NWR. ARTS — Film, Music, Painting, Book
This was a very wide ranging topic but interestingly nearly all the choices were paintings or books. The first part is on the painters.
As this is the 250th anniversary of the birth of J M W Turner he was one of the topics discussed. He exhibited at the Royal Academy aged 15. In 1834 he painted
St. Michael’s Mount. His use of light in the landscapes made him one of the great English landscape artists. The highest price paid for a Turner was £30m.
One of our group had a Douglas Portway limited print which she cherishes. He was a South African artist, an abstract impressionist, that is his drawings were paired back.
He left S.A. in 1957 and settled in St. Ives from 1967 to 1980 when he moved to Bristol.
The next artist we heard about was John E Millais who painted The Blak Brunswicker which is about a man in a German volunteer corps, the Brunswickers , about to go of to fight Napoleon. He is depicted as leaving his sweetheart but the two people never met; they posed separately around a pole! The girl was Charles Dicken’s daughter Kate an artist in her own right. A postcard of the painting adorns a fridge door.
A superb painter who had a scandalous lifestyle was Caravaggio. The painting, The Supper at Emmaus, was painted between 1572 and 1601.It hangs in the National Gallery. It is painted in a chiaroscuro style that influenced Baroque painting. It depicts Christ after his resurrection eating with two disciples who do not recognise him . The painting is full of Christian symbolism.
Salvador Dali painted a huge picture called La Gare de Perpignan which hangs in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. It is a surrealist painting of the station at Perpignan which Dali considered the centre of the universe and is also full of Christian symbolism . It was a significant moment for one of the group as it was the start of a relationship which eventually lead to marriage.
Tony Foster is a British landscape artist based in Cornwall who is an explorer and environmentalist documenting on huge canvases wildernesses worldwide. He works from a small paintbox with 12 brushes. His aim is to encourage conservation He has exhibited at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. Also mentioned were two books. Hilarious poems by the late Hilary Keane written in the Cornish dialect and The Scheme for Full Employment by Magnus Miller, an armchair politician.
Two other books were mentioned by two of the group. The first was Three Daughters of Eve by the Turkish Elif Shafak,whose works have been translated into 40 languages.
The next was a series of 6 books by Dorothy Dunnett a Scottish author based on chess games, the first of which was called The Game of Kings. They are set in the C16th and chronicle the history of the time based around the fictional Lymond family.
And finally a book not yet published by one of the group which will be concerned with how to become more attached to nature, to rewinding and to finding our spiritual well-being through connections with others.
This was a very educational as well as entertaining evening.