Today I spent four amazing hours with a good friend looking at one of the most fabulous art exhibits I’ve ever been to too.
FORD MADDOX BROWN at the Mosley Street Art Gallery here in Manchester.
FMB was one of the great originals of British art, best known for his pre-Raphaelite masterpieces.
Amazing as they were, it was not these that caught my attention and admiration.
For me it was his composition for these pieces which within themselves were highly advance in technique and style throwing out the ideas that surrounded the academic easy solutions of prettiness of the traditional Victorian formulae.
With FMB, you see children without sentimentality, the poor without condescension, beauty within landscapes where you wouldn’t expect to find it and you find the colours and freshness which you’d later see coming from the impressionists.
He clashes colour, has confrontational poses, agitated movements, forceful expressions, and plenty of humour which is present until the very end with his death in 1893.
For each painting he would piece together the composition with a collection of black chalk drawings, each concentraing on one point, movement, folds in clothes, expressions etc…
For myself, one of the highlights was his illustrations of Shakespeare’s King Lear, my favourite Shakespear play for its intensity of emotions and dramatic confrontations, which for FMB suit his style immensely, the shadows, generalised attitude but it verged on the grotesque.
These drawings were considered, simple and incomplete in their day but for me it was the forerunner of 20th century illustration and can be seen in perhaps one of the most memorable and climatic parts of the play with the storm; King Lear with His Fool in the Storm.
Jumping ahead a few years into 1856 here, otherwise I may be able to talk about this guy forever…
Study of a Corpse for the Prisoner of Chillion painting.
HOLY MOLEY!!!
This was grotesque. This was not the average study for physiological research.
He asked surgeon friend John Marshall from the university college hospital of London for a corpse. This was someone well and truly gone!!!, classic horror study.
Simply amazing.
Within his diary the day after drawing this corpse it was reported that he wrote;
‘’ When I saw it first, what with the dim light, the brown and parchment like appearance of it, with the shaven head, I took it for an imulation of the thing. Often as I have seen horrors I really did not remember how hideous the shell of the poor creature may remain when the substance contained is fled.’’
Between the years of 1851-1859 we see some of his most famed landscape work.
I LOVED the title of the ‘’The Pretty Baa Lambs’’ the baby talk of the title for myself summed up a connection of parenthood.
With further reading I found the women and baby within the picture are his wife and child which at the time were looked upon as; ‘’Madonna and baby’’ something he always denied as he claimed there was no religious meaning to his work.
Sadly due to the title, this painting was described at the time as; ‘’an effort worthy of a nursery’’
His work on stained glass windows depicting the legends of King Arthur and the death of Sir Tristram were simply breath taking with colour and poignancy of these legends.
After the gallery our trip lead us to Manchesters town hall. It is here I started to feel very conscious of myself, standing in my Grateful Dead dancing bear converse and Captain America t-shirt I was surrounded by the mighty grandeur of what is known as the Great Hall…
In the south side was a huge pipe organ overlooked by gold leaf and midnight blue solar system, shields and emblems of cities and countries, near and afar and surrounding the walls, FMB morals… mahogany panels, giant fire places made for a breath taking experience.
Something I had never realised was right on my door step.
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