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In the second room there’s a beautiful small Turner watercolour, ‘Dieppe from the East’, which rather distracts the eye. Is it fair to hang Turner in a Cotman show? Well, at least it isn’t a major painting and one does get the chance to compare and contrast, but Turner’s art is of a different order and sensibility. He is a great Romantic, while Cotman’s temperament is more classically inclined. Cotman’s painting ‘Dieppe from the Heights’ looks almost pedestrian by comparison, but not when you begin to examine the subtlety of the broken colour in the foreground. Of the more obviously descriptive scenes, ‘Mont St Michel’ is an impressive example, but the best things here are the pair of austere brown-wash abstractions of the crypt of St Gervais in Rouen.
I’m not that interested in 19th-century drawings of cathedral façades, so the occasional interpolation of a Turner or Bonington watercolour of Rouen is very welcome. But generally the comparative pictures by Charles Wild or John Coney (the latter’s ink drawings quite charming but with none of Cotman’s breadth of vision) left me cold. These felt like padding, which was a pity, because the best work here needs no support. I particularly enjoyed the brown-wash drawings of ‘The Falls of Selune’ and ‘Castle at Mortain’, and the pale limpidities of the Church of Pavilly. In the last room are watercolours of the grand Normandy rock formations at Domfront. Their lovely complex linearity and boldly fissured patterns made me think of Edward Bawden’s 20th-century landscapes, returning us once again to an awareness of Cotman’s disconcerting
modernity.
The Pre-Raphaelites continue to enjoy a peak of popularity, and the Tate’s exhibition was buzzing with excited and satisfied spectators when I visited. Art lovers tend to come to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood early, quite often as teenagers, subsequently regarding their erstwhile enthusiasm as the expression of an immature taste. (I’ve known people do the same with van Gogh.) Well, I can only hope they have the sense to take another look. Personally, every time I look at the PRB I find something new. Even the old warhorses, the great public favourites such as ‘The Scapegoat’, ‘Ophelia’ or ‘The Blind Girl’, have unexpected resonances to offer. A shame the Tate obviously feels the need to justify staging yet another PRB show, and so are here glorifying the Brotherhood as an avant-garde movement. This is rather difficult to demonstrate if you don’t also show what the lads were reacting against. Why can’t the Tate simply admit to putting on a popular blockbuster to fill the coffers?
There is, after all, nothing wrong with looking at pictures for pleasure, without having to consider some tedious curatorial argument. And there’s plenty to look at in the PRB show, from the wall of portrait and self-portrait drawings in the first room, along with a bizarre German painting by Overbeck of the painter Franz Pforr (looking remarkably like a maiden aunt), to the last room where Burne-Jones comes into his own with the magnificent ‘Rock of Doom’ and other paintings.
Along the way are lurid treasures aplenty by Holman Hunt, Millais and Rossetti, a wall of works on paper including the awkward but honest paintings of Lizzie Siddal, better known as muse and model, and then Ford Madox Brown’s fabulously detailed view over London from Hampstead. I’d forgotten how dark this painting is (likewise ‘The Stonebreaker’ by Henry Wallis), or how radical Brown’s painting ‘The Pretty Baa-Lambs’, with its almost savage colours and deliberate crudities. Some of the best things are by lesser-known artists: a lovely painting of spring by Daniel Alexander Williamson, ‘The Artist’s Garden’ by Rosa Brett (elder sister of John), and ‘May, in the Regent’s Park’ by Charles Allston Collins. Always try to check the unfamiliar as well as glorying in the renowned.
Meanwhile, I don’t want to close without mentioning an exhibition at the Fine Art Society (148 New Bond Street, W1, until 12 January), entitled Carving in Britain from 1910 to Now. This large show extends over the three floors of the gallery and includes magnificent things in both wood and stone. It’s very good to see a group of works by the underrated John Skeaping (1901–80), the finest of which must be the burnt cedar Crucifix, made in response to his son’s tragic death. The equally underrated Leon Underwood (1890–1975) is represented by such interesting works as the radical ‘Nucleus’ (c.1923) in Carrara marble. There’s a fabulous large carving in willow by Gertrude Hermes (1901–83) and a couple of excellent pieces by F.E. McWilliam (1909–92), especially the 1936 ‘Hollow Figure’ in beech; also impressive things by Eric Kennington, Henry Moore, Maurice Lambert, Eric Gill, Willi Soukop and Sven Berlin. A fascinating high-quality collection to browse, but inevitably galleries will have different opening hours over the festivities, so please check before turning up.
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