The Easel

9th April 2019

Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light @ the National Gallery

Popular in his native Madrid, Sorolla is elsewhere obscure. One critic praises his “Impressionist effervescence” and immense skill in depicting light.  However, key works, from the 1890’s, when Impressionism was no longer new, were essentially traditional. [He represented] “everything modern painting set out to overthrow.” Sorolla aspired to be Goya’s heir. He was not.

2nd April 2019

Powerful elegy for a world that is slipping away: Tate Britain’s The Asset Strippers reviewed

This “magnificent” show has a painful resonance with the Brexit identity crisis. Nelson has salvaged a mass of obsolete machinery from post-war industrial Britain. A show “not of nostalgia but deep sadness” says one critic “It’s about the end of an era: industries moving on and out of the country … everything must go, entire eras of the past.” More images are here.