No one before had ever painted horses like George Stubbs. Not only did they look incredibly lifelike, he seemed able to capture their individual character -- a talent that ensured he could command extremely high prices for his work from wealthy and influential patrons. There's now a rare chance to appreciate the only one of the painter's outstanding lifesize equine canvases still in private hands in a small free exhibition, Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse , in Room 1 at the National Gallery in London. This is Scrub, eight times a race winner, who like the gallery's Whistlejacket belonged to one of those rich patrons, the Marquess of Rockingham, and he commissioned both pictures in about 1762. Scrub, again like Whistlejacket, was depicted not just as a racehorse, under the control of a jockey or stable boy, but in a grand manner, intended to serve as the steed in an equine portrait of George III, who had recently come to the throne. Other specialist painters would be u...
Newly knighted Grayson Perry has one of the highest profiles in the art world, not just as a creator of pottery and tapestries, but as an author and television presenter, commenting on the big issues of our time. So no wonder the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh is staging the biggest ever exhibition of Perry's work over the summer, looking back at a 40-year career. Grayson Perry: Smash Hits is on from July 22 to November 12. On a distinctly smaller scale, you can explore Victorian Virtual Reality at the Watts Gallery in Compton, near Guildford. It's a look at the 19th-century craze for stereoscopic photographs that allowed images to be viewed as if in three dimensions, and it contains more than 150 pictures from a collection built up over the decades by the Queen guitarist Brian May. This one runs from July 4 right through to February 25 next year. Our next couple of shows are all about travels by the Impressionists, and our first stop is at the Musée des impressionism...