A few weeks ago I decided to take a trip to the Lady Lever Gallery in Port Sunlight. Following a discussion with my personal tutor in Fine Art practice I realised that I wanted to begin painting again and he advised me to visit the Lady Lever Gallery as a source of inspiraton. I got the train on the Chester line and arrived at this quirky villiage of Port Sunlight which I was surprised to find just a few miles outside of Liverpool. Sometimes it's very easy to forget that other places of interest exist outside the city when you live in such a city as Liverpool. It was like going back in time, walking around this wide open space in which William Lever employed 30 architects to create a garden villiage with a sense of space and beauty, and this he did. Walking around the small villiage you can't help but feel a sense of tranquility.
I entered the gallery space and was familiar with a few of the paintings that surrounded me such as John Constable 'Cottage at East Bergholt', JMW Turner 'The Falls of Clyde', Dante Gabriel Rosetti 'The Blessed Damozel', also there were a few names that I did not recognize, such as 'The Garden of Hesperides' by Frederic Leighton (1830-1896). This painting depicts the 3 daughters of Hesperides or the God of the evening. What I love about this painting is the balance, achieved by the composition. I love the circle shape of the painting, the dream like/heavenly state that the girls are in. I like the way all the objects are touching and nothing is seperate so you look at the painting as one whole vision. The paintings of this time seem to be highly influenced by religious and mythical ideas and concerns which are not so much predominately concerns in contemporary art today.
The Scapegoat (1854-6) Willam Holman Hunt oil on canvas 87cm x 139.8cm
This is a painting by William Hunt 1827-1910 influenced by an Old Testament ritual whereby priests loaded onto the scapegoat the sins of the people, who drove it to the desert to its death so that their sins would be cast out. William Hunt painted this mostly infront of the dying goat on the desolate shore of the Dead Sea in Palestine. When looking at this image in the flesh it really does convey the isolaton and despair of the situaton and Hunt really has accomplshed ths through not only the Scapegoat but the landscape behind. There is something so hopless and pityfull about this image and it is not something I would typically be drawn to. I think we can learn something from Hunt's approach to painting. The fact that he sat infront of the dying goat and experienced something so real that was then interpreted in his painting makes me consider my own practice and the ways in whch in confront my ideas.
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