A day at the seaside: stripey deckchairs, a pebbly shore, groynes, choppy sea, swimwear and towels drying on a line and the edge of a brightly coloured beach hut. It's a very English scene. And look, even the sun is out. Surely everybody's having fun? Sadly, the painter -- a very English artist -- wasn't enjoying himself. Stanley Spencer had come back to Suffolk, a place where he'd previously known happiness, seeking solace after divorce from his first wife and the almost immediate breakdown of his second marriage. On the beach at Southwold, there was an air of "suburban seaside abandonment", he wrote in his notebook. But painting it, he was separated from the jollity by the high sea wall. "I felt a kindred feeling with the bathing suits in the line in front of me in the scene that they seemed to be taking no part, as I was not, with the activities on the beach." The tale is told and the painting can be seen in Suffolk now, at Gainsborough's Ho...
Many of the big names in the history of American art are relatively little known in Europe, and so the idea of a show devoted to one of them at London's National Gallery is a tempting prospect. Winslow Homer: Force of Nature , from September 10 to January 8, features around 50 works, many focusing on man's relationship with nature and the elements. This introduction to the artist, who lived from 1836 to 1910, is organised together with the Metropolitan Museum in New York, whose own larger Homer show this summer had largely positive reviews. Can you name Lithuania's most famous artist? Thought not. We'll put you out of your misery: It's Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911). Dulwich Picture Gallery has a fine tradition of introducing you to art you never knew existed, and M.K. Čiurlionis: Between Worlds , running from September 21 to March 12, will feature more than 100 works that often have an ethereal, fantastical quality. Most will be on show in the...