Category: art
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Cerddwyr coll: Seosamh Mac Grianna a Hamish Fulton
Profiad cyffredin ond anochel, on’d yw e? Yn syth ar ôl ichi gyhoedd llyfr, dych chi’n dod o hyd i themâu neu bobl fyddai wedi bod ynddo, heb amheuaeth, pe baech chi wedi clywed amdanyn nhw’n gynt. Dyna a ddigwyddodd yn ddiweddar ar ôl imi ddarganfod gwaith gan y llenor o Iwerddon, Seosamh Mac Grianna,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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‘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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…