New territory, old friends

At Leeds Art Gallery today. I came looking for Stanley Spencer - four paintings, three of them on the staircase which made viewing and note taking interesting. Also the unexpected opportunity to renew aquaintance with the Neo Romantics Keith Vaughan, Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash. 

Current displays have been organised to show how the Great War affected art, especially landscape painting. Nevinson and the Yorkshire painter Roberts were significant here. I'm reminded that my sabbatical studies frequently found war a part of the story of individual paintings.

While travelling this week Radio Four has been airing 'Month of Madness', a programme tracing the events of July 1914 that led to the outbreak of war in Europe. Wars and rumours of wars and now, 100 years on, we still struggle to make sense of it all.