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Showing posts from October, 2021

New Exhibitions in March

She was a highly successful artist in 17th-century Brussels, creating the sort of paintings you might have seen from Rubens or Van Dyck, but then she vanished from art history. It's only very recently she's been rescued from obscurity, her pictures rightfully reattributed.  Michaelina Wautier  comes to the Royal Academy in London on March 27 from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, offering the first opportunity to encounter her work on a large scale. On till June 21.  And while we're on the theme of new discoveries, we've made quite a few at the Dulwich Picture Gallery down the years. The latest arrival there is a completely unknown name to us, from the Baltic:  Konrad Mägi  (1878-1925), described as a pioneer of Estonian modernism. More than 60 of his works are being shown in the UK for the first time in an exhibition that runs from March 24 to July 12.  No introduction is needed for David Hockney, and he's taking over the Serpentine Gallery on March ...

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Opening in November

William Hogarth -- now there's a painter you think of as British through and through, flag-wavingly so. Just look at a painting such as  'O the Roast Beef of Old England' . So an exhibition entitled  Hogarth and Europe at Tate Britain in London has something of a curious ring to it. Starting on November 3, it aims to show how Hogarth's portrayal of a rapidly changing British society in the mid-18th century was echoed by painters on the Continent, such as Francesco Guardi in Venice, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin in France and Cornelis Troost in Holland. Until March 20.  For an early pioneer of pan-European art, look no further than Albrecht Dürer. Dürer's Journeys: Travels of a Renaissance Artist at the National Gallery from November 20 follows the master painter from Nuremberg on his trips to the Low Countries and across the Alps, spreading his own reputation and exchanging ideas with his Dutch and Italian counterparts. The first major Dürer exhibition in the UK fo...

The Two Faces of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Rossetti's Portraits -- well, up to a point. There are some gorgeous paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti of his favourite sitters and his muses that are the star attractions of this show about the Pre-Raphaelite at the Holburne Museum in Bath.  But amid all the big hair and the pouting red lips, just how many really are portraits, giving you an insight into the characters of the women he's depicted? And how many are those idealised visions of enigmatic women Rossetti seemed to specialise in, those ladies of the town with the kiss of a snake that LS Lowry found so attractive.  For example, here's Alexa Wilding, one of Rossetti's most frequent models, though, for once, apparently not one of his love interests. She's posed as  Monna Vanna , the vain woman, a painting originally entitled Venus Veneta , representing the Venetian ideal of female beauty. Staring into the distance, resplendent in a billowing, ornate gown and fingering her fantastic fan and her coral neckl...