Month / May 2021

by Leonie Andrews

Drawing the exhibition: Boticelli to Van Gogh – Part 1

From March to June 2021 the National Gallery of Australia is hosting a raft of paintings, including many masterpieces from the National Gallery, London, in the Boticelli to Van Gogh exhibition. I have to say masterpieces because there is not a single work by a female artist is included in this show! Really? Yes, the National Gallery London is a very blokey affair, although I would have been happy to see their works by Rosalba Carriera, Artemesia Gentilleschi, Rosa Bonheur or Berthe Morisot. Rather ironic as the Know My Name exhibition of women artists is taking up almost all of the rest of the main floor of the gallery at present.

I have purchased a season ticket that allows me to visit the exhibition as many times as I can. My first post focused on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers 1888, but I must admit I have spent a lot more time looking elsewhere in the exhibition.

By drawing my way through the exhibition I can spend time looking closely at the paintings trying to learn what I can by copying. Though the reality is that a pencil (the only drawing tool allowed in the Gallery), is not always the right tool to capture a finely wrought portrait.

My first sketches included Joseph Wright of Derby’s double portrait of Mr and Mrs Thomas (Mary Barlow) Coltman, c. 1770-72 (NG6496) and Frans Hal’s Portrait of a Woman with a Fan, c. 1640 (NG 2529).

Mr and Mrs Thomas Colton, by Joseph Wright of Derby, c 1770-72

The Coltman’s were painted in a ‘conversation piece’ portrait, which was a popular convention of the time, showing the couple in a charmingly relaxed pose, (something that the Curator Susan Foister notes that would have required quite some forethought on Wright’s part). It is a portrait of ease and nicely observed detail, including Mary’s horse with it’s ears back, because their spaniel (not in my sketch) is nipping at it.

Alas my sketch of the Woman with a Fan was rather less successful. I have turned the sitter from a young woman into a middle-aged version of herself! The figure itself and dress with the lace collar and cuffs I am quite happy with.

Woman with a Fan, by Frans Hals, c.1640. The colour and black marker was added later as only pencil can be used in the Gallery.

I made a somewhat better go of this work the next time I visited. At least there is some vague resemblance in this version, although she still looks much older than she does in Hal’s portrait.

Frans Hals reboot and a cameo appearance by Rembrandt’s self-portrait aged 34.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we meet the Duke and the Actress!

by Leonie Andrews

Summit Walk (unposted from 2017!)

Yesterday (20 November 2017) we went for a pleasant walk around our local landmark Black Mountain. A walking track circles it below the summit. The walk is posted as taking 45 minutes to complete, but allowing for stopping to botanise and sketch we managed the circumnambulation at a cracking two hours and ten minutes!

Black Mountain telecommunications tower.

'Tiger' orchid, Diuris sulphurea, Black Mountain ACT

by Leonie Andrews

Self-portraits

WARNING this post contains a nude portrait. (It’s OK, it’s not me).

It seems there is a trend amongst my artist friends to be doing self portraits. So I am jumping in, along with Carol Haywood and Rose Davies to share my recent versions.

I started drawing myself in March and then quickly fell by the wayside. I recently got re-inspired by Jennifer Higgie’s book the Mirror and the Palette, looking at the herstory of the self-portrait.

Highly recommended, fascinating and a darn good read.

The portraits of older women artists are often the most experimental. Perhaps the most visceral portrait I know is by Maria Lassnig, (1919- 2014), painted in her 80’s, it really sorts the women from the boys. I saw it in Amsterdam in 2019 and it certainly hit me in the gut.

Oder du ich (You or Me) Maria Lassnig, 2005, oil on canvas , private collection.

Alice Neel has also painted an unapologetic nude self-portrait in her 80’s, which is on display in a current retrospective of her work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See here for a online veiwing of the exhibition.

You will probably be relieved to know that I don’t have the guts of Lassnig or Neel to do nude self-portraits. Maybe later. Maybe when I turn 80.

So here are the portraits I have made so far. Most, with the exception of the watercolour, have been sketched on paper roll from Ikea.

Self-portrait. Acrylic marker and brush pen.
Self-portrait with watching painting. Pencil.
Self-portrait Night repair. Collage and brush pen.
Double self-portrait. Gel pen.
Self-portrait with blue lips. Pen and ink, acrylic marker.