Notes from an eccentric art gallery

200207 Kelvingrove art gallery, Glasgow

William Strang - portrait of lady in red hat (vita sackville-west) 1918
Red (hat) + green (blouse) - Passion (picasso)
Very distinctive face

John Lavery - RB Cunninghame Graham 1893
John Buchan - moorland browns

Jacob Epstein - RB Cunninghame Graham 1923 bronze
Windswept hair
Another distinctive visage

Percy Wyndham Lewis - Froanna (the artist's wife) 1937
A different kind of brown palette - red/browen lifted with blue (incl her eyes)
Warmth and intimacy of an interior with only a sliver of daylight yet something cool about her
A superficial modernism

DG Rosetti - Regina Cordium (Alice Wilding) 1866
Use of gold - cf Klimt
Unusual, not conventionally beautiful face (big chin, wide apart eyes)
Mediaeval vibe, courtly romance
Symbolism - flowers, emblems

John Byrne - Self-portrait in Stetson 1989
Kinky Friedman
Cf Stanley Spencer

Constable - Hampstead Heath c1830
St Paul's alone on the distant skyline
North London as open countryside
2/3 sky

Optician's sign - part of John Quinton Pringle display
God's eyes in The Great Gatsby
90 Saltmarket, Glasgow (c1896)
Cf Seurat; Delaunay

Ben Nicholson - Still life 1946-50
Finishing off Picasso's Cubism
Classicism of De Chirico

Edward Baird - Unidentified Aircraft (over montrose) 1942
45% sky - cf Constable
Very original composition - another way of showing its about (off-stage) sky
Townscape cf Schiele
Upturned faces have a certain graceful calm in spite of fear - religious

Lowry - VE day 1945
The right artist for celebration
Memory: VE day 50th anniversary with U in Belfast
Restrained pallette cf Bridget Riley's egyptian paintings
Fades to white in bg

Ossip Zadkine - The Music Group 1926 bronze
Bought from the Exhibition of Jewish Artists 1943 - what and where was that?
Cf Picasso - Demoiselles d'Avignon - mask-like faces: Man Ray - portrait of woman with mask

Craigie Aitchison - Wayney Dead 2 1986
Cf Klee - universal simplicity
Honesty/loyalty of animal's mourning
Flower symbolism cf Rossetti - this is a universal flower of no particular kind