Canadian High Commission
Trafalgar Square
London SW1Y 5BJ
Wednesday March 16 2016
Today’s return trip had been arranged to fit within two
galleries’ opening times so we met, as last week, on the steps of Canada
House’s Gallery which lies to the side and handily opposite the Sainsbury Wing
of the National Gallery. Before we were allowed in we had to go through airport
type security with a baggage control and security arch – no sniffer dogs or
patting down though.
The whole of Canada House has had a ‘makeover’
and apparently the public can have a
conducted tour to the rest of the premises via booked visits on a Friday
afternoon ; we were informed of this as someone, clearly Canadian, came through
the gallery to exit.
For us today this was the only access allowed, but with a
nice bench and a high quality exhibition guide we were very happy. The dozen or
so paintings were all of women by a woman – the featured artist Marion Wagschal
– although born in Trinidad her surname betrays the German refugee status of
her parents and a move to Canada in 1951
validates the exhibition here and she has very much been claimed as a Canadian
feminist artist.
The room has six large canvases and a group of six smaller
ones – these are portrait heads while the larger ones are full length. The only
picture which left us luke warm was that entitled ‘Tales of the Schwarzwald as
told by my Mother’: it looked dream-like and as in many dreams rather jumbled
and hard to interpret. (Where’s Freud when you need him? In Hampstead.) The
portraits are unflinching but not unkind and show real rather than idealised
subjects, mainly women – in fact it was almost as though we recognised them as
‘old friends’... The catalogue notes
compare her to both Lucien Freud and james Ensor and this seemed very
valid. Jo liked the ‘Song for a dead
Coyote’ whereas I rated both ‘Sleep’ and ‘Death’ (clearly the same person – her
mother?) and the commanding presence of the subject in ‘Woman with Still Life’
.
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