CARAVAGGIO

Removed from context or adornment, the viewer becomes part of an intimate exchange. There are few clues as to time or place, the garb is simple, peasant robes, the background is dark and anonymous and the lighting so artificial as to almost seem more real than reality itself. This was the genius of Caravaggio, in this, one of the most important works of the Baroque: an ability to, as he so often did, take religious stories out of antiquity and bring them fiercely into the contemporary world that even five hundred years later they feel modern. Jesus is bathed in light that makes him emerge from the oil and seem almost real as his disciples gather round. Thomas, who had doubted his faith and Christ’s return, proves his finger into the open wound in Christ’s side. It is a tangible display of flesh, and confirmation that the son of God is both man and divine. Yet, this proof materialises in the medium of the painting as well of the subject. Christ as an eternal figure, always relevant, always human, is exemplified in the rich chiaroscuro of Caravaggios brushstrokes - as Thomas’s doubting was allayed by direct contact with flesh, so too is ours by being allowed entry into this scene that feels so tangible.

PICABIA

Francis Picabia is perhaps the ultimate artist’s artist. On the fringe of nearly every major Early 20th art movement, he never quite felt at home in any. Associated at some point with Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism, Dada and Surrealism, Picabia is most easily classified as Avant-Garde. One need not look further than Conversation II to see this. Painted in 1922, it is proto Pop Art exploring the two oppositional forces in Picabia’s life – the rigid lines represent order and mathematics while the floating bodies convey a sensual humanity he could not resist. Picabia was in a constant state of duality, existing between movements, straddling eras and ways of thinking, and he allowed this conflict to come through in his work. He lived extravagantly, earning a good living off his art and a large inheritance from his mother. He was a drifter and a dabbler, exploring his contemporary age with freedom.

JOHN CONSTABLE

Born in a small village in Suffolk, on the east coast of England where marshy land and rivers cut through a gently ebbing, pastoral countryside, the painter John Constable never strayed far from his home. So affectionate was he to his native landscape, that even today the area around his village is known as ‘Constable Country’. Yet his ties to his home were, at least to his contemporaries understandings, detrimental to his career as they led him to reject opportunities that would move him elsewhere. History has proved Constable right for his decisions to stay close; the works he painted of verdant fields, glistening rivers, and aching trees revolutionised landscape painting with a return to composition from nature, rather than the imagination. Constable painted this view of Stoke-By-Nayland, the neighbouring village to the one he was born in, many times throughout his life. Almost always from the same angle, with the same trees in the foreground and the same church behind, a church he had painted the altarpiece for as a young man, that they serve as a biographical record of his life. It was a dedication and love for his homeland that led him to such repetition - “I should paint my own places best”, he said, “painting is but another word for feeling”.