The Art Exhibitions Blog

British Baroque: Power and Illusion is the title of the new exhibition at Tate Britain in London, devoted to the period between the restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660 and the death of Queen Anne in 1714 and focusing on the magnificence of the art and architecture of the time -- by names such as Peter Lely, Godfrey Kneller and James Thornhill -- to convey status and influence. Many works, some from stately homes, will be on public display for the first time in this show running from February 4 to April 19. And artworks from one very stately home, Woburn Abbey , which is being refurbished, will be going on show for almost a year at the Queen's House in Greenwich. Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Reynolds and Canaletto are all represented in Woburn Treasures at the Queen's House , which runs from February 13 to January 17, 2021. Also at the Queen's House, from February 13 to August 31, the three versions of the Armada portrait of Elizabeth I, one of them from Woburn, w...

Shhh -- don't make a sound. You're eavesdropping on the Dutch Golden Age in the mid-17th century, and the man who's giving you a glimpse of this distant world is called Nicolaes Maes. He's a painter, and he's by no means a bad one. In fact, he's one of the most talented pupils of Rembrandt van Rijn. And, in such a crowded art market, one where you need to stand out, he's developed a little specialist genre of his own. Just take a peep through this doorway.... but quietly now.... the mistress of the house has her finger to her lips, in a painting aptly entitled The Eavesdropper . Over there, on the right, the servant is being distracted by an amorous man through the open window. And that means she's completely ignoring her charge, the child in the cradle. We're at Nicolaes Maes -- Rembrandt's Versatile Pupil at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the first solo retrospective ever to feature the artist, and one that will be travelling to the Nati...

Two museums in two countries collaborate on a big exhibition, to be shown in both, and you tend to assume that, apart from a few tweaks, you'll see much the same in each city. What we weren't quite expecting when we went along to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to see Rembrandt-Velázquez  this month was to find not only a completely different approach to the show we'd seen at the  Prado in Madrid  during the summer, but for the most part a completely different set of paintings.  The Prado exhibition bringing together the great Dutch and Spanish masters of the 17th century included some superlative pictures, but we were less than convinced by the curators' premise that, beneath the surface, there weren't really any national differences in the approach to art 400 years ago. It seemed a bit too much of an obvious pro-European political message and led to comparisons between paintings that we felt at times were rather contrived.  This show in Amsterdam, by con...

There are an awful lot of new shows to talk about this month, particularly in London, and one that looks set to be a crowd-puller is Gauguin Portraits at the National Gallery. It's the first ever exhibition devoted to the portraits of Paul Gauguin and aims to demonstrate how he revolutionised the genre. There are more than 50 works, including high-profile loans from around Europe and North America, but ticket prices (£24 on the door at weekends) are £6 higher than for the recent Sorolla show and £2 up on last year's Monet blockbuster. October 7 to January 26. Dulwich Picture Gallery is marking the 350th anniversary of Rembrandt's death with Rembrandt's Light , an exhibition designed to showcase the artist's mastery of light and shadow and focusing on his middle period. It will have around 35 works, including some never seen in the UK before, and runs from October 4 to February 2. The recent show at the Foundling Museum showed just how much meaning William ...