The Art Exhibitions Blog

It's not opening until September 10, but tickets to see The Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum go on sale at 1000 on July 1, so if you want to see it this year you'll probably need to get in early. Follow the link for details. Booking for the rest of the run, from January 1 through to July 11, 2027, will open later in 2026. If you've never seen this most astounding of historical artefacts in its natural habitat in Normandy, you'll want to seize the chance in London.  But what about this month? Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865) is regarded as one of Austria's finest 19th-century painters, and there's a free single-room show devoted to his views of the Alps, Vienna and Sicily from July 2 at the National Gallery. Waldmüller: Landscapes  is on till September 20.  Richard Dadd (1817-1886) was already known as a successful painter of Shakespearean fairy scenes before he began experiencing delusions, leading him to kill his father. Confined to Bethlem and Broa...

Why did King Charles I bring Anthony van Dyck to London as his court painter in 1632? Well, van Dyck could make you look magnificent, every inch a monarch. He'd portrayed the ruling elite in all their sumptuous finery in Rome, Genoa, Brussels and The Hague, and the results were stunning. Van Dyck has the reputation of being the best portraitist in Europe in the early 17th century, and if you want to know why, make an effort to get to the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa to see  Van Dyck, the European , a superlative exhibition about a superlative painter.  This is what Charles was paying van Dyck's high prices for: that impression of regal might (and no expense spared on the fashionable outfits or coiffure either). The figures of the King and his Queen, Henrietta Maria, are about lifesize and feel incredibly real, even four centuries later.  Of course, just in case you didn't recognise His Royal Highness, there's his golden crown, sceptre and orb on the table behind him. Though ...

It was once the most expensive painting in the world, and when it was sold 100 years ago, 90,000 people came to see it over three weeks at the National Gallery in London before it set sail for California and the collection of the railroad and real-estate magnate Henry E. Huntington.  "We have been to say good-bye to a boy who is leaving England, in a day or two, forever," The Times wrote in January 1922. "He received us dressed in a beautiful blue satin suit." The gallery's then director wrote "au revoir" on the back of the painting.  Now, Thomas  Gainsborough's Blue Boy  is back at the National Gallery for a special centenary guest appearance, a chance to see what all the fuss was about and why Huntington paid the astronomical sum of $728,000 (£182,000) for it. All the hype surrounding the sale even inspired Cole Porter to write a song about it --  The Blue Boy Blues : "a silver dollar took me and my collar to show the slow cowboys just how b...

There are some stunning paintings to behold in Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace at the Queen's Gallery in London, particularly from the Dutch Golden Age. They've taken 65 works off the walls of the Picture Gallery next door in Buck House, which in normal times is only accessible to the public during the summer opening of the palace and is in any case currently being " reserviced ".  Instead of being hung in two rows, some above settees and fireplaces, the paintings are all at eye level for you to examine and admire close up. The curators invite you to linger and to consider what actually makes a masterpiece.  There's Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, Van Dyck and Canaletto. Some great art from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries from one of the world's greatest art collections, so we'll talk about the paintings first. Later on, we'll tell you why, in spite of the masterpieces on show, we found it a somewhat underwhelming exhibition, given the high standard...

We all know what Charles I looked like, don't we? It was just how Anthony Van Dyck painted him: Van Dyck's triple portrait is the first image that catches your eye as you enter Charles I: King and Collector  at the Royal Academy in London, a terrific exhibition that's chock-full of great works of art. This show has at its centre two rooms of aggrandising pictures of Charles by his Flemish court painter, on horseback, with his family, in his robes of state. So it comes as somewhat of a surprise to find one or two portraits of the King by other artists that make him appear a little different. There's something slightly wrong with them, you feel, because you're so used to the Van Dyck look. Gerrit van Honthorst's Charles  seems somehow more boyish, less certain of himself, while a full-length view by Daniel Mytens captures some splendid tailoring but doesn't quite give us the self-confidence of a man who believed himself endowed with the divine righ...