It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to see one of the greatest -- and most fragile -- works of European art before your very eyes. The illustrated manuscript known as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry contains images that have shaped our view of the late Middle Ages, but it's normally kept under lock and key at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris. It's only been exhibited twice in the past century. Now newly restored, the glowing pages of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry are on show to the public for just a few months. "Approche, approche," the Duke of Berry's usher tells the visitors to the great man's table for the feast that will mark the start of the New Year. It's also your invitation to examine closely the illustration for January, one of the 12 months from the calendar in this Book of Hours -- a collection of prayers and other religious texts -- that form the centrepiece of this exhibition in Chantilly. It's su...
Take a good look at this man; he was very famous in Paris a century ago. You might think he was a magician, possibly a circus ringmaster or a fairground proprietor. Wrong on all counts; he was an anarchist, albeit one who worked for the War Ministry, and he became one of the most influential art critics and collectors in France. His name was Félix Fénéon , and you can find out all about him and the art he championed in an absolutely splendid exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie in the French capital, a show that's full of surprises and delights. Fénéon was a huge promoter of Neo-Impressionism (a description he coined), and it was the Pointillist Paul Signac who portrayed him in the painting above. That swirling, mesmerising, multi-coloured, almost psychedelic background? It was based on the pattern for a kimono in a collection of Japanese pictures that Signac owned. This was cutting-edge art in 1891, and Signac and Fénéon were at the sharp end. Fénéon is certainly a d...