Our favourite paintings: the great Auteur Gallery

For all we know, it could be the bust of a young girl sitting on the table with all the other objects. The image is very busy, but not uninteresting. The girl and the pram are certainly relegated in the frame.

Shani Rhys James: Turning the Tables

Here the face is behind the table, which is falling into us. Shani has a thing for prams and pink-red blotchy skin

Shani reminds me of James Ensor – in close-up. Balthus had his gamines and it seems so does James.

Her paintings are autobiographical- lots of self-portraits as adult, many from childhood, but she’s also a mother:

“My desire to produce powerful, emotional paintings which are read for their content, their colour and their abstract elements. I have to be emotionally and mentally taken over by my paintings. They are seemingly direct ; I paint about the studio, the kitchen, the artist, my children, childhood memories. So imaginative and observational elements co-exist in each work”

Rolf Harris, fellow Welsh Aussie (his grandad an accomplished South Wales painter), did a programme on her, and a self-portrait in her style.

This painting is of Shani as a girl with her mother, but as she’s said, she has merged into the adult figure too.

Beautiful new monograph on Audrius Puipa. Believe or not, it is a watercolor.

Now Puipa looks an artist worth exploring.

One British artist who died tragically young was Richard Parkes Bonington:

On the Adriatic

William Dyce: Pegwell Bay

Would people be interested if i did a Gallery list of, say, 50 or 100 British paintings? I’ve loved paintings since i used to collect postcards of art and went to the National Gallery and Tate in London as a teen. In those days there was nowhere near the easy access to see paintings that we have now online (but at least going in person to a gallery was better still).

Well I would be interested.

Thanks, Miasma. It’s what i fancy doing, anyway, i’m enjoying paintings and setting films second for the moment. I find it very therapeutic.

The British gallery is underway, and here’s one of the paintings by a Scot:

Craig Aitchison: Goatfell, isle of Arran

Beach of Rhyl

@ Kenji. Just started researching Paintings of the Welsh landscape during the 18th 19th century for a Video project. I’m off to Newport Village, Hereford West and Snowdonia next month. Have never been to Snowdonia before, have childhood memories of the other two places

Great! Snowdonia is beautiful- but fingers crossed with the weather cos it’s not so much fun when it rains (which is often). My favourite patch is round Beddgelert (where Rupert Bear’s creator lived) and the valley up towards Snowdon; the film Patagonia was filmed by Llyn Gwynant lake there, and Inn of the Sixth Happiness, supposedly in China. Do visit Portmeirion the Italianate village where The Prisoner series was set, if you get the chance. Do you mean Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire? In summer, Bosherston pools not far from there are great, with the lily pads and the paths to the beach.

That Cox painting is one i added to my Welsh Art Gallery (he was English but spent time in Wales).

I’m finalising the British gallery now, not far off 100 paintings, so any suggestions very welcome. There must be plenty of goodies i’ve overlooked.

Here’s one small section of the list- 18th into 19th century

Sir Henry Raeburn: Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch

Thomas Girtin: The White House at Chelsea

William Blake: Pieta

John Crome: Norwich River: Afternoon

Later in the list, 1930s to early 60s

Stanley Spencer: Self-Portrait with Patricia Preece

Dora Carrington: Farm at Watendlath

Ben Nicholson: Painting, 1937

Eric Ravilious: Wiltshire Landscape

Dame Laura Knight: Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring

Graham Sutherland: Devastation (1941, an East End Street)

Ivon Hitchens: Autumn Landscape

Edward Seago: Butterman’s Bay on the Orwell

Carel Weight: Allegro Strepitoso

Joan Eardley: Catterline in Winter, 1963

L.S. Lowry: Man on a Wall

Victor Pasmore

Georgia O’Keeffe

Paul Cezanne

Thanks for the advice on where to go Kenji. Yes, my Uncle lives in *Havefordwest. Will make the effort for Rupert Bear and The Prisoner

I will check out the Welsh Art Gallery. Where do you live in Wales?

Inn of The Sixth Happiness? Any good?

Thomas Hart Benton

Planting (Spring Plowing)

The Approaching Storm

Letter from Overseas

Three by Romare Bearden

Catterline in Winter is very nice.

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George Grosz:

@ Cosi: at the moment, having sold up from Brecon before venturing abroad, i’m in a caravan on the English side of the border, with house buying in Swansea having fallen through. Inn of the Sixth Happiness is only so-so, quite sentimental, with some dubious European “orientals”, Robert Donat not a well man as a Chinese bigwig sympathetic to missionary Ingrid Bergman. The scenery is a plus- my wife saw it as a girl and fancied going to China, little knowing she would visit the area, not so far away.

Grosz: The Pillars of Society

Spot on, same old pillars still in place.

Miro : The Garden

18th century Mughal art:

Royal Lovers (a Prince Offering Wine to his Mistress)

Krishna and Rahda Lie in a Bower