Gallery-going

click photo to enlarge

Anyone interested in art loves to visit an art gallery. The big London galleries, like Tate Britain, with its Turners, or the National with exceptional pieces from every age, can supply a week's worth of viewing pleasure. But therein lies the problem. A visit to a big gallery can cause visual indigestion! In many respects the smaller, regional galleries, provide a more manageable viewing experience - a limited number of paintings, with a bit of specialism, often around less well-known artists.

Over the years I've visited many galleries in "the provinces". Those that stick in my mind are the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight, with its Pre-Raphaelite collection, the Leeds City Gallery where I enjoyed the Atkinson Grimshaws, the Walker Gallery in Liverpool with some exceptional paintings from the first half of the C20, and the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull, with the marine paintings of John Ward. The other day I visited the Usher Art Gallery in Lincoln. It has collections of paintings by two Lincoln born artists, William Hilton (1786-1839) who has a number of views of the city, and William Logsdail (1859-1944) who is represented by some views of Venice. With the exception of an animal picture by George Stubbs, the best known paintings are by the the Staffordshire-born Peter de Wint (1784-1849). An artist much admired by Ruskin, de Wint visited Lincoln often because is wife came from the city. He painted a number of scenes that include the cathedral. Though none of the three artists are considered among the front rank of British painters, the collection shows that all were capable of high quality.

It may be because of the time I'd spent time looking at the works of these artists, that when I came to process this image of the cathedral seen from the south, I ended up with a photograph that has some of the qualities of a painting! Perhaps it's the darkness of the image that suggests this, or maybe it's the composition, or perhaps the colour and texture of the sky. Whatever the reason, the image was more heavily processed than most of my work, and it turned out like this. I'm not unhappy with the outcome!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 96mm (192mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On