Family portraits – Cambridge Festival

Family Portraits by Ted Coney, at 20 Woollards Lane, Great Shelford, until July 28, 11am – 4pm, reviewed by Marion Leeper.

For his exhibition of family portraits in aid of the Save the Children Fund, Ted Coney has opened his fascinating Shelford home to the public.

This is appropriate, since his works are intensely personal and quirky pictures (he is apt to call them “celebrations”) of his family and home life. He records christenings, holidays, relations: one painting is a moving memorial to a dead baby.

The exhibition includes preliminary sketches and even a home movie to help explain the allusions, though they make one feel even more of an intruder into the artist’s private world.