London Art Inspiration for Sixth Form pupils

On 3rd and 4th October our sixth form artists had a busy two days visiting a wide range of art galleries and exhibitions in London. We started with the William Blake exhibition in the Tate Britain, viewing over 300 works by the iconic and inspirational artist, printmaker and poet. After spending time researching the permanent Tate collection, which included the dramatic Turner landscapes in the Clore wing, we travelled on to the National Gallery. Here we were treated to the story of European art, masterpiece by masterpiece. Favourites amongst the students were Canaletto’s architectural compositions, Van Gogh’s landscapes and Rousseau’s ‘Tiger in a storm’. Finally we explored the National portrait gallery and were particularly impressed with the astounding skills and creative approaches demonstrated in the BP portrait award display. Friday was an equally action packed day. We started with the Royal Academy where we had tickets to see the paintings of the Finnish artist, Helene Schjerbeck. As the Observer says ‘her self portraits put her in the company of Goya, Rembrandt, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud’. After looking at the small but inspiring Constable collection we moved on to the Serpentine and Serpentine Sackler galleries in Hyde Park. The exhibited work of Albert Oehlen and Luchita Hurtadu gave us a powerful experience of large scale, high impact contemporary abstract painting. It was a productive and exciting couple of days and students will now weave their research, sketches and new ideas into their coursework and, illustrated ‘London report’.