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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 in April

Raphael died before he was 40, and yet he's still reckoned among the very greatest of Italian Renaissance artists. A new Raphael exhibition at London's National Gallery aims to show him as an all-round giant -- in painting, sculpture, poetry, architecture and more -- exploring why he can be regarded on a level with Michelangelo and Leonardo. More than 90 examples of his work include loans from the Uffizi, the Vatican, the Louvre and the Prado. The show is on from April 9 to July 31, and standard tickets are an initially eye-catching £24 (more with Gift Aid). As we've noted before, prices for the biggest exhibitions in the capital have been steadily creeping upwards, but then £24 is relatively cheap compared with, say, the cost of tickets to a Premier League football match or a West End theatre performance.
At the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, tickets are a reasonable-sounding £10 for Canaletto's Venice Revisited, which opens on April 1. This show features Canaletto's biggest ever commission, the 24 views of the city in the lagoon that normally hang in Woburn Abbey, and as well as exploring the painter's technique and eye for detail, it aims to look at life in 18th-century Venice and the challenges posed to the city today. Until September 25. 

Did you know that Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing influenced the animators of Disney films including Beauty and the Beast and Frozen? Find out more at the Wallace Collection from April 6 in Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts. The show juxtaposes Rococo art including clocks, furniture and porcelain with artwork from Disney movies and runs until October 16. A version of the exhibition was previously on at the Met in New York; reviews in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times were rather sniffy. 

Hard to imagine Walter Sickert ever being the spark for a Disney animation; he's tended to strike us as being so dark and gloomy. Maybe the new retrospective at Tate Britain -- the first in 60 years -- will change our view of a painter who was a major influence on British and French art in the 20th century, depicting the music hall, the nude and domestic scenes, among other subjects. This one -- with more than 150 works -- is on from April 28 to September 18, and it'll transfer to the Petit Palais in Paris in October. 
Inspiration is the springboard for a new show starting on April 8 at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London. It will delve into the museum's own collection to discover how visual artists have looked to books, plays and music for their subject matter, focusing on Victorian storytelling. Inspired! is on until September 11. 

Storytelling in a rather different genre at the Foundling Museum from April 1 in Superheroes, Orphans & Origins: 125 Years in Comics. Superman, Spider-Man, Batman: they're all orphans, and their experience has a bearing on their attitude to good and evil. The exhibition features original artwork, historic newspapers and new commissions and runs until August 28. To recognise today's superheroes, NHS workers get in for half price. 

The world's most popular sport comes under the microscope at the Design Museum from April 8 to August 29 in Football: Designing the Beautiful Game. More than 500 exhibits, including films and interviews, will tell the story of kit development, the evolution of stadiums and the shaping of club identities, and they'll also be looking at how grassroots initiatives are pushing back against the over-commercialisation of the game. Your nearest Premier League club to the Design Museum: Chelsea.  

One final exhibition in London in a packed month: Breaking the News at the British Library will examine how the news has been reported, presented and consumed in the UK over five centuries, from the Great Fire of London through Jack the Ripper and the Profumo Affair right up to the present. It's on from April 22 to August 21. 

Starting on April 9 at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh is Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life, a major retrospective with some of Hepworth's most celebrated sculptures. This show, which runs until October 2, comes from The Hepworth in Wakefield, and it will move on to Tate St Ives in November. 

We enjoyed a show last year at Hastings Contemporary on the art of the seaside. This year they're going offshore with Seafaring, from April 30 to September 25, bringing together pictures of life at sea from the past 200 years, by artists including Ravilious, Burne-Jones and Tissot. It's curated by James Russell, who also did the seaside exhibition.
At the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity looks at the Surrealists' interest in magic and the occult, with about 60 works from artists including René Magritte, Salvador Dalí and Dorothea Tanning drawn from a wide range of museums and collections. On from April 9 to September 26, and then moving on to the Museum Barberini in Potsdam in October. 

And finally this month, the Museé Marmottan Monet in Paris presents The Theatre of Emotions for a four-month run from April 13 to August 21. Almost 80 works from the Middle Ages to the present day featuring the likes of Dürer, Courbet, Fragonard and Schiele will trace the pictorial representation of intense feelings. 

Images

Raphael, The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (‘The Alba Madonna’), c. 1509-11, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Courtesy National Gallery of Art
Walter Sickert, Gallery of the Old Bedford, 1894-95, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Richard Eurich, Survivors from a Torpedoed Ship, 1942. © Tate
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