The Summer passed very quickly and shortly after a boat trip to Battersea Power Station in August with my wife, Christine, we both caught Covid which lasted a while and wasn’t very pleasant. We were both rather ill . We hadn’t had a break this year so we took a short holiday earlier this month in the South of France. During our stay we attended part of a Modern Art Auction in Cannes where art by Jean Cocteau, Chagall, Picasso and other famous artists is sold. This period also saw the broadcasting of two television programmes about Picasso, “The Beauty and the Beast” and another about Maggie Hambling and, when we returned from France, Portrait Artist of the Decade and a brand new series of Portrait Artist of the Year had started. This portrait of Dame Judi Dench was one of the paintings in Portrait Artist of the Decade by Christian Hook.
In the last week or so I’ve been looking at the history of art and particularly the depictions of Christianity with artists interpretations of biblical scenes, many in and after the Renaissance. The only copies I’ve ever done were Salome with the Head of John the Baptist by Caravaggio and, just now, I’m attempting The Light of the World by William Homan Hunt. Here is the Caravaggio from the Prado in Madrid with my very tiny copy:-
Th Light of the Word is not yet finished but I’ve shown the original, of which there are three versions, the largest being at St Pauls Cathedral in London, followed by my copy which still has much more detail to be added and some corrections to be made.
I rarely copy paintings by famous artists and this one is rather difficult because the colours and detail vary so much in the various reproductions available to study and use to make my version. So far I’ve been working about five months, on and off, looking at and struggling with my painting of “The Light of the World”!