art
Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando
One of my favourite paintings by Edgar Degas is Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando. As well as being one of his boldest – it’s probably one of the most audacious compositions ever painted in the nineteenth century – it has the great advantage of being easily seeable, since it’s usually on display in […]
Saving the gannets
The jaunty oil sketch may look charming, but it conceals an ugly story. It was painted by a well-known Cardiff artist, Thomas Henry Thomas, after a visit he and three friends from the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society made to Grassholm (Gwales) on 26 May 1890. They’d come to study the bird colonies, especially northern gannets and […]
Still life, still alive
‘Still life’ is a paradox. Can something that’s still or unmoving be alive, especially if it’s a dead creature or an inanimate object? The French equivalent, nature morte, is equally stark in its self-contradiction. But the term isn’t the only paradox. One of the reasons why the still life has had such a long history, […]
Delweddu pont: Pontypridd a’r artistiaid
Mae llawer o sôn yn yr Eisteddfod Genedlaethol, a gynhelir yng nghanol Pontypridd ym Mharc Ynysangharad, am ‘bontio’ rhwng siaradwyr Cymraeg a’r mwyafrif o’r trigolion lleol sy ddim yn medru’r iaith. Perthnasol iawn yw’r metaffor, o gofio bod Pontypridd yn cynnig esiampl wych o adeilad sydd wrth ei wraidd. Dyw’r gair ‘gwych’ ddim, mewn gwirionedd, […]
Cornelius Varley again
I’ve been revisiting the miraculous drawings made by Cornelius Varley when he spent time in Dolgellau in the summer of 1803. The end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century was an age of wonder for watercolour painting in Britain, but I think it’s a shame that Varley’s name isn’t celebrated as widely […]
Gweledigaeth mewn 4,525 o ddarnau
Yr wythnos ddiwethaf cawson ni’r anrhydedd o gyfarfod ag un o drysorau mawr Cymru. Enw traddodiadol y campwaith hwn yw Cwilt Teiliwr Wrecsam – er nad yw’n gwilt yn dechnegol, ond clytwaith, ac er bod y geiriau ‘teiliwr Wrecsam’ yn tueddu i guddio enw ei wneuthurwr, James Williams, 8 College Street yn y dref honno. […]
Stanley Spencer at Llanfrothen
1938 was a difficult year for Stanley Spencer. His marriage to his wife Hilda Carline had been in trouble for years. Divorce followed in 1937, though the two never lost contact. His relationship with the artist Patricia Preece, whom he’d met in 1929, had been close and obsessive – he commemorated it in several nude […]
Gwen John on foot for Rome
I’ve been reading Celia Paul’s painfully honest book Letters to Gwen John, a series of imaginary messages to her fellow-artist, dead for almost a hundred years. She shares many circumstances with Gwen, and feels many close affinities, both creative and emotional. In one of the letters, she describes a continental journey that Gwen made in […]
Pwy oedd Llywelyn ap Gwynn?
Dechrau’r stori hon yw llyfr. Llyfr o’r enw Rambles and walking tours around the Cambrian coast, gan Hugh E. Page. Mae’n perthyn i genre o deithlyfrau oedd yn boblogaidd yn y cyfnod rhwng y ddau ryfel byd, pan oedd marchnad barod i lyfrau o deithiau cerdded a gychwynnai o orsafoedd trenau. Y cyhoeddwr oedd y […]
The offbeat eye of Edgar Degas
The Musée D’Orsay is big. To make the best of your time you need to have a destination in mind. So once inside it made sense to march straight for the Degas paintings on show. Three of them took my eye. Though painted at different times over a period of maybe twenty years, they’ve much […]