We must confess that religious paintings are not our favourite subject, and we've tended to regard Spanish Catholic art as being, well, just a little too religious to cope with. So we approached the Francisco de Zurbarán exhibition at the National Gallery in London with a certain amount of trepidation. A degree of contrition is due.... Yes, there were monks, altarpieces and lots of saints, but we were blown away by Zurbarán's ability to depict textures and fabrics and to convey an intensity of feeling. It's an absolutely excellent exhibition, full of truly beautiful paintings. Such religious art was intended to bring the faithful closer to God, to bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth, in an age when many could not read. Zurbarán was a master at it. Let's start with a saint: Just take a look at the fabrics, trimmings and gems in this picture. And the garments are even more striking when you are stood in front of this nearly life-size figure. This is Casild...
It's a motif that recurs in art down the centuries, going back to ancient times: a woman at a window. A new show at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London builds an exhibition on the theme around its own Girl at a Window by Rembrandt with more than 40 works going right up to the present day, though don't expect Vermeer or Caspar David Friedrich. Reframed: The Woman in the Window runs from May 4 to September 4.
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We've seen Edvard Munch in Oslo at the old Munch Museum and the old National Gallery, but we've never been to the significant Munch collection at KODE in Bergen, collected during the painter's lifetime by the industrialist Rasmus Meyer. Eighteen works from the collection, dating from the 1880s and 1890s, will be on show at the Courtauld Gallery from May 27 to September 4 in Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen. Will this be as popular as the Van Gogh Self-Portraits show at the Courtauld, which finishes on May 8 but is completely sold out?
A free exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge brings together more than 100 works from its own collection as well as from the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Fondation Custodia in Paris for True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe 1780-1870. Constable, Corot and Turner were among the artists who sought new ways of depicting the natural world as travel became easier and equipment more compact. On from May 3 to August 29.
The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool presents the five Tudor monarchs from Henry VII to Elizabeth I and the people around them -- some of the most recognisable characters in English history, including Thomas Cromwell and William Shakespeare -- through around 100 objects, many from the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition runs from May 21 to August 29; a smaller version of this show has been on at the Holburne Museum in Bath.
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The Pallant House Gallery in Chichester has the first major exhibition to feature British artist Glyn Philpot (1884-1937) in almost four decades. Glyn Philpot: Flesh and Spirit will show how the painter moved from society portraits in the Edwardian era to a more modernist style, including sensitive depictions of black sitters, among them the actor Paul Robeson. This one is on from May 14 to October 23.
From May 17, the Belgian pointillist Théo van Rysselberghe is the subject of a show at Singer Laren in the Netherlands. Théo van Rysselberghe: Painter of the Sun will encompass his society portraits, land- and seascapes and nudes. It runs until September 4.
At the Pompidou Centre in Paris, they're offering a comprehensive look at Weimar Germany, though with close to 900 artworks and documents on show it does sound a little overwhelming. Germany / 1920s / New Objectivity / August Sander features paintings and drawings by George Grosz, Otto Dix and Jeanne Mammen, among others, as well as August Sander's photographs of Germans of all classes in People of the 20th Century. In Paris from May 11 to September 5, and then the show moves on to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art north of Copenhagen in October.
On in Denmark before then: Krøyer and Paris, starting on May 13 at the Skagens Museum at the northern tip of Jutland. This celebrates the work of one of the leading Skagen painters, P.S. Krøyer, alongside French art that inspired him, with Courbet, Caillebotte, Monet and Sisley among those represented, in a show that continues until September 18.
Last chance to see....
There's no charge to get into a small display at the National Gallery in London to see what all the fuss was about over Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy, once the most expensive picture in the world. Until May 15, after which he flies back home to California.
The best art exhibition we've seen so far this year is Whistler's Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan at the Royal Academy, which ends on May 22. Some gorgeous art, intelligently presented. Tickets are still available.
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Images
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Queen Elizabeth I ('The Ditchley Portrait'), c. 1592. © National Portrait Gallery, London
Peder Severin Krøyer, Summer Evening on Skagen Sønderstrand, 1893, Skagens Kunstmuseer, Skagen, Denmark. © Skagens Kunstmuseer
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No 1: The White Girl, 1862, National Gallery of Art, Washington
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