Galleries - January/February 2019

I did publish.' The first one is an absolute belter as they say, ranging some 500 years, from Albrecht Dürer's 'Deposition of Christ' woodcut via Rembrandt and Blake to Hiroshige, Picasso and Warhol, a master class in printmaking in short. With Malcolm Morley, Ed Ruscha, Paolozzi, Hodgkin and Kossoff, the second is pretty hot too. Nicholas Usherwood The Dutch invaded England in 1688 led by William III, Prince of Orange, toppling King James II in what would be known as The Glorious Revolution. But in the midst of the campaign, as Dutch troops made their way towards the king, William made a brief detour to Wilton House, a stately home in Salisbury. “The Earl of Pembroke has a rather beautiful house which is moderately beautiful because there are some very notable painting by van Dyck. His Highness went to see it” wrote one of the attendants on the campaign. The ties between English collectors and Dutch artists are old and close. More than a century earlier, English courtier Sir Thomas Elyot had commented that if his fellow Englishmen wanted anything well painted, carved or embroidered they had to “abandon our own countraymen and resorte unto straungers (foreigners)”. The collecting habit would also give rise to the sort of avid tourism to English stately homes exemplified in William’s visit to Wilton House. The new exhibition Prized Possessions brings together around 25 Dutch 17th century paintings now kept in National Trust collections. Launched in 2018, the exhibition now comes to Petworth House, the Sussex house rebuilt by the Duke of Somerset (also in 1688). As well as featuring pieces by Rembrandt, Peter Lely, Gabriel Metsu and others in a country house context, it is also a chance to admire some features unique to Petworth. These include the intricate woodwork by sculptor and wood carver Grinling Gibbons (1648- 1721) and remodelling by French architect Daniel Marot (1661-1752), who had worked extensively for the Dutch court. Dutch paintings on loan from the private collection of Lord Egremont (current owner of the home), never displayed publicly at Petworth House before are also on display, alongside some of the home’s public collection, such as Lely’s ‘The Three Younger Children of Charles I’ (1647). Patricia Darby colouration, but also something of the texture and specificity of the place, its spirit. For it was just this that Lydia Bauman came to feel was somehow missing in O'Keefe's approach, where the simplified forms and colours and the abstracted, smooth shapes demanded by Modernist Art's ideals had somehow drained this element out of the finished works. A somewhat ambivalent outcome in short. In any event you can make your own judgement on Bauman's bold venture when her paintings (together with her son Karl Dudman's sensitive photographs of the same landscape) go on show at the Mall Galleries in February in 'Looking for Georgia'. When Bernard Jacobson opened his first gallery space in London in 1969, a small fourth floor gallery in Mayfair, it was as a dealer selling and publishing prints by important contemporary artists. A lot has happened in between of course with countless hugely important exhibitions of major American and British contemporary painters, but prints have always remained a personal passion, so what better way to celebrate the gallery’s half century than to devote the first two shows of the year to prints, one in January entitled with characteristic panache 'Prints I wish I had published', the February one 'Prints JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 GALLERIES 7 from left C arl Plackman ‘Small Stacking Cups’ Pangolin London Pieter Jansz Saenredam ‘St Catherine’s Church Utrecht’ © National Trust, Petworth House David Hockney ‘Figure by Curtain’ Bernard Jacobson Gallery Dana Finch ‘Source with Cracked Pot’ Tregony Gallery Lydia Bauman ‘Red Hills, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico’ Mall Galleries D utch habit Prints passion