The Art Exhibitions Blog

You won't find a single work of art by Gustave Caillebotte in a British public collection. And yet he's one of the key figures in the Impressionist movement, whose 150th anniversary we're celebrating this year. But over in Paris, he's the subject of a big, big exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay; we jumped on the Eurostar to see it, and, even though  Caillebotte: Painting Men   was the most crowded show we'd been to in quite some time, we absolutely adored it.  And let's start with perhaps the pièce de résistance. Even if you don't know Caillebotte at all, you may have seen this image before; there's something about it that encapsulates late 19th-century Paris, with its view of an intersection between the broad new streets pushed through by that radical city-planner, Baron Haussmann, lined by elegant new buildings. This was the modern city, the modern world. Paris Street; Rainy Day : a painting in which there's nothing really happening, and there'

We're starting in London this month with a double helping of Renaissance Italy: From November 9, the Royal Academy has Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence, c. 1504 , when the three briefly crossed paths in the Tuscan city. While sculpture and painting feature in this display of more than 40 works, the emphasis appears to be very much on creations on paper, as it is in Drawing   the Italian Renaissance at the King's Gallery, which opens on November 1. This show, which also includes Titian, promises the widest range of drawings dating from around 1450 to 1600 ever to be displayed in the UK, with about 160 by more than 80 artists. The RA exhibition closes February 16, that in the King's Gallery on March 9.  As the Renaissance in southern Europe was coming to an end, a new Golden Age was starting in India, that of the Mughal Emperors. The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence at the Victoria and Albert Museum will display paintings, jewellery, clothing and more

Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers at the National Gallery in London -- heavily hyped and certainly extremely popular. So is it worth the fairly hefty ticket price? Very much so. This is a beautifully put-together illustrated narrative of the two years Vincent spent in Provence, the peak period of his short career, from early 1888 to spring 1890. There are major paintings from galleries far and wide, and pictures you may never have seen before from private collections. It's not a big show -- only 61 works, just under a quarter of which are on paper -- but it is gorgeous.  From the National's description of the exhibition, with its reference to "bringing together your most loved of Van Gogh’s paintings from across the globe," you might be expecting an all-encompassing retrospective. But there are no pictures from the start of Vincent's artistic life in the Netherlands, from his time in Paris, or from his last few weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise before he died of self-inflicted g

The headline new exhibition in London in October is Francis Bacon: Human Presence at the National Portrait Gallery, which assembles more than 55 works to examine Bacon's far-from-traditional approach to portraiture from the 1950s onwards. Among the sitters: Lucian Freud. The show runs from October 10 to January 19.  Those in search of something less visceral might prefer to Discover Constable &  The Hay Wain  at the National Gallery. This is the latest in a series of relatively small free shows at the gallery looking at a single picture in depth; we've found them very enjoyable so far. Constable's painting is now seen as presenting a traditional view of the countryside; when it was made, though, it was regarded as rather radical. On from October 17 to February 2.   More than five years ago, we went to the Nunnery Gallery in Bow in east London to see an exhibition of paintings of the local area by Doreen Fletcher . Those modern cityscapes could be seen as following on f

Are you ready? London's National Gallery says you're going to "be blown away by Van Gogh's most spectacular paintings in our once-in-a-century exhibition", Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers , which is on from September 14 to January 19. The show brings together "your most loved of Van Gogh’s paintings from across the globe, some of which are rarely seen in public," according to the museum. Given Vincent's prolific output and the plethora of Van Gogh shows, such hype may be a little overblown. Note that tickets are already selling well, and standard admission costs £28 before Gift Aid.  Still, the Van Gogh show may provide more bang for your buck than Monet and London -- Views of the Thames in the rather small exhibition space of the Courtauld Gallery (for which standard tickets are £16). Claude Monet stayed in London three times from 1899 to 1901, painting the Houses of Parliament, Charing Cross Bridge and Waterloo Bridge. He showed the pictures in Paris,

You can go to any number of exhibitions of late 19th-century Western artists -- Whistler , van Gogh , Vuillard  to name just three -- and see how their work was significantly influenced by Japanese prints, which presented a radically different way of looking at things from a country that had just opened up to the outside world. But don't imagine that the traffic was only one-way.  Japanese artists came West, and you can see some of the results of the fusion in  Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London.   The story starts in 1900, when Hiroshi Yoshida and a fellow Japanese artist were in London during a lengthy tour of America and Europe. The first time they attempted to visit the Dulwich gallery, on May 24, a policeman told them it didn't exist. They finally made it at their third attempt five days later, though Hiroshi had to leave his camera at the entrance, and their names are recorded in the visitor's book on di