e-Newsletter
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER - Keep up-to-date with exhibitions, news and events.
Exhibitions in 2019
Sep 27-29 2019
St Saviours Hall, Plymouth
A Dance to the Music of Time
“Dying while young is a boon in old age.” Yiddish proverb.
When, in 1979, artist Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002) set out to paint portraits of as many 100 year old Plymothians as he could find, the most recent census told him that Britain’s population of 100 year olds had grown to nearly 2,500, a ten-fold increase since the coronation of the Queen in 1952. But given Plymouth’s share of the UK population, he knew was only likely to find 9 or 10 such sitters locally. In the end, of the fifty portraits he painted, just three were of centenarians. He contacted most of the elderly subjects of the paintings via Elspeth Sitters House, at that time a day centre for Age Concern (now ageUK), which was a two minute walk from his Barbican studio. In 1982, Lenkiewicz created a mural at Elspeth Sitters House. Over 10 metres wide, it was painted in a vibrant style with vivid colours, based on Poussin’s famous painting ‘A Dance to the Music... Read more