Visual Art
REVIEWS 219+ 'NO-UIlEAU IN PROGRESS
The Lighthouse. Glasgow. until 23 January 000
To HOCKNEY: DRAWINGS FROM :lack and red beetle balances between fruit and leaf; its ‘ " " :' ' i :‘ :' 2
THE ROYAL COLLECTION ard, shiny limbs and antennae glinting in the light. . . :. . -
The Queen‘s Gallery. Edinburgh, Thu 25 Nov—Sun 6 Mar “7? p'cmre '5 part Of the Queews Gal'ery's lateSt " ' " ' ‘ ' ' ' exhibition, Holbein to Hockney: Drawings from the Royal :‘ ' -« ' ' : :
Maria Sibylla Merian was no ordinary 17th century Collection. It is a survey of the thousands of drawings '.’ ' ' w ' . :« . .
woman. Having married and split up from fellow flower collected by monarchs over the last 500 years. The first ' . . : ~ : ' z ' z" z - '
painter, Johan Andreas Graft, she spent five years in a ones by Hans Holbein came into the Royal Collection on I ' : ' :" : ’
nunnery before moving to Amsterdam. It was a time when the death of Henry VIII in 1547 but the most prolific -' ' : -' ' " : :
adventures in the New World were bringing home exotic collector was the louche, decadent Charles II. Though
and wonderful things - specimens from the natural world, neither grand nor epic, each sketch and mark tells its fabrics and spices. All these delights and curiosities were own story. For curator Martin Clayton, the insight and
tantalising for artists with a curious eye. And Merian had sense of the artist in progress are what makes the images an eye more curious than many. So curious, in fact, that come alive. ‘There is an immediacy where you see the she took herself and her 20-year-old daughter across the artist making decisions, maybe changing the angle ocean to the Dutch colony of Surinam on the northern slightly - there is directness,‘ he says. ‘When you see a coast of South America. There she perfected the art of painting or a sculpture that is the final decision, but the drawing from observation. Her illustration, ‘A citron with a sketch or drawing is all the thinking behind that.‘ The moth and a harlequin beetle‘ (pictured), is just one of 60 show includes the tentative and definite marks of
that formed her definitive work Metamorphosis Leonardo da Vinci, Diirer, Hogarth, Raphael, John Singer insectorum Surinamensium. The brilliant orangey yellow Sargent and David Hockney. And like the good Ma‘m
is the backdrop for the three humble stages of a moth‘s herself, they‘re exceptionally well preserved.
life - caterpillar, lavae and moth, while the magnificent (Ruth Hedges)
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