Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Guildhall Art Gallery and Tower Bridge


A telephone call came through from the curator’s office at Guildhall Art Gallery.
            The curator was forming an exhibition of depictions of Tower Bridge since its inception and had wanted to show my large 1954 painting of “Tower Bridge from Bermondsey Wall” that happens to be in the National Collection. She discovered that it hangs on some embassy wall in a far-flung outpost of the British Empire. Thus, it was unobtainable. So could she come around to see if I had anything else that was suitable to show.
            I rummaged around and found a large self-portrait, done in 1965, and made up of dockland shapes – steam from a ship’s boiler, wharves, quays, and a marker buoy. And in the background is a rather freely painted Tower Bridge.
            The curator looked at it and declared that she had seen many paintings in her life, but not one like this.
            There were also one or two later Landscape Recalled pastel depictions of the bridge that she liked. As well, were records of some of my other bridge paintings that had been sold at Christie’s and through Offer Waterman Gallery. These she would try to track down.
            The exhibition will be held at Guildhall Art Gallery through the month of June 2014, and I am to cut the opening ribbon.