Huon Mallalieu
Compton Verney, Warwickshire
15th October to 11th December
Her son may have engineered the Entente Cordiale and was a famous lover of (and in) Paris, but Queen Victoria was also remarkable for combining personal friendships and diplomacy in her relations with the rulers of France. In 1843 she paid a very successful state visit to King Louis Philippe and, in 1855, another to Napoleon III. She established close relations with both men and their families, and when each in turn was dethroned, provided comfortable English refuges. Both state visits were commemorated in watercolours, some of which were gifts and others commissioned by the Queen, a number of the same French artists contributing to both groups, which became a part of the Royal Collection. Forty-four watercolours of the 1855 visit will be seen at Compton Verney this autumn, in their first public outing, before moving on to follow Kurt Jackson’s exhibition at Exeter, from 20th December to 23rd April 2017.
The watercolours are products of the Anglo-French school, pioneered by Delacroix and Bonington, which enjoyed official favour during the Restauration and early Second Empire. Taken with the Queen’s diaries they record the enthusiasm with which Paris, as well as its rulers, received her. ‘Paris is the most beautiful & the gayest town imaginable. The very high houses were crowded from top to bottom & decorated in the most tasteful manner with banners, flags, arches, flowers & finally illuminations...Great enthusiasm, & one can give but a faint notion, of what was a veritable Triumph.’
This scene of her entry to the city was ably portrayed by Adolphe Bayot.
Jackson and Turner
Royal Albert Museum & Art Gallery
Exeter, to 4th December
Kurt Jackson is one of our most popular landscape painters, and deservedly so. He is both an ecologist with a passion for the details of plants, animals and weather, and a poet who can convey the soul of a place. Since 1984 he has lived in Cornwall, painting its coasts and seas as well as the land, although he has also worked more widely around Britain and the Continent. Among others he has worked with Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Eden Project, Oxfam, Surfers against Sewage and the Cornwall Wildlife Trust. His current exhibition in his St Just studio, Obsession, follows his studio assistant George on surf trips around the Cornish coast.
Among the honours that have come his way is a doctorate from Exeter university, which has given him access to its collection of Turner prints for the project that has produced the RAM exhibition. He visited twelve of Turner’s subjects in Devon and Cornwall in order to ‘investigate and record the profound changes that have occurred between the 19th century and today’. The resulting works are shown alongside the Turner prints, together with his sketchbooks and other accompanying material. While the effect may be depressing in one way, it is inspiring nonetheless.
