Skip to main content

Symphonies and Nocturnes on Canvas

The  James McNeill Whistler  exhibition at Tate Britain is big, probably a bit too big, but it's packed with beautiful pictures and it's not in the least bit boring.  That's not surprising as Whistler led a colourful life, never shying from controversy and confrontation -- notably pursuing a high-profile libel case against John Ruskin  -- and he produced art that was groundbreaking, hugely influential and enormously atmospheric. Including, of course, probably one of the most recognisable paintings in art history, that of his mother in profile, dressed in black. It's in this show, and we'll be taking a look at it shortly.  But we start in Whistler's studio, where the artist has painted himself at work, palette and brush in his hands, and looking out directly at us, the viewers. This is the first picture you see in the show, and we're told that for Whistler, the studio was a place for public performance, as well as making art. So here he is, making a statemen...
Post a Comment

Subscribe to updates

Opening and Closing in May

Which Japanese artist had the greatest influence on the West at the end of the 19th century? Perhaps not so much Katsushika Hokusai, despite The Great Wave; maybe more Utagawa Hiroshige, four decades younger and the last great exponent of the ukiyo-e tradition, with his stunningly framed landscapes. From May 1, you have the chance at the British Museum in London to experience Horoshige's world, which ended just as Japan started to open up to the outside. Featuring a large body of work from a major US collection, Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road is on until September 7.
And also at the British Museum, a second new exhibition explores the origins of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist sacred art, going back at least 2,000 years. More than 180 objects from the museum's collection as well as items on loan will be on display. Ancient India: Living Traditions runs from May 22 to October 19. 

If you enjoyed the colour and swagger of the John Singer Sargent show at Tate Britain a year ago, you'll be tempted by Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits at Kenwood House in Hampstead. Running from May 16 to October 5, this features 18 portraits of American women who crossed the Atlantic to marry into the British aristocracy, a group often dismissed as the "Dollar Princesses." 

Of course, to fit the Americans in, the usual Kenwood residents have had to find board and lodging elsewhere: in Suffolk, at Thomas Gainsborough's House in Sudbury. And it's there from May 3 to October 19 that you can enjoy Masterpieces from Kenwood: The Splendour of British & French Painting, including François Boucher, Angelica Kauffman, Joshua Reynolds, and of course Gainsborough himself.
The Watts Gallery in Compton, near Guildford, offers the chance to use your nose as well as your eyes to immerse yourself in the 19th century. Scented Visions: Smell in Art 1850-1915 comes to Surrey from the Barber Institute in Birmingham, aiming to provide "a bespoke olfactory experience inspired by key elements within selected Pre-Raphaelite works" by artists including John Frederick Lewis, John Everett Millais, Evelyn De Morgan and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. On from May 15 to November 9.

You'll rarely be disappointed by an exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. Their new show explores 125 years of artistic relationships in British painting, sculpture, photography and other genres, featuring more than 80 artists, including Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Lee Miller and Paula Rego. Seeing Each Other: Portraits of Artists runs from May 17 to November 2.
 
From one end of Sussex to the other for Sussex Modernism at Towner Eastbourne. This show aims to bring together painting, sculpture, film, literature, music and more from the late 19th century to the present to define a county that's "always, and ever, in flux". We're promised David Bowie, Edward Burra, Jacob Epstein, Gluck, Ivon Hitchens, Virginia Woolf and many more. May 23 to September 28. 

And down in Plymouth, there's a chance to see Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes, a show previously staged at the Hepworth in Wakefield. With work by artists including Salvador Dalí, Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun and Max Ernst, the exhibition at The Box runs from May 24 to September 7, and entry is free. 

The second of the shows in Switzerland marking the centenary of the death of Félix Vallotton gets under way on May 11. Félix Vallotton: A Monument to Beauty at Castello San Materno in Ascona, in the Italian-speaking southern canton of Ticino, concentrates on his landscapes, still lifes and nudes. It will feature several of Vallotton's series of graphic works and include loans from a major Swiss collection that haven't been seen in public for some time. On till September 7. 

Like so many artists from the cold, dark North, Henri Matisse was constantly fascinated by the light and the colour of the Mediterranean, and he made repeated visits there. So this summer, at the Musée Matisse in Nice, they're looking at Matisse's work through the lens of the Med, and exploring his relationship with the region. Matisse Méditerranée(s) runs from May 7 to September 8. 

Last chance to see....

May 4 is the final day at the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam to see The Illusionist, a show about the master of trompe l'oeil, Samuel van Hoogstraten. We caught him in a double bill with Rembrandt in Vienna late last year. 

There may still be tickets available for the final days of the first run of the huge and hugely popular Flowers -- Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture show at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, which closes on May 5. But if you can't make it, fear not: It'll be back on again at the same venue from May 30 to August 31. 
The big Surrealism centenary exhibition at the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid comes to an end on May 11. We saw the previous version at the Pompidou Centre in Paris last year. Next stop is the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, starting in mid-June. 

In California, May 25 is the final day for the superb Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men show at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. We were lucky enough to see this one in Paris too. Caillebotte will be rowing his boat on to the Art Institute of Chicago; the exhibition there starts at the end of June. 

And finally, retrospectives of two very different women artists shut their doors on May 26. Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London says goodbye to the somewhat fantastical world of Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious, while across the Channel at the Pompidou Centre, they'll be taking down the more substantial, very fleshy paintings of Suzanne Valadon.

Images

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), The Plum Garden at Kameido from 100 Famous Views of Edo, 1857, Collection of Alan Medaugh. © Alan Medaugh; Photo: Matsuba Ryōko
Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), Mary, Countess Howe, c. 1764, Iveagh Bequest
Sophie Mess, Burst, 2025
Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), The Blue Room, 1923, Centre Pompidou, Paris 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's On in 2026

Coming up in 2026: Lots more big exhibitions starring women artists, including Frida Kahlo, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and Gwen John , as well as a host of names from the 17th-century Low Countries. And women almost certainly embroidered the Bayeux Tapestry, a contender for this year's hottest ticket in London.   Here's a selection of shows that have caught our eye around Britain and Europe, in more or less chronological order; as ever, we make no claim to comprehensiveness, and our choice very much reflects our personal taste. January We'll start the year at the Fondation Beyeler on the outskirts of Basel, where they're devoting an exhibition to Paul Cezanne . Focusing on the artist's later years, the show will bring together some 80 oil paintings and watercolours. January 25 to May 25.  February Two leading British women artists feature in exhibitions opening this month, with the National Museum in Cardiff honouring the best-known female painter Wales has pr...
1 comment
Read more

The Highs and Lows of the Nahmad Collection

It's widely referred to as the world's most valuable private art collection : the one assembled over decades by the Nahmad brothers, dealers Ezra and David . Worth an estimated $3 billion or more, it's said to include hundreds of Picassos. Some 60 works from it are now on display at the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny as  The Nahmad Collection: From Monet to Picasso . Intended, apparently, to demonstrate how art developed from the early 19th century through Impressionism and on to the start of the modern era, towards the liberation of colour and form, this is an exhibition that ends up coming across as somewhat incoherent. We're not really told much about the Nahmads or their collecting choices -- and as you search the Internet, things become slightly mysterious: Is Ezra alive or dead? The art, presumably, is supposed to speak for itself, but it's a rather eclectic, if not confusing, selection; some of the works are fantastic, some are distinctly ho-hum.  Let...
Post a Comment
Read more

Two Years in Provence

Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery in London -- heavily hyped and certainly extremely popular. So is it worth the fairly hefty ticket price? Very much so. This is a beautifully put-together illustrated narrative of the two years Vincent spent in Provence, the peak period of his short career, from early 1888 to spring 1890. There are major paintings from galleries far and wide, and pictures you may never have seen before from private collections. It's not a big show -- only 61 works, just under a quarter of which are on paper -- but it is gorgeous.  From the National's description of the exhibition, with its reference to "bringing together your most loved of Van Gogh’s paintings from across the globe," you might be expecting an all-encompassing retrospective. But there are no pictures from the start of Vincent's artistic life in the Netherlands, from his time in Paris, or from his last few weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise before he died of self-inflicted g...
Post a Comment
Read more