Category: Voice

Memoirs of Danny Lyons ONE “Will you get those feelthy boots off!” I imagine my Great Grandma Bowe shouting as a 12-year-old boy tramped into the kitchen after a day herding pigs. Yet for all that young Paul, her second son, might be reeking of manure, he was also keeping the family out of the […]

Across the globe, museums have adapted to the new realities posed by the Covid pandemic. In many countries this means new lockdowns as governments battle to control infections. Many museums re-opened in the summer only to be forced to close again – one of the most important shows so affected was Artemisia at the National […]

Giverny in Normandy, where Claude Monet lived and painted for 43 years, was until this spring one of the most visited artists’ homes in the world. Up to 2,000 people passed through its brightly coloured rooms and famous gardens every day. Inevitably, this presented a problem as Giverny became a victim of its own success […]

Best art on show this winter

Andrea Marechal Watson reports on trends in the jewelley trade Early man believed that the strange bright stones they found in mountains and on river beds, created by mysterious underground forces, were somehow godlike. Countless legends spanning the world from ancient Greece to Australia share the idea that jewels are somehow of divine or superhuman […]

How Outsider Art has become big business

Across London, colourful murals in all manner of styles from bright graffiti to verdant jungles are appearing on walls and houses, many painted to order. And it’s not just in the East End. Dover Street Market in Mayfair just celebrated its 15th birthday with a work by the Russian artist Pokras Lampas. Other commemorative murals […]

A pen and ink sketch by the Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna, currently on tour, is to be offered for sale by Sotheby’s New York on January 29th. The preparatory drawing for a painting in the Triumphs of Caesar series belonging to the Royal Collection and now in Hampton Court Palace, is one of only 20 […]

CHELSEA BARRACKS – The beginning of an artistic legacy By Andrea Marechal Watson ‘Poetry and Sculpture exist to keep our passions alive’ the Irish poet W.B Yeats used to tell his fellow students. At Chelsea Barracks a series of inscriptions bring together these two pillars of the fine arts. The Chelsea Barracks Frieze takes the […]

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the designs of William Morris – his trellises and willows and honeysuckles – are a little out-of-date and irrelevant. Popular designs like Strawberry Thief adorn cushions and mugs but do they really fit the modern interior? Surprisingly, not only have these botanical themes made a massive comeback but Morris […]