Migrations: Journeys into British Art
31 January - 12 August, 2012
Tate Britain Gallery - Admission Charge
Brit art is a buzz phrase that has been humming in the air since the nineteen nineties. Like its close relative, Brit pop, it conjures an image of red and white masked youths conspiring to form both physical and notional bastions against ‘foreign’ influence; with rampant football anthems and pints of foaming beer. Migrations: Journeys into British Art, now open at Tate Britain, strives to unmask the true face of British art. The journey is a surprising one.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the majority of active artist on these shores hailed from Flanders, the Netherlands and Germany. Hans Holbein very famously painted for Henry VIII. Hans Eworth arrived in 1549 from Flanders, a religious exile escaping Protestant Europe. Initially, he worked for Mary Tudor and later on, for Elizabeth 1. His Portrait of an Unknown Lady ((1565-8) shows a realism and robustness then absent from English painting.
Anthony Van Dyck came to England from Antwerp in 1632 to paint for Charles 1. The king gave him a house by Blackfriars and a good income to live on but by 1635 he had been displaced as the king’s favourite painter, and looked back to Europe for commissions. In 1639, Van Dyck married Mary Ruthven, lady in waiting to Queen Henrietta Maria, but his success and happiness were short-lived. By November 1641 he was seriously ill and returned to his London house from Paris. He died on December 9 of that year.
Neoclassicism and the Royal Academy
Antonio Canaletto was born in 1697 and trained as a
scene painter with his father, Bernardo Canal. Canaletto soon discovered that
it was more profitable to paint pictures of celebrated sights en masse
for tourists than for individuals. Travelling to London was a logical
move for him in 1741 because of the contacts he had made through the art
collector, Joseph Smith, later British consul to Venice. Also, London in the 1740s was a city
evolving, with much new building happening. His panoramic painting, London:
The Old Horse Guards from St James Park , c.151, is a record of a vanished
London, is on view.
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| James Tissot Portsmouth Dockyard c. 1877 © Tate |
By now, several English artists of note were active in painting, most notably William Hogarth and Paul Sandby. But the quest for a Royal Academy of Arts was driven by bothe English and non-English artists. Angelica Kaufmann was born in Switzerland in 1741. A successful portraitist, she arrived in England in 1765 or 6. In 1769, she became a founding member of the Royal Academy. Her evocative Portrait of a Lady, c. 1775, is on display. By the late nineteenth century, Paris was the art capital of the world; a world that still reached out to Britain. James Tissot ( 1836-1902) was an exile from the Franco-Prussian war. Ever a favourite of mine, with his luscious evocations of middle-class life, three of his paintings are on view including The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth), c. 1876.
The Twentieth Century
By now, the trickle of exiles had turned to a flood. David Bomberg (1890-1957) was the son of Polish immigrants exiled from a Europe increasingly hostile to Jews. His Mud Bath is on display, along with the less frequently exposed Vision of Ezekiel, 1912. By the second half of the twentieth century, our influences had moved beyond the pale of Europe. The gorgeous, brightly-painted wooden sculptures of Rasheed Araeen (b. 1935), are well represented here. Among the installations to see is David Medaller’s Cloud Canyons No. 3: An Ensemble of Bubble Machines (Auto Creative Sculptures), first made in 1961 and remade in 2004. This is non-reproductive art, the combination of bubbles spewing forth from the ‘fountains’ will never occur again. Measures of Distance by Mona Hatoum (1988), is among the videos that make up New Diasporic Voices, a dark-room video installation. There are many, many more works on display at this extensive exhibition. Among them are paintings by Piet Mondrian and Kurt Schwitters, the exhibition being as much about the dialogue between Britain and other nations, as the paintings themselves. It is open until 12 August, 2012.
Mary Phelan, 2012