It was a boat ride on the Thames that inspired the masterpiece that launched John Singer Sargent into the firmament of English painting. The artist was in Pangburne, coming off the Parisian scandal of Madame X, when the spectacle of Chinese lanterns hanging between the trees and flowers set a new idea working in his mind. In two years, he would finish Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, the atmosphere of which, with its vibrant lights, still overwhelms visitors to the Tate Britain today. The work depicts two children in white garb, intent on lighting paper lanterns. Around them, the lush nature of an English garden with lilies, roses and carnations. With Polly and Dolly, daughters of illustrator Frederick Barnard, Sargent worked outside, waiting nightly for the ephemeral enchantment of sunset. Capturing “the warm light of the lanterns against the dark purple of the summer sunset” turned out to be an arduous task. It is a “terribly difficult subject,” the painter wrote to his sister, “The brilliant colours of the flowers and the lamps are impossible, and the more intense green of the lawn in the background. The paints aren’t vivid enough. And besides that, the effect only lasts ten minutes.” But the efforts of the American artist were compensated. In 1887, the exposition of the work at the Royal Academy decreed the launch of Sargent as a portraitist in the United Kingdom. Two ingredients made the painting irresistible to the Victorian public and critics - the innocence of youth and its setting in an English garden.
A journey to discover the Indian sculptor Mrinalini Mukherjee revisited through the works, drawings and sculptures of the artists who have most influenced her and with whom she has collaborated.
The exhibition begins in the 1920s, when swimsuits began to be marketed for swimming and when seaside holidays became popular and explores the role of swimming in modern life up to the present day.
An exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery dedicated to Stanisław Wyspiański, one of the most important Polish artists of the 19th century. Sixteen portraits on display, many of which have never been shown before in Britain, to tell the story of the artistic talent of a leading figure of the modernist movement, Young Poland.
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