David Inshaw, Roland Collins... & Picasso at the Courtauld

David Inshaw: Bonfire, Tree, Moon & Firework, 2012 

Yesterday I finally got to see David Inshaw's unsettling masterpiece 'The Badminton Game' in person, hanging in its rightful place on a gallery wall. Meticulously painted with a crazy sort of pointillist-meets-pre-Raphaelite attention to detail, it transforms a summery moment into a scene that is both whimsical and ominous. This sense of something unknown lurking behind an otherwise beautiful scene gives David's best work its attention-holding power, and if you're a fan of British landscape painting, post-war art in general or just wonderful pictures, I would hightail down New Bond Street to the Fine Art Society and have a look at the exhibition.

The Fine Art Society, with Badminton Game and mink.

Some of the figures are good, particularly the triptych of a woman draped in a towel, but I think the countryside brings out the best in an artist whose work is in the great tradition of visionary British landscape painters. Like Paul Nash he has a peculiar feeling for trees, and like Eric Ravilious he finds imaginative ways to explore chalk figures - particularly the Cerne Abbas giant. Crows in flight, bonfires, cliffs and water-filled ditches are all presented coolly and without fuss, yet each motif is charged with ambiguous emotions.

15 Paintings by David Inhaw, Fine Art Society (a bit dark, sorry)

If you want to know more, have a look at what Andrew Lambirth has to say, visit David's website, or best of all go along to the show.

Meanwhile, in another part of the city... in fact just round the corner in Cork Street, Browse and Darby have an exhibition of work by Roland Collins, who at the age of 94 is enjoying a well-deserved popularity. After a sold-out show at Mascalls last year he has recently exhibited at the Rye Art Gallery, and now has this small but lovely London exhibition.

Roland Collins, Belgrave Mews

His are paintings that do better with fairly subtle lighting, so that the colours are more natural, and this is the case here. Rather than being dazzled you can focus on his wonderful compositions, the best of which draw the eye through the foreground into some half-hidden scene behind. This show also features watercolours from the early part of his career - in the late 1930s - so you can see how his work exploded into life after the war, when he loosened up and grew more bold.

Roland Collins, A Shore Off the Yacht Club, Whitstable

Meanwhile, in another part of the city... As I had a little time before going to Greenwich to talk about 'Ravilious: Submarine', I trotted along to the Courtauld Gallery - surely one of the most civilized places in London. In fact it's more or less the perfect art museum, being small, fairly quiet and full of interest. Trying to order a cup of tea in the cafe proved to be a bit of a challenge, but then I was able to sit outside and look up at the sky...

If you have a friend who is interested in art history but intimidated by the vastness of most museums, the Courtauld is the perfect place to start. Starting at the bottom and working your way up through the three floors you see examples of work from diverse periods in European art, from the 14th century to the 20th. It's unusual to see such a carefully selected group of pictures covering such a wide time-frame, and fascinating to chart developments and influences.

It struck me that the figures in the current exhibition, Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901, have much in common with the very earliest pictures in the collection, being simplified and expressive. The overwhelming impression, though, was of the Spaniard's sheer energy; accompanying photos show the maniacal light in his eyes, while the paintings themselves are bursting with life. One day, I think, people will look at Picasso's more grotesque work and wonder what all the fuss was about, but in these youthful paintings his brilliance, emotional power and vitality is clear to see.

View of the Courtauld, with melancholy barmaid

Still, the picture I spent longest enjoying was 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergere'. A couple were very earnestly discussing the fact that the girl's reflection isn't quite right - it should be directly behind, perhaps, rather than off to the side. Meanwhile, the barmaid gazed out, as she has done for more than a century, waiting without much hope for her shift to be over.

David Inshaw, Alfred Wallis, Bloomsbury: 'Hidden Paintings' on the BBC

Curtis Dowling: are these worth £60k or nothing?

 Last night's 'Hidden Paintings' was an intriguing phenomenon - a series shown not in the same place at different times but at the same time but in different places. If that doesn't make sense, have a look here, and all will be clear...

Although each part was only broadcast in its particular region we now have, thanks to the BBC's iPlayer, seven days to watch the whole series. I've only managed a few so far, but have been treated to a behind-the-scenes tour of Charleston Farmhouse, a fascinating essay on fame with respect to David Inshaw and a Fake-or-Fortune quest featuring two paintings by Alfred Wallis - or should that be 'Alfred Wallis'? You'll have to watch to find out...

David Inshaw, Window, 1969

What the programmes have in common is less the 'hidden paintings' of the title than the impression - that I was left with at any rate - of artists and artworks bobbing about on the sea of fashion, either riding high on a wavetop or plunged into a trough. Fashion is cruel, inconstant and unpredictable. David Inshaw, for example, must have been thrilled to learn that he would be featured in the series - only to discover, as soon as filming began, that his painting 'Our days were a joy and our paths through flowers' had been taken off the wall at the City Museum and Art Gallery in Bristol after being on show more or less constantly for decades.

A curator at the museum pointed out that the painting had been taken down to make way for a newer acquisition. This is fair enough, and no doubt pleased both the artist concerned and his or her fans, but presumably there was choice involved. A decision was taken to remove this painting and leave that one, to hang this new artist but not this one. In the case of the City Museum and Art Gallery the phenomenal success of the 2009 Banksy takeover has perhaps influenced curatorial thinking, and it would be hard to think of two more different artists than Inshaw and Banksy.

When I was at school my experience of The Winter's Tale - a play with a preposterous plot and wooden characters - was enlivened by the Inshaw painting on the cover of the Arden paperback. His is a very particular vision - of strong, beautiful women and trees with dense foliage, of Silbury Hill and lightning and crows. I happen to think Inshaw is a very fine painter and a victim - presently - of the art world's continuing love affair with The New. In a few years' time he'll be rediscovered, as Piper, Nash and Ravilious are being rediscovered at the moment, and people will think it extraordinary that his paintings have languished in storage so long...

Charleston Farmhouse

On which subject, a highlight of the Hidden Paintings programme on the Bloomsbury group was the sight of volunteers preparing Charleston Farmhouse for the public after the winter closure. As people pulled bags off decorated jugs and whisked away curtains of plastic to reveal paintings, the bizarre decorated world of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and co came gaudily to life. The presenter - rather admirably, I thought - revealed the equally colourful love life of the group in a similar series of unmaskings, and the shots of Bewick Church were fantastic.

It may be quite hard to recall actual paintings by Grant and Bell, but in applying paint to just about everything in their house they gave their reputations immunity from changing curatorial fashions. This rather reinforces the point I made in the last post - and which Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen also made in relation to Devizes Museum - that artists are best served by small institutions which adopt them. I used to visit Kettle's Yard in Cambridge years ago, to have a look at Alfred Wallis and others.

Charleston: garden deco

Wallis's story was also about changing fortunes, as we learned how popular an artist has to be to attract the attention of forgers... It was also about different kinds of expertise and different kinds of knowledge, giving us the fascinating scenario of two well respected experts each absolutely sure that the two pictures shown to them were, or were not, by Alfred Wallis. In the end scientific analysis had the last say, but why would someone bother spending a fortune on a study of paint? Because an original Wallis is a valuable commodity just now - though whether it will be in twenty, or fifty years' time is anyone's guess.

'The Badminton Game': David Inshaw's Hidden Masterpiece

David Inshaw, The Badminton Game, 1972-3

Poor old Tate Britain. Barely weeks after one TV channel exposed the absence from its walls of paintings by LS Lowry, the BBC is about to broadcast a programme dedicated to another artist whose work is languishing in Tate Storage. In fact it focuses on one particular painting, David Inshaw's 'The Badminton Game'. Would it, I wonder, be all that hard for someone to rush off this afternoon to Tate Storage, retrieve the picture and hang it BEFORE the Beeb's presenter starts complaining about its concealment from the poor, overtaxed public?

I used to sell art at a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in my pomp I could rehang a room in minutes. Does it really take longer to pull a painting out of storage than it does to make a TV programme? Might it be sensible, in the age of instant media, to reserve one room for pop-up exhibitions, allowing TB to respond swiftly to public interest in a particular work or artist (and make TV pundits look silly to boot)?

David Inshaw, Our days were a joy and our paths through flowers, 1971/2

Often, the best place to see work by a favourite painter is in one of our many brilliant regional galleries and museums. The last time I went to Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery they were showing another exquisite painting of Inshaw's, 'Our days were a joy and our paths through flowers', which had been painted in 1971/2 for an exhibition at the Arnolfini Gallery.  The title, Inshaw has explained, "comes from Thomas Hardy's poem, 'After a Journey', about a dead lover whose spirit lives on in the sights and sounds of nature."

Unfortunately, 20th century British painters like David Inshaw are insufficiently represented at major London museums, which have far more art than space to show it. Happily, regional museums can and do support the legacy of particular artists - the Fry Art Gallery's devotion to Eric Ravilious and the Great Bardfield artists is a case in point - and now art lovers can travel around the country armed with Christopher Lloyd's comprehensive guide, 'In Search of a Masterpiece'.

Yet even regional museums lack the wall space to hang more than a small proportion of their holdings, and this situation can only worsen as time passes. At the same time, the costs of insurance and transport can make the sharing of art works between institutions prohibitive; from talking to gallery people one gets the impression that some think it safer and therefore more desirable to keep a picture in storage rather than share it with another institution. Of course there are many exceptions, but I think there is a genuine dilemma.

If people want to see publicly owned art, shouldn't every effort be made to help them do so? Taking digital pictures is one possibility, but it doesn't get to the root of the problem. The artworks themselves, as objects, are treated as valuable pieces of property, to be preserved in the best possible condition. This is as it should be, but only up to a point. After all, a painting is only really worth as much as the pleasure it gives, and a painting stuck in a basement for decades is giving pleasure to nobody.

PS The Bristol Evening Post have an interview with BBC presenter Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen here.

Eric Ravilious and the Art of Cricket

With the Cricket World Cup about to start it's strange to think how this eccentric old game has become a global sensation. Is there a sport of similar standing in which two national teams compete for anything as bizarre as the burnt remains of a set of bails? Back in the 1970s, cricket still seemed weird and archaic compared to soccer, but today its players can earn fortunes and TV audiences of millions tune in for the big events.

Some eccentricities survive, though, like the Wisden Cricketer's Almanack,  an annual compilation of the sport's facts and figures that means nothing to most people and everything to the die-hard cricket follower. Founded in 1864, Wisden has been published annually ever since, irrespective of minor inconveniences like world war.

David Inshaw, 'The Cricket Game'

Since 1938 the cover of this venerable sporting annual has born a suitably archaic illustration of two Victorian gentlemen at cricket. Eschewing leg pads and other modern nonsense in favour of a sound top hat, the batsman looks as though he wants to give the ball a wallop over cow corner but may instead have to settle for a dab through third man, while the keeper in idiosyncratic striped jumper waits to whip off the bails.

By the time Eric Ravilious was commissioned to create this memorable cover illustration he was a renowned master of wood engraving, with a taste for old-fashioned subjects that made him the ideal man for the job. He also played cricket once in a while at the village ground in Castle Hedingham, Essex.

WG Grace memorial, Bristol

In June 1935 he played for the Double Crown Club against the Hedingham village team, reporting afterwards that he was 'not out, hit four balls and made 1, also bowled  a few overs and in consequence feel stiff as a poker today.' Another time, only a couple of months before the outbreak of war, he hit three sixes, and wrote, 'It is you might say one of the pleasures of life hitting a six.'

Another artist inspired by cricket is David Inshaw, one of Britain's finest living painters. During the 1970s and 1980s he painted serene, sometimes haunting, gardens and rural scenes with extraordinary attention to detail, and in this painting captures the beauty of the village game when the sun is shining and the match is evenly poised.

Sally Prior, 'Beach Cricket'

The great cricketer WG Grace has himself been represented in various art forms, from a set of iron gates at Lords to a cameo role as the face of God in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. This mural can be seen at his birthplace in Downend, Bristol.

And the sport continues to inspire artists working in diverse media and styles, from sculpture reminiscent of Giacometti (not a cricketer so far as I know) to paintings by players like Jack Russell. Former England captain Michael Vaughan made some very odd paintings a couple of years ago, by whacking paint-covered balls at a canvas in the manner of a cricket-crazed Jackson Pollock.

More interesting is glass artist Lucy Amsden, who in 2009 created a series of pieces that recreate famous cricketing moments in graphic form, using a series of colour-coded balls to show a passage of play. In one, she recreates a venomous over bowled by Andrew Flintoff in the 2005 Ashes series, while the piece shown here represents the final passage of play in the inaugural T20 cup final. Good to see that cricket fans are as eccentric as ever...