Christmas crackers
Andrew Lambirth solves your present problems in art galleries around London Elizabethan sweetmeat course, in the Geffiye Museum's Christmas Past exhibition Abbott & Holder, picture dealers since 1936 and renowned for their witty 'Lists' of works for sale, occupy commodious premis- es hard by the British Museum. They have more than 1,000 works on display at any one time, but for their Christmas show (until 23 December) some 500 items have been specially selected within a price range of £15 to £250. The idea is to make good art readily affordable, and to prove that you don't have to be wealthy to collect. So, you can buy an 1825 engraving of South- wark Bridge after de Wint for £15, or charmingly atmospheric though anonymous watercolours for as little as £45.
In addition to the splendid stock on the walls, the Christmas show is largely unframed (A&H will undertake framing before 14 December), though at the top end of the range you might choose one of the beautiful framed botanical studies in watercolour and gouache on vellum by the 18th-century Conyers sisters. An etching of a Mexican pedlar by Whistler's disciple Mortimer Menpes would cost you £65, the same as a figure study in pencil by Patricia Watercolour by Rudolph Haidinger, c.1810, at Abbott & Holder Preece, the woman who led Stanley Spencer such a merry dance. Amateur topographical views of considerable quirky interest jostle with a Jock McFadyen aquatint of a graffi- tied wall at £125. Harlech Bay in water- colour by Roland Pitchforth is £300. A chalk cartoon for Punch by George Belcher (1875-1947) costs £75, a humorous pen and ink drawing by Nicolas Bentley a mere £40. The variety and quality is astonishing: easy to spend an afternoon browsing for the bargain you're bound to find.
A leaf from a sketchbook by Myles Bir- ket Foster, though admittedly only a very slight pencil drawing, will cost you £20 at Abbott & Holder. At Richard Green (39 Dover Street W1, until 23 December), two of the best pictures are by Birket Foster, a couple of watercolours, but priced at £7,000 and £12,000. Mr Green's clientele obviously go for marine paintings and cosy narratives: kittens at play, cart-horses under glassy skies, or a flower-arranging Cardinal. Some of these pictures (all less than £25,000) revel in the most sickly senti- mentality, others display a daunting, almost misplaced tedmical virtuosity. Cecil Kennedy (born 1905), for instance, paints exquisite vases of flowers as if the luxuriant blooms were made of porcelain.
Classics of a more modern stamp are at Crane Kalman (10 December-31 January): a rare Lowry commission from 1956 showing a ffim crew on location, an early experiment in abstraction by Ben Nicholson, a wild beachscape by Milton Avery, a demurely clothed girl by Jules Pascin. There's a cat on a piano by Ruskin Spear, or an orange Calder sun painting with streaking balloons of black and blue and red, a crescent moon and a star. For contrast, animal prints by Mary Newcombe, geometric watercolours by Jenny Franklin and vigorous still-lies by the Israeli Ra'anan Levy. Prices on applica- tion. At the Bloomsbury Workshop (until 21 December) you can pick up a Roger Fry pencil drawing for £550, a little Duncan Grant oil-on-board landscape for £800, or a substantial Vanessa Bell still-life, 'Sweet Peas in a Vase' for £6,500. lovely bright abstract screenprints by Patrick Heron sell for £475 each. A Kossoff etching of a nude in a chair is £450, a fine Eric Gill wood engraving of a woman grow- ing out of a tree holding an apple in her left hand is £330, an Elizabeth Blackadder etching of an orchid is £360. You can buy a decorative design by Matisse for just £110, a lithograph from an edition of 1,200. There are more expensive things by Hock- ney and Braque (£3,000-5,000), and a changing show including works by Frink, Moore, Piper, Scott and Hoyland. (Wednesdays and weekends until 22 December; ring 0171-587 0747 for details.) Although Christmas is a season of gen- erosity and gift-giving (to balance all the guzzling and swilling), it is not simply a commercial or acquisitive affair. After all, it's the high point of the year for time-hon- oured traditions, and where better to be reminded of the past than at the 18th-cen- tury almshouses which comprise the Geffrye Museum in ICingsland Road, London E2.
It's a museum of the domestic English interior from 1600 to the 1950s, and every year the Christmas display records how the festival was celebrated in different epochs. Certain things went in and out of fashion, such as the taste for evergreen decoration, and this becomes increasingly evident as the visitor moves through the 11 period rooms of the collection. Our modern Christmas, for instance, relies heavily upon Victorian customs and rituals, including the prominence of the Christmas Tree, plum pudding and the exchange of cards.
The Yule log and fancy sweetmeats much in evidence in the 17th century later gave place to fruit and oysters, as the swags of holly were followed by rosemary and bay. By the 1740s, Christmas was in decline, too barbaric and old-fashioned for the beau monde. In the room display for that period, a servant celebrates alone in the town house, its owners in the country. Traditions resurfaced in the 19th century with Twelfth Night revels. Coming into the present century, with stockings hung on the chimney for presents and the advent of tin- sel, one of the funniest details is the 1950s table decoration: a tree of cocktail sticks stuck with marshmallows, Bing Crosby crooning in the background. (By contrast on 17 December there will be an evening of Victorian a cappella music performed by candlelight in the library at 8 p.m.) For the aficionado of the more contempo- rary scene, there's the Christmas Tree in the rotunda of the Tate Gallery. Every year for the last eight years an artist has been com- missioned to decorate a tree sponsored by the Patrons of New Art. Artists as diverse as Craigie Aitchison, Shirazeh Houshiary and Cornelia Parker have all taken part, with results ranging from an upturned fir with gilded roots, to a menagerie, a manger and attendant budgies.
This year, Julian Opie (born 1958) is constructing a whole forest of trees. They are made from two intersecting planes of wood with serrated outlines, and look a bit like toys: a model forest, no less, exploring Opie's fascination with the relationship between real and artificial. On view from 11 December until 2 January.
'Vineyards, Cortivallo', 1923, by Ben Nicholson at the Crane Kalman Gallery
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