Thomas Gainsborough; Goya

 Thomas Gainsborough; Goya

 

 

What did Gainsborough think of the sitters for his famous society portraits? This question was prompted by a recent visit to Gainsborough’s family home in Sudbury, Suffolk. 

Stopovers in Bilbao and Santander

 Stopovers in Northern Spain: Santander and Bilbao

 

Until recently, the north coast of Spain has been, for me, fly-over territory: if the weather is good, glimpses caught of the bay of Santander, far below, almost exactly an hour’s flying time until Malaga.

Spain and the Hispanic World: Goya Portraits

 Hispanic Art at the Royal Academy: Goya Portraits

 

Goya (1746-1828) lived through especially tricky times in Spain – the Enlightenment, then invasion and brutal war, a brief interval of liberalism, followed by reactionary despotism.

Opera at the V&A and the Wallace Collection

Operas – Victoria & Albert Museum and the Wallace Collection

One week, two unique opera experiences. In the new exhibition suite at the V&A, there’s an ambitious, multi-media exhibition devoted to the history of Opera. A little way across London, near the crowds on Oxford Street, the Wallace Collection put on an evening performance Goyescas by the Spanish composer Granados. This was to accompany a small exhibition of Spanish paintings, including a couple of Goyas, on loan from the Bowes Museum in Durham.

The Art of Politics and the Politics of Art in Madrid

The Art of Politics and the Politics of Art in Madrid

An intense guided art tour to Madrid, Segovia and Toledo ends fittingly with the contemplation of Picasso’s Guernica in the Reina Sofia Museum. This painting is on one level rawly simple – basically a long scream far more visceral than, say, the existentialist and easily parodied howl of Munch. But the Guernica scream or, rather, screams are emitted by and among implacable and anguished images that draw on deliberately oblique and fragmented references to Spanish art and Spanish history through art.