A Slippery Subject

Queues are forming for the David Hockney exhibition which is currently running at the Royal Academy. It is the first major exhibition of new landscape works by Hockney featuring intensely coloured paintings inspired by the Yorkshire landscape.

Here we have a print from our Hockney collection, where the artist is concerned not by colour, but by the transparency of this very particular imaginary landscape: The Glass Mountain.  It forms part of his series of illustrations for the Brothers Grimm fairy tales (dating 1969) - stories that had long enchanted him.

Peter Webb, author of Portrait of David Hockney (1988) tells us that “Hockney chose Old Rinkrank because it starts with the words ‘A King built a glass mountain’, and he was fascinated by the problem of drawing a glass mountain. He made various attempts, even smashing a sheet of glass and drawing the ragged pieces piled up in a big heap, before finding the solution: he depicted a tree and a house with a glass mountain in front which distorts their reflection.”
 

Hockney considers this series to be one of his major successes.


Follow the links to see how he dealt with Rapunzel and Rumpelstilzchen.

Let It Glow

We’re gearing up to an exhibition this Saturday 3 December, displaying over 100 glass panels by the esteemed Patrick Reyntiens OBE. Coming up to his 86^th birthday, Patrick has had a shining career, notable for his 35 year collaboration with John Piper and such stunning works as the Baptistery Window of Coventry Cathedral.

Continuing in the age-old tradition of stained glass, each piece tells a story, whether drawn from mythology, rural landscapes or Patrick’s vivid imagination. Almost as innovative as the designs are the accompanying (and sometimes unexpected) titles including Exercise Tires and Martha’s Sausage Roll.

But you don’t have to stand outside in the cold with your nose pressed to the window/computer screen. Come along this Saturday and you’ll even see the man himself do a demonstration of painting on glass, along with a premiere of a new film about his work. Smashing.

Left: A Walk in the Park

Right: Hills in the North

A Bit Bitter?

       

The Fox and the Grapes

"The fox who longed for grapes, beholds with pain

The tempting clusters were too high to gain;

Grieved in his heart he forced a careless smile,

And cried, ‘They’re sharp and hardly worth my while."

from the 1687 English translation of The Fables of La Fontaine

Chagall etching, 1952

We are currently holding a Chagall exhibition which runs from 5-30^th November and features, alongside a number of his other celebrated suites, the artist’s famous illustrations for The Fables of La Fontaine. In this particular picture, the story is actually conveyed by the negative space between the fantastically frustrated Mr Fox and his out-of-reach snack, the very distance confirming our suspicions that his assessment of the fruit could not, in fact, be further from the truth.  Hand-coloured by Chagall himself, these grapes look nothing short of divine.

To view the whole bunch pick here

For more morals pick and choose here