Duke of Richmond and Lennox, 1633-8
No one does criticism like the Brits. Brian Sewell of London's
Evening Standard is no exception with
his evisceration of
Van Dyck and Britain which opened last week at
Tate Britain. Sewell doesn't like the artist:
Repeatedly Van Dyck and Britain demonstrates how bad a painter he could be and swamps the few masterpieces with paintings that are curate’s eggs, flawed in drawing and construction, more than faintly ridiculous in conception, and by workshop hacks as much as by himself.
The name of the exhibition:
And why call it Van Dyck and Britain instead of Van Dyck and England? He was attached to the English court, his duties as a courtier and painter were carried out in London and any influences that he absorbed here and traditions of portraiture that he chose to respect were those of earlier painters in London and the court. Scotland was another country and the courtly Stuarts were divorced from it; Britain did not exist.
Or the organization and information:
I felt that I had been subjected to a plodding tutorial by thoroughly dull minds, to essays written by students with access to Wikipedia, and to the connoisseurship of eyes less accustomed to looking at paintings than to examining reproductions. I could identify neither new research nor a fresh approach to this dry as dust material.
But what he does like are the dogs:
Van Dyck was far better with men and dogs than with women and there is morew pleasure to be had from the hounds and lapdogs that inhabit these paintings than from any of their masters and mistresses.
If you never want to enjoy looking at a Van Dyck again read Sewell's
full article. Actually, I think he makes some valid points about scale and composition issues. But no one handles satin like Van Dyck and his hounds are magnificent. Here are some of my favorites:
Charles I and Henrietta Maria, 1632
A Lady of the Spencer Family, 1633-8
Crowning Christ with Thorns, 1618-20
Children of Charles I, 1637
Van Dyck and Britain is on view at Tate Britain until May 17, 2009.
Click here for more information.
(If you like this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to Dog Art Today. This blog is powered by traffic from readers like you. Thank you for visiting!)
