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...
A couple of weeks ago, we found ourselves getting increasingly exasperated by a late Victorian painting superstar, Edward Burne-Jones , in a show at Tate Britain that was full of knights in shining armour and damsels in distress. But British art was getting more modern. In the 1870s, James McNeill Whistler was already "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." And then a couple of years later, William Stott of Oldham came along. William Stott? Not exactly a household name, but he did paint one rather influential picture that's seen as key in the move to Impressionism and naturalism in British art in the 1880s. It's called Le Passeur (The Ferryman) , and it was bought by the Tate last year for £1.5 million. This beautiful work is now touring the country, and it's currently at Southampton City Art Gallery in a small but very well done (and free) exhibition called Beneath the Surface . It's well worth seeing. Confusingly, there seem to have been th...