From Sickert to Gertler: Modern British Art from Boxted House@Brighton Museum

Study from the Coutyard by Robert Bevan

This is an intriguing exhibition at Brighton Museum from the collection of Robert Alexander Bevan (known as Bobby to his friends) and his wife Natalie Bevan assembled at his Essex home. Bobby was the son of the artist Robert Polhill Bevan founder of the Camden Town Group in London (a British group of painters influenced by Impressionsim and Post-Impressiont painters such as Van Gogh and Gauguin, founded by Walter Sickert in 1911 and named after the seedy district of north London where Sickert had lived in the 1890s and again from 1907.) Bevan senior was also known as the painter of mauve horses. This exhibition shows a little of the type of styles that influenced these modern British artists in the early years of the Twentieth Century.

It is a very personal exhibition showing how the works were shown in Boxted House, which is interesting up to a point. There is an overdone quality to much of Bevan's work, still think Tate Britain has his best drawings.

Paintings by Walter Sickert, Mark Gertler and their associates may prove to be the biggest draw, but visitors should not neglect the collection’s fine works on paper, including powerful drawings by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and a Goya etching. Although Maggi Hambling remembered ‘the people and the gin more than the pictures’, this exhibition reinstates the art of Boxted House and the art of this time, to its rightful place.

This exhibition was originally shown at Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, via Gainsborough House in Sudbury. There are a number of exhibits here including postcards and letters from the trenches of 1915. The exhibition continues until 12th September 2010.

You may also wish to see the exhibition of Matthew Smith paintings at Victoria Gallery in Bath.

Anish Kapoor returns to India with first major exhibition

London based artist Anish Kapoor, poses near one of his works as part of the exhibition 'My red homeland' at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Malaga. EPA/JESUS DOMINGUEZ.

Anish Kapoor is keen to claim following the announcement by the DCMS, that a new cultural agreement between Britain and India was signed during Prime Minister David Cameron's recent visit:

"While I am delighted the first major show of my work in India is going ahead, I feel I need to make it clear publicly that the planning of the show well pre-dates the election of the present Conservative government. We have in fact been working on this show for more than ten years."


Secretary of State for Culture Jeremy Hunt in India last week to coincide with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on 'Cultural Co-operation' between the UK Government and the Government of the Republic of India. The exhibition was announced by Secretary of State for Culture Jeremy Hunt in India last week to coincide with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on 'Cultural Co-operation' between the UK Government and the Government of the Republic of India.

The exhibition will be organised across two sites, the new galleries of the NGMA, New Delhi, and the Mehboob film studios, Bandra, Mumbai. This will be a major exhibition for Kapoor and nothing on this scale has been seen in India, it will feature a selection of sculptures and installations spanning the breadth of his career, from early pigment-based works of the 1980’s, to his most recent wax installations recently shown at the Royal Academy, which attracted over 275,000 visitors in less than three months, to become the most successful exhibition of a living artist ever held in London.

The exhibition in India is organised by the British Council, in association with the Lisson Gallery, see Kapoor's new works here Lisson Gallery London, the Indian Ministry of Culture and the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi. See review of Kapoor's Royal Academy Show at AbstractPaintingEngland