The Easel

19th November 2024

Remembering Frank Auerbach, one of the leading artists of his generation, who has died aged 93

Matthew Holman | The Art Newspaper | 12th November 2024

Auerbach was intense, perhaps a consequence of his tragic last-minute departure from Nazi Germany. He had just a few subjects – his favourite sitters and the urban activity around his London home. From quite early, his paintings showed a characteristic style – densely applied paint (“trowelled on”), distorted images that “connect to the materiality of the subject”, and a feeling of never being carefree. His “contribution to portraiture and landscape painting had no equal during his long lifetime“.

Discover Constable is a chance to see one of Britain’s most beloved paintings up close

Florence Hallett | iNews | 17th October 2024

Constable’s The Hay Wain is so beloved that it’s on British biscuit tins. Yet its cosy familiarity obscures the fact that it was “radical” for a landscape painting. With hindsight it looks “less like a landscape painting and more like an actual landscape”. That was Constable the “naturalist”. His preparatory studies were made outdoors, showing the landscape under the bright midday sun. Such choices were an “act of rebellion” and anticipated the imminent invention of photography.

Painting the town: Florence in 1504

Sarah Dunant | RA Magazine | 15th November 2024

A familiar tale but rarely told with such detail and panache. By 1500, Florence was struggling to meet the challenge of rival city states. Michelangelo’s statue of David had been a “stunning piece of civic propaganda … a symbol of a city defiant in the face of her enemies.” Michelangelo and da Vinci were both soon bid away by more powerful patrons, but not before they overlapped with the precocious Raphael. His early paintings show him learning quickly from them. Still, his work was “already his own”.

12th November 2024

How a single year in Florence changed art forever

Martin Gayford | The Spectator | 2nd November 2024

Renaissance art seems so distant that we can lose the drama surrounding its creation. Florence in 1504 is a case in point. Michelangelo and da Vinci “distained” each other. Then, a young Raphael arrived, learned from both and started winning commissions they probably wanted. Rivalries sharpened further. Da Vinci and Michelangelo, seeing “flaws” in each other’s work, tried to out-do the other while the observant Raphael produced his “harmonious synthesis”. How very contemporary. Background is here.

The Great Mughals review – dazzling decorous delights waft you to paradise

Jonathan Jones | The Guardian | 6th November 2024

The Mughals were a contradiction. They were violent, engaging in palace coups at home and military conquest abroad. Yet their courts were religiously tolerant and intellectually open, incorporating Central Asian, Persian and European influences. Immensely wealthy at their peak (about 1560 – 1660) their ravishing palaces were full of art, books and precious objects. Their floral patterning was widely influential. Their gardens were to die for. Which, eventually, they did. Images and background are here.

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