Dutch master Johannes Vermeer was fascinated by fabric, and it informed the nature of his art on multiple levels. This significant connection to fabric began early in Vermeer’s childhood, through family connections to textiles, and it stayed with him for life. He spent his entire career exploring the way its draped, shimmering surface could add…
All posts by Rosie Lesso
Husband-and-wife team Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch are the charismatic, larger-than-life founders of Roman and Williams, an American interiors and architecture firm making waves throughout the contemporary design world. Founded in 2002, their company took the names ‘Roman and Williams’ from their maternal grandfathers, a move that would set the stage for their design ethos,…
Contemporary Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugito draws us deep into his world of meditative calm, where softly diffused gray light like that of GRAY CASHMERE Linen expands across vast areas of empty space. Sugito made his name in the 1990s as a leader in the Tokyo-pop movement alongside Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara, but his brand…
Fabric has played a vitally significant role in the lives of countless artists, acting as a source of inspiration, comfort and self-expression. In this new series, we will look at the world’s finest artists who built an intimate relationship with fabric – one brought about by family history, travel or personal interest – that would…
The great Dutch-American Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning made paintings as acts of performance, smearing, slapping and swiping great slabs and wedges of paint onto his thickly impastoed surfaces, before scraping them back and starting again. Indulgent, creamy streaks of off-white like that of Parchment Linen were a defining feature, suggesting the flickering movement of…
American painter Robert Ryman made many of his quiet, introspective paintings on biscuit toned backdrops, coloured with the same warm, comforting neutral of NEW SAFARI Linen. He interrupted these backgrounds with jarringly fresh shades of arctic white, sometimes skidding like an accident across the picture plane, other times neatly ordered into fenced off squares. A…
British-American painter Cecily Brown weaves Purple Sage Linen’s deep lavender shade into her expressionist canvases, letting it form shadowy rivulets of uneasy, hedonistic darkness. Brown made her name in New York in the late 1990s, painting tangled bodies lavishing in paradisiacal gardens with fleshy passages of paint in rich, indulgent jewel tones. Process, she explains…
French painter Albert Gleizes had a particular knack for painting radiant, golden tones alike to CURRY Linen, investing his paintings with a humane and deeply comforting warmth. A leader in the school of French Cubism alongside Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Gleizes pioneered new ways of seeing the world, painting with multiple perspectives and fragmented…
Peter Lanyon’s turbulent paintings capture the sublime rough and tumble of the English coastline, with free, energised brushstrokes and luminous shades of grey alike to QUARTZ Linen. A leading member of the St Ives School in Cornwall, Lanyon blended the style of Abstract Expressionism with the majestic wonder of the Cornish landscape, painting craggy rock…
Andrew Wyeth’s paintings are an ode to the barren, melancholic wonder of the American outback, celebrating its long, parched grass and creaky buildings stained yellow in the sun. The golden glow of APPLE CINNAMON Linen tinged Wyeth’s paintings with the tart sweetness of homemade apple juice, infusing a comforting warmth into his otherwise lonely, abandoned…
Henri Matisse had an enduring obsession with BRIGHT COBALT’s distinctive shade of blue, observing with fascination how it could ignite his paintings, prints and paper cut-outs with the luminescence of the sea and sky. Throughout his long and prolific career Matisse shifted through an array of adventurous styles and subjects, but a burning passion for…
Askeli Gallen-Kallela painted his native Finland as a magical watery paradise, where icy lakes, bruised skies and mounds of snow are dappled with streaks of enigmatic blue shadow. The blue-tinged shade of GREY MIST Linen was one he would return to over and over to convey these darkening areas of cast shadow, invoking the ancient,…
Swiss Symbolist painter Ferdinand Hodler’s art is a homage to the wonders of the Swiss landscape, conveying jagged, snow-peaked mountains and glossy mirrored lakes with flat panels of vivid, jewel-like colour. The indigo of NIGHTSHADOW BLUE Linen was his favourite colour for conveying depth and shadow, which he brought in to describe shadowy mountain ranges…
French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage was one of the greatest Naturalists of his generation, painting the French countryside with muted, earthy shades of moss green alongside soft tones of beige, brown and peach. OLIVE Linen’s warm, rustic shade of dark green was a favourite in his limited colour palette, lending his canvases a relatable down-earth-quality that…
Deep earthy colours like that of BROWN SUGAR Linen were a defining feature of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Baroque paintings, investing into them a quietly brewing mystery and intrigue. Gentileschi was the most celebrated female painter of 17th century, working throughout Europe for a series of high-profile clients in an era when few artistic opportunities were available…
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