The Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum starts on September 10; it's already sold out for this year but booking for the rest of the run, from January 1 through to July 11, will open on October 21. If you've never seen this most breathtaking of historical artefacts, you may want to seize the chance before it leaves London next year for its permanent home in Normandy, which will have been renovated during its absence. At Southampton City Art Gallery, we're promised an extensive exhibition of British art from the first half of the 20th century, drawing on the museum's own substantial holdings and those of the Ingram Collection . Running from September 26 to February 21, Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 will feature artists including Barbara Hepworth, Gwen John , Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious. There might not be much new on in London this month, but we'll always have Paris. Starting at the Musée Jacquemart-André with Time...
Frans Hals had 27 blacks in his paintbox, according to Vincent van Gogh. How many whites did James McNeill Whistler have in his? You can make your own judgement in Whistler's Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan at the Royal Academy in London. Jo, the red-headed Irishwoman who modelled for the paintings at the heart of this excellent exhibition, was also Whistler's lover (and distinctly different from Whistler's Mother ), and she was central to his early development as an artist. As you enter this show, this is the picture of Jo you can see in the distance through the doorway to your right: Symphony in White, No 1: The White Girl . Whistler started the painting in Paris late in 1861, posing Hiffernan for exhausting all-day sessions, and he submitted it to the Royal Academy's annual exhibition in London the following year. "Some stupid painters don't understand it at all," Hiffernan wrote, adding that Whistler thought that "praps the old duffers may...