The Easel

2nd November 2021

The Triumph of Rubens

Lucia Marchini | The Past | 19th October 2021

When we think Rubens, we think sensual, fleshy bodies. Yet he was also a scholar and diplomat. An “all-encompassing interest” in the art of antiquity links what otherwise might seem divergent. He admired ancient sculptures and their buff bodies. Alluding to their mythologies in his own art made him seem learned, accomplished. But his exuberant re-working of those ideas makes his work truly his own, “part of his narrative, part of the expression that he’s bringing to these ideas.’

26th October 2021

Hans Holbein’s Portraits Defined—and Immortalized—Tudor England’s Elite

Nora McGreevy | Smithsonian Magazine | 21st October 2021

Holbein the Younger lived through the charged politics of the Protestant Reformation. As the leading painter in Henry VIII’s Tudor court, a balanced deference was required to both Church and State. His most famous works, portraits of the court’s members, are masterful character studies, full of symbolism and psychological insight. They were also a balancing act – flattery versus truth, professional identity versus the person. Says one writer, Holbein was a “political artist to the tip of his brush”.

Suzanne Valadon: Model, Painter, Rebel at the Barnes Foundation

Ed Voves | Art Eyewitness | 10th October 2021

In the late 19th century, artist’s models were not taken too seriously. Valadon overcame this prejudice – and her working-class background – to become a notable realist painter. Her modern appeal comes from her psychologically insightful portrayal of people – often women – as capable individuals, rather than passive figures. She revealed the domestic realm, says one critic, “beyond the expectations of bourgeois propriety … [an explorer] of interior space”.

Sword fights on canvas: Georges Mathieu at Perrotin and Nahmad Contemporary

David Ebony | Art in America | 22nd October 2021

Postwar European abstraction leaned toward the geometric which didn’t enthuse Mathieu. Visiting New York, he met Pollock and others who, like himself, were exploring gestural abstraction. Thus encouraged, Mathieu built his career on flamboyant gestural paintings, executed at top speed. A revealed liking for painting for an audience did not enhance his reputation. Neither does it diminish his role in pioneering a European expression of “testosterone-driven, postwar angst”.

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