Tag: paintings

A port painter

January 20, 2023 1 Comment
A port painter

The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery has got into the excellent habit of displaying a good mix of works from its permanent collection along a long wall in one of its upstairs rooms.  This has the advantage of letting us see paintings that would not otherwise often see the light of day.  When I was there […]

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John Singer Sargent in Morocco

September 16, 2022 6 Comments
John Singer Sargent in Morocco

In 1879, years before he became known as the world’s most famous society portrait painter, John Singer Sargent left Paris, where he had trained as an artist in the studio of Carolus-Duran, and travelled south, to Spain and north Africa.  Carolus-Duran idolised Velasquez, and Sargent’s first stop was Madrid, to study paintings by Velasquez in the […]

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Lludd and the three plagues

March 30, 2020 2 Comments
Lludd and the three plagues

Lludd, son of Beli Mawr (‘Lud’ in English) is king of the Island of Britain, and a wise and successful ruler.  From his capital, Caer Lludd (London), he takes care of his subjects, housing them well and supplying them with ample food and drink.  One of his brothers, Llefelys, is king of France.  So begins […]

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Frank Brangwyn’s British Empire Panels

March 9, 2018 11 Comments
Frank Brangwyn’s British Empire Panels

1          Introduction Most Swansea people are familiar with the British Empire Panels.  Many sitting through a dull patch in a concert in the Brangwyn Hall will have turned to ponder Frank Brangwyn’s enormous work.  In a few months’ time the Panels will get more exposure, as Marc Rees’s performance piece Nawr yr arwr / Now […]

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New paintings by Carys Evans

September 26, 2016 2 Comments
New paintings by Carys Evans

In the Ceri Richards Gallery is a collection of around 40 paintings by Carys Evans – her first solo exhibition since graduating in fine art in Swansea in 2013.  The pictures are varied in size and in medium, but all of them share Carys’s persistent themes: female figures in domestic settings; birds, cats and other […]

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Two Americans in Porto

February 22, 2016 1 Comment
Two Americans in Porto

What comes to mind when you think of a contemporary art gallery?  Probably, big empty spaces, clean geometric vistas, minimal signing, white walls.  The Museo de Serralves in Porto, Portugal’s main centre for modern art, meets all those expectations, and many more.  Its new building was opened in 1999.  The designers not only had a […]

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Angst and the void: Vienna portraits and Mira Schendel

October 18, 2013 2 Comments
Angst and the void: Vienna portraits and Mira Schendel

Two London exhibitions, two very different ways of presenting and seeing art: ‘Facing the modern: portraits in Vienna 1900’ at the National Gallery, and ‘Mira Schendel’ at Tate Modern. We all think we know about art in Vienna in the decades immediately before the First World War.  Politics: a rickety, arthritic empire waiting to be […]

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