The Wallace Collection announces an exhibition of 25 new paintings by Damien Hirst including two triptychs, being shown in the UK for the first time. ‘The Blue Paintings’ marks the artist’s return to the solitary practice of painting. Created between 2006 and 2008, these paintings represent a radical departure from the artist’s established working practice.
Since the start of his career, Hirst has challenged the boundaries of art and what it means to be an artist. ‘The Blue Paintings’ bear witness to a bold new direction in his work; a series of paintings that, in the artist’s words are “deeply connected to the past.” Their exhibition at the Wallace Collection, arguably the most intimate national museum in the world, is significant. In contrast to the white walls of a contemporary gallery, Hirst has opted to present these works in a classical context, surrounded by Old Master paintings in the great European tradition at the Wallace Collection.
In Floating Skull (2006), The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth (2008) and Men Shall Know Nothing (2008) Hirst confronts the darkness that lies at the heart of human nature and experience. His ethereal treatment of the memento mori references centuries of art where ‘intimations of mortality’ are represented by the human skull and symbols of the passage of time such as in Poussin’s A Dance to the Music of Time, part of the Wallace Collection.
Very few living artists have exhibited at The Wallace Collection. Hirst joins a select group who have been privileged enough to have shown their work at the museum within their own lifetimes, most famously Lucian Freud in 2004. Hirst will exhibit his paintings in the upper galleries leading on to the Great Gallery
The Wallace Collection is a national museum which displays the wonderful works of art collected in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by the first four Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the son of the 4th Marquess. It was bequeathed to the British nation by Sir Richard’s widow, Lady Wallace, in 1897.
Displayed at Hertford House, the main London townhouse of its former owners, the Wallace Collection presents its outstanding collections in a sumptuous but approachable manner which is an essential part of its charm. The Wallace Collection’s archives also contain documents relating to the Founders and the history of the museum. Visitors may see both these collections on request.
It is probably best known for its paintings by artists such as Titian, Rembrandt, Hals (The Laughing Cavalier) and Velázquez and for its superb collections of eighteenth-century French paintings, porcelain, furniture and gold boxes, probably the best to be found anywhere outside France.
www.wallacecollection.org
Image: Damien Hirst, Skull with Ashtray and Lemon, 2006/20071020 x 764 mm, oil on canvas. Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst. All rights reserved, DACS 2009. Courtesy Damien Hirst and The Wallace Collection
