ART IN LONDON
Group
visits to exhibitions, galleries and salerooms.
Discussion groups. Ad hoc pop-up visits — an
individual member can advertise a date, time and
venue for a visit they intend to make in order to find out if any other members
would like to join them.
Group Coordinator: Denise
Reardon (click to contact)
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When
One visit per month (plus planning meetings every three months and
occasional discussion groups and pop-up visits).
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Where
We go anywhere in Greater London
(and sometimes more widely in the South East that
can be reached relatively easily by public
transport.) Suggestions from group members are
welcome.
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Our range of interest in art is broad. We
agree our programme of visits at planning meetings, and
visits are organised by the members. We buy our own tickets
and meet up by pre-arrangement with the organiser before the
visit. We do not go round as a group, but those who wish to
meet up afterwards for a snack and a chat about the visit.
We normally choose to see special exhibitions at public or
private galleries, from old masters to modernism. Some
recent visits are mentioned below.
Our Next Events
See the Beacon Membership System (under
'Calendar') for all the next planned Art In London group
visits.
Our Next Planning Meeting
The last one was held on 2 July 2018 when we planned the
programme for the period up to Christmas.
Group members will be advised of the next one.
Recent Visits
Summary for 2019
The group has averaged 1-2 visits per month, doing the
rounds of the major galleries and some blockbuster
exhibitions:
- Tate Britain (Van Gogh, Burne Jones, Don
McCullin, Turner Prize)
- National Gallery (Mantegna, Sorolla)
- National Portrait Gallery (Gainsborough)
- V&A (Frida Kahlo)
- Barbican Art Gallery (Lee Krasner)
- Tate Modern (Bonnard)
- Queen’s Gallery (Leonardo da Vinci)
We've also ventured to quieter shows at the the
Guildhall
Art Gallery (Victorian children),
Dulwich (Harald
Sohlberg),
William Morris Gallery/Vestry House
(Madge Gill),
Foundling Museum (Hogarth),
National
Army Museum (Munnings),
London Transport Museum
(poster girls) and newly refurbished
Pitzhanger Manor
(Anish Kapoor).
The most popular shows? Unsurprisingly, members flocked to
Van Gogh and Leonardo — leaving the group leader to endure
the 2018 Turner Prize video installations on her own!
The photos show Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, and IU3A members
reflecting on Anish Kapoor:

Summary for 2018
Several group members have championed visits to galleries
both inside and outside of London. In March, Maggie Butcher
led a very successful event to Kettles Yard in Cambridge and
the accompanying picture shows just one example of Jim Eves’
stunning personal collection which is displayed in his
former home. The four historic cottages are an
artistic feat in themselves but the newly opened gallery
extension is a must for anyone interested in the
architectural blend of old and new. Kettles Yard is a
new venue space for those willing to spend less than an hour
on the train to Cambridge.
Nearer to home, earlier in the year (2018) we have had
successful visits to see Jasper Johns work at the Royal
Academy, the Picasso Exhibition at Tate Modern, and to the
National Gallery for Monet and Architecture.
But not all members either like or are able to join a group
visit so we have now added to our agenda offering, a regular
conversation session in which members share their views on
the latest shows. They are a fun exchange of diverse
opinions. The next one will be on 2 July when we shall
also plan the programme for the period up to Christmas.
All new members are welcome.
Visits in 2017
In November
we visited
Basquiat: Boom
for Real at the Barbican Art Gallery.
Photo copyright Edo Bertoglio, courtesy of Maripol
In
October we visited
Scythians: Warriors of
Ancient Siberia (900-200 BC)
at the
British Museum. To sound effects of wind
sighing and galloping hooves, across the steppes and forests
ranging from China to the Black Sea, we learnt about the
Scythians through their artefacts and funerary goods — many
preserved in near-perfect condition having been hidden in
permafrost until excavated. We saw pieces of cheese,
saddles, human skin with tattoos still visible, gold neck
rings (similar to Celtic torcs), bags, shoes, felt
decorations — a felt swan for hanging on the inside of a
wagon or tent looked as if it had been made yesterday. The
Scythians were nomadic, had no written language and relied
on their horses, which were sacrificed as part of funeral
rites and decorated for the afterlife, as well as being used
for food and milk. They seemed to weave their beliefs into
everything they, and their horses, wore. They were famously
fierce and fought each other as well as others; but they
also traded and formed alliances through marriage. We
compared the Scythians with other animistic cultures —
looking at ideas such as realms governed by different
creatures, sacrifice and taking drugs (marijuana), perhaps
to connect with spirits. A bag containing nail clippings and
hair seemed reminiscent of European witchcraft. One can only
speculate about what the Scythians actually believed, but
their beautiful artefacts give us glimpses of an
extraordinary way of life.
Also in September we visited the
Heath Robinson
Museum in Pinner. William Heath Robinson was an
accomplished and original artist whose work, whether in his
humorous drawings or his illustrations for Kipling,
Shakespeare or children’s stories, is integral to British
cultural heritage. His name entered the language as early as
1912 and is still in daily use to describe the kind of ad
hoc contraptions that featured in many of his cartoons. For
Islingtonians he is a local boy — born in Finsbury Park and
educated at Islington School of Art. The Museum is the first
purpose-built museum to be opened in London for forty years
and it has been open for less than a year. It is small but
beautiful and is set in a lovely park. The display of Heath
Robinson’s work is imaginative and informative; and the
temporary exhibition was also both interesting and
attractive. In 1935 William Heath Robinson created a series
of drawings that he called “Rejuvenated Junk”, showing new
uses for unwanted objects. Ten of these drawings were
published in a magazine. The temporary exhibition featured
several of these together with a collection of recycled and
upcycled artefacts from 33 countries around the world,
provided by knowtrash (
www.knowtrash.com). Picture copyright
Heath Robinson Museum Trust.
In September we visited
Waddesdon Manor 
near Aylesbury, a
French-inspired chateau set among extensive parkland, both
the single-minded creation of the fabulously wealthy
Ferdinand Rothschild in the late 19th century. Ferdinand
stopped at nothing: the top of the hill was chopped off to
make a flat platform on which to build; existing buildings
were demolished; and farmed land was converted to parkland.
He ruthlessly cleared away anything that would cause the
untidiness of the real world to intrude on his luxurious
idyll. And luxury, and ostentation, were certainly
everywhere evident, from the circular entrance room with
portraits by Gainsborough and Reynolds to the sumptuous
dining room, and the sequence of other rooms filled with
ormolu and Sevres-inlaid furniture, 17th and early 18th
century carpets, ceilings and panelling alike bought by
Ferdinand, a connoisseur as well as an avid and wily
collector, from French hôtels and chateaux once owned by
pre-revolutionary aristocracy, the shapes of the rooms
designed and adjusted to incorporate them. We proceeded room
by ever more grandiose room until we were bedazzled out! Not
all of us ventured up to the bedrooms, once host to Queen
Victoria, Queen Mary and George V, or to the exhibition of
Tudor portraits. Upstairs, two virtually complete sets of
Sevres porcelain were on display as well as material from
the Waddesdon Archive. Picture c
opyright
National Trust Waddesdon Manor.
On the wettest day of the year in August
four

of us were glad to visit the
Estorick
Collection's fascinating exhibition of works by the
influential artist and graphic designer,
Franco Grignani,
whose most famous creation was the Woolmark logo.
Anticipating Op Art by ten, if not twenty, years his designs
are ingenious, even if, as we all agreed, they mess with
your eyesight! Our visit to the two rooms displaying his
work was completed with tea and a shared pasteis de nata in
the gallery's new café.
In July we had a day out
and visited the new Piper Gallery,
to see “John Piper — A Very British Artist“, at
the River and Rowing Museum at Henley-on-Thames. John
Piper spent most of his working life living at Fawley,
just outside Henley. Apart from works in its own
collection the Museum’s Piper exhibition includes loans
from private and public collections and also a video of
an interview with the artist. It is a relatively small
exhibition, but attractively and informatively
displayed. It shows work in a range of media, covering
drawing, painting, collage, stained glass, ceramics,
tapestry, set design, books, photography and textiles.
Piper revelled in collaborating with other artists and
craftsmen on joint projects. He developed an early
interest in modernism, to which an interest in
Romanticism was later added. He refused to be pinned
down to any one style or movement. His lifelong interest
in English art and architecture informed the wartime
pictures of bombed architectural landmarks such as
Coventry Cathedral, which made him famous.
Image: Copyright Photo Ian MacDonald
Photography
In June we visited Hokusai:
beyond the Great Wave at the British
Museum. Hokusai’s image of his famous print
“The Great Wave” has been used for a variety of
purposes and is familiar to people almost
everywhere, even if they do not know the name of the
artist. This exhibition covers many aspects of
Hokusai’s life and art: his exploration of the
natural and spiritual worlds, his own aspirations
and his humanity. Born in 1760 in
Edo (present-day Tokyo), he was adopted (a common
practice) into a family who were mirror polishers at
the Shogun’s court, where at six he showed a talent
for drawing. He received a good education and in his
teens he trained as a block-cutter. This knowledge
of woodblock cutting stood him in good stead when he
became a print-designer. He knew poverty as well as
fame; and in his last years (he died at 89) he lived
with his artist daughter. Hokusai was prolific: by
the 1780s ideas poured from him. He widened his
subject matter and became more adept at the use of
techniques, especially in the gradation of colour to
give a sense of distance. When he worked with paint
directly on silk his style is often softer but not
lacking in power. At this time Japan was opening up
to the influences of the West; Hokusai was quick to
experiment with the new
colour of Prussian Blue and to delight in imported
paper. His ambition was to improve as an artist
through the whole of his life. This exhibition
is the opportunity of a lifetime to see so many
masterpieces by this great artist.
In June an enjoyable discussion group
took place in a Canonbury garden about the David
Hockney exhibition at Tate Modern.
In May a visit took place to the
Estorick Collection
to

see
Giacomo Balla:
Designing the Future. Four of us thoroughly enjoyed
the visit to this hidden gem in Islington. We were able to
enjoy a light lunch and afternoon tea in the delightful
partly-shaded courtyard with a large metallic eye-catching
sculpture. The exhibition encompasses all aspects of Giacomo
Balla's talent drawn from the Biagiotti Cigna Collection:
abstract and figurative painting, applied art,
fashion-related designs, clothing and futuristic furniture.
This was totally unexpected and we were very impressed. We
also enjoyed the permanent collection of early 20th century
Italian art in the rest of the gallery. We would thoroughly
recommend a visit to this gallery. There are free tours on
Saturdays at 3.00pm.

In April a visit took place to
the
William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. Is yet
another once very famous British artist about to be
resurrected? The small exhibition at the Gallery
Sheer
Paradise; Frank Brangwyn and the Art of Japan perhaps
suggests so. A pillar of the Arts and Crafts movement
Brangwyn developed a lifelong passion for Japanese art
around the time of the First World War, somewhat after the
popular interest of the late nineteenth century. His
interest was particularly stimulated by his meeting, and
then working closely with, a Japanese woodblock master,
Urushibara, who lived in London. The exhibition provides
selected examples of this collaboration. It also shows
examples of Brangwyn's many other Japanese-related interests
such porcelain, screens and architecture. For an artist with
a very wide range of artistic endeavours, this exhibition
provides a fascinating taster of his Japanese dimension. We
all thought the William Morris Gallery itself is a little
gem and well worth a visit.

A second discussion group took
place in March at the home of Art in London group member
Maggie Butcher. The focus was the Rauschenberg exhibition at
Tate Modern and the guest speaker Robert Vas Dias introduced
Rauschenberg in his artistic context. There was a group
visit to the
Queen’s Gallery on March 21st to view
the exhibition
Portrait of the Artist. The
exhibition contained over 200 objects including paintings,
drawings, prints, photographs and decorative arts ranging
from the 15th to the 21st century. It focused on images of
artists within the Royal Collection, showcasing
self-portraits by artists including Rembrandt, Rubens,
Hockney and Lucian Freud. Also featured were images of the
artists by their friends, relations and pupils — including
the most reliable surviving likeness of Leonardo da Vinci by
his student Francesco Melzi. The relationship between
artists and patron, and the role of the monarchs in
commissioning, collecting and displaying portraits of the
artist, was discussed. After viewing the exhibition the
members of the Art Group met up in a local cafe to exchange
their views on the exhibition. The illustration shows the
self-portrait of Artemisia Gentileschi that is in the Royal
Collection. Copyright Royal Collection Trust.

In March we teamed up with some
members of the Theatre Group for a tour of the
Garrick
Club, where we saw a fascinating collection of
paintings dating from the eighteenth century to the present
day, displayed in the fine architectural setting of a
nineteenth-century gentleman’s club. The informative tour
was led by Frances Hughes, lecturer in Art and Theatre
History and Sarah Hughes, drama school lecturer and casting
director.
In February a group of us enjoyed a discussion at the
Co-ordinator’s house about the exhibition of the work of
Paul
Nash at
Tate Britain.
On January 10th there

was an enjoyable group visit to
Ardizzone:
A Retrospective at the
House of Illustration
at King’s Cross. Although Ardizzone’s style seems
quintessentially English, he was not born English. He spent
most of his childhood in Suffolk, but he was born in Vietnam
where his French father was then working for an English
firm. His father had been brought up in Algiers and married
a Scot. We admired the quietly rebellious streak in
Ardizzone that saw him leave the dull office work that his
parents had chosen for him and in 1929 branch out as a
full-time artist, having learned his craft at evening
classes. He featured children in his stories who were as
independent-minded as himself. Having married in 1926, he
succeeded in supporting his wife and three children solely
through his art. The 1930s was a good time to be going in
for children’s books, which were then becoming more popular
and exciting than they had been before. Ardizzone said that
he envisaged his illustrations as rather like views of a
stage seen from up in a box; and although his scenes
contained a lot of action, the action somehow appeared
frozen in time as in a tableau. We enjoyed the economy and
fluidity of his line, drawing in pen and ink and in
lithographic crayon.
Image: copyright estate of Edward Ardizzone
On January 13th there was a group visit to
Rodin and Dance: the Essence of
Movement at the
Courtauld Gallery,
Somerset House. The centrepiece of this exhibition was a
series of experimental sculptures known as the Dance
Movements made in 1911 which gave the viewer an insight
into Rodin’s unique working practices. The pieces were
presented alongside a series of drawings in which Rodin
explored movement and new forms of dance. They included
the acrobatic models who posed for him in the studio as
well as performers from the Royal Cambodian dance
troupe, the like of which had never been since in Paris
before. The highly stylized movements and positions of
the limbs of these Cambodian dancers clearly fascinated
Rodin. This exhibition was a delight for all but
particularly for art students, of which there were many
at the time we visited, and those of us who love dance
both as observers and practitioners. The stretching,
leaping and twisting figures were in turn moving,
interesting and perplexing — can the human body really
achieve that pose? The drawings and photographs were
often more satisfying in that the models and subjects
were living and beautiful and showed the artist’s
appreciation and understanding of the human form.
Image: Copyright Musée Rodin, Paris.
Reference
If you are interested in reading about our earlier visits
then have a look at our archive. Use the following links:
Archive 2016 Jan-Dec
Archive 2015 Jan-Dec
If there are exhibitions that you don’t
want to miss (including if you were unable to join one of
our group visits recorded above) you can consult our
blog for the closing date (scroll down
to “About” and click on it to get to the most recent post).
There you will find a selection of London exhibitions listed
in the order in which they close.