If you were asked to name a Mexican painter, you'd probably initially think of Frida Kahlo. Then, maybe, Diego Rivera. But the first historical Mexican artist -- indeed the first from Latin America -- to get an exhibition at London's National Gallery in its 200-year existence is José María Velasco. No, we didn't know anything about him either, so we were keen to see the show. And what you discover in José María Velasco: A View of Mexico is certainly exotic, though not perhaps in the way you're expecting. Velasco, born in 1840, was trained in a tradition of European landscape painting, and while some of the pictures you see at the National Gallery have an air of the Old World, this one definitely doesn't: The cactus is spectacular enough, with its green branches reaching into the blue sky above the hills beyond, but it's only when you notice the man in the shade beneath it that you realise how immense this plant really is. This is a painting that...
October's another big month for new exhibitions, with Titian, Rembrandt and Goya among the artists on the agenda in mainland Europe. In London, though, the Royal Academy is staying British with a look at the final 12 years of the career of John Constable, from 1825 to 1837. Late Constable is characterised by expressive brushwork and features paintings and sketches of the British countryside and studies of the weather, in locations such as Hampstead Heath and Brighton seafront. On from October 30 to February 13. At the National Gallery, Poussin and the Dance is intended to show the French painter in a new light, illustrating how he tackled the challenges of capturing movement and bodily expression. Running from October 9 to January 2, it includes not only the Wallace Collection's A Dance to the Music of Time but also more than 20 paintings and drawings from public and private collections around Europe and the US. The show moves to the Getty Center in Los Angeles in Februar...