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Fire and Water, Sun and Sky

"Fire and water.... the one all heat, the other all humidity -- who will deny that they both exhibit, each in its own way, some of the highest qualities of Art?" That was the Literary Gazette 's verdict in 1831 on JMW Turner and John Constable, probably the most admired of all British landscape artists. Almost exact contemporaries whose work is being celebrated at Tate Britain in  Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals , a thoroughly engrossing exhibition that bathes you in the drama of Turner's golden sunlight, contrasted with perhaps the more understated charms of Constable's cloud-filled skies.  "The Sun is God" are supposed to have been Turner's last words, and throughout this show you can't get away from his solar worship -- one striking watercolour records The Sun Rising over Water . And that's it, that's all there is, but to be frank, you don't really notice the water. It's the bright yellow Sun that holds your eye,...
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Opening and Closing in December

It's the month before Christmas, and all through the house, there's not a lot stirring in terms of new exhibitions.

At the Wallace Collection in London, December 4 sees the opening of Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company. Curated by writer and historian William Dalrymple, this is the first show in the UK of works by Indian painters for the trading company that effectively ruled large parts of the subcontinent in the 18th and 19th centuries. Until April 19.

We've seen some superb exhibitions at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg in the past, and their new show brings together three really big names: Goya, Fragonard, Tiepolo. With around 100 works, the exhibition will examine the disparity of 18th-century art in an age of great political, technological and social change. December 13 to April 13.
And in Italy, the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara is devoting a show to Giuseppe De Nittis, the Italian painter closely associated with the French Impressionists. It's on from December 1 to April 13.

Last chance to see....

Two complementary shows are finishing at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the City of London. December 1 is the last day for Architecture of London, an exhibition that looks back at how artists have viewed the metropolis over four centuries, while The London that Never Was, a quirky free display on the buildings and projects that failed to get constructed, closes a week later.
And in Copenhagen, one of the best exhibitions of the year, a huge retrospective of the Danish Golden Age in the 19th century, ends its run at the National Gallery on December 8. It will be on again at the Petit Palais in Paris from April 28. 

Images

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Don Tomás Pérez Estala, c. 1795. © Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk, Photo: Elke Walford
Image of Fleet St taken from a 1967 Greater London Council report on the feasibility of introducing monorails in central London, London Metropolitan Archives (City of London)

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