|
9 March-5 June 2005
Sunley Room. Admission Free.
Sponsored by Hiscox
John Virtue is the sixth National Gallery Associate Artist and this exhibition marks the end of his two-year period at the Gallery. Virtue has made 11 new paintings for this exhibition. These works are all dominated by the river Thames and represent the London cityscape looking down-river towards St Paul's Cathedral. Executed solely in black and white, this series of paintings of London are on a scale never before attempted by any other artist. They are monumental works, the largest of which is over seven metres wide.
'These paintings are punk epics: gritty; brazen with tough truth,' says Simon Schama in the catalogue, 'You don't so much look at them as collide with them; pictures which smack you into vision, themselves the material of new vision.'
Central to the Associate Artist scheme is the idea of making new works in response to the art of the past. Virtue's relationship to the National Gallery Collection runs deep. He vividly recalls his first trip to the National Gallery, as a schoolboy in 1964 and the artists, Turner, Constable, Rubens and other painters of the great European landscape tradition, who have left an enduring legacy on his work. When the National Gallery first approached John Virtue he was living in Exeter and working on a series of paintings of the Exe estuary. After accepting the Gallery's invitation, he abandoned his rural surroundings and subject matter to concentrate instead on his new location, the sprawling and historic cityscape, of London.
Virtue made the preparatory drawings for this new work from two sites in London: on the south bank of the Thames alongside the Oxo Tower and from the roof of Somerset House, home of the Courtauld Institute of Art. In addition to the Thames paintings, three further works were made from drawings executed on the roof of the National Gallery itself, overlooking Trafalgar Square. These paintings are dominated by Nelson's Column, with the Palace of Westminster in the background. They will be shown outside the main exhibition space, adjacent to Central Hall.
The National Gallery is grateful to Robert Hiscox and Hiscox plc the specialist insurer for their generous support of both the exhibition and the catalogue, and Roland Levinski, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Plymouth, for the additional funding the university has provided for the catalogue. The fully illustrated catalogue, including essays by Simon Schama, Paul Moorhouse and Colin Wiggins is distributed by Yale University Press priced £14.95, and available at the Gallery shops, by mail order and online for the special price of £12.95. The exhibition is also accompanied by a film that documents the making of the paintings, and a longer version will be sold on DVD, priced £10.
An exhibition of drawings by John Virtue, made in preparation for this series of paintings, and one new painting of Somerset House will run concurrently at the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, Somerset House. Both exhibitions will travel to the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, from February to April 2006.
For PRESS information only please contact Cathy Hinde on 020 7747 2512 catherine.hinde@ng-london.org.uk
For IMAGES only please contact the Press Office on 020 7747 2596 press@ng-london.org.uk
For PUBLIC information quote 020 7747 2885 information@ng-london.org.uk
November 2004
Back to 2004 Press Releases
|
|
