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Much of the charm of Bernard Dunstan's work comes from its accidental quality. While he constructed pictures in his studio using a hired model, he was happiest to come across an informality that makes them come alive, there's a lot of geometry under their casual appearance.
John Singer Sargent painted his friends in more experimental ways than his commissioned portraits. His reputation went into freefall after his death at the age of 69 mainly because his former friend, the critic Roger Fry, came to see Sargent as irrelevant to 20thC modernism.
@Datvires @jamesfr88883003 That silvery light surely derives from Corot. What I find interesting about his later work is that it's half way between naturalistic and dreamy. His Impressionist works are excellent.
This afternoon I popped into Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich to view Colin Davidson's monumental painting of the singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran. Davidson is a singular connoisseur of the portrait and his picture of Sheeran is eloquent proof of this.
This portrait of Gerald Brockhurst's first wife Anaïs has Pre-Raphaelite overtones of his early works which he later developed into a masterpiece of etching over a decade later.
John Minton wrote to a friend: 'God how I love the land to stand and see it move in intricate perspectives to the heathaze of the gentle skyline ... I love the sea, treacherous, cold, impersonal, caught by the moon and shifted in the giant tides, the waves breaking forever.'
When Paul Henry first settled on Achill Island in the summer of 1910 he was attracted by the local populace and the difficult lives they led. At that time a red dress was almost universal among the older women who Henry said, 'had an instinctive sense of good colour.'
The American artist Nathan Oliveira was profoundly influenced by Rembrandt and the later German Expressionists. His figures, most often solitary and distorted, reflect an existentialist view of man, tragic yet enduring.
Winston Churchill’s paintings may not stand among the great artworks of the 20thC but they tell us a lot about why he was such a memorable leader. His political genius lay in the creativity that the paintings quietly embody. His painting was one outlet for a genuine artistic side
Kyffin Williams said of Jonathan Evans then a student at the Slade: 'He had a magnificent and almost noble head that made him look like a cross between Picasso and a Roman emperor. When he spoke his voice had the resonance of a great actor or an archbishop.'