I am delighted to be the 2014 recipient of the Richard Ford Award. Established in 1976, the award provides figurative artists with the opportunity to travel to Spain for the purpose of studying paintings, particularly those in the Prado Museum in Madrid. From the start of September I will be based in Madrid, spending just over two months of practice-based research, working primarily in the Prado but also in two other outstanding museums, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, which are both within a ten-minute walk of the Prado.
The Prado Museum, Madrid
The Prado Museum houses one of the world’s finest collections of European Art and unquestionably the best single collection of Spanish Art. Many masterpieces are held in its collection: Las Meninas by Velázquez, a Self-portrait by Dürer, The Holy Family by Rafael and The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronimous Bosch.
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Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez (1656)
The Museo del Prado has an interesting collection of Prints and Drawings representative of various schools from the 15th to the 19th centuries. It is made up of a core group originally from the Spanish Royal Collection, to which more than 3,000 works from the Pedro Fernández Durán Bequest, among others, were subsequently added. As a result, the Drawing Collection now numbers over 8,200 works. The Spanish School is the best represented and includes more than 500 works by Goya of which the most notable are The Sanlúcar Album, The Madrid Album, The Disasters of War, The Tauromaquia and The Proverbs, which show the artist’s stylistic evolution.
From the series La Tauromaquia by Goya
Drawings from other schools, such as the Flemish, French, Italian and German, comprise a smaller group with significant works by Rubens, Jordanes, Teniers, Corneille Blanchard and Mengs. There are also two drawings by Michelangelo and prints by Anthony van Dyck, Annibale Carracci, Rembrandt and Giambattista Tiepolo.
