All the latest news on art happenings. What's hot and what's...not. Mostly Pre-Raphaelite stuff at the moment though.
The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection: Pre-Raphaelites and other masters
As soon as I heard about this exhibition back in May I was very excited, as I have never seen an official exhibition of 'PRB' paintings before. However, it has proved popular with the public as well, a fact confirmed by the masses of people I had to make my way through in order to see paintings such John Everett Millais' mini Ophelia.
The exhibition is divided into 11 sections and begins with the Pre-Raphaelite paintings. A great deal of space is devoted to Burne-Jones and rather less to Rossetti than publicised. I recognised many beautiful pictures on display here and muttered "Oh, he's got that one," several times. I found the Victorian domestic period of paintings collected here dull, quite frankly, but that's a matter of personal taste. THe Munnings were dreadful, the Tissots bizarre but almost everything else was a complete dream, including the wonderful Waterhouse pictures. They throbbed with mystery, atmosphere and beauty in the darkly-lit rooms, and seemed right at home in this sort of space. Rossetti's work was mainly nude-women-based (no surprise there then) but sensual and evocative nonetheless. The Burne-Jones were moody and lyrical, as well as moving - his pictures have the power to transport the observer to another dimension entirely. Finally, I was rather surprised by the outstandin quality of John Atkinson Grimshaw's work, which consists mainly of beautifully renderd landscapes. Overall, a damn good show - buy the exhibition book if you can, as it includes full-colour reproductions of all the paintings on show and a series of well-written essays. Highly recommended.
