Friday 10 July 2009

Children's Art Day with artist Jill Carter

On 9 July Jill Carter, photographer and filmmaker worked with children from King William Street School taking inspiration from the Gilbert and George 'Four Knights' picture. The children performed a range of characters such as lords and ladies dressing up in appropriate costumes. They clustered together while in character to form a composite picture. Jill took photographs of the children at various stages of the event and will later use the material to create an artist's film, which will be on display in the art gallery.

Thursday 2 July 2009

A Missing Manet?

Antal Neville, a student at The American University of Paris, emailed to find out if we have a painting by Manet previously owned by HJP Bomford. Mr Bomford generously donated a number of important pictures to our collection but unfortunately not the Manet painting.


If you would like to know more:

Antal is taking part in a research project for The Letters of Samuel Beckett, the first volume of which was published in February by Cambridge University Press. In one of his letters, dated from August 1848, Beckett mentions having seen a painting by Manet entitled "Madame Manet dans la Serre" at the Living Art Exhibition at the National College of Art in Dublin, which took place from Aug 11 to Sept 12 1948. Antal has tracked down this painting to the National Gallery in Oslo, but according to their records it hasn't left Oslo since the 1930's. However, it appears that there may have been a duplicate painted by Edouard Vibert, Madame Manet's nephew, which was owned by H.J.P. Bomford in 1957. I know that many paintings from the Bomford collection were on display at the Living Art Exhibition.

If you know the current location of the painting please let me know and I will pass the information on to Antal.