Norman Rockwell

Though Norman Rockwell relied heavily on photographs to create his artworks he was loath to take them himself, instead employing a photographer and taking on the role of cinematographer. See more of the photographs behind the artist's famous works here.

Marriage Counselor, 1963

Monday Portrait: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

Image c/o Jack Shainman Gallery

One of 2013 Turner Prize nominee Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's wonderful imaginary portraits. See more of her work here.

Monday Portrait: Ken Currie

Continuing a slightly morbid run of Monday Portraits, this week is 'Unfamiliar Reflection', 2002 by Ken Currie. The reflection brings to mind Francis Bacon's 1955 work 'Study for a Portrait II (after the Life Mask of William Blake)'.

For those in Edinburgh, Currie's latest exhibition 'New Works' opens this weekend at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Monday Portrait: The Cholmondeley Ladies, Artist unknown

c.1600-1600, Artist unknown. Part of the Tate Britain collection, currently on show. If you haven't been recently we highly recommend a visit as their main galleries have been rehung.

The faintly visible gold script at the bottom of the painting says: 'Two Ladies of the Cholmondeley Family, Who were born the same day, Married the same day, And brought to Bed the same day"

Flaming June

Can you work out the link between Flaming June and Spandau Ballet's 'Gold' video?

Monday Portrait: Maggi Hambling 'Victim I'

 

'Victim I', 2013, Maggi Hambling. (Photo Douglas Atfield)

Monarch of the Glen

Kit: Last weekend I went to  a viewing of Wes Anderson's film, Moonrise Kingdom, which was full of period detail, pretty much in sync with my own childhood. In the scoutmaster's (Ed Norton) tent hangs a painting of a stag in the wilderness.
There was always a copy of the same painting in my grandfather's house. It has a hole which we decided was the gunshot that killed the stag so he could be put in a painting. My grandfather's came with him from Maine and was probably painted between 1860-1880. It is a terrible, but charming copy. I was curious to find the original that had spawned an apparent Victorian repro business and dropped the image into google image search. Up popped the Landseer original, whose fate appears to be to have been made for appropriation. It was wonderful to discover the Peter Blake take on it, then Peter Saville's version of Blake's version of Landseer's original.
I have my Monarch close to me in my London studio. As an epilogue, this morning I walked past one of my favourite buildings on Giltspur Street, just near St Barts. Over the door is a huge stag's head, very similar to the Landseer… I had never realised why that building gave me so much pleasure until now- a cross Atlantic palimpsest of the best kind.

Original: Monarch of the Glen 1851, Edwin Landseer

Giltspur Street stag