Yesterday, after breakfast at Kafe Blok across the road, I visited the reopened Alfred East Gallery in Kettering.
The Faces and Places exhibition put on for its reopening fills both rooms of the gallery. One is largely devoted to the work of Alfred East and the other to that of another Kettering artist, Thomas Cooper Gotch.
East had a high reputation at his death in 1913, but is not well known today. This video clip from the BBC's Antiques Roadshow gives a fair summation of his strengths and weaknesses as a painter.
Gotch is more interesting to the modern eye, particularly his Death the Bride, which is nearest the camera in the photograph below. The black veil and poppies make it dark and portentous, yet the young woman looks a minx and is giving the onlooker a casual wave.
Kettering did a great thing in building its own art gallery. East gave dozens of his paintings to the town on condition that it was there to display them.
Its collection now reaches far beyond East and Gotch, and I shall be back to see what follows Faces and Places.
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