Inspired! – Guildhall Art Gallery, London

A review of Inspired!, a new exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery, London. A deep dive into their storied collection. No, literally storied. Read on to find out more.

Inspired!

Guildhall Art Gallery, it’s been a while! I was last here what feels like a long time ago, between 2020 lockdowns, to see The Enchanted Interior. I only spoke briefly about the Gallery’s permanent collection in that review, but it is now very much at the forefront in Inspired!

Inspired! is all about the story behind the artwork. The premise is to explore art inspired by literature, theatre and music. This seems to have been a particularly popular source of inspiration in 19th Century art, and the Guildhall Art Gallery have large holdings of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite paintings, so it is a match made in heaven. Aside from a couple of discrete loans from Keats House, I didn’t spot any other works that weren’t from their own collection.

An exhibition all about inspiration and hidden stories is always going to be quite a thoughtful one. Perhaps at the time the artworks were originally created the artist could have assumed their audience understood what they were referencing. But even then, this was an age of opening up art to more people through public galleries and museums, so not everyone came with the same prior knowledge. And with a century’s distance (or more), tastes have changed in some instances and once popular works have fallen out of favour. So we might recognise a scene from Shakespeare, for instance, but I for one have never heard of Sir Roger de Coverley from The Spectator. What I am saying here is if you want to properly take everything in, plan maybe an hour or so. There is quite a lot of reading to do in order to fully appreciate what is here and why.

O Muse! Invoking Inspiration

Something that I found interesting about Inspired! was the broad range of interpretations of the central premise. There are scenes from plays, poems and other forms of literature, of course (plenty of Shakespeare). Portraits of musicians, poets and actors. But there’s also a painting of a theatre on fire. Images of a bookseller, and a fashionable lady posing with a violin for effect. A work by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema of an ancient Greek/Spartan dance performed by armed warriors. And works that show the moment of creative genius (including one of those loans from Keats House of John Keats listening to a nightingale).

It helps to add variety and interest to what could otherwise be a rather narrow focus. It has also helped some unloved paintings back into the limelight – one portrait of Hungarian violinist Dr. Joseph Joachim is out of storage for the first time in decades!

One of the reasons that there is such a range of works for the Guildhall Art Gallery to choose from goes back to the amount of 19th Century art they hold. As far as the Victorian artistic establishment was concerned, art had to be about something. Hence why Whistler caused a scandal calling his paintings ‘Symphonies’ or ‘Nocturnes’. They were a moralising lot, the Victorians. So if you wanted to do a painting of children, even better if you could make it a teachable moment.

And a great way to do that is to link it to a poem by your friend Coventry Patmore, so everyone knows that the friendship of these sweet young children is going to end in doomed romance and tragedy. Or so at least Sir John Everett Millais thought. So you can see this artistic inspiration like a kind of shorthand – if the audience understand the reference, then they already know what sort of artwork this is. It reinforces a shared culture and outlook.

Final Thoughts On Inspired!

I rather enjoyed this small and self-contained exhibition. It’s an interesting lens through which to view the Guildhall Art Gallery collection. And shows off a range I hadn’t quite realised, going back to a few nice Old Masters. I also enjoyed learning about the tendencies of a few artists in more detail. Sir John Gilbert, for instance, mined unprecedented depths of literary inspiration. Or at least pops up very frequently in this exhibition. Upon further investigation, the fact that he was primarily an illustrator seems to be the cause for this connection to novels and other stories. And my favourite artist in Inspired! was Sir Matthew Smith. Again there is a good selection of his works on view, as he painted portraits of several actors, writers and other relevant figures. Including a young (and almost unrecognisable) Roald Dahl. I really enjoyed his colourful style, and was not surprised to learn he trained at the Slade School.

This isn’t a blockbuster, but it’s interesting and well-thought out. Inspiring, one might say? That could be pushing it: this is after all more about understanding inspiration than sparking it. But if you haven’t seen the Guildhall Art Gallery’s collection before then this is certainly a good way to do it.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Inspired! on until 11 September 2022