Art and Eye

  With Baroque drama, expressive light and shade, alongside a contorted figure crammed into the picture frame, Guercino successfully captures the desperation of Elijah, stretching out his dark purple cloth to catch the food which falls from ravens above him. Based on the lesser known Old Testament narrative, the artist concentrates on the study of an ageing figure to convey his hunger and failing strength, against the fading blue lighting and cool stream below.  The monumental canvas gifts the viewer with a life-size representation of Elijah, whist enabling Guercino to show off the power of foreshortening - with his right knee jutting out towards a viewer, Elijah seems almost to fall out of the canvas towards us, toppling forward and bearing down on us to enhance that monumentality. This also suggests Guercino's debt to Caravaggio when constructing his Baroque canvases, and the torn red sleeve to reveal Elijah's white undershirt was yet another favoured motif of the Cavaraggis...

  Strudwick's carefully, sensitively and delicately rendered pencil portrait proves the awareness of the artist's hand beyond the medium of oil painting, and the importance of a study in his methods of working. Shading is richly worked, to capture a variety of tonal changes across the sitter's face, focusing on her downturned gaze, the gentle folds of cloth around her head and the subtle shadows of her hairline against her features. Not only does it tell a viewer more about the hand of Strudwick, but also about the artistic processes at the time; the creation of a preparatory sketch to create a future work, but which is nevertheless worth exploring on its own as a capable pencil drawing by a later Pre-Raphaelite practitioner. Strudwick is best known for his works which capture the spirit of Waterhouse, Burne-Jones, or John Roddam Spencer Stanhope - In the Golden Days by Strudwick, from 1907, invokes the stacked female figures which Burne-Jones included in his paintings, whi...