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Rembrandt & van Hoogstraten: The Art of Illusion

It takes a split second these days to create an image, and how many millions are recorded daily on mobile phones, possibly never to be looked at again? You can see it all happening in the palatial surroundings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, definitely one of those tick-off destinations on many travellers' bucket lists, where those in search of instant pictorial satisfaction throng the imposing statue-lined staircase for a selfie or pout for a photo in the café under the spectacular cupola. But we're not in Vienna for a quick fix, we're at the KHM to admire something more enduring in the shape of art produced almost 500 years ago by Rembrandt and his pupil Samuel van Hoogstraten that was intended to mislead your eyes into seeing the real in the unreal. Artistic deception is the story at the centre of  Rembrandt--Hoogstraten: Colour and Illusion , one of the most engrossing and best-staged exhibitions we've seen this year. And, somewhat surprisingly, a show wi...
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Opening and Closing in May

Art history? No, we're starting this month with an exhibition that we'll be tagging #artherstory on social media. Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920 opens at Tate Britain in London on May 16, with the aim of charting the path of women to being recognised as professional artists over the centuries. More than 100 will be represented: relatively widely known names such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman, Gwen John and Laura Knight, as well as the more obscure or neglected -- Levina Teerlinc, Mary Beale and Sarah Biffin. It's on till October 13, and as we've just seen a show in Germany focused on women artists over much the same timescale, we'll be keen to compare and contrast.
Let's stick with a female theme. A short stroll up Millbank and across Lambeth Bridge, and you're at the Garden Museum, where from May 15 to September 29 you can see Gardening Bohemia: Bloomsbury Women Outdoors. The show takes you around the gardens of Vanessa Bell (and Duncan Grant) and her sister Virginia Woolf at Charleston and Monk's House in East Sussex, Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst in Kent and Ottoline Morrell at Garsington in Oxfordshire, and there'll be art from Bell, Grant, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and John Nash, as well as photographs, documents and garden tools, to tell the story of their relationships, life and times. 

Another woman artist? How about the unmistakable Beryl Cook? All those rather fleshy ladies out for a good time; who would have thought they might have much in common with those muscular men looking for a different sort of good time, as depicted by gay icon Tom of Finland? Well, as they point out at Studio Voltaire in Clapham, "both artists have a distinct and coherent way of hyperrealising the body in images that fundamentally celebrate pleasure and deny shame." So shed your inhibitions from May 15 to August 25 for Beryl Cook/Tom of Finland; admission free. 

It's the 200th anniversary of London's National Gallery, and from May 10 a dozen of its National Treasures will be making guest appearances across the UK as part of the bicentenary celebrations. To pick out three: The Wilton Diptych will be at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford until September 1; Diego Velázquez's Rokeby Venus will be admiring herself in the mirror at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool until August 26; and JMW Turner's The Fighting Temeraire will be towed up the Tyne to anchor at Newcastle's Laing Art Gallery, where it'll be part of a wider show, Turner: Art, Industry & Nostalgia, that runs until September 7. With more than 20 works by Turner as well as art by LS Lowry and James McNeill Whistler, this exhibition will explore the rise of steam power and industry in Britain. 
The Burrell Collection in Glasgow is showing Discovering Degas from May 24, complementing the 23 works by Edgar Degas in Sir William Burrell's original collection, on display together for the first time, with some 30 others drawn from around Britain and from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The exhibition runs until September 30.

Back down south now, for The Shape of Things: Still Life in Britain at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, which is on from May 11 to October 20. Featuring around 150 works by 100 or so artists, this show will start by looking back to the 17th century but concentrate on modern and contemporary art. Among the leading names: Vanessa Bell, Patrick Caulfield, Lucian Freud, Gluck, Jann Haworth, David Hockney, Walter Sickert and Stanley Spencer. 

Along the coast, a chance to discover A Painter in Paris: Albert de Belleroche (1864-1944) at the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth. Born in Wales, Belleroche grew up in France and later forged associations with leading artists including John Singer Sargent and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. More than 60 of his paintings and lithographs will be on display from May 3 to September 22. 

It's the 150th anniversary of the birth of Harold Harvey, a Cornish painter who progressed from early genre paintings of rustic and marine life to a more sophisticated style that has similarities with the work of his friends Laura Knight and Dod Procter. The Exceptional Harold Harvey at Penlee House in his home town of Penzance will present more than 60 pictures, and it runs from May 1 to September 29. 

LS Lowry was fascinated by the sea and he was a regular visitor to Berwick-upon-Tweed and the North-East Coast over four decades, painting both beach and marine views. Lowry and the Sea at the town's Granary Gallery, on from May 25 to October 13, will feature 20 of his works, some empty seascapes, some with the familiar matchstalk men and matchstalk dogs (cats not being known for liking a trip to the beach). 
In Paris, the Fondation Louis Vuitton has Matisse: The Red Studio. The exhibition reunites Henri Matisse's 1911 painting from MoMA in New York, The Red Studio, with the artworks from his atelier that he depicted in it, a picture regarded as a key creation in the development of modern art. On show from May 4 to September 9. 

The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen's main offering this summer is Whistler: The Butterfly Effect, which aims to take an all-encompassing look at the art of the American painter and his huge influence at the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century. There's Whistler's Mother, of course, but the curators promise to appeal to all five senses to capture the spirit of Whistlerism. On from May 24 to September 22, until when you can also see at the same gallery (for free, in this case) David Hockney: Normandism, which includes some intriguing nocturnal landscapes as well as garden views and portraits. 

Finally this month, the recently reopened Wien Museum in Vienna is hosting an exhibition looking at the Secession movements that gave new impulses to art in Berlin and Munich as well as the Austrian capital at the start of the 20th century, even if in different directions. The big names in the three cities were Max Liebermann, Franz von Stuck and Gustav Klimt. Secessions: Klimt, Stuck, Liebermann is on from May 23 to October 13. 

Last chance to see....

May 26 offers your final chance to catch Turning Heads: Rubens, Rembrandt and Vermeer at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. We saw this entertaining and informative exploration of a key genre for Dutch and Flemish artists in Antwerp last year. 

Images

Laura Knight (1877-1970), The Dark Pool, c. 1908-18, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
JMW Turner (1775-1851), The Fighting Temeraire, 1839. © The National Gallery, London
LS Lowry (1887-1976), On the Sands, Berwick, 1959. © The Estate of LS Lowry. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2024
Circle of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), The Man with the Golden Helmet, c. 1650, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, property of Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein 
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