I’ve currently been working on a pastel sketch that I made some years ago on a painting course run by Claire Spencer PS at Westhope College in Shropshire. I think it was Claire’s suggestion to use a portrait format for an in situ pastel sketch of a view along Wenlock Edge. That did not present any particular problem but I never really resolved the composition satisfactorily and my enthusiasm for the painting went off the boil. I discovered the unfinished picture in a folder of work and decided that I ought to take another look at it.

The decision to work on it again was encouraged by my current preoccupation with ‘Land and Light’ as a progressing theme and the happy memories of the late summer weather when it was begun. Thinking about a strategy my first idea was to catch the sunlight on the rising slopes of Wenlock Edge. The second was to simplify the foreground in some way. In the original sketch there was a broken hedge in the foreground. I had been lured by its rampant summer growth much of which had gone to seed. The seed heads created interesting forms but they were really a distraction - but what to do?

The solution was found by simply playing! The joy of pastel is the pleasure taken in just making marks - it offers almost unlimited possibilities to rub, blend, scrape, and add new marks at will. So the first task was to rub out the hedge by making random marks with dark pastels and blending them – great fun. Then the thought occurred that a grassy path emerging from shade would create a simple foreground that would emphasise the feeling of sunlight on the rising ground beyond. All that remained then was to create a little more interest in the sky and enjoy a little more creative mark making in the fields with complementary colours.

After an hour or so of total absorption I felt the painting was finished – and as Alwyn Crawshaw used to say at the end of his TV demonstrations, ‘”I’m happy with that!”

Whenever possible I try to avoid using fixative because it can create problems. Too heavy application renders the paper surface hard and smooth which makes further drawing and blending difficult. The problem can be solved when using robust grounds like board by roughing the surface with fine sandpaper. This happened when I applied fixative to the face and hair – fortunately Canson is a heavy robust paper which can take a certain amount of rough treatment so no real harm was done.

For this portrait an intermediate fix was needed to seal the underdrawing and prevent it lifting and soiling the final marks. Faces generally have to be highly worked in order to render the subtle tones created around the eyes, nose and mouth. Even the lightest pastel sticks make strong marks which have to be softened when drawing delicate forms. This detail from the completed portrait shows the degree finish that can be achieved.

My strategy was to treat crown of the hat and nightdress more loosely to focus attention on face. The best laid plans though collapse if you get too engrossed in mark making. I began suggesting the straw weave of the hat and the marks took over – I could have brushed them off of course but I was beguiled by the effect they created so it was too late.


Framing is another aspect of the craft of painting that I agonise over. Victor Ambrus lovely pastel drawings on light tinted Ingres paper look fine in a wide ivory mount inside a narrow frame. A full painterly treatment needs a different form of presentation. I had to hand a wide frame which had a gold finish, a slip made from a length of glass bead was used to separate glass and painting. There was a problem – the painting would need to be cropped.

I believe portrait heads need space within the frame if they are not to look imprisoned. The role model who led me to this conclusion is Goya, his head and shoulder portraits are all drawn sight size and the chest is often fully facing the viewer. The width of the shoulders then creates the required space for the head. I had drawn a sideways pose and I think the wide brimmed oversize hat created just sufficient space to allow the painting to be satisfactorily cropped to fit the smaller frame.

The attractive qualities of pastel are its directness and the textural marks which are possible with the medium. With a portrait currently on my easel I began to consider strategies which might be implemented to bring the painting to a conclusion. It helps when deciding on a particular approach to look at examples. One valuable source of reference is ‘Pastel Painting and Drawing 1898-2000’ published by The Pastel Society to celebrate the Society’s Centenary Exhibition.

The book illustrates some fine examples of portraits done by PS members which display the broad range of techniques which can be used with pastel. Ken Paine is an artist who tackles his portrait heads in a vigorous direct manner. The faces seem to emerge from a flurry of textural marks. His subjects are usually old, hirsute, and with ‘character.’ In contrast Victor Ambrus portraits are essentially light firm drawings with hints of colour in the face and parts of the clothing. The linear approach he adopts is ideal for recording detail.

Between these two extremes are portraits which have highly worked parts – usually the face – and more more loosely treated areas which exploit the dry textural nature of the chalk. I decided that this would be the best strategy for a portrait of a child where the skin is smooth with subtle tonal contrast best achieved by blending the coloured marks made by the pastels. Background and clothing could be given looser treatment.

I’ve temporarily abandoned studies of birds to return to a portrait that is in danger of going off the boil. I began it last summer prompted by the sight of my granddaughter dressed in my wife’s nightdress and her straw sunhat. Most children love dressing up and this one is no exception but recording them in their fancy dress is not easy except with a camera. Reliance on photographic references becomes essential since the first tentative drawing was made over six months ago.

The portrait has progressed to the point where major corrections to the pose have been made, one of these – to the outline of the hat – still shows. She is turned away from the light and the face for the most part is lit by reflected light. This creates subtle contrasts of tone around the eyes and nose which I hope to record rather - dare I say – in the way that Rembrandt did!

I’ve gone for a full painterly treatment in pastel on the reverse side of a grey Canson paper – preferring this to the ‘correct’ side which has an insistent regular grain that breaks into textural marks. The work has progressed to the point where I’m beginning to consider an intermediate fix. I’m always reluctant to use fixative preferring to scrape down to the ground when I can. I don’t think I will be able to do this on Canson because the rubbed blends and corrections have filled the grain of the paper. Little can be done that is not likely to damage the paper surface.

This digital image was made from a photograph of a 2005 calendar published by Hawksworth Graphic and Print Ltd. The calendar was one of the most appreciated gifts I received at Christmas - it is now hanging on my studio wall and is a delight and inspiration. The illustrations are by Leonard Squirrel RWS, RE. who has long been one of my favourite watercolourists. He taught etching and engraving at the Ipswich School of Art and exhibited at the Royal Academy for around 50 years. He was born in 1893 yet he was not elected a full member of the RWS until 1941 – a surprising fact which shows how persistent and determined you have to be to progress in the art world.

He belonged to a generation which produced fine landscape painters like Jack Merriott, Stanley Buckle, and Stanley Badmin. They never get a mention in the scholarly art history books and rarely feature in exhibitions in public galleries - yet they were all very prolific artists making a living from commissions and sales of their work.One of the best ways to become familiar with their work is to look at Greg Norman’s book ‘Landscape Under the Luggage Rack.’

The illustration shows a watercolour ‘The Street, Kersey, Suffolk’ painted in 1960. It is a fine example of a class of English watercolour which use controlled washes over a fine drawing. The detail reveals the method but it is hard to decide if the tiles are drawn with a pen or a fine brush superimposed on the wash or beneath it. The choice of instrument and order of application is a matter of the artist’s preference. Jack Merriott advocated the use of a brush drawing in Indian ink with superimposed washes of colour.

Interest in the work of these artists declined as amateur artists engaged with the looser style of Seago and Wesson. Although both artists developed a loose understated method of working this was underpinned by close observation. Wesson in particular could draw well and it is fatal to try and imitate their style if you can’t. So many of the Wesson ‘look alikes’ in amateur exhibitions suffer from a badly drawn beginning.

I meet artists who are excited by the concept of developing new ways of using watercolour - extending its boundaries. Then I often recall a comment by Milan Kundera which I once read. He questioned whether 'the never before expressed is always ahead of us – may it not be found from something which has gone before and has been overlooked?' Artists like Leonard Squirrel tend to be overlooked but there is much in their work which can be rediscovered.

A poster announcing an exhibition called ‘Cuoto on Netsuke’ caught my eye at the Museum and Art Gallery in Hereford so I made a brief visit. Netsuke are small Japanese beads used to secure objects to a belt. They are highly decorative objects and very beautiful Cuoto turned out to be an artist who was showing large engravings influenced by traditional Japanese themes. Of more interest were the woodcuts of birds and flowers. Although they were described by the exhibition catalogue as realistic, to modern eyes accustomed to photographic images that seemed inappropriate. There charm springs from the limitations imposed on the artist by the medium he is using. Details of colour and texture have to be suggested rather than accurately recorded. For artistic rather than scientific purposes this is not a handicap and they can be enjoyed for their directness and honesty of purpose. These are qualities that distinguish the best hand made artifacts and which give them value.

I’ve just enrolled for a Wildlife Drawing and Painting Course at Ludlow Museum. The museum has a good collection of bird specimens that are interesting to draw. Our tutor Angela Gladwell MArt (RCA) is pushing us in the direction of careful observation and accurate recording. Good basic principles once instilled into art students in the life class. Drawing museum specimens is a good discipline. It’s more like drawing from the antique casts that were once used to prepare students for the life class than drawing a living breathing model.

That said it is a worth while form of study and a lot easier than drawing birds in the wild. I’ve tried drawing garden birds and visitors to our bird table and also puffins at their nesting burrows on Skomer. This is essential study if you want to capture a sense of how birds move, perch, or feed but there is no substitute for having a mounted specimen to study anatomy and plumage. I’ve only ever managed to record such details in a very superficial way in the brief time you get to observe from life.

Having tried sketching birds from life I never cease to be amazed by Charles Tunnicliffe’s sketchbooks. The published sketchbooks are a good source of reference and I’ve learned a lot about drawing techniques from making copies from them. Another artist I greatly admire is Victor Ambrus who makes drawings to reconstruct the buildings excavated by Channel 4’s Time Team.

Victor is also a prolific book illustrator and he has published ‘Drawing Animals’ a book which describes his method of sketchng animals from life. All of his drawings were done at various locations using carbon pencils. I’ve found it instructive to make copies from these by following his methods.

These quick studies copy the style of each of these two fine artists – a brush drawing based on an illustration from Tunnicliffe’s ‘Peregrine Sketchbook’ and a Macaw from ‘Drawing Animals’ by Victor Ambrus.

Angela Gladwell’s web site is also worth a visit at

www.angelagladwell.co.uk

Compared to the practical humanitarian work that needs to be done to help the broken communities recover from the Tsunami disaster painting suddenly seemed to be a useless and irrelevant activity. The enthusiasm for painting left me completely as the daily news bulletins carried more and more horrific images. Then I saw aid workers helping children to face up to their horrific experiences by drawing. So there is a place for art even in the midst of complete chaos to help people overcome the trauma of disaster. Where words cannot be found to record the emotional nightmare perhaps images can.

New Year’s Day seems to be a good time to post a Blog. The last day of 2004 saw the arrival of the Pastel Society’s Newsletter – always an interesting though rather brief read. Roger Dellar, the Editor made reference to ‘Degas, Art in the Making’ - an exhibition currently on show at the National Gallery. Degas late pastels are a source of inspiration for anyone using the medium. He frequently used tracing paper as a support. He made use of it to create mirror images of the poses of his drawings of dancers. In this way he could create varied figure compositions from just a few simple poses. He seems to have resorted to this practice as his eyesight began to fail and he was no longer able to go to the ballet.

Degas also used canvas as a support for pastels – a practice which is hardly ever used today. Sickert, who studied with Degas, criticises this practice in his book ‘Open House.’ because of the risk of damage through vibration. He has a point if a traditional stretched canvas is used but the risk is greatly reduced if the canvas is glued to board.

There are valid creative reasons for exploring the properties of different grounds for pastels. Roger Dellar states the case nicely in his Editorial. ‘I find myself being more and more concerned with the paint surfaces, textures, mark making, and also the composition.’ Painting begins with the preparation of a ground suited to the subject being portrayed. The use of prepared pumice grounds and materials such as canvas offer choices which extend the range of the medium. Degas seems to have been aware of this and in his late pastels he produced some of his most exciting paintings.

While passing the Municipal Gallery in Worcester yesterday my eye caught sight of a poster advertising an exhibition of paintings called ‘Porth’ by Kurt Jackson. Shows in the Worcester gallery are usually a disappointment they are usually touring shows of installations or the ill considered daubing that seem to be in fashion with museum curators. . I first became familiar with Jackson’s work on seeing an exhibition of his innovative watercolours in a gallery in St. Just. So this time I went in eagerly anticipating a welcome change from the usual stuff.

Well for this touring exhibition Kurt has put together large collaged paintings in mixed media. The collaged bits were mostly items retrieved from the beach at Priest’s Cove where Kurt mostly works. ‘All that was left’ had two crumpled oilskin jackets and cork floats with bits of rope evocative but somehow inappropriate.

The majority of the paintings were made up of two or three door-sized stretched canvasses fixed together – gallery art again. Very few locations could display these paintings, a college refectory if you shifted the portraits of pensioned academics perhaps. There were perhaps three of four mixed media watercolours framed but unmounted as though they were a hurried addition. These were typical Kurt showing evidence of his playful exploratory way with water based media – capturing effects of light on the sea and evoking in the viewer a sense of noise of waves breaking on shingle. I wish there had been more.

The gallery was showing a video of Kurt at work outdoors on a cliff top at Priests Cove. He gave a bravura performance working on a huge canvas spread on the turf and held down by stones. I guess he was working on an acrylic underpainting laid in earlier. The video showed him working barefoot, trowelling on paint with a knife, splattering it on with a loaded brush Jackson Pollock style and blending it with fingers and toes. Great fun and with an eye for the chance effect or happy accident but never completely controlled.

For quiet reflection I wandered into a neighbouring gallery and saw ‘Herald of the Night’ by Arnesby Brown - an oil painting of about 1870 he was also a Newlyn painter. The painting shows a full moon rising over a simple landscape with two rather badly painted cows, a painting easily dismissed because of its romantic Victorian subject matter. But then I looked at how he had painted the evening sky, there were blues mauves greens juxtaposed and harmonious. It was controlled and considered the product not of impulsive brush gestures but of carefully placed marks. Characteristics all too rarely found in contemporary painting.

Robert Hughes is still one of the few critics that are worth reading. For an art critic he has the rare quality of expressing his opinion in plain words. His international status as a critic is long established and he has no time for dumb hyped-up nonsense posing as fine art.

He wrote in The Guardian recently a review of Lucien Freud’s exhibition of recent paintings and etchings at the Wallace Collection, Hertford House, London – it runs until 18th April. He used his review to contrast Freud’s achievement with the show at the Saatchi Gallery called ‘Fresh Blood.’ A show of ‘awful dumb-arsed posturing’ to paraphrase Hughes’ assessment promoted by Ad-men without any kind of connoisseurship. Nobody can really take the whe work of Hirst, Emin, Lucas and their chums seriously can they?

By contrast there is Freud at 82 producing strong engaging work – the product of a lifetime engaged in subjecting people and objects to obsessive scrutiny. This scrutiny leaves the viewer if not the sitter feeling uncomfortable. There is a residual element of the expressionist distortion which characterised German art of his Grandfather’s time – those reclining figures with exposed genitals distorted by exaggerated perspective.

For Hughes, Freud is England’s greatest living artist - other critics share his enthusiasm - ‘our Titan among minnows’ is Laura Cumming’s assessment of him in The Observer. It is good to find critics who are defending work done by a figurative oil painter. Freud has a sensitivity to the way the oil medium can reconstruct a perceived form and give an interpretation of reality which is far superior to the photographic image. In part this superiority is due to the fact that much effort and obsessive observation have gone into the creation of the paint surface – a result of long and exploratory reworking of the surface. Freud’s paintings show the ‘naked evidence of labour’ to quote Cummings. It is this display of effort which for me gives the work a value which demands respect. After all the uncompromising nakedness though it is refreshing to escape into the fresh air where the breeze ruffles the leaves on the trees and and sunlight creates vibrant colour. I need to gaze at a little David Cox watercolour I think.

Read the reviews at:
Sarah Cumming: 'A brush with Genius'
Robert Hughes: 'The Master at Work.'

It is good to meet an artist who is at home with digital technology and makes competent use of it. Last week I went to meet Mark Ansell one of our new Ludlow Art Society members. Mark is a graphic designer and we met to discuss the Society’s publicity – specifically designs for the posters for our exhibitions. Mark had been busy on his Apple Mac and showed my some of his preliminary designs for the Society’s logo and a redesigned format for the Newsletter.

Some years ago I designed the Society logo using a graphic created with Corel Draw. Greyscale versions of it are used on our membership cards and on the masthead of the Newsletter. Colour versions also are used on the Society’s web site. The design carries the words ‘Ludlow Art Society’ superimposed on the church of St. Laurence the town’s most visible landmark. This in turn has the skyline of the Titterstone Clee as a background.

Mark essentially adopted the same device but gave it more impact by placing the lettering below the graphic and simplifying it into a stark black and white design employing counterchange. It was at once more contemporary and striking. I congratulated him and we chatted about this and other changes over a cup of coffee. What was refreshing about our talk was the way in which he was quite ready to engage in critical discussion without rancour. A rare quality I find in the art world where artists can be temperamental and easily upset if someone expresses a dislike of their work. But then as a professional designer he is constantly discussing designs and listening to his clients instructions. Such is the difference between the real world of the commercial art and the more esoteric one of the fine artist.

Richard Wardle RE in a recent demonstration he gave to Ludlow Art Society members expressed concern about the marketing of Giclée prints. It is a concern I share because of the way they are marketed as a form of fine art. An advertisement once caught my eye in, I think, The Observer. It was offering a ‘Fine Art Giclée’ of ‘St. Michaels. Mount’ in a limited edition signed by the artist – an elected RA. The image was printed of course on archival paper with lightfast inks by state of the art digital technology - a quality bargain at around £200!

Well the gullible may be impressed with that and there is nothing new in the marketing of mass editions of signed artists prints. Russell Flint and L S Lowry are two artists who come to mind whose work was marketed in this way. Lowry though was honest enough to admit that he was being paid a fee essentially for signing his autograph. There is a nice story told in his biography that a dealer brought a quantity of prints for him to sign. The dealer became concerned when he noticed that Lowry was signing the prints ‘L.S.Low.’ When asked to explain Lowry replied, “You have only paid me half my fee so you are only getting half a signature.” He was also quietly amused by the fact that gullible art shoppers were prepared to pay a prestigious gallery £45 for a signed numbered print from an edition of 850 when the same print could be bought unsigned for around £5 from less pretentious outlets. Do artists, who can now produce their own passable prints rather than use a commercial printer, really wish to compromise their integrity with this kind of marketing?.

Richard and other RE members make prints which are individual in the sense that each carries the stamp of the artist’s hand–tooled mark. Their work has far greater integrity than the digital print where the technology creates a barrier between the original hand crafted artefact and the mechanically produced print. I once took issue with the writer of an article in ‘The Artist’ magazine which explained at length the skill and care that she took in producing her giclée prints - using the finest materials and making test prints to get the right contrast and colour. All of this of course is sheer pretension, the real skill resides with the programmer who wrote the robust code that kept her system stable while she tinkered and played with the image on her screen. The final digital print owes more to the programmer’s skill than hers.

There is of course a place for digital imaging in helping artists to promote their work. The technology is quite appropriate for cards and notelets that are not being passed off as fine art. But as painters or printmaker we have chosen to work using hand-craft methods which have a long tradition. We should work in sympathy with the tradition and practice of our chosen craft if our work is to have integrity. In any hand crafted printing process image quality degrades after a number of prints are made. This is why the printmaker produces a signed limited edition – at the end of the print run he destroys his plate. There is no such constraint with ink jet prints so it is a pretence to sign and number them.

By using graphics software like Adobe Photoshop to merely make copies of their paintings artists are missing the creative potential of digital technology. There are artists with the necessary skill and training who use graphics software to create original digital images. Their work has greater integrity and honesty of purpose than scanned images of paintings. The simple reason is that their work does not attempt to simulate a hand made artefact. Indeed original digital images are created by a process in which the hand made mark has no place. The appropriate place for digital graphics is in the developing media like video, the internet, or advertising. Digital images are quite out of place in a gallery or exhibition whose primary function is to display hand-made artefacts. I personally would like to see an addition to the Rules of Entry for the Society’s exhibitions that would exclude Giclée prints from being accepted. I hope most members will be persuaded by the logic of my reasoning

Yesterday a poster placed in the window of Hereford Art Gallery caught my eye. It announced an event called ‘Making a Splash’ which turned out to be an exhibition by St. Ives artists. The doors of the gallery were closed and enquiry at reception revealed that the exhibition did not open until today. I was saved from disappointment by a nearby gallery assistant who having overheard my enquiry asked if I had traveled far. “Oh about 30 miles,” I said, “from Ludlow.” At this she invited me to have a look round while they continued to hang the pictures and I was privileged to spend 20 minutes or so with three very friendly assistant curators who pointed out the paintings by artists I was interested in. It was a kind gesture that I really appreciated and I promised too return again to see the exhibition when it is up and running.

The exhibition has a painting by Stanhope Forbes of a group of figures enjoying a summer day in the shade of a tree lined pool. There was something familiar about the location and the way he handled the ripples on the water. Then I remembered his large canvas ‘The Drinking Place’ which is in Oldham Art Gallery. Did he work at the same spot for both pictures? It’s worth another visit to check. Critics have been rather sniffy about Forbes but in my view he handled paint very well. There was also a nice watercolour by Dame Laura Knight that I must return to study and a rather disappointing small work by Peter Lanyon painted in 1945 I didn’t get the title but it shows him working in the manner of Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo. These flat abstracts created from linear designs have lost their novelty and interest now. Ten years later the linear basis is still there in his work but the colour is more subtle and textural treatment of the paint surface makes his work more appealing. Another visit to the exhibition is a must.

Tim Marlow is currently presenting an interesting series about great artists on Channel 5, the series is enjoying a rerun and last night his subject was Delacroix. I was delighted when he opened the little Phaidon edition of the Journal and read from it. The same edition that graces my bookshelf and which I also turn to from time to time. It takes real determination to write a journal and there are periods when Delacroix never wrote a word. So his journal has several gaps whether this was due to pressure of work or because he had little to say is uncertain. Well in this respect I’m in good company - this is the first entry in my blog since September 2003. 2004 begins with a resolve to pick up the thread again.

Viewing the Delacroix programme again I was struck by the strange preoccupations of 19th Century Romantic painting. The massacres, noble suicides, violent revolution, and voyeuristic glimpses into harems. Uncomfortable subjects hardly enjoyable to contemplate. Better perhaps to simply look at how the paint is handled, It is now easy now to understand why the Impressionists admired Delacroix vigorous free handling of paint – a revolutionary change from the tight handling of the French classical tradition. Those raindrops he painted with juxtaposed touches of rainbow hues are also prophetic. The idea of exploiting the optical blending of primaries did not occur again until it was developed by Seurat and the Divisionists.

Recent correspondence with my New Zealand friend (see 25 Aug. 2003) has renewed my interest in Frances Hodgkins. Frances who? you may be forgiven for asking unless you were at Art School in the 1950’s, then she was better known and her work was featured in ‘The Studio’ and other art magazines of the time. She was born in Dunedin but spent most of her artistic life and did most of her painting in Europe. From the age of thirty when she came to England and for the rest of her life she was totally dependent on what she could earn from painting, so life was a struggle. She never had a permanent home of her own and stayed with friends or rented rooms and for a time led a gypsy lifestyle roaming around France, Morocco, Italy, Holland and Belgium.

She taught in order to keep painting and her letters home to New Zealand which are now preserved in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington tell of her struggle. ‘Painting reduces me to tears and misery, peaks of ecstasy, disillusion I feel as if I am possessed by a painting devil which is devouring me body and soul, and claims my brains and energy and leaves me with no wish nor inclination for anything else. Is it worth the sacrifice?’ She found it difficult to get recognition from the conservative British art establishment but finally she was awarded a pension negotiated on her behalf by Sir Kenneth Clarke during his time as Director of the National Gallery. She died in 1947aged seventy-eight in poverty and suffering from depression.

She is honoured today in New Zealand as one of the country’s finest artists. Her work is represented in Tate Britain but there is more to discover on the web site of the Dunedin Art Gallery and that of the City of Dunedin.

Tate Online
Dunedin Public Art Gallery
City of Dunedin

This photograph shows the old school building where the Thames Society of Arts hold their exhibitions and workshops. (see yesterday's Blog)

I have a friend who is a member of the Thames Society of Arts – I should explain that this Society is based in a little town on the Coromandel Peninsular, North Island, New Zealand. They have converted an old school building which they use as a gallery and for running courses – but that is another story. Dennis went out to New Zealand in the 1950’s and the native born Kiwi’s jokingly refer to him and an ‘improved Englishman.’ In a recent letter I asked him what the winter colours were like in the North Island landscapes commenting that Rowland Hilder was the first English watercolour painter to really make extensive use of winter landscapes. The New Zealand seasons do not have the dramatic changes of those in England, plants seem to grow all year and winter simply is the season when there is more snow on the mountains. Rowland Hilder turned out to be a painter that Dennis admired and reference to him had the effect of arousing nostalgia for the Kent landscapes that he knew as a boy.

This exchange renewed my own interest in Hilder and so I turned to a copy of ‘Sketching Country’
That I bought in a second hand bookshop some years ago. Hilder’s description of his working methods makes fascinating reading. He was an artist who loved making sketches out of doors, sometimes these were simply scribbled notes and ideas for paintings following in the footsteps of Turner who left a thousand or more such drawings in sketchbooks. Ruskin – who went through Turner’s effects and arbitrarily destroyed many that he considered might undermine Turner’s artistic reputation – wrote comments on the back of some of his Petworth sketches. Ruskin clearly did not think much of them – he wrote ‘rubbish,’ ‘inferior,’ ‘worse,’ on many of them.

It is curious how taste changes, now these little Petworth colour notes are highly regarded. In Hilder’s day Turner’s sketches and Constable’s oil sketches aroused great interest and the sketch became elevated to being a work of art in it’s own right. So there developed a taste for the direct sketchy style of painting practised by Seago, Wesson, Hilder himself and currently John Yardley. It is a style of painting which has attracted many amateur watercolourists. But beware it is difficult to carry off.

However on balance I think Hilder is right when he observes that; ‘…I am a believer in banishing from a watercolour the kind of detail which I have heard visitors to mixed exhibitions applaud as being ‘true to life’. Truth, in all art, is not the same as literal description.’

I believe a painting benefits from having a part which is understated yet this is rarely appreciated. This year the Ludlow Art Society Summer Exhibition had a lovely watercolour in pen and wash by Maggie Humphry. She is one of the Society’s new professional members and this was the first time she had submitted work. She must have been thrilled to bits to have her watercolour awarded the Selector’s Choice.

I was admiring it when a friend who was with me said it had been frequently criticised because of an understated indefinable area which could be visually read as an area of grass or perhaps part of a farmyard or driveway. The point of the understatement was that it provided a quiet area which focussed attention on some beautifully drawn foreground plants yet afterwards led the eye past some buildings into the distance. The current preoccupation with finicky detail, a result I suspect of unimaginative use of photographs, means that artistic subtlety of this kind often goes unnoticed. A great pity because Maggie in this painting was teaching a lesson which we all ought to take to heart.

You can see more of Maggie's work on her web site at: Maggie Humphry at Pink House

‘The Art of Chess’ exhibition currently showing at Somerset House has attracted media attention even though chess does not have a great deal of popular interest. The exhibition displayed 19 chess sets dating from the 19th Century to the present day including some newly commissioned work by some members of the Britart school. With the exception of a set designed by Marcel Duchamp, who was himself a very good player, it would be very difficult to actually play a game with some of the sets. In one case this was the deliberate intention. Yoko Ono designed a set entirely made up of white pieces so that the combatants would become so confused that an effective battle could not be fought. So chess has been used to promote the cause of ‘Give Peace a Chance.’ A laudable objective perhaps but missing the key idea that chess is a cerebral battle not a physical one.

The Britart gang clearly had little interest in or knowledge of the game. There was a time when if an artist was given a design brief he undertook some background research to ensure that his design was appropriate for its use. Good design becomes a fusion of imagination with knowledge of materials and understanding of the artefacts function. The Britart school blindly ignores this tradition and is in danger of becoming totally irrelevant to real concerns. Not surprisingly a chess journalist commented that ‘one of the exhibits looked like the contents of a kitchen cupboard which had fallen onto the floor.’

Away from the exhibits the real Art of Chess was being demonstrated by two chess prodigies David Howell aged 12 and Sergei Karyakin aged 13 who played a demonstration game on a giant-sized chess board in the courtyard. The genuine beauty of the mind game being enacted through the moves each player made is something which none of the artists, except perhaps Duchamp, seem to have understood.