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Rembrandt & van Hoogstraten: The Art of Illusion

It takes a split second these days to create an image, and how many millions are recorded daily on mobile phones, possibly never to be looked at again? You can see it all happening in the palatial surroundings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, definitely one of those tick-off destinations on many travellers' bucket lists, where those in search of instant pictorial satisfaction throng the imposing statue-lined staircase for a selfie or pout for a photo in the café under the spectacular cupola. But we're not in Vienna for a quick fix, we're at the KHM to admire something more enduring in the shape of art produced almost 500 years ago by Rembrandt and his pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten that was intended to mislead your eyes into seeing the real in the unreal. Artistic deception is the story at the centre of  Rembrandt--Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion , one of the most engrossing and best-staged exhibitions we've seen this year. And, somewhat surprisingly, a show wi...
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Opening in April

If you enjoyed Claude Monet's views of Westminster in Impressionists in London at Tate Britain, your next destination is clear: Monet and Architecture just up the road at the National Gallery from April 9 to July 29. It's a new way of seeing Monet's work, the National says: the first exhibition looking at the great Impressionist's career through the buildings he painted, with more than 75 pictures together for the very first time.
There's another blockbuster of a French-themed show coming at the British Museum: Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece opens on April 26 and can be seen until July 29. Rodin was captivated by the Parthenon sculptures when he saw them in 1881, and 100 years after his death, his work including The Thinker and The Kiss can be seen alongside them in a new light, the museum says.

It's the season to get into the garden. So it's the perfect time to be inspired by the paintings of Cedric Morris, not only a botanist who cultivated 90 new irises but also the teacher of Lucian Freud. Two venues in London celebrate this rather forgotten painter simultaneously in Artist Plantsman at the Garden Museum and Beyond the Garden Wall, showing his landscapes, at Philip Mould in Pall Mall. Both run from April 18 to July 22.
But there's no getting away from Monet. A new show at the Orangerie in Paris looks at the links between his late work and Abstract Expressionism in the US. The Water Lilies: American Abstract Painting and the Last Monet starts on April 13 and is on until August 20.

Images

Claude Monet, The Doge's Palace (Le Palais ducal), 1908. (c) Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, Gift of A. Augustus Healy
Sir Cedric Morris, May Flowering Irises No. 2, 1935. (c) Philip Mould & Company, Courtesy the Cedric Morris Estate

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