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...
Impressionism shook up the world of art, but that was nothing compared to what followed. After Impressionism at the National Gallery in London, starting on March 25, aims to take us through the revolutionary period from around 1880 to the start of World War I, on to Expressionism, Cubism and Abstraction, with Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Klimt, Kokoschka, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky and Rodin; among more than 100 works, including loans from around Europe and the US, there'll also be unfamiliar artists like Broncia Koller-Pinell. Until August 13. However, if you're not quite ready for the Post-Impressionists just yet, how about the leading woman Impressionist, who's coming to Dulwich Picture Gallery on March 31? Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism will include more than 30 of her works, nine of them from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, as well as looking at how she drew inspiration from 18th-century paintings by the likes of Fragonard, Watteau, Gainsborough and Reyno...