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New Exhibitions in September

The Bayeux Tapestry  exhibition at the British Museum starts on September 10; it's already sold out for this year but booking for the rest of the run, from January 1 through to July 11, will open on October 21. If you've never seen this most breathtaking of historical artefacts, you may want to seize the chance before it leaves London next year for its permanent home in Normandy, which will have been renovated during its absence. At Southampton City Art Gallery, we're promised an extensive exhibition of British art from the first half of the 20th century, drawing on the museum's own substantial holdings and those of the Ingram Collection . Running from September 26 to February 21,  Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960  will feature artists including Barbara Hepworth, Gwen John , Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious.   There might not be much new on in London this month, but we'll always have Paris. Starting at the Musée Jacquemart-André with Time...
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Doreen Fletcher's Streets of London

There's a really rather good exhibition of paintings by Doreen Fletcher on at the Nunnery Gallery. Who's Doreen Fletcher, you ask? And where's the Nunnery Gallery?

We're in Bow in east London, and we're looking at townscapes, virtually all of them of the local area. This is Doreen Fletcher: A Retrospective, and this weekday lunchtime it's quite full of visitors, many of them from the East End, and clearly delighting in recognising landmarks that in some cases are now just history.
Doreen Fletcher has been painting the streets of east London since the 1980s, though she stopped working in the early 2000s for lack of recognition before resuming a couple of years ago after being rediscovered. And justifiably so.

She paints in a fairly precise documentary style that's full of detailed observation. Her pictures are by no means devoid of people, but they certainly don't play a central role. They might be in a car or at a bus stop, rarely taking centre stage.
There are echos of Edward Hopper, George Shaw, Ben Johnson, Dutch 17th-century city views and indeed the East London Group who recorded the capital between the wars.

"I am an artist interested in the pockets of life others ignore," Fletcher has said, and those words are inscribed high up on the wall of the main gallery here.
Rain-drenched tarmac, advertising hoardings, boarded-up shopfronts, a stray traffic cone, graffiti on railway bridges, a pink wheelie bin: There's a sort of urban poetry here.

Fletcher's more recent work continues in a similar vein. There's something very up-to-date about The Beckton Fox, on the prowl at the supermarket petrol station:
Hopper's Gas sprang immediately to mind!

This is a delightful show, even if you're not all that familiar with the East End. Doreen Fletcher's pictures are full of interest and anecdote. If you get the chance to head down to Bow in the next few weeks, it's well worth the trip.

Practicalities

Doreen Fletcher: A Retrospective is on at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow, east London until March 24. It's open from 1000 to 1700 Tuesday to Sunday, and admission is absolutely free. The Nunnery Gallery is just a few minutes' walk from both Bow Road station on the Underground's District and Hammersmith & City lines and Bow Church station on the Docklands Light Railway.
“
I am an artist interested in the pockets of life others ignore
”

Images

Doreen Fletcher, Commercial Road, Whitsunday, 1989. © Doreen Fletcher, courtesy Nunnery Gallery
Doreen Fletcher, Bus Stop, 1983. © Doreen Fletcher, courtesy Nunnery Gallery
Doreen Fletcher, Salmon Lane in the Rain, 1987. © Doreen Fletcher, courtesy Nunnery Gallery
Doreen Fletcher, The Beckton Fox, 2019. © Doreen Fletcher, courtesy Nunnery Gallery

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