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Showing posts from April, 2023

Very Rich Hours in Chantilly

It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to see one of the greatest -- and most fragile -- works of European art before your very eyes. The illustrated manuscript known as the  Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry contains images that have shaped our view of the late Middle Ages, but it's normally kept under lock and key at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris. It's only been exhibited twice in the past century. Now newly restored, the glowing pages of  Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry are on show to the public for just a few months. "Approche, approche," the Duke of Berry's usher tells the visitors to the great man's table for the feast that will mark the start of the New Year. It's also your invitation to examine closely the illustration for January, one of the 12 months from the calendar in this Book of Hours -- a collection of prayers and other religious texts -- that form the centrepiece of this exhibition in Chantilly.  It's su...
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Opening and Closing in May

We start off in London this month with two new exhibitions at the British Museum. The first, opening on May 4, takes us back to the ancient history of the region round the eastern Mediterranean and an examination of Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece . It aims to uncover how the Persian Empire spread ideas of elegance and craftsmanship across neighbouring lands around 500 BC. Featuring items from the museum's own collection as well as international loans, the show runs until August 13.  We head further east for the second exhibition, exploring  China's Hidden Century . On from May 18 to October 8, this show looks at life in 19th-century China through art, fashion and everyday objects, seeking to show how decades of violence and turmoil that ended with the deposing of the emperor in 1912 were also a period of significant creativity.  The National Gallery is staging the first ever exhibition in the UK to be devoted to Saint Francis of Assisi . Looking at how the saint's com...
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In an English Urban Garden

April, and the weather is slowly getting warmer. The delights of the garden beckon. Perfect, then, for an exhibition such as  Private & Public: Finding the Modern British Garden  at the Garden Museum in London. We found quite a lot to like, much of it from artists we didn't know. Though strangely, a lot of the paintings that made the biggest impression didn't seem to have a massive amount to do with gardens, or gardening.  The premise of this show is to look at how British artists in the period between the two World Wars depicted private and public spaces, but those places seem to be pretty loosely defined. There's also quite a bit of work from the 1940s and 50s. The exhibition area at the Garden Museum isn't that big, but they've crammed a lot in, and if you really take a shine to a picture, it may still be for sale, as this show is put on together with the dealers Liss Llewellyn .  One of the largest and most strikingly attractive paintings hangs right opposit...
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Not All Dogs Are Created Equal

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney  -- now that's a very good notion for an exhibition in dog-loving Britain. In reality, however.... The Wallace Collection in London has borrowed more than 50 works to put its idea into practice. Unfortunately, a good quarter of those are by Sir Edwin Landseer. So, if you really like twee, gooey, unsubtle 19th-century paintings of dogs pretending to be people or populating Queen Victoria's sitting room, you'll love it. Now, it's not as if Landseer -- creator of The Monarch of the Glen -- wasn't a highly skilled artist with a deep understanding of animal anatomy and behaviour. It's just that he produced loads of mawkish kitsch , presumably because that was what his sentimental Victorian patrons wanted. And there are a dozen of those Landseers here, coming at you round every corner .  But then there's also this Landseer:  A Saluki Dog .  The Saluki , prized by the hunters of the Middle East, with a long history (...
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Berthe Morisot, Rococo Impressionist

"I like either extreme novelty or things of the past," said Berthe Morisot. Just what that meant for her art is revealed in  Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impresssionism , a sparkling, fresh show at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London, and an exhibition that changed our view of the leading woman Impressionist. We were a little bit apprehensive on the way to Dulwich, with lingering memories of an extensive Morisot retrospective in Lille about 20 years ago that we unexpectedly found quite dull and repetitive. This new show turns out to be a bit of a revelation, focusing as it does on her fascination with and imaginative reworking of pictures by French and British 18th-century artists. And as for some of her late work.... it's so reminiscent of Edvard Munch. We certainly weren't expecting that. This Self-Portrait is the very first picture in the exhibition. Morisot painted it in her mid-40s, and it's a very self-assured picture, and a very modern one. Her palette...
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