Last Saturday, I spent the day in Bath (Somerset, England).
I visited again the
Victoria Art Gallery in Bath,
next to the famous Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon. The building was
designed in 1897 by John McKean Brydon and was named to celebrate Queen
Victoria's sixty years on the throne.
Victoria Art Gallery, at the end of the Pulteney Bridge
The Pulteney Bridge has shops built on it on both side.
Unless you come from the street along the Avon, you could cross it without
realising you were on a bridge.
Victoria Art Gallery
The main entrance of the Victoria Art Gallery
The side entrance, with a statue of Queen Victoria by A. C.
Lucchesi.
The carving on Queen Victoria’s dress is intricate
and delicate.
Queen Victoria’s statue by A. C. Lucchesi.
I saw, on the ground floor, the Bath Society of Artists
109th Annual Exhibition (5 April - 31 May). Very nice and inspiring works
exhibited there.
I then went to the upper floor where the permanent collection
is exhibited. You are not allowed to take photographs of the works (even those
in the public domain…) but I could take a general photograph from the entrance
to give you an idea of the exhibition space. They kept the gallery the way it
would have been in Victorian time, with paintings sometimes hung one on top of
the other.
Permanent collections gallery
The paintings are reproduced on the
Your Paintings site.
With the limited space, they have to rotate the works exhibited. Below is my selection
My two favourite paintings in the gallery, in this order,
are:
The Watersplash - Oil on canvas (116.8 x 94 cm) by Henry
Herbert La Thangue – Painted in 1900
The elements that make this painting work are: the
composition (with the perspective leading the eye towards the boy), the dappled
light, and the way the geese are arranged. Notice how the geese in the background
have their head raised high and how, as they approach the water, they bend
their neck more and more. This creates almost a cinematic illusion — you can
see the motion happening along the way.
Henry Herbert La Thangue (19 January 1859 – 21 December 1929) attended Dulwich College, trained briefly
in London and then at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was influenced by the
Barbizon school. He painted open-air landscape painters and people leaving and
working in the countryside.
I also liked the following paintings:
The sketchers - Oil on canvas (50.8 x 60.1 cm) by Algermon Talmage (in 1930). This painting in the Impressionist style, with its backlit
clouds, has a nice, creamy texture and luninous colours.
Thomas Gainsborough was one of the most popular artists of
the 18th Century. He remains famous to this day for his portraits. He established
his portrait studio in Bath in 1759 and stayed until 1774, when he left for
London.
I was struck by the painting of 'Old Tom Thumb'. The
portrait of this old wrinkled man is more luminous and subtle than the
photograph shows. Beyond the painting itself, the story of the model is quite
extraordinary. Here is the notice for this painting on Your Painting site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/old-tom-thumb-richard-brent-16821790-39814
“Richard Brent was a
pedlar nicknamed Tom Thumb who worked the Bristol and Bath area. He married
four times, had 32 children, and died in Bristol, blind and deaf, aged about
110.
Thomas Barker painted
old ‘Tom Thumb’ at least three times. Bath ladies and gentlemen were so
enthusiastic about this portrait that they raised money to give the pedlar a
weekly income in his old age.”
Thomas Jones Barker was from Bath. He trained in France and had
a successful career in Paris, and then in London.
The Victoria Art Gallery
Victoria Art Gallery in Bath
Bridge Street,
Bath,
BA2 4AT
. It opens in a landscape
format and the paper is thick enough to take ink and watercolour washes.
)
