Self-Portrait by Thomas Gainsborough (1759) ✎

Born May 14th 1727.

It features the artist in his early thirties (wikipedia).

Himself in the dignified & refined pose of the Rococo.

More impressionistic and less rigid than his Mr and Mrs Andrews of a decade ago.

From the National Portrait Gallery.

“Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery ✎

At the National Portrait Gallery, I went to Jenny Saville’s blockbuster retrospective: Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting.

It was outstanding.

Jenny Saville is a painter of the human flesh - mostly female and some male. It all comes down to us - bodies & faces. For me, Saville seems to have moved away from her earlier depictions of the body with pain and suffering. Towards, an acceptance and calmness. Jenny Saville - who’s undergone childbirth, unknown to da Vinci and Michelangelo - also chose to infuse her art with the tenderness of motherhood. What is amazing is the sheer level of emotion conveyed in her brushstrokes.

Of particular interest to me is Saville’s focus on the eyes and lips, almost as a window into a person. Nearing the totality of expression - the inner workings of the subject’s mind and thoughts.

Her art is mindblowing.

Yet, even as I recognise her tremendous skill, there are some pieces which are difficult to engage with. Her earlier work seems to have a sense of anxiety and/or impending doom underlying them. Still I remain compelled - never indifferent.

Pieta 1 is stunning.

Rating: 5/5 ★★★★★

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Hyphen by Jenny Saville (1999)

This painting, Hyphen, was part of Saville’s first solo exhibition.

This is a double-portrait of the painter and her sister.

I think it’s amazing. Clearly Saville is “sculpting” paint to create a single body mass (with the two heads nestled together).

Thick impasto.

A scraper used to create the sensation of muscles?

Sir Joshua Reynolds at the National Portrait Gallery ✎

Sir Joshua Reynolds was a founding President of the Royal Academy in 1768 and one of the foremost portraiture artists of England in the 18th-century.

He was born in Plympton St Maurice, just outside Plymouth, on 16 July 1723. Happy birthday!! 🙌

Reynolds’s career spanned six decades and his acclaim and fame reached a degree rarely seen by any artist, especially in their lifetime. If you were a wealthy aristocrat looking for a portrait, Reynolds was your man.

He travelled widely and studied the Old Masters as the best way to emulate greatness.

In the RA Schools, he set out his influential art theories between 1769 and 1790 which were seen by many as changing the course of British art. In his “Discourses on Art”, Reynolds argued that painters should adopt classical and Renaissance works as their model, imbuing their works with symbolic references to classical myths. He also emphasised the importance of drawing on the works of Old Masters such as Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck. This “Grand Manner” was the unification of painting and scholarship.

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Self-portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1747–1749)

This self-portrait was done before Reynolds travelled to Rome to study and learn.

It shows a young man; eager and excited. Looking out into the distance (and future?), with brush and mahl stick in one hand, and other hand shielding his eyes.

Love his tousled hair too.

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Portrait of Omai by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1776)

I was excited to see this painting.

It was a recent acquisition by the National Portrait Gallery and the Getty Museum.

Apparently, the price was £50m! This is a stunning painting, for sure — but that price probably reflects our cultural zeitgeist of “cancel culture” and framing British history as an unspeakable litany of horrors and evils. Galleries today are marked by some ahistorical puritanism in which history is understood through our present-day’s mortal buzzwords.

At any rate, it is a beautiful portrait. This Tahitian was called Omai and he joined Captain Cook on a return voyage in the 18th century. His face is quite beautiful. Clothes are gorgeous. The gestures are welcoming, and he peers at someone out-of-frame.

Omai met George III and Samuel Johnson, dined with the Royal Society. It’s probable Reynolds knew Mai personally.