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Stubbs, a Thoroughbred Painter of Horses

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...
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Opening and Closing in August

With the summer holidays in full swing, August is almost inevitably the quietest month of the year for new art shows, but we do have to highlight one absolutely superb exhibition that's opening, as well as another stunning show that's coming to an end.

It's the 250th anniversary in 2024 of the birth of the great German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich, and the next in a series of commemorative retrospectives gets under way at the Kunst Museum in the Swiss city of Winterthur on August 26. Caspar David Friedrich and the Harbingers of Romance features some of the artist's most iconic pictures, including the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, as well as taking a look at the landscape painters who went before him, such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Claude Lorrain. We got to see this show in Schweinfurt in northern Bavaria in the spring and absolutely lapped it up. It's on in Winterthur until November 19.  

You only have until August 13 to get to the National Gallery in London to see After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art, which provides a crash course in developments in art from the late 19th century up to the start of World War I. Cezanne, Rodin, Gauguin, van Gogh, Klimt, Munch, Pointillists, German Expressionists, Braque, Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian are all highlighted, as well as some more surprising artists, particularly from Barcelona. A really satisfying exhibition, with much we hadn't seen before. 

Images

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon, c. 1824, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Houses in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, June 1888, Private collection
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