James Beechey
banner
jamesbeechey.bsky.social
James Beechey
@jamesbeechey.bsky.social
Art historian. Liberal.
It was cut into sixteen pieces to facilitate the making of this 1920 etching; when these were subsequently stuck back together (by Sickert’s third wife Thérèse Lessore?) the middle two squares in the bottom row were mistakenly transposed.
2/3
November 12, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Piano Nobile’s excellent exhibition of paintings, drawings and prints by Walter Sickert from the Lucas collection includes this drawing of c.1912 - enigmatically titled The Handicap - of a young Enid Bagnold and a not-so-young Harold Gilman locked in an amorous clinch.
1/3
November 12, 2025 at 10:23 AM
The most affecting image in the exhibition, however, is this recent painting of the now wheechair-bound artist and his great nephew (and studio assistant) Richard.
3/3
November 6, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Also on show are some of the cooler and more melancholy Moon Series of iPad pictures made in Normandy in 2020, previously seen in exhibitions in Rouen and Paris.
2/3
November 6, 2025 at 10:49 PM
David Hockney’s exhibition, opening tomorrow at Annely Juda’s chic new gallery in Hanover Square, contains radiant new paintings made this summer of chairs, flowers and fruit which joyfully convey his undimmed zest for life (and art).
1/3
November 6, 2025 at 10:47 PM
The Prince of Wales (as he then was) was prompted to commission this by his admiration for Bastien-Lepage’s portrait of Sarah Bernhardt (of whom he was also a great admirer). Bastien’s huge popularity & influence in Britain derived from the exhibition of the latter at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880.
November 1, 2025 at 8:26 PM
And hating a painting can definitely be cathartic. Here’s one I especially loathe - a set-piece so contrived it seems an absurd parody, with the models dropped onto the bed like limp puppets and a child tossed onto the floor like a discarded doll.
2/2
October 31, 2025 at 12:24 PM
Who is this baby painted c.1912-13 by Harold Gilman? I make a very tentative suggestion in a catalogue note for Bonhams Modern British sale next month:
www.bonhams.com/auction/3071...
October 27, 2025 at 7:00 PM
My catalogue note on this rediscovered Interior by Harold Gilman, in Bonhams Modern British sale on 19 November:
www.bonhams.com/auction/3071...
October 27, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Leonard Woolf, in a 1964 BBC interview, when asked to define his wife’s ‘genius’:
1/2
October 23, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Happy 80th birthday to my not-at-all-fearsome friend Maggi Hambling.
October 23, 2025 at 11:02 AM
A fascinating exhibition at John Swarbrooke Fine Art (11 Fitzroy Square, London W1, to 30 October) resurrects his less well-known - and tragically curtailed - artistic career.
2/3
October 23, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Denton Welch (1915-48) belongs to a small band of British artists who were also novelists or poets - including William Blake, Wyndham Lewis, David Jones & Alasdair Gray. His 1945 autobiographical novel In Youth is Pleasure is a minor masterpiece.
1/3
October 23, 2025 at 10:33 AM
The second of four portraits Harold Gilman made of the Polish-born artist Stanislawa de Karlowska, the wife of his great friend and fellow member of the Camden Town Group, Robert Bevan. To be sold in Christie’s Modern British sale in London tomorrow evening.

www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...
October 21, 2025 at 1:47 PM