Wendy Gray

Teacher by trade; art lover by choice. Like all manner of artists and movements but somehow always end up back in 1910!

Stories By Wendy Gray

20th century

Kyffin Williams and the Welsh Landscape
By Wendy GrayApril 15, 2021
The Welsh landscapes have inspired artists, poets, and writers for generations. But, for one 20th century artist, they were more than just a subject for the canvas, they were a metaphor for melancholic isolation, for power,...
19th Century

Psychological Truth on the Verge of Modernity: Symbolism in Victorian Art
By Wendy GrayMarch 31, 2021
Symbolism in the late 19th century came out of the romantic movement and explored the meanings of forms, lines, shapes, and color. It drew on literary genres such as mythology and subjects such as dreams and...
Surrealism

Violet Oakley: A Grand Vision by a Female Muralist
By Wendy GrayMarch 4, 2021
1906, Philadelphia, USA, a historic moment in art was unfolding in the Pennsylvania Capitol Building. A series of murals depicting The Founding of the State of Liberty Spiritual were being installed in the Governor’s Reception Room...
Renaissance

Pieter Bruegel: Hunters in the Snow. Hidden Stories and Meanings
By Wendy GrayJanuary 25, 2021
In the ‘Bruegel Room’ in Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, twelve paintings hang in the space. They cover the final ten year period of the life of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. One painting, in particular, takes us...
Surrealism

Lee Miller And Surrealism In Britain
By Wendy GrayAugust 7, 2018
In the delightfully quirky Hepworth Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, is a quiet exhibition that packs a whole range of mad surrealism in three galleries. What was particularly exciting about this was the fact that the lead...
Museums And Exhibitions

Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One
By Wendy GrayJuly 11, 2018
When you walk into the first room of any exhibition, there is an involuntary holding of the breath as it can often be a make or break moment. Walk into the first room of Tate Britain’s...
20th century

American Synthesizers: Gerald Murphy, Louis Lovowick, and George Ault
By Wendy GrayJuly 7, 2018
In the catalogue for a 1959 exhibition on Precisionist art at the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis, Director Martin Friedman said of the precisionist artists that they were not so much innovators or theorists as they...
Art Nouveau

‘The Divine Sarah’ – Sarah Bernhardt, The First Artist Superstar
By Wendy GrayJune 9, 2018
While we are all familiar with celebrity culture and can recognise all of the Kardashians from their silhouettes, the idea of ‘celebrity’ is not a new one. In the 19th century, a notorious French actress, who...
19th Century

Edvard Munch and The Frieze of Life
By Wendy GrayMay 17, 2018
By 1902, Edvard Munch’s life had seen a pattern of chaos within his professional life, his health and his love life. While his life had become solitary, his artwork was not destined to remain stacked against...
19th Century

Get To Know The Cultural Legacy of Albert, Prince Consort
By Wendy GrayApril 12, 2018
The Royal Collection is one of the largest and most important art collections in the world, and one of the last great European royal collections to remain intact. A press release by the UK’s Royal Collection...