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...
It's the 500th anniversary this year of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, and to mark the occasion 144 drawings from the Royal Collection are being exhibited simultaneously in 12 museums across the UK. Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing starts on February 1, with 12 works each on show at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, the National Museum in Cardiff, Derby Museum & Art Gallery, Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, Leeds Art Gallery, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Manchester Art Gallery, the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield, Southampton City Art Gallery and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens. Admission at most venues is free. Until May 6. All the drawings and more go on show at the Queen's Gallery in London starting in late May, with a selection at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh from November.
For something completely different, head for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Jeff Koons, one of the most divisive (and expensive) of contemporary artists, gets a show at the world's oldest public museum featuring his shiny, kitschy, blingy work covering periods from the 1980s to the present day. February 7 to June 9.
At the Holburne Museum in Bath, meanwhile, there's a rather more understated contemporary painter. George Shaw is known for his use of the sort of enamel paint you utilise for model aircraft and the like and focuses on the estate where he grew up in Coventry and its surroundings. George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field runs from February 8 to May 6 and is a smaller version of a show that was well reviewed when it was on at the Yale Center for British Art in the US.
Harald Sohlberg, born 150 years ago, was a symbolist painter who was one of Norway's great landscape artists. He's never had a major exhibition outside Norway, but now his work is coming to the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London. Harald Sohlberg: Painting Norway, which has just been on at the National Gallery in Oslo, starts in Dulwich on February 13 and closes on June 6.
The small but affecting Gainsborough's Family Album show at the National Portrait Gallery featuring Thomas Gainsborough's wonderful pictures of his young daughters closes on February 3. Finishing the same day, next door at the National Gallery, is the very interesting free display centred on Edwin Landseer's Monarch of the Glen. Another excellent free show at the National, Lorenzo Lotto Portraits, goes on until February 10.
You have until February 19 to get down to the British Library to view Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, an exhibition with some absolutely fantastic objects, though a few too many manuscripts.
Four shows we've reviewed finish on February 24: At the British Museum, I Am Ashurbanipal, the story of the king who ruled Assyria more than 2,500 years ago, was one of the best exhibitions we saw in 2018. The Lost Treasures of Strawberry Hill, restoring some of the great 18th-century collection assembled by Horace Walpole to the pioneering neo-Gothic mansion he built, is the best show we've seen so far in 2019. Closing at Tate Britain is the undeniably beautiful though strangely uninvolving retrospective of Edward Burne-Jones, while finishing at the Lowry in Salford is the ultimately disappointing show that explored LS Lowry's love of the Pre-Raphaelites.
At the Holburne Museum in Bath, meanwhile, there's a rather more understated contemporary painter. George Shaw is known for his use of the sort of enamel paint you utilise for model aircraft and the like and focuses on the estate where he grew up in Coventry and its surroundings. George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field runs from February 8 to May 6 and is a smaller version of a show that was well reviewed when it was on at the Yale Center for British Art in the US.
Harald Sohlberg, born 150 years ago, was a symbolist painter who was one of Norway's great landscape artists. He's never had a major exhibition outside Norway, but now his work is coming to the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London. Harald Sohlberg: Painting Norway, which has just been on at the National Gallery in Oslo, starts in Dulwich on February 13 and closes on June 6.
Small is beautiful at the National Portrait Gallery starting February 21, when the attention is on Elizabethan Treasures, in the form of portrait miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver. Not the easiest artworks for a crowded show, miniatures, so it will be interesting to see how it's done. Until May 19.
The American Surrealist Dorothea Tanning is the subject of the new show at Tate Modern, the first large-scale exhibition of her work for 25 years. Tanning, who died aged 101 only seven years ago, became more abstract as her long career went on and began making soft fabric sculptures in the era of Pop Art. February 27 to June 9.
At Tate Britain, it's a case of the very, very real, with a retrospective of the great British photojournalist Don McCullin, known above all for his pictures of war zones. February 5 to May 6.
At the National Gallery, a free display presents, for the first time in the UK, the sharply observed work of Louis-Leopold Boilly through the French revolution and its aftermath. Boilly: Scenes of Parisian Life is on from February 28 to May 19.
If you want to see Rembrandt, the place to go is the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and especially so from February 15. For the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's death, the gallery is showing All the Rembrandts it has -- 22 paintings, 60 drawings and more than 300 prints. The exhibition runs through to June 10.
The exhibitions at the Hermitage in Amsterdam, which draw on the collection of the Hermitage itself in St Petersburg, are always well worth seeing, and to mark their 10th anniversary they're putting on a show called Treasury! Masterpieces from the Hermitage, which will bring together a cross-section of 250 objects from the ancient world to Old Masters including Rembrandt. February 2 to August 25.
A terrific show at the National Gallery in London almost a decade ago introduced Britons to the early 19th-century Danish artist Christen Købke. He was perhaps the greatest painter of what is now recognised as The Danish Golden Age, an era when realism met romanticism. The period is the subject of a large-scale exhibition that will be seen in three European capitals over the next 12 months, starting at the newly refurbished National Museum in Stockholm from February 28 to July 21. It then goes on to Copenhagen and, early next year, to Paris.
The American Surrealist Dorothea Tanning is the subject of the new show at Tate Modern, the first large-scale exhibition of her work for 25 years. Tanning, who died aged 101 only seven years ago, became more abstract as her long career went on and began making soft fabric sculptures in the era of Pop Art. February 27 to June 9.
At the National Gallery, a free display presents, for the first time in the UK, the sharply observed work of Louis-Leopold Boilly through the French revolution and its aftermath. Boilly: Scenes of Parisian Life is on from February 28 to May 19.
If you want to see Rembrandt, the place to go is the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and especially so from February 15. For the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's death, the gallery is showing All the Rembrandts it has -- 22 paintings, 60 drawings and more than 300 prints. The exhibition runs through to June 10.
The exhibitions at the Hermitage in Amsterdam, which draw on the collection of the Hermitage itself in St Petersburg, are always well worth seeing, and to mark their 10th anniversary they're putting on a show called Treasury! Masterpieces from the Hermitage, which will bring together a cross-section of 250 objects from the ancient world to Old Masters including Rembrandt. February 2 to August 25.
A terrific show at the National Gallery in London almost a decade ago introduced Britons to the early 19th-century Danish artist Christen Købke. He was perhaps the greatest painter of what is now recognised as The Danish Golden Age, an era when realism met romanticism. The period is the subject of a large-scale exhibition that will be seen in three European capitals over the next 12 months, starting at the newly refurbished National Museum in Stockholm from February 28 to July 21. It then goes on to Copenhagen and, early next year, to Paris.
More than 20 works by Titian are among the highlights of the major new show at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Titian and the Renaissance in Venice, looking at how the city's artists used light and colour to make their mark. Lorenzo Lotto, Giovanni Bellini and Jacopo Palma il Vecchio are among the other painters featured from February 13 to May 26.
Last chance to see....
You have until February 19 to get down to the British Library to view Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, an exhibition with some absolutely fantastic objects, though a few too many manuscripts.
Four shows we've reviewed finish on February 24: At the British Museum, I Am Ashurbanipal, the story of the king who ruled Assyria more than 2,500 years ago, was one of the best exhibitions we saw in 2018. The Lost Treasures of Strawberry Hill, restoring some of the great 18th-century collection assembled by Horace Walpole to the pioneering neo-Gothic mansion he built, is the best show we've seen so far in 2019. Closing at Tate Britain is the undeniably beautiful though strangely uninvolving retrospective of Edward Burne-Jones, while finishing at the Lowry in Salford is the ultimately disappointing show that explored LS Lowry's love of the Pre-Raphaelites.
Images
Leonardo da Vinci, The Head of Leda, c. 1505-08, Royal Collection Trust. © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018
Harald Sohlberg, Street in Røros in Winter, 1903, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway
Dorothea Tanning, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1943, Tate. © DACS, 2018
Harald Sohlberg, Street in Røros in Winter, 1903, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Norway
Dorothea Tanning, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1943, Tate. © DACS, 2018
Christen Købke, A View of Lake Sortedam from Dosseringen Looking Towards the Suburb Nørrebro Outside Copenhagen, 1838, The National Gallery of Denmark.
Jacopo Palma il Vecchio, Young Woman in a Blue Dress with Fan, c. 1512–14, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. © KHM-Museumsverband
Jacopo Palma il Vecchio, Young Woman in a Blue Dress with Fan, c. 1512–14, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. © KHM-Museumsverband
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