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A Queer Tale of Deception

Truth is often stranger than fiction, isn't it? Head to the newly opened venue of Charleston in Lewes for  Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story , an exhibition that relates a piece of art history that, you have to say, would make a good film.  And here are the two principal characters: Dorothy, on the left, a talented graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art , and her fellow student, friend, lover, partner and collaborator Patricia, perhaps not quite so talented, but both passionate about art.  The photograph seems to tell you a lot. Dorothy looks a little bit awkward and ill at ease, slightly frumpy, androgynous even. Patricia appears confident, glamorous, exuberant, perhaps a little.... possessive? But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. We need to establish the plot....   The rather retiring Hepworth and the outgoing, gregarious Preece became inseparable as students, and they planned to set up a studio together after graduation. In 1922, Preece took exam
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Opening and Closing in August

August is normally a quiet month for new shows, but there are two exhibitions moving on this month to fresh locations that really deserve to be highlighted.

At the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, the doors open on August 10 on Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light. Joaquín Sorolla is best known for his impressionistic light-filled paintings of the Spanish coast, but as the previous version of this show at the National Gallery in London demonstrated, he produced masterpieces of social realism and portraiture too. The Dublin show looks to be smaller than London's, with 50 or so works, but the best of Sorolla's work is remarkable. Until November 3.
And if you're visiting Madrid at any point, Sorolla's atmospheric house and studio, now the Museo Sorolla, has a great selection of his paintings and is well worth a visit. Our tip, though, is to go somewhere less scorching in August.

Copenhagen, for example. Because the best exhibition we've seen all year has finished its run in Stockholm and is moving on to Denmark's national gallery, the SMK, starting on August 24. The Danish Golden Age is the largest ever show about the flowering of the country's art in the first half of the 19th century, with more than 200 works, including quite a few by Christen Købke, the greatest painter of the period. The show is on until December 8, after which it goes to Paris.

Last chance to see....

Anish Kapoor's disorientating, disarming, devilishly clever mirror sculptures are on display in the brand-new exhibition space at Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, west London until August 18.

You have until August 26 to get to Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. We found this comprehensive show on Britain's only Art Nouveau movement fascinating when we caught it in Glasgow last year.

And although Hogarth & the Art of Noise ends in September, we thought we'd better include it in our August round-up, because the final day is September 1. This show at the Foundling Museum in London takes you through William Hogarth's March of the Guards to Finchley detail by detail and adds a soundtrack, making it come absolutely to life. A great exhibition (among the best of 2019 so far) based on just the one painting. 

Images

Joaquín Sorolla, Sewing the Sail, 1896, Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna di Ca' Pesaro, Venice. © Photo Archive - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia
Christen Købke, View from Dosseringen near the Sortedam Lake Looking towards Nørrebro, 1838, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
William Hogarth, The March of the Guards to Finchley, 1750. © The Foundling Museum, London

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