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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 August

With the summer holidays in full swing, August is almost inevitably the quietest month of the year for new art shows, but we do have to highlight one absolutely superb exhibition that's opening, as well as another stunning show that's coming to an end.

It's the 250th anniversary in 2024 of the birth of the great German Romantic landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich, and the next in a series of commemorative retrospectives gets under way at the Kunst Museum in the Swiss city of Winterthur on August 26. Caspar David Friedrich and the Harbingers of Romance features some of the artist's most iconic pictures, including the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, as well as taking a look at the landscape painters who went before him, such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Claude Lorrain. We got to see this show in Schweinfurt in northern Bavaria in the spring and absolutely lapped it up. It's on in Winterthur until November 19.  

You only have until August 13 to get to the National Gallery in London to see After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art, which provides a crash course in developments in art from the late 19th century up to the start of World War I. Cezanne, Rodin, Gauguin, van Gogh, Klimt, Munch, Pointillists, German Expressionists, Braque, Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian are all highlighted, as well as some more surprising artists, particularly from Barcelona. A really satisfying exhibition, with much we hadn't seen before. 

Images

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon, c. 1824, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Houses in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, June 1888, Private collection
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