Henry Fuseli and the Nightmare of Unrequited Love

I have long stared at the question of unrequited love and what makes this particular type of love so painful and obsessive. I started drafts. I discarded them. I came back to this question and gave it another go only to find my writing out of touch. The truth is I do not know much…

Thomas Cooper Gotch – The Exile (1930)

She could be anyone, so you get close to see her. The fiery monotone background does not steal away from her mystery and, in fact, recedes as your gaze fixates on her. She looks like a rag doll dressed up hastily by her child-mother and abandoned carelessly on a chair quickly afterwards, slouching under the…

Herbert James Gunn and His Mona Lisa

At thirty-one-years old Herbert James Gunn’s life was only just beginning. Sure, the Scotsman had already been married once, fathered three children, fought in World War I and wandered through the cities of Europe and the sun-drenched north of Africa, milestones which would take many of us a lifetime to achieve. But there he was…

Stanley Spencer – The Last Supper (1920)

“All the things that happened in the Bible, happened in Cookham”, English artist Stanley Spencer once said. Cookham, a small rural village on the banks of the River Thames where Spencer had grown up and spent most of his life, and the peaceful countryside area surrounding it were the backdrop for most of his religious…

Charles Rennie Mackintosh – La Rue du Soleil, Port-Vendres (1926)

Impoverished after World War I and lacking commissions, Charles Rennie Mackintosh moved to Port-Vendres – a small port in southern France – to start anew. He had previously achieved success as an architect, even winning the competition to design the new Glasgow School of Art. Versatile in his talents, the Scotsman also designed furniture and…

William Roberts – The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel (1961 – 1962)

Inspired by Cubism and Futurism, in 1914 a group of avant-garde artists sought to disrupt the sentimental British art scene with bold, geometric lines reflecting the frenzy and dynamism of the post-industrial age. They called the movement Vorticism and in their magazine, BLAST, they explained the significance of the name: “You think at once of…