Journal - Blue & White Company

Wishing you a very Happy Christmas!

24th December

Thank you for all your custom this year – we look forward to returning in the New Year. With every good wish for Christmas and 2020. ?

Arts & Crafts, Burne-Jones, Industrial Revolution, Jane Burden, John Ruskin, Rossetti, William Morris

William Morris

24th September

As many young students return back to Oxford for the start of their new academic year – or arrive for the first time – we take a look at one artist who also took the same path… William Morris (1834-1896) is widely known as a multi talented figure who was not only a British textile...

Ballpoint pen, Biro, Bleu-Topique, blue, drawings, Faces, Johan van Mullem, Musee D'Art Classique de Mougins, Portraits, Rembrandt

Interview: Johan van Mullem

25th May

We had the pleasure to interview Belgian artist, Johan Van Mullem during his recent exhibition REVERENCE in London, following his successful exhibition Bleu-Topique at the Musee d’Art Classique de Mougins in France. Driven by emotion and human gesture, Johan van Mullem’s art captures traces of ethereal portraits which radiate through earthly tones. Every face is...

Celebrating Spring Blooms in Art

16th April

Flowers in their infinite varieties have been used to convey meaning in art for centuries. One of the most celebrated Dutch flower painters of the early 17th Century, Jan Breughel the Elder, was also one of the first artists to create still life paintings where flowers were the primary and sole subject. This trend for...

camera obscura, Cezanne, French Salon, Golden Ratio, Gustave Courbet, Leonardo da Vinci, modern art, Mont Sainte-Victoire and Chateau Noir, Rilke, Salon d'Automne, The Bathers, Theory of Colours

Cézanne’s Sixteen Shades of Blue

13th March

In 1907, the poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke travelled to France and visited the Salon d’Automne, an annual art exhibition in Paris, where he saw the work of Cézanne, a year after the death of the artist. Rilke wrote a series of letters to his wife, the sculptor Clara Westhoff, reflecting on the paintings of...

Canvas, Cirrus, Clouds, Cumulus, JMW Turner, John Constable, John Ruskin, Luke Howard, Royal Academy, Stratus, Tacita Dean, Tate, Thomas Gainsborough

Clouds, a Canvas in the Sky

19th January

Clouds are mysterious and ephemeral aerosols, each one a visible mass of condensed watery vapour. It was the amateur British meteorologist, Luke Howard, who created the name clouds that became universally adopted, so becoming known as the father of meteorology. His curiosity was born from daily musings on the different shapes of clouds he...

Christmas Message…

22nd December

We wish you a Merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years! ? From everyone on the Blue & White Company Team ? We will be back on Wednesday 3rd January 2019

The Sumptuous Marriage of Blue and Gold

5th December

For centuries blue and gold have been married together in art. It is difficult to ascertain why artists choose certain colours for their compositions, we can only infer their reasons. Examples of these two colours being used together can be traced back to the Byzantine period, which spanned several centuries between c.330-1453. Artworks in this...

Delftware Characters

15th November

In the mid sixteenth century the Eighty Years War took place, which had a big impact on art making and buying. When the citizens of the Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule under King Philip of Spain, taking back their independence, the result was the dissolution of the powerful Royal court. Protestantism became the dominant religion,...

botanical art, botanical artists, butterfly, David Attenborough, insects, Maria Sibylla Merian, printmaking, vellum, watercolour

A Love of Bugs: Maria Sibylla Merian, Botanical Artist and Pioneering Scientist

14th October

Maria Sibylla Merian was born in 1647 in Frankfurt, Germany. Her father Matthäus Merian (the Elder) was a well known engraver and publisher, who ran a flourishing publishing shop in Frankfurt. He died when Maria was three, but the shop continued to be run by other family members. There was a great deal of work going...