Opening in March: A Tale of Two Cities

There's an impressive range of new art shows starting in both London and Paris in March. So before cross-Channel traffic grinds to a juddering halt....

The rediscovery of Greek and Roman art in the 15th and 16th centuries saw artists north and south of the Alps put the human body at the forefront of their painting and sculpture. That's the theme of The Renaissance Nude from March 3 to June 2 at the Royal Academy in London. Titian, Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Bronzino, Dürer and Cranach are among those represented in an exhibition of around 90 works.

Over at Tate Britain, the largest assembly of Vincent van Gogh's paintings in the UK for nearly a decade -- 45 of them -- is the big selling point of Van Gogh and Britain. The show explores how he was inspired by British art and culture -- Constable, Millais and Dickens -- and in turn inspired British artists like Francis Bacon and David Bomberg. March 27 to August 11, with standard tickets costing £22, reflecting the intended blockbuster status. 

It feels like we've been to a lot of exhibitions by artists described as Masters of Light, but the Spanish Impressionist Joaquín Sorolla -- known perhaps above all for his beach scenes -- has a fairly indisputable claim to the title. A new show at the National Gallery in London features more than 60 of his works, apparently the most complete exhibition mounted about him outside Spain. It's also the first in Britain for more than a century. March 18 to July 7.

The sculptor Henry Moore spent many hours at the Wallace Collection, looking at armour. Now the gallery is bringing together his helmet-head sculptures for the very first time. Henry Moore: The Helmet Heads runs from March 6 to June 23. Meanwhile, the National Portrait Gallery is putting on a major new show of work by one of Britain's most popular photographers. Only Human: Martin Parr will include Parr's take on the social climate since the Brexit vote. March 7 to May 27.

If you saw All Too Human at Tate Britain last year, you may remember Leon Kossoff's expressionist London cityscapes. There's a chance to explore a lot more work by the artist, now in his 90s, in a retrospective at Piano Nobile in Holland Park, running from March 1 to May 22. Something rather different is on offer at Philip Mould in Pall Mall: Jewel in the Hand, from March 12 to April 18,  features portrait miniatures from collections not normally on view to the public, including by Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, complementing the Elizabethan Treasures show at the National Portrait Gallery.

Over in west London, the architect Sir John Soane's early 19th-century country retreat, Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, has been renovated and will reopen to the public on March 16 with a new gallery space for exhibitions. First up will be a show of sculptures by Anish Kapoor, running until August 18.

We spent several absorbing hours at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Gallery last summer in the tremendous Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style exhibition. If you're in north-west England, you really shouldn't miss it when it travels down to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, opening on March 15. Around 250 objects tell the story of Glasgow's greatest style icon and Britain's only Art Nouveau movement. Until August 26.

A new show at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester marks 100 years since the death of Harold Gilman, the British painter who combined the vitality of post-Impressionism with the formality of the Camden Town School. It's the first exhibition of his work in more than 35 years and runs from March 2 to June 9. 

How about a bit more Van Gogh? Together with David Hockney? Sounds like a bit of a crowd-pleaser, and it starts on March 1 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Hockney-Van Gogh: The Joy of Nature explores the similarities in their landscape paintings, including the bright colours and experiments with perspective. Until May 26.

If you didn't get the chance to see the show about the rivalry between brothers-in-law Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini at the National Gallery in London, there's another opportunity when it opens at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin on March 1. Mantegna and Bellini: Masters of the Renaissance runs until June 30.

Meanwhile, just outside Berlin at the excellent Museum Barberini in Potsdam, you can view rarely seen works made during the last couple of decades of Pablo Picasso's career from the collection of his wife Jacqueline. Picasso: The Late Work opens March 9 and is on until June 16.

There are a whole swathe of exhibitions starting in Paris in March, and the most spectacular looks to be Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Pharaoh, featuring 150 objects from King Tut's tomb on a global tour before they go into the Grand Egyptian Museum currently under construction near the Pyramids. The show is on at La Villette in north-east Paris and is scheduled from March 23 to September 15. It's just been announced that the exhibition will move to the Saatchi Gallery in London starting in November.

Not inappropriately, how European painters viewed the exoticism of the Middle East and North Africa is the theme of the new exhibition at the Musée Marmottan Monet. L'Orient des peintres, from March 7 to July 21, features Ingres, Vallotton, Kandinsky and Klee.

At the Musée d'Orsay, Black Models: From Géricault to Matisse, which runs from March 26 to July 21, explores how French painters have represented black subjects over the past two centuries. This show was well reviewed when on in New York, as was a new exhibition opening at the Musée de l'Orangerie: Franz Marc/August Macke: The Adventure of the Blue Rider, featuring two of the major figures of German Expressionism who died in World War I. From March 6 to June 17.

An exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg looks at the colourful decorative art of the late 19th-century group, the Nabis, whose leading lights were Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. Les Nabis et le décor starts on March 13 and runs until June 30.

From the same era but with a much cooler palette, the atmospheric work of the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi goes on show at the Musée Jacquemart-André. Hammershøi, the Master of Danish Painting will feature 40 of his works, including some rarely seen. March 14 to July 22.

And just outside Paris, the Musée des Impressionismes in Giverny, just a hop and a skip from Claude Monet's garden, marks its 10th anniversary with Monet-Auburtin: An Artistic Encounter, a show comparing Monet's landscapes in Normandy and Provence with those by Jean Francis Auburtin, the Symbolist painter who followed in the Impressionist's footsteps. March 22 to July 14.

Last chance to see....

One of the best exhibitions we visited last year was Egon Schiele: The Jubilee Show Reloaded at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, marking the 100th anniversary of the death of an artist whose work continues to come across as unbelievably modern and still has the ability to shock. Until March 10.

It's the early work that's most exciting in Fernard Léger: New Times, New Pleasures at Tate Liverpool, which runs until March 17. Prized Possessions -- Dutch Paintings from National Trust Houses is on until March 24 at Petworth House in West Sussex, a show we enjoyed at the Holburne in Bath last year. Also finishing on March 24: the east London townscapes of Doreen Fletcher in a really good show at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow. And you have until March 31 to get down to The Lightbox in Woking for Cyril Mann: Painter of Light and Shadow, revealing the somewhat forgotten artist whose biggest triumph was his groundbreaking solid-shadow paintings. 

Images

Agnolo Bronzino, Saint Sebastian, c. 1533, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Vincent van Gogh, L’Arlésienne, 1890, Collection MASP (São Paulo Museum of Art). Photo: João Musa
Joaquín Sorolla, Boys on the Beach, 1909, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. © Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Charles Rennie Mackintosh. © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Collections. All rights reserved
Harold Gilman, Tea in the Bedsitter, 1916, Kirklees Collection: Huddersfield Art Gallery
David Hockney, Woldgate Vista, 27 July 2005. © David Hockney, Photo: Richard Schmidt
Edouard Vuillard, Woman in a Striped Dress, 1895, Washington, National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon. © National Gallery of Art
Vilhelm Hammershøi, Portrait of Ida Ilsted, Future Wife of the Artist, 1890, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. © SMK, Photo: Jakob Skou-Hansen
Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Striped Shirt, 1910, Leopold Museum, Vienna. Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna/Manfred Thumberger