Shirley Hughes - Alfie's Choice

In her youth, Shirley Hughes found Walker Art Gallery a great source of inspiration and liked to look at the many pictures. She has selected some of her favourite paintings as part of a trail around the gallery called 'Alfie's Choice' - here are just a few of the pictures and her thoughts about them.

Blackberry Gathering by Elizabeth Adela Forbes [Ne Armstrong]1912

Elizabeth Forbes, like her husband Stanhope Forbes, painted in Cornwall. This was at a time when women were only recently being admitted to art training and the art school at Newlyn produced some excellent female painters. Elizabeth liked to paint landscapes and children. You can almost smell the sea air in this bold composition with the three figures mounting the hill against a background of huge blown clouds and a sweep of coastline below.

Outings in the country and picnics have always been a favourite subject for artists. Would you like to draw or paint one?

Woman Ironing by Edgar Degas 1890

Degas loved to draw people in movement. He made many paintings of dancers, jockeys, bathers and people at work. The laundress ironing in this picture is seen in profile against a warm honeyed light. The whole concentration is upon her perfectly captured gesture over the ironing board. The form of her face and arms is so boldly simplified that they appear to have been put down in a few brush strokes, but all the essentials of her are there; the pressure of her hand, her face intent upon her task.

When I try to draw someone in action from memory I sometimes act the movement myself in front of a mirror. Would you like to try drawing a figure in movement, running, dancing, fighting or kicking a ball? The side view is usually the easiest one to draw!

Bathers, Dieppe by Walter Richard Sickert 1902

Sickert painted in the style we call 'Impressionism' which aimed to catch a fleeting moment in time. More than ever before, artists were sharing the physical act of painting with the viewer, through the excitement of brush strokes on canvas. There is no horizon in this picture only the brisk waves and the quaintly costumed bathers, seen from above, wading in. They are scattered across the canvas with the random immediacy of a snapshot. When Sickert painted it Impressionism was already giving way to modern, non-realistic styles of art.

Have you tried to paint the sea? It is not always blue, often a mixture of greens, greys, yellows, browns and white. It reflects the colour of the sky. Sometimes you can't see where the sea stops and the sky begins, sometimes the horizon is clear.

The exhibition is sponsored by Random House Children's Books [opens new window]

© National Museums Liverpool and Shirley Hughes, 2003