We must confess that religious paintings are not our favourite subject, and we've tended to regard Spanish Catholic art as being, well, just a little too religious to cope with. So we approached the Francisco de Zurbarán exhibition at the National Gallery in London with a certain amount of trepidation. A degree of contrition is due.... Yes, there were monks, altarpieces and lots of saints, but we were blown away by Zurbarán's ability to depict textures and fabrics and to convey an intensity of feeling. It's an absolutely excellent exhibition, full of truly beautiful paintings. Such religious art was intended to bring the faithful closer to God, to bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth, in an age when many could not read. Zurbarán was a master at it. Let's start with a saint: Just take a look at the fabrics, trimmings and gems in this picture. And the garments are even more striking when you are stood in front of this nearly life-size figure. This is Casild...
It's in the reign of King Henry VIII that English history seems to come to life, to become truly accessible. And part of that is down to the portraits of the royal family and the court by the German artist Hans Holbein the Younger, which retain an uncanny immediacy five centuries on. Holbein at the Tudor Court at the Queen's Gallery in London will display the largest group of Holbein's works from the Royal Collection in more than 30 years, including over 40 of his sublime portrait drawings, of sitters such as Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour and Thomas More. It's on from November 10 until April 14.
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Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543), Sir Thomas More, 1527, Royal Collection Trust/© His Majesty King Charles III 2023
Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), The Lavergne Family Breakfast, 1754. © The National Gallery, London
Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Summer Night by the Beach, 1902-03, Private collection
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More works on paper at the Royal Academy, but from well over 300 years later: Degas, Cezanne, Morisot, van Gogh, Monet and Toulouse-Lautrec are all represented in Impressionists on Paper, which assembles 77 exhibits to show how the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists transformed art through other media as well as painting. This one runs from November 25 to March 10.
November seems to be drawing month in London: November 2 sees the start of David Hockney: Drawing from Life at the National Portrait Gallery. Or actually the restart: The show was on briefly at the beginning of 2020 before the Covid lockdown. The exhibition explores the artist's work over five decades with a focus on five sitters, among them Hockney's mother and himself. There are also 30 new portraits painted in Normandy in 2021 and 2022. Open till January 21.
Also starting on November 2 at the British Museum is Burma to Myanmar, which looks through artefacts and artworks at the past 1,500 years of history of a nation that's situated at the crossroads between South and South-East Asia yet in recent decades has found itself rather cut off from its neighbours and the outside world. On till February 11.
A free show at the National Gallery will reunite the oil and pastel versions of the Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard's Lavergne Family Breakfast after 250 years. There are few painters who can match the delicacy and charm of Liotard, so this display is well worth getting along to between November 16 and March 3. The National claims this painting is Liotard's masterpiece, although that's debatable; what about The Chocolate Girl in Dresden?
A free show at the National Gallery will reunite the oil and pastel versions of the Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard's Lavergne Family Breakfast after 250 years. There are few painters who can match the delicacy and charm of Liotard, so this display is well worth getting along to between November 16 and March 3. The National claims this painting is Liotard's masterpiece, although that's debatable; what about The Chocolate Girl in Dresden?
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OK, you've got a big decision coming up. Trainers, wellies, brogues, high heels? Just what are you going to wear when you hotfoot it to The Arc in Winchester to see Shoes: Inside Out? This show, on from November 24 to March 6 with free admission, looks at how footwear has shaped and been shaped by society since ancient times. Which of the 70 pairs on display will suit you?
We started with Holbein, and there'll be more of his work on show at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt from November 2 to February 18. The exhibition is called Holbein and the Renaissance in the North, and as well as the Holbein who went to England, the focus will also be very much on his father Hans the Elder and Hans Burgkmair, who like them was from Augsburg. Albrecht Dürer and Jan van Eyck will also be represented in the more than 100 works on show. The exhibition moves on to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in March.
There's already one Edvard Munch exhibition on in Berlin, and a second opens just outside at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam on November 18. It's Munch's sometimes dreamy, sometimes troubling landscapes that are the subject of Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth, which is on until April 1. There are more than 100 loans in this show, which goes on to the Munch Museum in Oslo later in April. It's already been on at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts; the New York Times said it was "fun" and the Washington Post called it "boffo".
There's already one Edvard Munch exhibition on in Berlin, and a second opens just outside at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam on November 18. It's Munch's sometimes dreamy, sometimes troubling landscapes that are the subject of Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth, which is on until April 1. There are more than 100 loans in this show, which goes on to the Munch Museum in Oslo later in April. It's already been on at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts; the New York Times said it was "fun" and the Washington Post called it "boffo".
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At the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, November 24 sees the start of Modigliani: Modern Gazes. This show features some 50 works by Amedeo Modigliani alongside pictures by contemporaries including Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. It's on until March 17, and then in April the exhibition will reopen at the Barberini in Potsdam.
And one last exhibition this month: At Moderna Museet in Stockholm, you can explore Lotte Laserstein: A Divided Life. Noted for her realism, Laserstein fled Germany under the Nazis at the height of her career before settling in Sweden. Forgotten about for decades, she's recently been rediscovered. This one's on from November 11 to April 14.
Last chance to see....
November 19 is the last day for Caspar David Friedrich and the Harbingers of Romanticism at the Kunst Museum in Winterthur in eastern Switzerland. We saw this outstanding show at Schweinfurt in Bavaria earlier in the year. Can't make it? There's a lot more Friedrich coming up over the next 12 months to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth, starting at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg in December.
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Images
Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789), The Lavergne Family Breakfast, 1754. © The National Gallery, London
Edvard Munch (1863-1944), Summer Night by the Beach, 1902-03, Private collection
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, about 1817, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Permanent loan of Stiftung Hamburger Kunstsammlungen. © SHK/Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk (Photo: Elke Walford)
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