Hidden treasure

Transfiguration
Guildhall Art Gallery, until 4 October

Transfiguration

Guildhall Art Gallery, until 4 October

Complaining the other day in these pages about the crowded nature of public exhibition spaces in London, I had momentarily forgotten the secret charms of the Guildhall Art Gallery. This museum, specialising in London subjects, receives scant attention in the press, and as a consequence it is less than mobbed by the public. Yet it has mounted a very creditable and popular-scholarly series of exhibitions, being particularly good on Victorian painters of the Frith and Watts type, while also dealing with modern and living artists. The permanent collection contains many treasures, some of which may be seen in the newly published catalogue Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in the City of London (Public Catalogue Foundation, £25 in hardback), as well as a huge collection of works by Matthew Smith (1879–1959), in all subjects and media. There will be an exhibition of Smith’s work later in the year, which I hope to review, but in the meantime, there is Transfiguration.

The subtitle of this show is Our Landscape, Our Art, Our Time, and it was put together by the two young artists whose work it features — Dan Llywelyn Hall (born 1980) and Raphael Pepper (born 1979). It was shown first in the National Museum and Gallery of Wales in Cardiff alongside paintings from that museum (such as the poignant landscapes of James Dickson Innes, one of my long-time favourites) that had inspired Llywelyn Hall and Pepper, together with work by schoolchildren taught by the two artists. In London, the remit has changed slightly: the artists are showing some of their Welsh work but have made new paintings and drawings in response to the Olympic site in East London. The result is a smallish display in the first-floor balcony gallery, but the work is of such quality and interest that it overflows the space and effortlessly colonises the imagination.

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