British and Irish Art

Adrian Clark Art Commentator and Historian

Category: Book Reviews

  • John Piper, Myfanwy Piper by Frances Spalding

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    Oxford, 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-956761-4 £25Review published in the British Art Journal, X, 2, Winter 2009 It is difficult to know where to begin when tackling John Piper. He lived a long and productive life, working successfully in a variety of styles and media. Although crudely categorised by some as a ‘traditional’ artist, in fact there…

  • Sir Matthew Smith 1879-1959. A Survey of his life and work, drawn from the artist’s studio collection.

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    Exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery, London, 4 November 2009-31 January 2010.Matthew Smith. Catalogue Raisonée of the Oil Paintingsby John Gledhill. Farnham, 2009, ISBN 978-0-85331-998-6. Leafing through the details of the catalogue section of the Matthew Smith book – and one has to do this manually because there is no index – reveals that most of…

  • Review of 2009/10 Auerbach and Bacon exhibitions/books

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    Catalogue for Frank Auerbach London Building Sites‘Frank Auerbach. London Building Sites 1952-1962’Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, 16 October 2009-17 January 2010. Accompanying catalogue with essays by Barnaby Wright, Margaret Garlake and Paul Moorhouse, London 2009 ISBN 978-1-90347-094-7Frank AuerbachWilliam Feaver, New York 2009 ISBN 978-0-8478-3058-9‘Francis Bacon. A terrible beauty’The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, 28 October 2009-7 March…

  • LS Lowry. The Art and the Artist by TG Rosenthal

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    Norwich 2010, ISBN 978-1-906509-06-4. £45 Lowry (1887-1976) would be an excellent choice to illustrate a debate about the meaning of artistic reputation in the context of the 20th century British art world. Highly valued by the market (the author tells us that a picture has sold at auction for £3.77 million) and, correspondingly, by certain…

  • ‘John Craxton’ by Ian Collins

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    Farnham, 2011, £35, ISBN 978-1-84822-069-0Published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 1, Summer 2011 This sumptuous book by John Craxton’s friend, Ian Collins, does great credit to both of them. Craxton was not always an easy person to engage with in the case of art critics and I think he would have approved…

  • Women Artists between the Wars. ‘A fair field and no favour’ by Katy Deepwell

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    By Katy Deepwell, Manchester, 2010, ISBN 97807 190 80807 £65Review published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 1, Summer 2011 This is an important and substantive work of social history. Its main thesis – that women artists working between the Wars were hard done by in not getting equal treatment to male artists…

  • Evan Walters. Moments of Vision.

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    Edited by Barry Plummer. Bridgend, 2011, ISBN 978-1-85411-542-3. £12.99.Published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 2, Autumn 2011 The 20th century Welsh art world can be described in a few sentences. But that is at least partly because it has not, until recently, had enough attention paid to it to enable a proper,…

  • The Face of Courage. Eric Kennington, Portraiture and the Second World War

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    by Jonathan Black, London, 2011, ISBN 978-0-85667-705-2 (and exhibition at the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon June 2011 – June 2012)Published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 2, Autumn 2011 The title of the book must, I think, represent Eric Kennington’s ambition in many of these portraits – to display the physical attributes…

  • John Piper in the 1930s. ‘Abstraction on the Beach’.

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    Dulwich Picture Gallery, London,1 April to 22 June 2003; the Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, July to 7 September 2003.Catalogue edited by David Fraser Jenkins and Frances Spalding, 192pp, published by Merrell Publishers in association with Dulwich Picture Gallery, London £29.95, ISBN 1 85894 223 3Published in the British Art Journal, IV, 2, Summer 2003 John Piper…

  • The Journals by Josef Herman, edited by Nina Herman; Ceri Richards by Mel Gooding; Kenneth Rowntree by John Milner

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    The Journals by Josef Herman edited by Nina Herman, Peter Halban Press, London 2003, £25, ISBN 1870015 819Ceri Richards by Mel Gooding, Cameron & Hollis, Moffat, 2002, £39.95, ISBN 0-906506-20-4Kenneth Rowntree by John Milner, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2002, £25, ISBN 0-85331-850-6Published in the British Art Journal, IV, 2, Summer 2003 Josef Herman was a Polish…

  • Henry Moore at Perry Green, edited by Sandra Pisano

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    London, 2011, ISBN 978 1 85759 683 0, £12.95Review published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 1, Summer 2011 Perry Green provides an extraordinary range of experiences. One visits the home of the artist, the studios in which he worked, special exhibitions of his work, the gardens containing major sculptural pieces and (by…

  • William Gear by John McEwen

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    Lund Humphries, 2003, 129pp, £30, ISBN 0-85331-867-0Review published in the British Art Journal, V, 1, 2004 This is the first major book about Scottish artist William Gear (1915-1997). He trained at Edinburgh College of Art; worked for a while in Léger’s studio; took part in the War; and spent the best part of three years…