van Gogh. Among the highlights are Degas’ Woman at a Window (1870-71), van Gogh’s The Fortifications of Paris with Houses (1887), Monet’s Cliffs at Etretat: The Needle Rock and Porte d’Aval (c1885) and Toulouse-Lautrec’s images of the urban underworld of Montmartre. The display can be seen in The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries until 10th March. Admission charges apply. For more, see royalacademy.org.uk.

• English Heritage have unveiled their final Blue Plaque for 2023 and it celebrates two of the most influential painters of the early-to-mid 20th century, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. The plaque was unveiled at number 46 Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, from where the Bloomsbury Group – of which Bell and Grant were leading members – drew its name. Bell first lived at number 46 with her siblings, including Virginia Stephen (later Woolf), and, in 1914, Grant moved in with Vanessa and her husband, Clive Bell. Paintings the pair made at number 46 include Grant’s Interior at Gordon Square (c1915) and Bell’s Apples: 46 Gordon Square (c1909-10), a still-recognisable view from the drawing-room balcony to the square. For more on the English Heritage Blue Plaques scheme, head to www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/.

• The history of Burnham Beeches has been brought to life with a new augmented reality app. The app allows users to superimpose periods of Burnham Beeches’ history – from the Iron Age, Middle Ages and World War II – over what they see when visiting the site and incorporates sounds from selected era as well. It can be accessed via a QR code which is being published on signs at Burnham Beeches. Burnham Beeches, located near the village of Burnham in Buckinghamshire, was acquired by the City of London in 1880 when the area was threatened by development and is managed as a free open space. For more, head here.

• The work of 30 young artists celebrating African community and culture is being showcased on billboards across the city in conjunction with Tate Modern’s current exhibition, A World in Common. The photographs have been selected following a call from the Tate Collective for 16-to-25-year-olds to submit images responding to the exhibition. More than 100 entries were submitted by young people based across the UK and beyond and Londoners will be able to view the 30 shortlisted works on billboards in Haringey, Lambeth, Southwark and Tower Hamlets over the next two weeks.

Send all items to exploringlondon@gmail.com.

This Week in London – Virginia Woolf celebrated at NPG; the City of London Festival; and, a new gallery at the V&A…

by exploringlondon

• The life of literary icon Virginia Woolf is being celebrated in a new exhibition which opens at the National Portrait Gallery today. Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision explores her life as novelist, intellectual, campaigner and public figure and features more than 100 works including portraits of Woolf by Bloomsbury Group contemporaries like her sister Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry as well as photographs by Beresford, Ray Man and Beck and McGregor who photographed the intellectual for Vogue. The display also includes works depicting her friends, family and literary peers and archival materials such as extracts from her personal diaries, books printed by Hogarth Press which she founded with husband Leonard Woolf and letters including one written to her sister shortly before her suicide in 1941. Runs until 26th October. Admission charge applies. For more, see www.npg.org.uk.

• The 52nd City of London Festival enters its final week today with numerous music, dance, spoken word and theatre events – many of them free – still on offer across the City. Events this week include a concert focusing on the history of the instrument known as the recorder and that of the office of Recorder of London (as St Sepulchre with Newgate tonight; tickets required), a showcase of musical talent from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama (at St Stephen Walbrook at 1.05pm next Tuesday; free), and, the Cart Marking Ceremony, in which vehicles process into Guildhall Yard where they are marked with a red hot iron by the Master Carmen and Lord Mayor (next Wednesday at 10.30am, free). For the full program of events, see www.colf.org. This year’s festival also features the placement of “street guitars” at 12 locations across the Square Mile where you can turn up and have a strum – for locations, see www.colf.org/streetguitars.

• A new gallery of items you might find in your own home has opened at the V&A. Gallery 74 now features items collected as a result of the museum’s “rapid response collecting” approach which sees them acquiring new objects relating to contemporary events and movements in architecture and design. Among the objects on display are a soft toy from IKEA, a pair of jeans from Primark (acquired soon after the Rana Plaza factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in which 1129 workers were killed – the factory made clothes for a number of western brands including Primark), and the world’s first 3D printed gun, the Liberator, which was designed by Texas law student Cody Wilson. Entry is free. For more, see www.vam.ac.uk.

Send all items of interest for inclusion to exploringlondon@gmail.com.

Around London – Chiswick House’s Camellia Festival; Picasso at the Tate; and, Mondrian at the Courtauld…

by exploringlondon

• The second annual Camellia Festival kicks off in  gardens surrounding the neo-Palladian property, Chiswick House,  in west London this weekend. The month long festival, run by the Chiswick House & Gardens Trust, was kicked off in 2011 with the aim of showcasing Chiswick’s world renowned Camellia Collection, believed to be the largest in the Western world. Following the success of last year’s festival following a £12.1 million garden restoration project, the flowers will once again be on display in the Conservatory (designed by Samuel Ware in 1813). Complementing the display of camellias will be a showcase of early spring flowers planted in the newly restored Italian Garden (originally created for the 6th Duke of Devonshire in 1814, it was, at the time, at the forefront of horticultural fashion). The Camellia Collection, meanwhile, includes rare and historically significant plants featuring pink, red, white and striped blooms, many of which are descended from the original planting in 1828. Among them is the Middlemist’s Red which was originally brought to Britain from China in 1804 by John Middlemist, a nurseryman from Shepherds Bush. It is one of only two in the world known to exist (the other is in Waitangi in New Zealand). The festival runs from the 18th February to the 18th March.  Admission charge applies. For more information, see www.chgt.org.uk. PICTURE:  The Middlemist’s Red Camellia at Chiswick House © Clare Kendall.

• On Now: Picasso and Modern British Art. This exhibition at Tate Britain explores the influence of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso on British art and the role this played in the acceptance of modern art in Britain as well as celebrating the connections Picasso made with Britain following his first London visit in 1919. It features more than 150 works including 60 by Picasso, among them Weeping Woman and The Three Dancers, as well as works by the likes of Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland and David Hockney. Runs until 15th July. Admission charge applies. For more information, see www.tate.org.uk

• On Now: Mondrian || Nicholson in Parallel. This show at the Courtauld Gallery tells the story of the extraordinary relationship between celebrated 20th century painter Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson, one of the UK’s greatest modern artists. The exhibition will follow the parallel artistic paths taken by the two artists in the 1930s and their subsequent creative relationship. Each of the works selected for the exhibition have a particular historical significance and the presentation also includes archival material such as photographs and letters. Admission charge applies. For more information, see www.courtauld.ac.uk.