Date published: 2007/05/06
It's a typical Bank Holiday weekend in England, i.e. overcast and not that warm. But Londoners seem to have deserted the city, and it was rather quiet, even in Trafalgar Square.
The National Gallery in London has an exhibition entitled "Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883". It's only on for another two weeks, until 20 May. It then moves to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa from 8 June to 9 September, and then travels to the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 4 October to 6 January (2008).
Now Renoir is not the world's favourite impressionist painter (that's Van Gogh) or even the second favourite (that's Monet) but he's still fairly popular. So it is a bit surprising that the exhibition was fairly quiet. You could just walk in and get a ticket for immediate entry. And, unlike typical impressionist exhibitions, there were perhaps typically only three or four people per painting, and the paintings were well spread out so it was pretty good viewing. (Mind you, some people insist on looking at these paintings from two foot away. Ok, if you are an artist who wants to study technique, fine. Otherwise, you should step back occasionally.)
And it seems it wasn't just the quiet Bank Holiday weekend, because the National Gallery reduced the price of the softback version of the exhibition catalogue from 25 pounds down to 10. (And the hardback version was also reduced but not quite so dramatically.) So they must have a lot of stock left over. (The National Gallery also reduced the price of their "Complete Illustrated Catalogue", 2001 version, from 50 to 25 pounds, supposedly only until the end of the Renoir exhibition. Presumably this means that a new edition is soon to come out.)
A lot of exhibitions in London consist mainly of works from at most two or three collections. This Renoir exhibition was completely different. There were 63 paintings in the London show (the set in Ottawa and Philadelphia will be slightly different). Around a quarter were from private collections, and the others came from over thirty museums. So all in all, this is one of those exhibitions where this will be the only time you ever see many of the paintings. (The catalogue has 73 paintings listed. A couple of the paintings shown in London are not in the catalogue. Some in the catalogue are not being shown in all three locations of the exhibition. And three paintings in the catalogue are not being shown in any of the locations.)
The quality of the works on show, as you would expect, is pretty high. Renoir is perhaps known most for his (ruddy, fully shaped) women, but, he was actually pretty good at landscape. The word "landscapes" in the title of the exhibition was stretched to include some paintings with people more prominent than the landscape, but there were several powerful, proper, landscapes in the exhibition. For example, "The Watering-place", "Springtime (in Chatou)", "The Wave" (the 1879 one), "Rocky Crags at L'Estaque", and, perhaps best of all, "The Jardin d'Essai, Algiers".
Meanwhile, over at the British Museum there is an exhibition entitled "A New World: England's first view of America", on until 17 June. This is mainly about John White, who produced some of the earliest English depiction (in watercolours) of life (the natives and nature) in the "new" world, in the 1580s. This was mainly from the British Museum's own collection. Unfortunately much of the work was damaged by water because of a fire in 1865. And White also used some pigments that discoloured with time. So we are not close to seeing the original colours in much of the work. But it does not matter that much.
Not that much seems to be known about White. He was not of the first rank (like Raleigh) but just below that. Other than these watercolours, he is probably best known for having led the disasterous expedition that created the temporary colony on Roanoke Island. (He did not die because he was sent back to seek assistance.) Indeed, the first (not so lucky) English child born in America was his grandchild.
White is not that great a painter. And some of his portraits of the natives were evidently copied from other, earlier, artists (and in turn his work was also copied by others). And part of the purpose of his work was to serve as propaganda, to convince people back home that the new world was a land of opportunity. So that further undermines any real claim to authenticity. His animal pictures were better than his human ones, but even here he seems to have gotten many details wrong. So this exhibition is almost more interesting for seeing how America was presented to the English back home rather than anything else. On the other hand, the maps (by White and others) were quite interesting, because one can assume that these were at least intended to be accurate, and they are impressive for their time, although of course not that accurate in many parts.
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