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Showing posts from September, 2021

Give Women Painters a Chance!

You know Rembrandt, Watteau and Monet, reads the introduction at the start of  Maestras: Women Masters 1500-1900 at the Arp Museum on the River Rhine. But, it asks, do you also know Fede Galizia, Anne Vallayer-Coster or Marie Bracquemond?  You'll see a few of their paintings in this show. As well as work by Giovanna Garzoni, Rachel Ruysch and Helene Funke too. And they're fantastic pictures, some of them, works that make you go "wow". But will you have learned any more about the artists by the time you've been round, will you know much about them? Perhaps a little bit. But the presentation here is really rather strange. The wall captions only give the picture title, the artist and dates, and the detail of where it's on loan from. There's no discussion of subject matter, context, technique, style or the artist's background at all. An audio guide does provide further information on some pictures and their creators, but the English commentary is delivere

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Opening and Closing in October

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 February

Nero: Nasty or Nice?

Nero has had a bad press for 2000 years. Roman writers trashed his reputation as cruel and debauched after his early death, and as you enter Nero: The Man Behind the Myth at the British Museum in London, that impression is conveyed by a big blow-up shot of Peter Ustinov portraying the Roman Emperor in the 1951 movie Quo Vadis ,   looking more than a bit unhinged. (The curators, alas, don't reference the Christopher Biggins interpretation, neither from the 1970s BBC series I, Claudius  nor the  Heineken lager commercial .)  It wasn't like that at the beginning of his reign, though. The fifth Roman Emperor, Nero came to power in 54 AD aged just 16 amid high hopes of a new golden age for Rome following the death of the elderly Claudius. Official portraits emphasised his youth and vigour, with a simple, bold new hairstyle. The show takes you through Nero's story over the 14 years of his rule and leaves you to make up your own mind about his achievements -- seemingly quite cons

Five Meet Up at the National Gallery

You've bought a new painting, but it's actually one of a set of five. Nice idea to borrow the other four for a few months so you can admire them all together, as they were originally meant to be seen. And let the public in for free. That's what the National Gallery in London has done to mark the acquisition of  The Fortress of Königstein from the North by Bernardo Bellotto. If you're in central London, take 20 minutes out of your day to transport yourself to 18th-century Saxony for Bellotto: The Königstein Views Reunited .  If you follow the River Elbe upstream from Dresden towards the Czech border, you'll eventually come to the fortress on the right-hand side. It's in an area known as Saxon Switzerland, not Swiss in the sense of towering mountain peaks, but distinguished rather by rocky outcrops such as the one the fortification sits on.  Bellotto (1722-80), the nephew of Canaletto, was court painter to August III, the Elector of Saxony, and painted around 30