The Art Exhibitions Blog

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...

This month's star turn in London has to be  James McNeill Whistler  at Tate Britain, apparently the first major retrospective in Europe in 30 years and featuring 150 works. There's no doubting Whistler's position as one of the most influential of late 19th-century painters; just how often have you seen other artists alluding to his portrayal of his mother, the  Arrangement in Grey and Black , in their work? On at the Tate from May 21 to September 27, and then at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from mid-October. For a taster, here's a reminder of a smaller Whistler show at the Royal Academy in 2022.  One of the greatest names in Spanish 17th-century art is Francisco de Zurbarán. We have to admit, many of his religious paintings leave us cold, but he's also known for his portraits and still lifes. The first major exhibition devoted to him in the UK takes place at the National Gallery from May 2 to August 23. Zurbarán  will have almost 50 paintings, including th...

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is reviving Pre-Raphaelites: Drawings & Watercolours , a show that closed after just five weeks last year due to the Covid pandemic. On from July 15 to November 27, this exhibition features more than 100 works from the museum's own outstanding Pre-Raphaelite collection; Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt and Millais are the big names.  There are two new exhibitions coming to the Lightbox in Woking, a venue we always enjoy visiting. Starting on July 9, Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden are the stars of a collaboration with the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden that looks at the story of the artists' colony at Great Bardfield in Essex; more than 30 paintings and drawings will be on display.  The Ingram Collection & the Fry Art Gallery: 'Bawden, Ravilious and the Art of Great Bardfield'  runs until October 9. The second show, beginning on July 16, sets 20 paintings, prints and drawings of Venice and England by Canaletto alongside ...

It's a motif that recurs in art down the centuries, going back to ancient times: a woman at a window. A new show at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London builds an exhibition on the theme around its own Girl at a Window by Rembrandt with more than 40 works going right up to the present day, though don't expect Vermeer  or Caspar David Friedrich . Reframed: The Woman in the Window runs from May 4 to September 4.  We've seen Edvard Munch in Oslo at the old Munch Museum and the old National Gallery, but we've never been to the significant Munch collection at KODE in Bergen, collected during the painter's lifetime by the industrialist Rasmus Meyer. Eighteen works from the collection, dating from the 1880s and 1890s, will be on show at the Courtauld Gallery from May 27 to September 4 in Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen . Will this be as popular as the Van Gogh Self-Portraits show at the Courtauld, which finishes on May 8 but is completely sold out? A fre...

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...

Monet, Pissarro, Sisley -- names calculated to get the crowds flocking to Tate Britain for Impressionists in London . Legros, Dalou and Carpeaux -- well, probably not, but you'll be seeing more of them than you might have bargained for if you go to this rather misleadingly named exhibition. The show's subtitle is French Artists in Exile 1870-1904, which probably gives a rather better sense of what you are going to see. The story starts with the flight of artists and dealers to London in 1870-71 amid France's military defeat by Prussia and the bloody suppression of the popular uprising that was the Paris Commune. The scene is well set in the first room, which introduces us to the devastation and carnage behind the exodus. Claude Monet crossed the Channel to avoid conscription while Camille Pissarro's house was used as stables by the Prussians. There are a few works from that early period on display -- the relative lightness of a Monet view of the Thames contrasting w...