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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 and Closing in June

The Swiss artist Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) is perhaps not very well known outside France and his homeland, but the Royal Academy in London is staging the first comprehensive exhibition in Britain, starting on June 30, of his quite varied work, which often conveys a sense of unease. Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet brings together more than 80 pictures, the majority of them loans from Switzerland. Fans of the Nabis and the German New Objectivity movement will find much to admire. Until September 29.
And, of course, it's that time of year again at the Royal Academy: The Summer Exhibition, with well over 1,000 new works on show, starts on June 10 and runs until August 12.

At the British Library, Leonardo da Vinci: A Mind in Motion provides an opportunity to explore the science, artistry and inventions of three of Leonardo's notebooks in another exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of his death. It brings together manuscripts owned by the library, the V&A and by Bill Gates. June 7 to September 8, complementing the big show of Leonardo drawings that's just started at the Queen's Gallery.

The Dulwich Picture Gallery's summer show is Cutting Edge: Modernist British Printmaking, looking at 1930s work from the Grosvenor School in Pimlico, with vivid designs on themes including motor racing and London's Tube network. The exhibition runs from June 19 to September 8.
Meanwhile, a free Room 1 exhibition at the National Gallery features Bartolomé Bermejo, described as one of the most accomplished and innovate Spanish artists of the second half of the 15th century. Bartolomé Bermejo: Master of the Spanish Renaissance brings together six of his paintings never before seen outside Spain and is on from June 12 to September 29.

There's little modern art as distinctive as the dazzling abstracts of Bridget Riley, and on June 15 the first comprehensive survey of her output in the UK for 16 years will open at the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. The exhibition will span over 70 years -- Riley will be 90 in 2021 -- and has been organised in close cooperation with the artist. It runs until September 22, after which it will transfer to the Hayward Gallery in London.
Opening at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, on June 29, is the excellently titled Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage. It's apparently the first ever survey anywhere in the world of an art form that's been around for longer than you think, with more than 250 works from artists including Henri Matisse, Peter Blake (think Sergeant Pepper) and a certain Charles Dickens. Until October 27.

At Tate Liverpool, the mood will be 1980s New York for the first major exhibition in Britain of Keith Haring, the artist and activist with an immediately recognisable graffiti-like style who died of AIDS-related complications in 1990 at the age of just 31. Most of the 85 works have never been seen in the UK. June 14 to November 10.

And down in Chichester, the Pallant House Gallery opens an exhibition on June 29 looking back at the long career of Ivon Hitchens (1893-1979). Ivon Hitchens: Space through Colour, on until October 13, will encompass some 70 works from 1920s landscapes to his increasingly abstract late paintings. There's already a much smaller Hitchens show on at the Garden Museum in London, looking at Hitchens's flower paintings, many made in his studio near Petworth, not far from Chichester.
Take some Velázquez from the Prado in Madrid; take some Dutch Golden Age masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: Put them together and you have Velázquez, Rembrandt, Vermeer -- Parallel Visions at the Prado from June 25 to September 29. The exhibition investigating the parallels between 17th-century Spanish and Dutch art goes on to the Rijksmuseum in October and is part of the commemorations of the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's death.

The leading woman among the Impressionists was Berthe Morisot, and a show tracing her career opens at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris on June 18, running through to September 22. This exhibition has been touring North America, and reviews seem to have been largely positive, if not gushing. Morisot was one of the founders of the Impressionist movement but her work is still rather less known than that of her male contemporaries. We did see the last big Morisot show in France, in Lille (just discovered it was as long ago as 2002!), and remember it as having a handful of highlights but generally being less than enthralling. 

One room at the Van Gogh and Britain show at Tate Britain is taken up by one of Vincent's pictures of sunflowers and British artists' response to it. Another version of that painting is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and it's the centrepiece of their new exhibition, Van Gogh and the Sunflowers, looking at why the flowers were so important to the artist. The Van Gogh Museum announced earlier this year, by the way, that its Sunflowers would no longer be lent out as the painting is now too fragile to travel. The show runs from June 21 until September 1. 
Also in the Netherlands, the Lakenhal museum in Leiden, Rembrandt's home town, reopens on June 20 after reconstruction: They'll be putting on a show from their own collection running through to October 3 telling the story of Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age before a big exhibition about Young Rembrandt starts in November.

The Pierre Bonnard: Colour of Memory show at Tate Modern drew big crowds. We liked a lot of it -- those shimmering images of the south of France and those intimate bathroom interiors -- though there were a fair few pictures that were less than memorable. There's an opportunity for those of you in northern Europe to see the exhibition when it opens at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen on June 7. It's on until September 22, after which you can see it at the Kunstforum in Vienna.

Last chance to see.... 

Just a couple of days left, until June 2, to see four major exhibitions: If you have to choose one, make it the really very fine retrospective of Harald Sohlberg and his magnetic depictions of the Norwegian landscape at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London, This exhibition goes on next to Museum Wiesbaden in Germany, opening on July 12. Elsewhere in London, it's the last call for the Renaissance Nude at the Royal Academy, a show that didn't really live up to its promise.

Also closing on June 2 is Charles II: Art & Power at the Queen's Gallery at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, showing how the King rebuilt the royal art collection following his restoration to the throne in 1660. We saw this show in London last year. And another show ending the same day: Sérusier's The Talisman at the Musée d'Orsay, telling the story of the picture that sparked the birth of the Nabis movement and Synthetism in the late 1880s.

The very satisfying exhibition at Tate Modern opening the doors on long-lived American surrealist Dorothea Tanning finishes on June 9. That's the last day, too, for the Harold Gilman retrospective at the Pallant in Chichester, but there's more Gilman to be seen in the Van Gogh show at Tate Britain.

One of the very best shows we've seen this year is Les Nabis et le décor at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, with stunning decorative panels from the likes of Vuillard and Bonnard. It runs until June 30, as does the exhibition at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin comparing the work of Renaissance brothers-in-law Mantegna and Bellini, which we enjoyed in London in the autumn.

Images

Félix Vallotton, The Lie (Le Mensonge), 1897, The Baltimore Museum of Art. Photo: Mitro Hood
Cyril Power, The Tube Station, c. 1932. Photo Osborne Samuel Gallery, London/© The Estate of Cyril Power, all rights reserved, 2019/Bridgeman Images
Bridget Riley, High Sky, 1991, Private collection. © Bridget Riley 2019. All rights reserved
Ivon Hitchens, Curved Barn, 1922, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. © The estate of Ivon Hitchens
Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, 1888, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Pierre Bonnard, The Bath, 1925, Tate

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