Go and see John Singer Sargent's paintings at Tate Britain and you come away with the impression of Sargent as an incredibly savvy stylist and promoter of his sitters -- the elite of London, Paris, New York and Boston. That's not to downplay his talent as an artist, because Sargent and Fashion shows he was brilliantly skilled, producing images with real staying power. You may not know much now about the people -- then famous -- he painted more than a century ago, but the pictures themselves still exert a fascination. Flamboyant -- that's perhaps the adjective to use when describing Sargent's most striking works, and flamboyant's definitely the word for Dr Pozzi at Home . Samuel-Jean Pozzi was a Parisian gynaecologist, with links to avant-garde art circles. You might expect a late 19th-century professional to be portrayed in a dark suit, but Sargent shows Dr Pozzi in a crimson dressing gown, wearing Turkish slippers. Standing in front of red curtain, it's as
Pan-European art superstar Angelica Kauffman comes to the Royal Academy in London on March 1. Feted in London, Venice and Rome in the late 18th century, and indeed a founding member of the RA, she was one of the few women to smash through the glass ceiling of the male-dominated art world. Known above all for her celebrity portraits, she also created history paintings with a female slant. Kauffman was originally due a retrospective at the RA in 2020 before Covid struck, and we saw that show at the Kunstpalast in Dusseldorf. Her story is a fascinating one though, to be frank, we found the history more intriguing than some of her art. You can see Kauffman at the RA until June 30. Two more women at Charleston in Lewes, but a very different tale. Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story from March 27 to September 8 relates how, over decades, the couple fooled the art world: The shy Hepworth created widely praised paintings that she signed not in her own name but that of h