You may have noticed that it's the 250th anniversary of John Constable's birth this year, while JMW Turner was born 250 years ago last year and Thomas Gainsborough's 300th birthday falls in 2027. Put them all together and you get Gainsborough, Turner and Constable: Inventing Landscape at Gainsborough's House in Sudbury, Suffolk. This show, running from April 25 to October 11, explores the emergence of English landscape painting through three of its greatest exponents, and it features mostly rarely seen works from private collections -- including Turner's Abergavenny Bridge , which hasn't been on public display since 1799! Meanwhile, the show that's just been on at Gainsborough's House -- Love & Landscape: Stanley Spencer in Suffolk -- transfers to the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Berkshire, starting on April 4. On till November 1, the exhibition explores the pivotal role the time Spencer spent in Suffolk had on his career. You can read he...
As London's Courtauld Gallery closes for a makeover , some of its highlights are making the short trip up the Strand for a show at the National Gallery. Courtauld Impressionists , which runs from September 17 to January 20, brings together works purchased in the 1920s by the industrialist Samuel Courtauld for his own collection as well as Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings he helped acquire for the National Gallery. Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat and Bonnard are represented and tickets are a modestly priced £7.50. There are two new exhibitions at the Royal Academy. The first traces the career of Renzo Piano , architect of the Shard, and it's on from September 15 to January 20. The second, starting September 29 and running until December 10, looks at the indigenous art of Oceania , marking the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific. Huge canoes and stunning god images are promised among the 200 artefacts. Dulwich...