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At Crane Kalman (178 Brompton Road, SW3, until 25 July) is a delightful show of her paintings and drawings. For Winifred, colour was the essence and she strove to reveal it through landscapes and flower paintings that are flooded with prismatic light. She tried abstraction (there’s an example called ‘Sun Circles’ here) but her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted a more direct celebration of the visible world, though she enlivened her paint surfaces with much textural variation, from thinly washed veils and runs of paint to satisfyingly worked, slightly chalky impasto. There’s a glorious straight landscape here called ‘Northrigg Hill’ (c.1926), made special by the touches of pink for the lane between the fields. Andreae’s book reproduces this painting beside Ben’s of the same view and also one by their friend Christopher Wood. All were painted within a couple of years and are good paintings, but Winifred’s is the best.
The show is packed with joyously coloured still-lifes and atmospheric landscapes. I’ve sometimes wondered how long Winifred Nicholson’s effects last, how quickly the charm wears off. She all too often verges on the whimsical, and, although she mostly avoids it, the strain of that propinquity can be wearisome. At her best, she is lyrical, and on occasion compellingly visionary, but sometimes the purity of her colours is compromised by a cosiness of composition. Still, well worth a visit.
As is the show of Howard Hodgkin’s new prints (at Alan Cristea Gallery, 31 & 34 Cork Street, W1, until 11 July). In the corner gallery hang two vast hand-painted, sugar-lift aquatint and carborundum etchings, with the joint title of ‘As Time Goes By’, which are among the best and freshest things that Hodgkin has produced in recent years. Essentially the same composition in different colours (red and blue), these monumental prints come in an edition of seven, and each measures 8ft by 20ft, quite possibly the largest etchings ever made. These gigantic panels are liberally festooned with blots and dribbles of colour and could represent the seasons — perhaps spring and summer, or summer and fall. There’s certainly an autumnal feel to the colours, but what energy and verve to their arrangement. A triumph.
Over the road is a tribute to Robert Motherwell entitled Open (at Bernard Jacobson Gallery, 6 Cork Street, W1, until 28 August), which also launches a book of the same title (21 Publishing, £40). Motherwell doesn’t get the praise that is routinely handed-out to other big-league Abstract Expressionists, such as Rothko and Pollock, but he’s a great artist nevertheless. The Americans resented his deep interest in European culture, while his own diversity of practice prevented him from being typecast and easily assimilated. The group of paintings at Jacobson’s includes a couple of exquisite small canvases, ‘Red Open’ and ‘Open #138’, as well as much larger works, such as the magisterial ‘Open #15 in Cerulean Blue with White Line’. Heart-lifting.
Tempera painting is a laborious technique involving the mixing of pigment with fresh eggs, and tends not to be much practised nowadays. However, there are still devotees of its subtle science, such as Helen Clapcott, who paints Stockport, and two very different artists, who currently have shows in London. Peter Godwin (born 1953) is an Australian enjoying his first UK exhibition (at Nevill Keating McIlroy, 5 Pickering Place, SW1, until 10 July). He paints rather beautiful still-life interiors in a gestural, brushy manner, using tempera as never before, with scant regard for the precise effects usually associated with the medium. David Tindle (born 1932) is an old tempera hand showing new paintings (at Redfern Gallery, 20 Cork Street, W1, until 2 July). His quiet accumulations of colour and texture have a more typical serenity and poise. An instructive comparison.
Finally, two shows by established favourites of this column: George Rowlett (born 1941) and Craigie Aitchison (born 1926). Rowlett is showing his rarely seen flower paintings, as well as new views of East Kent, the Thames and Wast Water in the Lake District (at Art Space Gallery, 84 St Peter’s Street, N1, until 25 July), while Aitchison will show a selection of recent work (at Timothy Taylor Gallery, 15 Carlos Place, W1, 9 July to 28 August). Both are involved with very individual forms of figuration: Rowlett with landscape done en plein air in luscious cascades of thick paint, Aitchison with thin stains of brilliant colour, almost scrubbed into the canvas. Aitchison’s subjects are primarily still-life and religious pictures, images distilled to their essential forms; Rowlett’s are great, seething paintscapes packed with incident but drawn with a fineness of touch belied by the large gestures. Both are adornments to our visual heritage and both deserve not only close attention, but also our respect and affection.
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Also by Andrew Lambirth
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