art

Posteri’r Eisteddfod

March 21, 2025 0 Comments
Posteri’r Eisteddfod

Un o draddodiadau Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru sy wedi mynd ar goll yw’r arfer o ddylunio a chyhoeddi poster arbennig i hysbysebu’r ŵyl.  Yn y degawdau cyntaf o’r ugeinfed ganrif tyfodd yr arfer, ac weithiau gwahoddwyd artistiaid Cymreig o fri i greu delweddau i’r posteri.  Dechreuodd y traddodiad cyn y Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf.  Yn Eisteddfod Genedlaethol […]

Continue Reading »

Kenneth Rowntree paints Wales

March 7, 2025 1 Comment
Kenneth Rowntree paints Wales

In 1940 the government commissioned around sixty artists to record local scenes all over Britain, in order to capture a visual record of the country’s buildings and landscapes before they were transformed by the effects and aftereffects of war.  The scheme, labelled ‘Recording Britain’, became a home equivalent of the war artists scheme set up […]

Continue Reading »

Two versions of Ceridwen

February 14, 2025 1 Comment
Two versions of Ceridwen

Christopher Williams is little known today outside his home town of Maesteg, but in his heyday – he was born in 1873 and died in 1934 – he was regarded as the outstanding painter of Wales.  He earned his living mainly by painting portraits.  Among his subjects were many of the Welsh public figures of […]

Continue Reading »

‘No Welsh art’

January 31, 2025 1 Comment
‘No Welsh art’

Peter Lord’s exhibition ‘Dim Celf Cymreig / No Welsh Art’ fills the whole of the largest exhibition space in Wales, the Gregynog Gallery in the National Library.  It needs such a big space because Peter’s personal gallery, built up over forty years of collecting, is unrivalled in size and scope among private collections of Welsh […]

Continue Reading »

Farewell to Yorkshire

December 27, 2024 4 Comments
Farewell to Yorkshire

My parents used to tell me that when I was small I’d tell them that York Minster was, in my opinion, the best building in the world.  Of course, I’d not seen much of the world then, just bits of Yorkshire and Scotland. But I didn’t let that shake my boyish confidence.  After all, I […]

Continue Reading »

Francis Place at Coxwold

November 30, 2024 0 Comments
Francis Place at Coxwold

I’ve written before about Francis Place, late seventeenth century artist and potter, and about Coxwold in north Yorkshire.  This piece brings the two together. Place was a landscapist ahead of his time, in vision (he anticipated the watercolour painters of the second half of the eighteenth century) and also in method (he walked for long […]

Continue Reading »

How to make an icon

November 22, 2024 0 Comments
How to make an icon

The three of us were talking, as we strolled along the front at Porthcawl the other day, about modern icons.  J. had just been for a return visit to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, so the Angel of the North in Gateshead soon came up in the conversation.  Antony Gormley’s great weathered steel figure is over twenty-five years old, […]

Continue Reading »

Van Gogh up close

November 9, 2024 0 Comments
Van Gogh up close

The National Gallery is celebrating its 200th birthday with a very special exhibition.  Surprisingly, it’s the first show it’s every mounted devoted to the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.  To be able to look at them intently and quietly, in the privileged conditions of a private view, is quite an experience. The exhibition is special […]

Continue Reading »

Blodau a breuddwydion

October 25, 2024 0 Comments
Blodau a breuddwydion

Cysur mawr, yn y cyfnod hwn o boen a galar, yw ymweld â Glenys yn ei thŷ yn y Mwmbwls â’i olwg digymar dros Fae Abertawe.  Dyma ni’n dau’n cerdded lawr ’na amser coffi.  Rownd bloc y teras, tu heibio i’r lotments yn haul y bore, trwy’r ardd gyda’i choeden palmwydd a’i cherflyn metal ar […]

Continue Reading »

Burying Lucy

October 18, 2024 0 Comments
Burying Lucy

Most visitors to Syracuse stick to Ortygia, the tear-shaped island that was the original site of the Greek colony, and Neapolis, with its large Greek theatre and sculptured caves.  The Basilica di Santa Lucia is slightly off the beaten track, and few visitors were there last week. When you’ve been used to the elaborate Baroque […]

Continue Reading »