Brilliant Barbers: Birmingham Barber Institute of Fine Arts Hangs Out at the Courtauld Gallery, London

Whilst major building works take place at Birmingham’s Barber Institute of Fine Arts, its remarkable art works are literally hanging out else. Some are being exhibited at the Courtauld Gallery, London in: The Barber In London: Highlights From a Remarkable Collection. At the same time, given the Courtauld’s friendly policy towards its art works — where else can you almost stick your face into a Monet, Rossetti or Vigée Le Brun to admire the brushstrokes and the tiniest of details?

Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of Countess Golovina, (1797–1800)

She’s gorgeous, she bursts out of the canvas with life and intelligence, sweeping a wonderfully dramatic shawl around herself in a modern classical manner. I love the tumble of curls in a scarf, the beautiful russet pop of the red of her clothes, the tender perceptiveness of her look. It’s such a sympathetic portrait and incredibly lovely. Best of all a woman painter creating art of another woman!

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blue Bower, (1865).

Beautifully sensuous, this Pre-Raphaelite portrait is also full of puns — as cornflowers at the front hint at Fanny Cornforth’s name. She models all the Pre-Raphaelite modes — voluminous tumbling red hair, long elegant fingers, velvety materials, medieval-ish clothes (velvet cloak-like gown with a neck trimmed by fur or perhaps down or swansdown) and intricate jewellery and hair ornaments imitating natural forms. It’s also a peek into a private world — a indoor bower, a pleasant pleasurable place. Maybe a literal love nest. Against a backdrop combing Arabic forms, Asian cherry blossom motifs and passionflowers, she plays a koto, plucking the strings. It feels very Sleeping Beauty-like, and slightly uneasy as she tilts her head to look at us (more through us) interrupting her. Is she going to enchant us or magic us into something nasty? It’s hard to read Cornforth’s direct, steely expression — but her gaze is coming straight out of the canvas, like laser beams. At the same time, the gentle blush at her cheek and neck, and slightly nervous expression in her lips indicate that she’s wary of our gaze — and of us. There’s definitely a question forming there, as she seems about to speak.

Moreover, the lady is from the rural working-class, styled in a distinctly middle-class aesthetic setting, and perhaps the profusion of flowers around her, almost enclosing her, hints at this. It mimics too the Japanese paintings and drawings of court ladies playing musical instruments in elegant settings.

Joshua Reynolds, Maria Marow Gideon and her brother William, (1786–87).

This portrait caught my attention and the more I looked into the background behind it all, the more captured I was. At first, they look like mother and son, read the caption and it’s older sister, younger brother. Underneath her girl’s dress mimicking adult fashions, Maria is incredibly young. Her swaggering brother is ready to stride off into the world. Despite a gorgeous hat dripping with feathers and a fabulously enormous blue sash, Maria gazes at us tentatively and a touch uncomfortably, wanting us to really go away and stare at someone else. It’s intriguing that she’s holding her brother’s hat. The energy of the painting is quite something — although they’re in a pastoral Arcadian setting, her brother is clearly about to ask his sister to come off with him, perhaps to walk his adoring spaniel, perhaps to dream of their future lives. Or, given William’s riding clothes and almost military buff waistcoat, gallop off into the sunset. Sadly, despite all his energy and liveliness, brother William will die at age 30, having had a career in the Army. Their father is Sir Sampson Gideon, from a banking family and seeking to be a politician, culturally Jewish and yet Christianised to participate in national life. The more you read into Sir Sampson’s life, the more you realise that he had to endure some horrible antisemitic slurs. There’s so much more I want to know that’s only hinted at here — was he really useless? Or is this prejudice against his cultural background and faith coming through? Was there jealousy at his marrying a wife from such an influential family? The comment about his name change, though heavy with irony, is horrible too. Clearly he valued his children enough to pay £300 for a painting of them by one of the star painters of the day and cherished them enough to want to capture their likenesses. (Though maternal influence could play a part here too as she was portrayed by Gainsborough). Maria will marry the fabulously named Gregory William Eardley-Twisleton-Fiennes, 14th Baron Saye and Sele. Their main claim to fame seems to be producing children with incredibly long stylings — such as William Thomas Eardley-Twisleton-Fiennes! (Not to mention memoralising her brother’s memory in their son’s name).

Frans Hals, Portrait of a Man Holding a Skull, (c. 1610–14).

Frans Hals not only gets us thinking about our mortality and fragility, Hamlet-style, but impresses us with his black upon black textures. Whilst not Rembrandt, it’s a dazzle of shadowy light and dark shades, the contrast of black patterns against a black background. The ruff around the collar and cuffs are incredible though! as are the ridges around the arms, creating delicate puffs of material.

Claude Monet, The Church at Varengeville, (1882).

It’s not only the colours and the light, but the delicate twists of foliage at the front which enchant the viewer in this coastal landscape.

Edgar Degas, Jockeys Before The Race, (around 1878–79).

Degas gives us jockeys warming up before a race, off-centre and against a unique pale jade background. A painted snapshot of time. location and waiting as he bravely paints his jockeys cropped, moving out of the canvas. The smudgy light adds to the tense, contained atmosphere.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Sun Setting Through Vapour, (around 1809).

Just like the brother and sister portrait, Turner’s glowing big ships had me in raptures. Look really closely and you can see every grainy wooden plank in the fishing boats. Though the star is Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory, the fishing families (men and women) are working hard on the beach, unloading their catch ready for sale, are equally important. I like the way that they’re generally ignoring the warships as they have work to do, a population to feed. Charmingly a woman and child paddle at the edge of all of this busyness. But most of all it’s the vaporous golden glow turning everything into a stage set, lighting up sails and the beach or harbour edge. It’s easy now to forget how commercial and busy the UK’s waterways were — this is evidence to the contrary! There’s also a hulk, a prison ship in view too, enveloped in the glamourous glow.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White No. III, (around 1865–67).

In sinewy, deceptively simple lines, two young women lounge, white and pale yellow(or perhaps cream). Reflecting the passion for Japanese style at the time, it’s delicate and calm, with the greens and whites of a flower arrangement to one side, reflected in the pattern of the carpet. The pop of colour comes from a square orange fan and the yellows of one of the dresses. Unusually one of the young women wears a long bright cream dress against a duller cream sofa, white on white, reversing the Renaissance focus of blacks on blacks.

Giovanni Bellini, St Jerome in the Wilderness, (around 1445–60).

Unintentionally funny, the lion’s doleful expression as it holds up its paw to be healed by the saint in the desert. More dog than lion, it pleads for healing as the saint reminds them that human and lion should live in peace, and whilst the lion’s distracted, peaceful grazing goes on in the distance!

(Hermann) Max Pechstein, Still Life in Grey, (1913).

This 1930’s still life is extraordinary and complex. A Cameroonian stool is juxtaposed against a German china blue and white jug. A top the stool is a bowl, brim-full of lemons, oranges…and a cauliflower! Perhaps the apples on the floor have escaped from the bowl and rolled away onto the floor. Everything’s presented at a tilt to juxtapose the patterned floors and walls, and deep folds of the curtain. There’s a curious thing happening behind all of this — a classical warrior or maybe just a man appears to be rising up behind them. Perhaps they’re really hungry?

Taken at face value, it’s a fascinating and striking image. But Cameroon was a German colony at the time, much of the European art world was fascinated by the different art traditions of other cultures, carrying on what Gauguin started. Is it admiring or is it colonialist? You decide. I can’t start looking at the geometric patterns, the colours…the cauliflower and the designs on the Cameroonian stool.

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