Conversing in the car

 

I took my now-retired English teacher from school at Uppingham, Gordon Braddy, on a day trip to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at Birmingham University.

 

We saw so many fine works there ‒ Botticelli, Veronese, van Dyck, Rubens, Poussin, Dahl (above*), Murillo, Gainsborough, Turner, Rossetti, Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Monet, van Gogh, Rodin, Gauguin, Derain, Magritte, Hodgkin… His first time there.

The journey was some two hours by car in each direction (including me losing my way in both directions, somewhere around Spaghetti Junction). We talked intimately and continuously.

At one point, Gordon remarked how good such journeys are in promoting rich conversation… ‘much better than trains.’

I suppose the fact that driver and passenger sit so close to one another, but necessarily without eye contact, has a lot to do with that.  

*Johan Christian Dahl (1785-1857, Norwegian), ‘Mother and Child by the Sea’

Portrait of the artist as a young musician

In my mind Sir Peter Lely has always been one of those seventeenth century portrait artists who painted society sitters by the shedload, all pretty much interchangeable, and without any real sense of insight or distinctiveness.

That is, until we went to the recent show of his work at the Courtauld in London. These were voluptuous works, bursting with exuberant sensuality. Quite a shock.

And among them was this extraordinary group portrait, The Concert. At its heart is the man playing the violone – a precursor of the double bass. This is expertly depicted, as though the artist is himself a performer on the instrument. Is this a self-portrait?

Then there’s the flautist, depicted in a more generalised way, and the various onlookers. But who are they? And how do they relate to the musicians? It’s a mystery.

If you’d like to see it now, this magical painting from the Courtauld’s own collection, it is on loan to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham. Worth the trip.