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Showing posts from August, 2022

It's Impressionism, Just Not as We Know It

There's not a haystack, waterlily or cliff-face to be seen; you won't be gazing into the box at the theatre or contemplating steaming locomotives in the station, because we're not looking at the French Impressionists for a change; we've crossed the Rhine (literally; we flew into Strasbourg and took the train) to explore  Impressionism in Germany: Max Liebermann and his Times  at the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden.  Yes, there are Caillebotte-like yachts and Renoir-style children, intimate interiors and cityscapes -- similar themes, though the treatment is often quite different -- but then there are also actors on the stage, Bible stories and views of orphanages, subjects the French never really tackled. Oh, and beer gardens. The three big names in this show are Max Slevogt, Lovis Corinth and above all Max Liebermann, the doyen of the German Impressionist movement. And a man with a passion for horticulture; Liebermann's garden on the outskirts of Berlin is as im...

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Opening and Closing in September

Many of the big names in the history of American art are relatively little known in Europe, and so the idea of a show devoted to one of them at London's National Gallery is a tempting prospect. Winslow Homer: Force of Nature , from September 10 to January 8, features around 50 works, many focusing on man's relationship with nature and the elements. This introduction to the artist, who lived from 1836 to 1910, is organised together with the Metropolitan Museum in New York, whose own larger Homer show this summer had largely positive reviews.   Can you name Lithuania's most famous artist? Thought not. We'll put you out of your misery: It's Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911). Dulwich Picture Gallery has a fine tradition of introducing you to art you never knew existed, and M.K. Čiurlionis: Between Worlds , running from September 21 to March 12, will feature more than 100 works that often have an ethereal, fantastical quality. Most will be on show in the...

A Gondola Trip down the Grand Canal

It's a perfect day in Venice, that most picturesque of cities, most desired of travel destinations. Just look at those fluffy clouds in the sky. Not too hot, not too sunny. Scarcely more than a light breeze to stir the surface of the canals. Certainly no hint of a flood in the offing for this miracle of civilisation constructed in a lagoon in the Adriatic Sea.   Your gondola awaits. Climb aboard for an hour or so, for a trip around the sights. Your guide is none other than Canaletto, that master of the 18th-century painted cityscape and a man who has helped shape our vision of Venice right down to the present day. This is Canaletto's Venice Revisited , at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. There are 24 stops on this tour, 24 canvases by Canaletto. They've come to Greenwich from Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, where they normally hang in the dining room, but which is now undergoing restoration. This exhibition offers a rare chance to view all these paintings at eye le...

Lucy's Awfully Big Art Adventure

Do you sometimes find it's not so much the art itself as the stories behind it that make for a really enjoyable exhibition? It's certainly the case at Towner Eastbourne in  A Life in Art: Lucy Wertheim, Patron, Collector, Gallerist  and  Reuniting the Twenties Group: From Barbara Hepworth to Victor Pasmore ; these two linked shows take us well beyond the paintings and sculpture to uncover fascinating personal histories and to shine a light on the mid 20th-century art scene in Britain. And, unless you're an absolute expert in the art of the period, you'll discover many talented artists who are very unfamiliar names.  Who was Lucy Wertheim? Without formal art training but with a fair amount of money, she broke into the male-dominated British art scene and was a patron to many young artists, establishing her own gallery in London in 1930. She set up the Twenties Group -- artists in their 20s, as the name suggests -- whose work she tried to exhibit round the country, wit...