"Fire and water.... the one all heat, the other all humidity -- who will deny that they both exhibit, each in its own way, some of the highest qualities of Art?" That was the Literary Gazette 's verdict in 1831 on JMW Turner and John Constable, probably the most admired of all British landscape artists. Almost exact contemporaries whose work is being celebrated at Tate Britain in Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals , a thoroughly engrossing exhibition that bathes you in the drama of Turner's golden sunlight, contrasted with perhaps the more understated charms of Constable's cloud-filled skies. "The Sun is God" are supposed to have been Turner's last words, and throughout this show you can't get away from his solar worship -- one striking watercolour records The Sun Rising over Water . And that's it, that's all there is, but to be frank, you don't really notice the water. It's the bright yellow Sun that holds your eye,...
Not long now till the Olympics start in Paris, but the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge is looking back to the last such event in the French capital, the Chariots of Fire Games of 1924. Paris 1924: Sport, Art and the Body will use a range of media -- painting, fashion, film, photography and more -- to examine how tradition and modernism came together to shape the future of sport. July 19 to November 3, and entry is free. Elsewhere in East Anglia, Gainsborough's House in Sudbury stages the first major exhibition in 40 years of the work of Cedric Morris, perhaps best known as a teacher of Lucian Freud at his art school in Suffolk and as a breeder of irises. We saw a couple of smaller-scale Morris shows in London back in 2018 , but this one aims to take a deeper and broader view of Morris and his artistic and romantic partner, Arthur Lett-Haines. Revealing Nature: The Art of Cedric Morris & Arthur Lett-Haines is on from July 6 to November 3. The record for the most valuab...