Right at the northern tip of Denmark, where two seas meet under endless skies: Skagen, a fishing village that developed into a late 19th-century artists' colony. One of those artists was actually from Skagen; her parents ran Brøndum's Hotel in the village. Anna Brøndum went on to become Denmark's most famous woman painter: Anna Ancher. You won't find any paintings by her in any public collection in Britain (we know, we've used that line before when writing about several other artists), and, rather oddly, she doesn't even get a mention in Katy Hessel's The Story of Art without Men . The illumination you need is provided at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London, in Anna Ancher: Painting Light . She had a way with light, coming in through windows and casting shadows on walls, reflecting on the sea, breaking through the trees in her garden. These are generally very intimate, understated pictures, yet sometimes quite breathtaking. Virtually all th...
Got any plans for the first month of 2021? Zoom call? Vaccination? An exhibition? Well, here's a few that are scheduled to open, if the authorities allow. London's first big-name show of the year is at the Royal Academy. Francis Bacon: Man and Beast looks at how the boundaries between humans and animals are so often distorted in Bacon's violent pictures. Bacon was fascinated by the subject of animal movement throughout his career. This exhibition is scheduled from January 30 to April 18. The previous lockdown meant the curtain failed to go up in November on Noël Coward: Art & Style at the Guildhall Art Gallery, but the show is now slated to begin its run on January 14. The exhibition, including previously undisplayed material, is being staged to commemorate the centenary of Coward's West End debut as a 19-year-old playwright. The writer of Brief Encounter and Mad Dogs and Englishmen had a huge impact on fashion and culture in the...