Thursday 13 August 2009

Spain in Edinburgh







Two weeks ago (two weeks!) we went to visit an exhibition of Spanish and Spain inspired art in Scottish National Gallery. As usual there was a lot of uninteresting fillers among real gems (a beautiful portrait by Velasquez with these magnificent yet simple brush strokes and my favourite painting of El Greco that I used to stare at for hours when I was a child: Fabula, Around 1600, a Boy Lights a Candle, as a Monkey and a Bearded Figure Watch . I could not take my eyes away and was coming back again and again to annoyance of the rest of the family). There was as usual the whole bunch of Scottish artist inspired by Spanish sunshine while on vacations in the Med. The most spectacular discovery of the day was Arthur Melville and his big watercolours. I really liked his technique and colour choices and since I use watercolours more and more often in my own work I was studying him very carefully.
I am attaching some images of Melville's watercolours I have found on the web (I cannot remeber where, sorry!) - one with corrida was featured in the exhibition.

I have to find somewhere at my various stocks that fascinating book by Ortega y Gasset about Velasquez and Goya that I have read so many years ago!

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