So the question to ask about the Michaelina Wautier exhibition at the Royal Academy in London must be: Is the hype about this recently rediscovered 17th-century woman painter justified? The answer: Yes, absolutely. She really does merit acknowledgement -- and not just because we recognise a woman working in a man's world. Her art shows she was extremely talented, producing superb canvases covering a diverse range of subject matter. What's more, she painted very large pictures featuring male nudes, such as Bacchus, despite her contemporaries thinking that was not the sort of thing a female artist could do. And her portraits are wonderfully lively and lifelike. This is Martino Martini, an Italian Jesuit missionary who travelled to China in the 1640s. It was painted in 1654, when Michaelina was around 40. Martini, who was staying at the Jesuit College in Brussels, is depicted wearing traditional Chinese silk court attire and a hat of fur and feathers. A rather substantial...
Picasso's artistic progress from teenager to 30-something comes under scrutiny from March 13 at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich in Pablo Picasso: The Legacy of Youth. More than 20 of his works will be on show in this exhibition looking at his advance to the head of the international artistic avant-garde at the start of World War I, and comparing his achievements with painters including Monet, Bonnard and Redon. It runs until July 17.
Now, if you wanted to combine a trip to Picasso in Norwich with something else in East Anglia, how about David Hockney in Cambridge? Hockney's Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction is on at the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Heong Gallery from March 15 to August 29, with free entry. The shows will explore Hockney's experiments in new ways of seeing the world as well as allowing you to compare his works with those of artists such as van Gogh, Constable and Andy Warhol.
If you missed the recent Laura Knight show at MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, or if you want to see some more of her work, the place to head is Nottingham Castle, where from March 19 to June 5 some 80 of the Nottingham-trained artist's paintings and drawings will be on display in Laura Knight & Caroline Walker: A Female Gaze. Walker is a contemporary figurative painter whose pictures often show women at work.
With the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace's Picture Gallery continuing, you can see Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace, including works by Rembrandt, Rubens and Artemisia Gentileschi, at the Queen's Gallery in Edinburgh from March 25 to September 25. When we saw the London version of the exhibition last summer, we admired some great art but found the presentation pretty dull.
The last time we visited the magnificent Burrell Collection in Glasgow a few years back, it was a rainy day and there were buckets in the galleries to collect the water dripping through the roof. They've fixed the leaks and renovated the building, and the Burrell reopens on March 29. The collection includes some fine 19th-century French art as well as Chinese, medieval European and ancient Roman and Egyptian treasures.
Florence is hosting a major exhibition across two venues starting on March 19. Donatello: The Renaissance at the Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello will provide a retrospective of the master sculptor of the early Renaissance, perhaps most famous for his David, known as the first free-standing nude made since Roman times. Donatello's work will be compared with that of other great Italian Renaissance artists, including Mantegna, Raphael and Michelangelo. On until July 31, then moving to the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin in September and supposedly to London's Victoria & Albert Museum early next year, though there's no information about that on the V&A's website.
You can usually rely on the Städel Museum in Frankfurt for a well put-together exhibition, and we like the look of Renoir -- Rococo Revival, starting on March 2. Renoir, who was a porcelain painter by training, was well acquainted with the work of Fragonard, Boucher and Watteau, which was coming back into fashion at the end of the 19th century. This show will look at how he and other Impressionists were inspired by their Rococo predecessors, with 120 or so works from both eras. On till June 19.
There are a lot of interesting exhibitions starting in Paris this month; let's go first to the Musée de l'Orangerie, where from March 2 to July 11 you can see Le décor impressioniste, exploring how Impressionist painters from Renoir to Monet to Caillebotte applied their new art to interior design. A different Impressionist story from the one we're used to.
The Musée du Luxembourg offers us a show entitled Pioneers: Artists in the Paris of the Roaring 20s. Women artists, that is, with Tamara de Lempicka and Sonia Delaunay the leading names among those being given their due in the development of genres from Fauvism to Cubism and Surrealism and beyond. This one runs from March 2 to July 10.
Finnish art is not well known in western Europe, but the Musée Jacquemart-André is devoting an exhibition to Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), with a focus on his exploration of nature and the Finnish countryside (Visitors to London's National Gallery may remember a small show with his pictures of Lake Keitele a few years ago). About 70 works will be on display in Gallen-Kallela: Myths and Nature from March 11 to July 25.
And what's this? Another Finnish painter on in Paris? Whether by accident or design, the Petit Palais is showing the work of Gallen-Kallela's contemporary Albert Edelfelt. This retrospective will have about 100 works and runs from March 10 to July 10. Edelfelt looks to have been rather more of a realist, compared with Gallen-Kallela's mystic approach.
Also on at the Petit Palais from March 29 to July 24: around 150 works by Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931), close friend of Edgar Degas, an Italian who spent most of his life in Paris, becoming famous for his portraits of men and women from high society dressed in the latest fashion. It's the first such retrospective in France for 60 years.
With the Courtauld Gallery in London presenting a single-motif show of Vincent Van Gogh Self-Portraits, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is going for a similarly tightly focused view of their man's output: Van Gogh and the Olive Groves, which runs from March 11 to June 12. Vincent made 15 paintings of the subject in the final year or so of his life, and now they're brought together to explore their significance for the artist.
Last chance to see....
Closing on March 20 at Tate Britain in London is Hogarth and Europe, with a fine array of paintings and prints by the great story-teller of 18th-century British art, William Hogarth. Dismayingly, though, the curators seek to trash Hogarth's reputation by presenting him as sexist and racist, and the pictures by his continental counterparts are also not terribly pertinent.
Images
Pablo Picasso, Tête de jeune femme (la
Madrilèna)/Portrait of a Young Woman
(The Madrilenian), c. 1901, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands. © Succession Picasso/DACS, London
2021
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, After the Luncheon, 1879, Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Spring Night, 1915, Private collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery conservation department
Vincent van Gogh, Olive Grove, July 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
Vincent van Gogh, Olive Grove, July 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
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