Andrew Lambirth trawls the galleries and finds a visual feast for the festive season
Most people who have heard of James Ward (1769–1859) will know his monumental landscape in Tate Britain, ‘Gordale Scar’, but perhaps little else by him. ‘Gordale Scar’ is immensely impressive (I also love Karl Weschke’s versions of the same subject made in 1987–8), but Ward was far from being a one-work artist. A painter of animals as well as of landscapes, his gifts of observation and curiosity made him a valued recorder of country life. A superb show of his drawings at W.S. Fine Art/Andrew Wyld (27 Dover Street, W1, until 11 December) gives a full account of his skills as a draughtsman in subjects ranging from charcoal burners to cloud studies. Particularly effective are the pencil drawings of trees in Wales and Scotland, holly trees in Needwood Forest, Staffordshire, and Cader Idris from various viewpoints. The style is vigorous, particularising and affectionate. It’s time to know him better.
The Ward show is accompanied by a beautifully produced and scholarly catalogue, as is the very different exhibition currently at the Fine Art Society (148 New Bond Street, W1, until 3 December), bleakly entitled War. This display focuses on the art released or inspired by two world wars, and includes a host of famous artists and some extremely forceful images. C.R.W. Nevinson (1889–1946) is quintessentially a war artist — though I would also proffer an argument for some of his other work — who made unforgettable images that cross the boundary between man and machine and thus illustrate the essential inhumanity of conflict on this scale. Paul Nash (1889–1946) made disturbingly beautiful watercolour and chalk drawings of the devastated battlefields of the first world war. In the realm of sculpture, Charles Sargeant Jagger (1885–1934) modelled confrontational bronze figures overflowing with compassion, while Eric Kennington (1888–1960) drew individual soldiers asleep or off duty in poignant pastel. (His ‘Nissen Hut’, 1918, is a potent emblem of the loneliness and desolation of life on the Western Front.) Other artists represented in this powerfully affecting show are William Roberts, Charles Sims, John Piper and Edward Wadsworth. ‘Belsen Head’ by Raymond Mason (born 1922) confirms the horror and outrage of man’s bestiality to man.
On a very different note are two exhibitions by abstract artists, whose work could be seen as a logical development of the ‘dazzle’ camouflage of the ship in dry dock in Wadsworth’s famous woodcut (actually on view at the Fine Art Society). Michael Kidner (born 1917), showing works on paper from the 1960s (in the Friends Room at the Royal Academy, until 9 December), and Bridget Riley (born 1931), whose new work can be seen at Timothy Taylor Gallery (15 Carlos Place, W1, until 19 December), exploit the optical shiver that can be generated by the cunning juxtaposition of colour and shape. Kidner is the Grand Old Man of Op Art, while Riley is its most celebrated exponent, but both offer different pleasures. Kidner’s bright oil-on-paper waveform studies vibrate with playful inquiry. Riley’s latest wall paintings, and particularly ‘Rhythm in Green’, which proposes a dancing grid of form and breathtaking colour, are startlingly beautiful.
Morandi is an artist whose work I love, and it’s rare to have the chance to see 20 of his paintings on show in a private gallery (until 18 December) and for most of them to be for sale. But Imago Art Gallery (4 Clifford Street, W1) is run by the Pescali family, who have owned Morandi paintings for three generations. In fact, the present curator’s grandfather bought directly from the artist, whose habit it was to display his paintings flat on the floor to potential buyers. A still-life from 1950 is shown almost thus — unframed, certainly, and virtually on the floor, but preserved (for the sake of security) in a Perspex box. There are some quietly magnificent paintings hung over four floors, particularly engaging being a group of seven landscapes to ring the changes from the more familiar still-lifes of bottles and jugs. There are even a couple of flower paintings. The brushiness of Morandi’s style grew more pronounced with age, and his compositions more abstract, but they are never less than exact. Delectable.
I have to declare an interest in three of the shows I am about to mention, though that sounds bizarre because I have a deep interest in all mentioned here. But for the following trio I have written catalogue introductions, so they may be taken to be especially close to my heart. Ramiro Fernandez Saus (born 1961) is a Spanish artist with a dedicated following in this country, whose latest show at Long & Ryle (4 John Islip Street, SW1, until 18 December) has already nearly sold out. Ramiro paints the everyday scenes of life transfigured by a richly poetical imagination and a quirky humour. His witty and beautifully painted compositions haunt the memory with a gentle but insistent magic: utterly beguiling. Among his admirers is Craigie Aitchison, who has gone on record saying it’s a disgrace that Ramiro’s work isn’t in the Tate. Will the gauleiters of Millbank show their faces at this delightful show? They’ll be missing something if they don’t.
One of the most indomitable gallery-goers I know is William Packer (born 1940), for many years the art critic of the Financial Times and a distinguished painter in his own right. Piers Feetham Gallery (475 Fulham Road, SW5, until 28 November) is giving him a mini-retrospective, and a full range of the Packer subtlety may at last be seen. Comparing landscapes from the 1960s with recent paintings, the chief quality that emerges is a consistent sensitivity to the subject, despite brief excursions into abstraction. Packer is a quietly assured and very enjoyable painter, and his show deserves every success.
Out of town are a couple of most worthwhile shows. Firstly, Alexander Pemberton presents new paintings of Thames subjects at the River and Rowing Museum in Henley (until 3 January 2010). His toughly painted visions of riverside building are filled with tender colour and reflected light and look beautiful in the museum’s ground-floor space. Don’t miss the vast Piper mural upstairs and the masses of other intriguing exhibits: easily worth a special trip. Secondly, an artist I haven’t written about before but have long admired is Wladyslaw Mirecki (born Chelmsford 1956, of Polish parentage). He and his wife run the enterprising Chappel Galleries, in Chappel, Essex, where his current exhibition has been demonstrating (by its profusion of red dots) the undiminished loyalty of his supporters and patrons. Mirecki paints the fields and footpaths of Essex and more dramatic subjects, such as the great railway viaduct at Chappel, with an extraordinary intensity. Self-taught, he has made himself a master of the sometimes despised medium of watercolour, in which it’s relatively easy to do something passable, but extraordinarily difficult to excel. Mirecki excels, apparently effortlessly. His watercolours are not only technical tours de force, but are also imbued with a sense of place that is compelling. Remarkable.
Comments