Galleries - September 2013

57. GALLERIES SEPTEMBER 13 Gallery, Harrogate Nov 23-Mar 30) and offers a good cross- section of both the subject pictures and his “killing portraits”, as Millais bluntly put it, with five informative essays on his life and work. One minor carp: many of the images are reproduced twice; alternatives would have been preferable, but perhaps there were availability problems? AA masterpiece of English social realism” (Christopher Wood). In the 1880s Holl turned to portraiture and such was the demand that he was producing 20 a year on his death – from overwork, in defiance of medical advice, at the height of his success. This book accompanies the first retrospective in over a century (Watts Gallery, Compton Jun 18-Nov 3 and Mercer Art Frank Holl: Emerging from the Shadows , ed. Mark Bills. 168pp, 90 ills, Philip Wilson pbk £19.95 Frank Holl RA (1845-1888) was a leading light (and arguably the best painter) of the Social Realists of the 1870/80s, whose images were based on realistic observation, avoiding the melodrama and stereotyping of earlier generations. His Newgate; committed for trial has been hailed as “perhaps the BOOK reviews coda F rank Holl, ‘Sir William Schwenck Gilbert’, 1886, oil on canvas. ©National Portrait Gallery, London ‘Newgate; committed for trial’, 1878, oil on canvas, Royal Holloway, University of London Robert Parker ‘Jugs, Bottles and Coffee Pots’ oil on canvas 28 x 36ins ‘Carboys and Jug’ oil on canvas 28 x 27ins Robert Parker Trained as a painter under Ruskin Spear at Hammersmith and as an etcher under Andrew Freeth at St Martin’s in the Sixties, Robert Parker has always remained passionately true to the lessons he learnt from them, above all “the serious articulation of form in space” as he very straightforwardly puts it in his catalogue introduction, along with a strictly tonal approach to colour. The range of subject matter is quietly traditional too – landscapes, still-lifes and nudes predominate – but the final outcomes, in the landscapes most particularly, are far from conservative, monumental and filled with a rich, resonant light. Gallery 54 , 1- 8 September, see map 24 for details