A day out yesterday, to the Royal Academy to see some of the paintings we’ve never seen before.
From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 from Moscow and St Petersburg

The exhibition presents modern masterpieces drawn from Russia’s principal collections: the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and [...]



Manet to Picasso

This exhibition at The National Gallery brings out some old favourites as well as introducing us to some lesser known pictures.
Briefly, there are groupings of Monets, Pissaros, Degas’, Renoirs, Van Goghs and Cezannes, mostly taken from the gallery’s own collection, but some placed alongside loans from elsewhere.
The exhibition is portrayed broadly chronologically and there [...]



Modernism VII

Herbert Read argued, in 1933, that the modernist movement had produced the greatest seismic change of all time. We were not, he wrote, concerned with an unprecedented development. But with an abrupt break with all tradition. The aim of five centuries of European effort is openly abandoned.
Twenty years later, C S Lewis, referred to the [...]






About Writing:

Among the extremely diverse books lumped together as 'mysteries,' I shall try to judge each fairly according to the best standards of the type which the author intended to produce, and not those of another type which I personally prefer. (from "Code for Mystery Reviewers,") by Anthony Boucher

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