People (not me) rely on sat-nav to get from A to Anywhere. I rely on Wiki to get background facts and so on. Today’s subject falls through the Wiki sieve and does not have an entry.
Walter James, 3rd Lord Northbourne, was a 19th century artist and engraver who moved in Pre-Raphaelite circles. He was a close friend of another aristocratic artist, George Howard, Earl of Carlisle. I’m not sure how James has managed to fly below the radar. His work comes up at auction and in galleries, indeed I have a small landscape in oils and a very fine engraving by him, dedicated in his hand to George Howard. He was born in Kent but moved to Northumberland which is how he became friends with the Howards of Castle Howard and Naworth. Northumberland was the subject of many of his landscapes, of which this is an example.
The scene makes me want to put up a rod and try my luck in one of those inviting pools. There aren’t too many bushes along the banks, an advantage for a poor caster like me.
Andrew Lloyd Webber bought the best Pre-Raphaelite pictures before they became fashionable but we wouldn’t have been able to afford them. Last year he said that he couldn’t afford them either at today’s prices. Buy a Walter James and get the look but don’t pay the price. If he comes back into fashion he’ll surely have a Wiki entry. We aren’t dedicated followers of fashion; we must eschew fashion to buy good art inexpensively.
What you say is v interesting and true. And yet what strikes me about art is that though fashions do come and go, and for all that I eschew fashion and spot a lot of “Emperor’s New Clothes” in modern art, my own taste is only ever about one inch further up the curve than that of the ravening horde of fellow art-lovers, if that. Glyn Philpot, Sickert, Gerald Kelly, John Craxton, Keith Vaughan, Evelyn Dunbar, the Whistlers Rex and Laurence, Ravilious, Burra, Cornell, Scandi-art: all these seemed like the preserve of the cognoscenti until they became household names about the time I fell in love with them. The NPG and the Tates and the Pallant seem always to be just ahead of me, knowing what I will love next.
If this is your kind of thing -and I infer from the clip of Ray Davies that it is – I warmly recommend “Sunny Afternoon” – the musical story of the Kinks. A very relaxing evening – at least it was 18 months ago, and there is always the risk that it has got tired by now.
Francis
Sixties pop is a favourite genre, as you may have noticed.I see that there are “table seats” for Sunny Afternoon. It sounds like an optimal way to see the show.
I completely agree with Richard’s comments. On more than one occasion I have fallen in love with the work of a particular artist, and have thought that I have discovered him or her by myself, only to discover that the rest of the world has got there 5 minutes before me!