Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery holds a comprehensive collection of the Norwich School of Artists, including works by John Sell Cotman and John Crome. There is a selection of British, Dutch and Flemish landscape paintings and a number of Rembrandt etchings. The modern collection covers a range of different movements with notable works by David Bomberg, George Clausen, Gwen John, Walter Sickert and Alfred Sisley.
Ivan Seal’s paintings, at first, appear as depictions of objects taken directly from life, but are in fact drawn directly from the artist’s imagination. Seal’s handling of paint is masterly in some areas and impressionistic in others. The artist rarely divulges the subject for the paintings and is instead interested in what each viewer sees in their composition. The objects that the paintings depict exist between imagination and reality, clarity and confusion. The subject of still-life runs through the collection – from the relief drawings of Ben Nicholson to the prints of David Hockney – connecting with the historic collection of work by the 19th Century female still-life painters Emily & Eloise Stannard. The titles of Seal’s works are selected from a list of words created by a computer random word generator.
The painting plemploted fowidead and its accompanying drawing ors devurth at seven (swingerbuffetbit), made especially for this acquisition, will be on display at the Contemporary Art Society in Spring 2013 with works from Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery selected by the artist.