Showing posts with label Kirchner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kirchner. Show all posts

Sunday 13 April 2014

'The Great War in Portraits' at the National Portrait Gallery and the RI of Painters in Watercolour exhibitions


 When I visited the Bailey 'Stardust' exhibition a few weeks ago I didn't really have time to see the first world war exhibition and they have very different moods.

The National Portrait Gallery's literature says that, 'In viewing the First World War through images of the many individuals involved, The Great War in Portraits looks at the radically different roles, experiences and, ultimately, destinies of those caught up in the conflict.'

It's an interesting and thoughtful exhibition of drawings, paintings, photographs, film and a piece of sculpture. The sculpture is Jacob Epstein's Rock Drill - man and machine, 'the Frankenstein monster that war has made us'.  It sits at the entrance with its chopped off arms and shows the way in.

The skillfully painted, traditional portraits of royalty and heads of state set the scene and show some of the international players at the start of the war when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and before empires crumbled.

Then the exhibition moves on to show the ordinary men and their leaders.   Work by William Orpen, war artist, is well represented and again its good, traditional portraiture.   The compasisonate, pastel images of facially mutilated solidiers by Henry Tonks haven't been shown before.  He was working at a hospital in Cambridge doing documentary work at first but became interested in his subjects and their difficulties and continued painting them.  The pastels are shown near the films of the Battle of the Somme.   One film produced by the British and the other by the German government for propaganda purposes.

Still photographs were displayed to show personal stories e.g of an underage soldier who lied about his age, signed up and died more or less immediately.

The German Expressionist paintings by Kirchner, Max Beckman and Lovis Corinth created a stronger emotional impact, in many ways than the restrained traditional pieces.

After a break, I went on from this exhibition to see the soothing Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour exhibition at the Mall Galleries.   A wide range of skilled work was on show.  I particularly liked Ann Blockley and Shirley Trevenna's loose textural and vivid paintings.