Three exceptional art works, three essential exhibitions

The gallery was delighted to arrange the loan of Jessica Hayllar’s A pink azalea to Pathways to Pre-Raphaelitism, at the MAPFRE Foundation, Madrid, which highlights the contribution of women artists to the Pre-Raphaelite movement. The exhibition is curated by Pamela Gerrish Nunn, known internationally for her writing on 19th century Western women artists. The exhibition not only recognizes the various pathways to Pre-Raphaelitism that women artists had to take, but also illustrates the individuality of their responses to this new idea. The narrative presents a fresh approach to the topic and spans the period 1850-1914, covering consecutive phases of the style: its origins in the 1850s, its establishment by the 1860s, its reworking in a Burne-Jones or Rossetti form, its manifestation in the Arts and Crafts movement, and the ‘neo-pre-Raphaelitism’ of the early 20th century. It was with the rise of feminist studies, beginning in 1980, that Pre-Raphaelite women artists began to be reevaluated. The exhibition presented by Fundación Mapfre is the most recent manifestation of this reassessment, recognizing more than forty female artists associated with the movement, such as Elizabeth Siddal, Joanna Boyce, Julia Margaret Cameron, May Morris, Marie Spartali Stillman, Evelyn De Morgan, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale and Alice Boyd. Furthermore, it highlights the diverse paths that female artists of the period were compelled to explore in their creative processes. The variety of their responses to Pre-Raphaelitism allows for a unique appreciation of the nuances of this movement's influence on Victorian art.

The legacy of Pre-Raphaelitism can be seen in this magnificent painting, A pink azalea by Jessica Hayllar. The exceptional precision and finish of Jessica’s work, with its appreciation of colour and material surfaces, recalled Pre-Raphaelitism’s original aims for a nostalgic early 20th-century audience.

Pathways to Pre-Raphaelitism (1850-1914)

24^th September 2026-10^th 2027

Fundación MAPFRE

https://www.fundacionmapfre.org/arte-y-cultura/exposiciones/sala-recoletos/prerrafaelismo-itinerarios-femeninos/

Richard Green is delighted to lend LS Lowry’s A man waiting, 1964, to the forthcoming retrospective, LS Lowry: The Theatre of Lifeat MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, this autumn, marking the 50th anniversary of the painter’s death and thirteen years since his last significant institutional show. Lowry is an extremely popular artist in Britain, however, the extraordinary breadth of his work is little known. This important exhibition aims to provide an overview of all his themes and subjects, from landscapes and seascapes to portraits and surreal imaginings. He was also a complex character who kept his life and art separate and encouraged many of the myths that now surround him: that he was solitary, self-taught, disconnected from art history and the modernist tradition. Lowry’s career ran alongside huge changes in British society which saw the workers, mills, terraced housing and urban landscapes he painted bombed, cleared and replaced. All these themes will be explored within the exhibition.

A man waiting was also exhibited fifty years ago at the Royal Academy’s seminal Lowry retrospective in 1976. This iconic work, an ingenious balance of space and form, subtlety and style, was originally owned by another exceptional artist. A photographer, cinematographer, film studio owner, musician and pilot, Keith Ewart (1926-1989) also had a remarkable eye and contributed images to Vogue and Harper’s, which helped define the Swinging Sixties. 

Following the sell-out success of his one-man exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in 1961, Lowry dramatically changed the emphasis of his paintings to focus on single or small groups of figures, stating “I feel more strongly about these people than I ever did about the industrial scene.”

This painting is for sale. See other works available for sale by LS Lowry here.

L.S. LOWRY: THE THEATRE OF LIFE

24 October 2026 - 28 February 2027

Barbara Hepworth and Greece

Richard Green is delighted to lend Marble Form (Core), 1955-56, to Barbara Hepworth and Greece at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester from 21^st November. This is the first exhibition dedicated to Hepworth’s deep connection with Greece and the extraordinary impact it had on her art. One of Britain’s most celebrated artists, renowned for her pioneering abstract sculpture, Barbara Hepworth and Greece reveals how a journey through Greece and its islands in 1954 renewed her artistic vision at a crucial point in her life. Bringing together extracts from Hepworth’s diary from the trip alongside major sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints, the exhibition explores how the country’s radiant light, vibrant colours, dramatic landscapes, ancient architecture and elemental forces shaped her work. ‘I have waited 30 yrs to see Greece’, Hepworth wrote in 1954. Invited by her friend Margaret Gardiner to join a cruise through the Greek islands, Hepworth visited Athens, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Delphi, Crete, Rhodes, Cos, Patmos and Santorini. This seminal trip at a crucial point in her life and career would have a profound and lasting impact on Hepworth’s work, leading her to pronounce in 1964, ‘a whole decade later…It is deeply part of my work.’

Carved in a quintessentially classical material, associated with Greek and Roman antiquity, Marble Form (Coré) refers to Archaic Greek female figure sculpture of the sixth century BC, known as ‘kore’ or ‘korai’ (‘koré’ or ‘coré’ in French) which Hepworth saw on her visit to Greece in the summer of 1954.[1] Sophie Bowness, the artist’s granddaughter and author of the forthcoming revised catalogue raisonné, writes: ‘She owned a postcard of a marble kouros torso c.550BC from Actium in the Louvre, which she may have bought on a visit to Paris before the war. Her Coré shares the upright stance, poise and sensuous curves characteristic of Greek korai.’[2]

See other works available for sale by Barbara Hepworth here.

Barbara Hepworth and Greece

21^st November 2026-2^nd May 2027

Pallant House Gallery

https://pallant.org.uk/whats-on/barbara-hepworth-and-greece/

[1]See Sophie Bowness (ed.), Barbara Hepworth, The Plasters. The Gift to Wakefield, 2011, p.108.

[2]Sophie Bowness (ed.), op. cit., p.108.