Frank Auerbach.The Charcoal Heads Startling and profound studies of the human head by one of Britain’s greatest artists. Courtauld Gallery, London, until 27 May
On the corner of Union Street and O’Meara Street in London, just south of the River Thames, stands a new white brick building with a great furrow gouged out of its facade, which enables people to continue to enjoy the view of a nearby church window. It is a rare considerate architectural WTF moment that has been stopping people in their tracks. Read the full story here.
A Vision of the Last Judgment by William Blake, 1808
William Blake is usually thought of as a prophet ignored in his lifetime, who created his illuminated books such as Visions of the Daughters of Albion and Jerusalem in obscure toil, ignored by the masses who preferred to laugh themselves sick at Gillray’s cartoons. But he did have some supporters, even in high society, as this unlikely treasure of a stately home shows. It was commissioned by Elizabeth Ilive, Countess of Egremont, and still hangs today in the Egremont family seat at Petworth, West Sussex, along with many paintings by Blake’s contemporary JMW Turner. It’s a homage to one of Blake’s heroes, Michelangelo. He fills the skies with blessed and doomed souls, delineated as bold physical forms, just like the towering bodies in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. But this is not just an artistic exercise. Blake really believed the end was nigh. Petworth House, West Sussex
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
