Last night I had an advance view of ‘Anthony Lawrence: A Practical Guide To Aesthetics‘, an exhibition of the work of post-modern artist Anthony Lawrence at St John’s, Waterloo. See my Artlyst Art Diary for October for more on the exhibition and my review of last year's retrospective for more on Anthony Lawrence.
Coinciding with Frieze week, the exhibition shows some of Lawrence’s major works from his series of grand themes, such as Dante, Tannhäuser, and the Damned Demoiselles, as well as portraits and several of his religious and spiritual paintings. Lawrence worked intensively over five decades, creating a vast collection of work that is now being made public.
‘A Practical Guide to Aesthetics’ follows a critically acclaimed 2025 retrospective at Nick and Caroline de Rothschild’s Palais des Vaches Gallery in the New Forest, which was the first to show the full spectrum of Lawrence’s career. Forbes described the work as blending “classical technique, pop-cultural wit, and poetic imagination. Playful portraits, surreal landscapes and painterly still lifes bring overdue recognition to a hidden genius of British art”. Many of the works in that show had not been seen before then; this exhibition at St John’s will bring to light several more of Lawrence’s paintings, including some from the newly restored ‘A Practical Guide to Aesthetics’ series from the early 1990s.
Lawrence worked throughout his life on portrait commissions; his works included sitters such as John Wayne, Yehudi Menuhin, Ian McKellen, and Rt Rev Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, among others. Included in this show are Lawrence’s paintings of Francis Bacon and Seamus Heaney, with whom he became friends.
Fascinated by religion, Lawrence spoke of the “constant fight between the sacred and the secular” and made many works relating to religion and spirituality. His own ‘The Stations of the Cross’ was inspired by the restoration of the display of religious imagery in the Byzantine Empire; these colourful and dramatic paintings show his commitment to technique, stressing the importance of post-modern framing. In my review of the 2025 retrospective for The Church Times, I said, “While constantly evolving through styles and series as a great ‘knowing’ Post-Modernist, Lawrence sought, through his blend of tradition and invention, history and innovation, to hint at how reconciliation might be found in the great contest of social humanity.”
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