Janet Boulton: Remembering Little Sparta
Edinburgh College of Art, until 30 August
Janet Boulton (born 1936) is an artist of integrity and dedication, whose principal subject is still-life. She paints in watercolour, that most demanding of media, and eschews drama of subject or treatment. She has chosen a difficult path, and one which attracts little attention, particularly in an art world dominated by sensationalism. Boulton’s is a quiet art, its aim residing in the subtlest differentiations of tone and placing. She paints exquisite compositions of glass vessels, making of their reflective surfaces a fitting subject for contemplation, a modern vanitas. She is also a passionate gardener, and one of her most heartfelt projects in recent years — besides the designing and tending of her own small garden in Oxfordshire — has been visiting and recording Ian Hamilton Finlay’s famous garden in the Pentland Hills of southern Scotland.
People are divided about the artist, writer and polemicist Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006). They tend either to adore him and all his works, or else to execrate his politics or self-aggrandisement. But even his severest critics are frequently won over by the charms and intellectual delights of Little Sparta, his garden. For the past 16 years, Janet Boulton has visited Little Sparta on a regular basis, spending a week there every few months, and devoting her time to recording the varying aspect of the place. A classical garden on a domestic scale, it recalls the arrangements of Stowe in the placement of inscribed sculptures in relation to various landscape features and new plantings. The themes of Finlay’s garden are an extension of his obsessions but presented in a more relaxed way. Humour, irony and affection are evident, and make a lasting monument to an often difficult man.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in