Truth is often stranger than fiction, isn't it? Head to the newly opened venue of Charleston in Lewes for Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story , an exhibition that relates a piece of art history that, you have to say, would make a good film. And here are the two principal characters: Dorothy, on the left, a talented graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art , and her fellow student, friend, lover, partner and collaborator Patricia, perhaps not quite so talented, but both passionate about art. The photograph seems to tell you a lot. Dorothy looks a little bit awkward and ill at ease, slightly frumpy, androgynous even. Patricia appears confident, glamorous, exuberant, perhaps a little.... possessive? But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. We need to establish the plot.... The rather retiring Hepworth and the outgoing, gregarious Preece became inseparable as students, and they planned to set up a studio together after graduation. In 1922, Preece took exam
So, it's Spain against Holland in Madrid, for a much-anticipated meeting in the heat of the summer. And, from a rich pool of talent, there are some really big names on both sides.
But it's not football we're here for, we've come to the Museo del Prado for 17th-century art, in the shape of an exhibition called Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer -- Parallel Visions. Is it any good? Well, the opening 25 minutes are fantastic and there's a real purple patch in the second half, but unfortunately they can't keep the pace up for the entire game.
The idea of this show isn't so much a contest between the painters of opposing nations, it's to illustrate how similar their art was 350 years ago in the context of a united European culture (strong message here, one might say). National differences were overstated by art historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, the curators argue. Works by Spanish and Dutch masters hang side by side, for you to compare and contrast. Some of this works brilliantly, it really does. But, as if bits of the exhibition had been curated by separate, less talented teams, some of it seems rather strained.
Anyway, let's meet the team captains: Diego Velázquez (Real Madrid, obviously) and Rembrandt van Rijn. On the left, below, Velázquez's picture of the ancient satirist Menippus, his sidelong glance conveying the absurdity of life; on the right, the Dutchman's Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul, wearing a slightly naive expression. You're invited to compare the similarities: the broad brushwork, the plain backgrounds, the handling, the poses, and that pair of bulbous noses. Are they singing from the same hymn sheet? They're definitely painting on the same canvas.
The show kicks off with a parade of men in black: portraits from both nations demonstrating a shared heritage. The preference for wearing black was a legacy from the Burgundians, who had ruled the Netherlands and produced the Spanish royal dynasty, against whom the Dutch fought a war of independence that lasted decades. And the way the portraits were painted -- the poses, the gestures, the accessories -- was similarly influenced by Italian and Flemish models.
Hung together are two pairs of portraits demonstrating this international style. There are Frans Hals's pictures from the Mauritshuis in The Hague of the Haarlem brewer Jacob Olycan and his wife Aletta Hanemans, the husband as usual on the left, his spouse on the right, dressed in the most sumptuous of blacks, even if Aletta's robe opens to show a bodice worked in gold thread and a red skirt. Hals had 27 variants of black, according to Van Gogh. Alongside them, just as black and possibly even more opulent, Velázquez's Antonia de Ipeñarrieta and her husband, Diego del Corral. She's on the left, breaking the rules because of her position at court. Striking in both sets of portraits: the sober, plain, unadorned background.
What's the best contrast to black? Well, there's nothing like the brilliant white of a ruff. All styles and sizes are on show here. Diego del Corral even has them on his wrists. Velázquez's teacher and father-in-law, Francisco Pacheco, author of a treatise on painting that covered Leonardo and Dürer, wears a dazzling unstarched version in the portrait on the left by his son-in-law. Werner van den Valckert's goldsmith on the right sports something that would have needed a little more preparation by a servant.
Eventually the authorities cracked down on the wearing of ruffs; such laws were passed relatively frequently in Europe to restrict overspending on clothing. The Spanish banned them in 1623, and Velázquez's Portrait of a Man from the same year displays the new approved neckwear, the golilla, a fabric-covered stiffened collar.
One Dutch speciality the Spanish don't really seem to have matched is the group portrait, and there are two splendid examples on display here. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Sebastiaen Egbertsz by Aert Pietersz is the first ever artwork known to show a group watching the dissection of a corpse, predating Rembrandt's famous depiction of Dr Nicolaes Tulp in action by almost 30 years. In this version, there are no sinews, no innards on show -- the first incision seems not yet to have been made -- and you certainly don't get to see the face of the dead man. But there are 29 men in black, each with a ruff, of course.
And you also get to view Rembrandt's The Syndics, the sampling officials of the Amsterdam Drapers' Guild, depicted as if you were interrupting them by walking in the door on their meeting. Their restrained neckwear is a signal that this painting is from the second half of the 17th century, when the Dutch finally replaced ruffs with collars. You're invited to contrast this Rembrandt with Velázquez's Las Meninas, another picture with a sense of the action being looked in on from outside, but that giant of a painting remains, probably not too surprisingly, in its normal location elsewhere in the Prado.
This first section of the exhibition on portraits is generally superbly done, but then things start to go a bit awry. There's an interesting look at the similarities between Hendrick ter Brugghen and Jusepe di Ribera as followers of Caravaggio. They both spent a lot of time in Italy and probably met. But an attempt to correlate large-scale Spanish religious paintings, all angels and Virgin Marys, with Dutch genre pieces like Gabriel Metsu's The Sick Child doesn't quite wash, even if The Sick Child has a certain Madonna-like quality to it and there's a crucifixion scene on the wall behind.
We also weren't hugely convinced by the suggestion that Vermeer's Geographer might be somehow inspired by the depictions by Ribera and his workshop of ancient philosophers. Rembrandt's picture of his son Titus in a Monk's Habit certainly has a Spanish feel to it, but there's no comparable Spanish piece on display. The curators could surely have drummed up a Francisco de Zurbarán monk from somewhere....
This exhibition is a joint effort by the Prado and the Rijksmuseum, but while the Dutch paintings on display come from a relatively wide range of galleries, the Spanish works are almost without exception from the Madrid museum alone. An area largely devoted to still-life painting is also rather underwhelming, but it does contain one astounding juxtaposition: Put Pieter Saenredam's Interior of the Sint-Odolphuskerk in Assendelft alongside Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei, a ram with bound legs, and what do you get? Both are precisely painted down to the smallest detail, but both are also exercises in restrained minimalism.
And here's another surprising combination: Velázquez's View of the Gardens of the Villa Medici, hung alongside Vermeer's The Little Street. You wouldn't have thought it, but look at them together and you see unexpected symmetries in size, geometry and a slight air of architectural dilapidation shared by Rome and Delft. These painters didn't know each other, but they had the same aesthetic intention.
Suddenly, towards the end of the show, you feel the curators have got things back into focus and are again properly illustrating what they are driving at. More Velázquez (and most of the best Spanish stuff in this show is by Velázquez; he's definitely the star performer on the home side) in the shape of broad-brush pictures of dwarves and buffoons from the Spanish court hangs alongside some loosely painted Hals portraits. The style and handling of the subject matter is similar too. You could imagine them swapping canvases....
And don't these two pictures seem to share a common heritage? Carel Fabritius's Self-Portrait is on the wall next to El Greco's Jerónimo of Cevallos, both with even looser handling against that common plain, dark backdrop.
Those last three pairs all work partly because they're of similar size and subject matter, but sometimes size doesn't matter. Velázquez's Mars is three times as high as Rembrandt's Woman Bathing in a Stream, and it's a much more colourful composition, but the comparison is really effective. You can see how both painters left the marks of their brushes and spatulas very visible in these pictures. Not so different after all.
As you exit this show, then, the argument is repeated that 17th-century Spanish and Dutch artists weren't really expressing any particularly national characteristics at all; they shared a common vision. Rembrandt and Velázquez were both praised for expressing Dutch, and Spanish, virtues of seriousness and austerity in their portraits. Were we totally convinced by all this? Well, not really. Think of all those Dutch genre paintings, cityscapes, marine pictures and more celebrating cleanliness, order, industriousness, prosperity, in a land that had a claim to be the most advanced society in Europe during the Golden Age. And then think of all those Spanish religious paintings....
While this isn't a fully satisfying exhibition, there are some real highlights and some absolute masterpieces on display. If Madrid's a long way away, the second leg kicks off on October 11 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul, 1661, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Diego Velázquez, Francisco Pacheco, c. 1620, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Werner van den Valckert, Portrait of a Goldsmith, Probably Bartholomeus Jansz van Assendelft, 1617, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Diego Velázquez, Portrait of a Man, c. 1623, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Diego Velázquez, View of the Gardens of the Villa Medici, Rome, c. 1630, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Johannes Vermeer, View of Houses in Delft, Known as The Little Street, c. 1658, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Frans Hals, Portrait of a Man, c. 1635, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Diego Velázquez, The Buffoon el Primo, 1644, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Carel Fabritius, Self-Portrait, 1645, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
El Greco, Jerónimo of Cevallos, 1613, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Diego Velázquez, Mars, c. 1638, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Rembrandt van Rijn, A Woman Bathing in a Stream, 1654, The National Gallery, London
But it's not football we're here for, we've come to the Museo del Prado for 17th-century art, in the shape of an exhibition called Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer -- Parallel Visions. Is it any good? Well, the opening 25 minutes are fantastic and there's a real purple patch in the second half, but unfortunately they can't keep the pace up for the entire game.
The idea of this show isn't so much a contest between the painters of opposing nations, it's to illustrate how similar their art was 350 years ago in the context of a united European culture (strong message here, one might say). National differences were overstated by art historians in the 19th and 20th centuries, the curators argue. Works by Spanish and Dutch masters hang side by side, for you to compare and contrast. Some of this works brilliantly, it really does. But, as if bits of the exhibition had been curated by separate, less talented teams, some of it seems rather strained.
Anyway, let's meet the team captains: Diego Velázquez (Real Madrid, obviously) and Rembrandt van Rijn. On the left, below, Velázquez's picture of the ancient satirist Menippus, his sidelong glance conveying the absurdity of life; on the right, the Dutchman's Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul, wearing a slightly naive expression. You're invited to compare the similarities: the broad brushwork, the plain backgrounds, the handling, the poses, and that pair of bulbous noses. Are they singing from the same hymn sheet? They're definitely painting on the same canvas.
Hung together are two pairs of portraits demonstrating this international style. There are Frans Hals's pictures from the Mauritshuis in The Hague of the Haarlem brewer Jacob Olycan and his wife Aletta Hanemans, the husband as usual on the left, his spouse on the right, dressed in the most sumptuous of blacks, even if Aletta's robe opens to show a bodice worked in gold thread and a red skirt. Hals had 27 variants of black, according to Van Gogh. Alongside them, just as black and possibly even more opulent, Velázquez's Antonia de Ipeñarrieta and her husband, Diego del Corral. She's on the left, breaking the rules because of her position at court. Striking in both sets of portraits: the sober, plain, unadorned background.
What's the best contrast to black? Well, there's nothing like the brilliant white of a ruff. All styles and sizes are on show here. Diego del Corral even has them on his wrists. Velázquez's teacher and father-in-law, Francisco Pacheco, author of a treatise on painting that covered Leonardo and Dürer, wears a dazzling unstarched version in the portrait on the left by his son-in-law. Werner van den Valckert's goldsmith on the right sports something that would have needed a little more preparation by a servant.
And you also get to view Rembrandt's The Syndics, the sampling officials of the Amsterdam Drapers' Guild, depicted as if you were interrupting them by walking in the door on their meeting. Their restrained neckwear is a signal that this painting is from the second half of the 17th century, when the Dutch finally replaced ruffs with collars. You're invited to contrast this Rembrandt with Velázquez's Las Meninas, another picture with a sense of the action being looked in on from outside, but that giant of a painting remains, probably not too surprisingly, in its normal location elsewhere in the Prado.
This first section of the exhibition on portraits is generally superbly done, but then things start to go a bit awry. There's an interesting look at the similarities between Hendrick ter Brugghen and Jusepe di Ribera as followers of Caravaggio. They both spent a lot of time in Italy and probably met. But an attempt to correlate large-scale Spanish religious paintings, all angels and Virgin Marys, with Dutch genre pieces like Gabriel Metsu's The Sick Child doesn't quite wash, even if The Sick Child has a certain Madonna-like quality to it and there's a crucifixion scene on the wall behind.
We also weren't hugely convinced by the suggestion that Vermeer's Geographer might be somehow inspired by the depictions by Ribera and his workshop of ancient philosophers. Rembrandt's picture of his son Titus in a Monk's Habit certainly has a Spanish feel to it, but there's no comparable Spanish piece on display. The curators could surely have drummed up a Francisco de Zurbarán monk from somewhere....
This exhibition is a joint effort by the Prado and the Rijksmuseum, but while the Dutch paintings on display come from a relatively wide range of galleries, the Spanish works are almost without exception from the Madrid museum alone. An area largely devoted to still-life painting is also rather underwhelming, but it does contain one astounding juxtaposition: Put Pieter Saenredam's Interior of the Sint-Odolphuskerk in Assendelft alongside Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei, a ram with bound legs, and what do you get? Both are precisely painted down to the smallest detail, but both are also exercises in restrained minimalism.
And here's another surprising combination: Velázquez's View of the Gardens of the Villa Medici, hung alongside Vermeer's The Little Street. You wouldn't have thought it, but look at them together and you see unexpected symmetries in size, geometry and a slight air of architectural dilapidation shared by Rome and Delft. These painters didn't know each other, but they had the same aesthetic intention.
While this isn't a fully satisfying exhibition, there are some real highlights and some absolute masterpieces on display. If Madrid's a long way away, the second leg kicks off on October 11 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Practicalities
Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer -- Parallel Visions continues at the Prado in Madrid until September 29. It's open from 1000 to 2000 Monday to Saturday and from 1000 to 1900 on Sundays and public holidays. Full-price tickets to the museum, including the exhibition, cost 15 euros. This show was at times surprisingly empty when we visited, compared with other exhibitions we've been to at the Prado, but you do need to have a timed entry ticket, so the best way to ensure one is probably to book online, which you can do here. Banco de España and Estación del Arte are nearby on the Madrid Metro, as is Atocha for main-line and suburban trains.Images
Diego Velázquez, Menippus, c. 1638, Museo Nacional del Prado, MadridRembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul, 1661, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Diego Velázquez, Francisco Pacheco, c. 1620, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Werner van den Valckert, Portrait of a Goldsmith, Probably Bartholomeus Jansz van Assendelft, 1617, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Diego Velázquez, Portrait of a Man, c. 1623, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Diego Velázquez, View of the Gardens of the Villa Medici, Rome, c. 1630, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Johannes Vermeer, View of Houses in Delft, Known as The Little Street, c. 1658, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Frans Hals, Portrait of a Man, c. 1635, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Diego Velázquez, The Buffoon el Primo, 1644, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Carel Fabritius, Self-Portrait, 1645, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
El Greco, Jerónimo of Cevallos, 1613, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Diego Velázquez, Mars, c. 1638, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Rembrandt van Rijn, A Woman Bathing in a Stream, 1654, The National Gallery, London
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