Ian Robertson – Hispanophile and Richard Ford Scholar

Ian Robertson, who has died aged 92, embarked on a lifetime’s scholarship on Spain and a prodigious production of travel guides inspired by an unlikely combination of the Duke of Wellington’s campaigns in the Peninsular War and Richard Ford’s accounts of his Spanish journeys. He became a leading authority on both.

His Spanish interests led to a commission to write the Blue Guide to Spain. A succession of further Blue Guides followed on France, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Austria and Switzerland, but his work on Spain, and especially Ford, remained his abiding passion and his crowning achievement.

In addition to several titles on Wellington’s campaigns, Robertson’s seminal work was the authoritative Los Curiosos Impertinentes about English travellers in Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries, which was published in Spanish in Madrid in 1977. Richard Ford, a major biography, was published in London in 2004. Along the way, he edited Ford’s Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain and Gatherings from Spain.

Richard Ford both inspired and informed him. “Time has not dimmed the scintillating perspicacity of Ford’s observations,” Robertson wrote.

Robertson’s own observations were equally masterful – combining waspish wit, artistic detail and encyclopedic knowledge – and even today it is a challenge to find a cloister or remote chapel that he had not visited and written about in his Blue Guide. The same is broadly true of all of his guides.

Robertson died in hospital from heart failure on 7 December 2020 in Arles which had been his home for the last 20 years.

Written by Gail Turner

ONLINE SEMINAR TONIGHT: The Cloister of Segovia Cathedral: Dislocation, Inheritance and Critique, 6-7:30 pm

Cloister door interior, image: https://www.sahgb.org.uk/whatson/seminar1

In tonight’s talk, Costanza Beltrami explores the long history of the cloister of Segovia cathedral. Shifting the analysis from the cloister’s construction to its conception and relocation, she will discuss such issues as collaboration, competition and conservation.

Please click here for more information and to register.

ARTES and the Zurbarán Centre at Durham University present a 12-week online seminar series, including the annual Glendinning Lecture

We are very pleased to announce that the Zurbarán Centre has teamed up with ARTES Iberian & Latin American Visual Culture Group to organise an exciting 12-week online Research Seminar Series starting on 13 January and running through to 31 March 2021. It provides a forum for engaging with the latest research by national and international scholars who specialise in Iberian and Latin American art and visual culture. The topics are rich and diverse, ranging from Nasrid architecture to twentieth-century art writing on Afro-Brazilian art.

The series also incorporates the prestigious annual Glendinning Lecture in honour of the eminent Hispanist Nigel Glendinning, organised by ARTES with the Instituto Cervantes. The lecture will be given by Professor Jesús Escobar (Northwestern University, Chicago), who will be speaking on ‘All Roads Lead to the Plaza de Palacio: Architecture and Ceremony in Habsburg Madrid’ (17 March).

Furthermore a special seminar (3 March) will be devoted to the collection of the new Spanish Gallery, due to open in Bishop Auckland in the summer of 2021. The series is free and open to anyone interested in the visual arts.

Please email the Zurbarán Centre (Zurbaran.centre@durham.ac.uk) to register and to receive a zoom link. Please note registration closes 24 hours before the seminar.closes 24 hours in advance of each seminar. Click here for

Text from the Zurbarán Centre newsletter and website

María del Carmen Garrido Pérez, former Prado conservator, 1947-2020

María del Carmen Garrido Pérez was one of Spain’s leading conservators who specialised in the technical research and conservation of Spanish paintings from the 15th through to the 20th century. Having studied Art History at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where she was awarded her doctorate in 1979 with a thesis on the physical and chemical analysis of Hispano-Flemish paintings of the Renaissance, she went on to work from 1980 until 2015 at the Prado Museum’s Technical Documentation Office, which she headed from 1982. The result of her research and technical studies are the numerous books, articles and monographs, including: a technical study of Picasso’s Guernica (1981, in collaboration with María José Cabrera), and one of many technical publications on Velazquez in 1999. Over the years she also contributed to and collaborated with others in many exhibitions and participated in many associated conferences. In 2006 she collaborated with Gabriele Finaldi (now Director of the National Gallery in London) in the Prado’s exhibition El trazo oculto. Underlying drawings in 15th and 16th century paintings.

Text courtesy of Xanthe Brooke


Reflections on the ARTES visit to ‘Artemisia’ at the National Gallery (by Susan Wilson)

We waited in Trafalgar Sq last Wednesday to go in at 9:30 for an ARTES private viewing of Artemisia. A cold grey London Morning with people out, hurrying through the handsome classical space, St Martins-in the Fields looking austere and fine. A grey day in winter suits the square.

Inside, empty rooms and the chance to take time to see the paintings. We all felt over-excited to be back in the National Gallery and were thankful to Letitzia Treves, the exhibition curator, and Lucy Chiswell, her assistant, for making the visit possible, as it was cancelled in November. We locked down, the very next day.

There was good discussion amongst the members, wide-ranging conversation, and reunions among friends after being isolated. Muffly chats in masks.

I am fond of the loan from Pozzuoli -St Januarius being taken to the coliseum in
Pozzuoli to be martyred with a huge wolf snarling, at his side, and giant bears/lions who look a bit sweet, sinking in homage at his feet, tamed by his presence, having come in to attack. It is for me, as a painter, a good example of how a commission is pieced together. Had Artemisia seen a lion? It is an excellent loan, tender, and compelling. A painting we mightn’t have seen, no matter how thoroughly we visit churches in the Bay of Naples.

Finest for me was Susanna and the Elders from Pommersfelden (detail included below). It is worth the visit alone, as is The Right Hand of Artemisia Gentileschi holding a Brush, a soft black and red chalk drawing on loan from the Prints and Drawings department of the the British Museum.

detail of ‘Susannah and the Elders’ (1610, Kunstsammlungen Graf von Schönborn, Pommersfelden), photographed by Susan Wilson

We do Plan more visits for the future!
Susan Wilson, ARTES

Zurbarán Doctoral Scholarship for the Study of Spanish Art, Durham University

The Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art at Durham University invites applications for a doctoral scholarship in Spanish art-historical studies, commencing in the academic year 2021/22. The scholarship has been created thanks to the generous support of the CEEH (Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica) in association with ARTES and The Auckland Project. It supports research projects on Spanish art from the Golden Age to around 1900, including the reception of Spanish art. The successful candidate will enjoy privileged access to the Spanish Gallery at The Auckland Project, which is due to open in 2021 in Bishop Auckland. The scholarship is tenable for three years full-time (or five years part-time). Details on the eligibility criteria and the application process can be found here. Interested candidates are advised to contact the Zurbarán Centre administration (Zurbaran.Centre@durham.ac.uk) at least four weeks in advance of the application deadline: 31 March 2021.