National Trust Delaval Hall Emerging Artist of the Year
Proposal:
Inspired by old masters' paintings I will be creating several large tableau style, metallic photographic prints (living pictures) in a fine art style. The images will depict scenes from the hall's rich history of mischief and macabre and will be in a painterly style. The image will contain several stories which are connected.
The series of images will mainly contain marginalised people, rather than models, similar to the work of the likes of Caravaggio and other painters from the15th century and is inspired by the work of English painter William Hogarth.
The sample image created above shows sir Francis Blake Delaval, tricking an older lady who he thought to be rich, into marrying him so that he could pay off his debts. Sir Francis is proposing to the woman who is holding an empty purse behind her back, whilst his creditor is taking the deeds for the house from his back pocket. The sitters used are local people rather than models and include people with learning disabilities, limb differences and health conditions, alongside a race horse that retired due to injury and 2 rescue dogs.
Alongside the images will run a moving image of the images as they are being created, as if they were paintings, to show the arduous task the sitter had whilst being painted, it will be interesting to see how much movement these images will contain as they may feature some children and animals. The moving image will contain some form of sounds, perhaps music from the time of the story and/or a narrator telling the story or reading from one of the many letters from the archives. I have produced a sample of this which can be accessed via a QR code.
With enormous thanks to:
Josh & his wig
Lisa & Pat
Laura & Shelley
Patch & Billy
Erik & Paul
Anonymous WoodPigeon
The very patient and accommodating Staff at Delaval Hall
This is a
prototype of a series of images/moving images that I will produce if I am successful in this award. The current moving image was captured on my iPhone as part of my idea development and is by no means perfect. The project was very ambitious and helped me to asertain how it will work going forward.
Research and Inspiration
With Thanks to the very knowledgeable Elspeth Gould and to the Northumberland Archives for helping me with some research into the delaval family archives.
Available to see at the National gallery in London or here:
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/william-hogarth-marriage-a-la-mode-2-the-tete-a-tete
(Accessed 04.04.2024)
