There are some familiar names and familiar paintings in Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 at Southampton City Art Gallery, but it's the unfamiliar that makes it especially worth the trip to a venue you might not normally consider for an exhibition. This show provides an excellent overview of art trends in this country in the first half of the 20th century. And it's free! Southampton has a very good collection, but we often get the feeling that a lot of interesting works are in store behind closed doors. Pleasant surprises await when they finally see the light of the day, in this case in combination with a selection from the extensive Ingram Collection of modern British art. In all, there are more than 100 works by over 100 artists, demonstrating how the British reacted to the latest developments in art on the Continent. So let's start with a couple of hidden gems from the Southampton treasure trove, first of all a Landscape that really stoppe...
Hogarth and Europe : It's an intriguing-sounding exhibition at Tate Britain; the chance to see that great chronicler of 18th-century London life, William Hogarth, compared with his contemporaries in Paris, Venice and Amsterdam. Hogarth "was not alone," the Tate tells us on its website. "Across Europe, artists were creating vivid images of contemporary life and social commentary." So we went along in the expectation that we were going to see Hogarth's story-telling and insight reflected in similar scenes from across the continent. Alas no. Somewhere between the conception and the execution, another idea seems to have taken hold. For one thing, few of the pictures on show here from French, Italian or Dutch artists are a patch on Hogarth, and they don't really live up to the billing of vivid social commentary. And there also appears to be a determined attempt to present Hogarth as an ingrained misogynist and racist, failing to live up to 21st-century value...