Opening and Closing in January

It's surely an anniversary the Tate has long been counting down to: JMW Turner was born in 1775, John Constable in 1776. To mark the 250 years of two of the country's greatest painters, Turner and Constable is on at Tate Britain from November 27 to April 12. Rivals with very different approaches to landscape painting, they were both hugely influential. More than 170 works are promised, with Turner's Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons and Constable's White Horse coming home from the US for the show. Before those two were even born, Joseph Wright of Derby had already painted his most famous picture, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump . It'll be part of Wright of Derby: From the Shadows at the National Gallery from November 7 to May 10, which is intended to challenge the view of Wright as just a painter of light and shade and to illustrate how he used the night to explore deeper and more sombre themes. Only 20 or so works, however, making it a disappo...

Opening and Closing in January

Let's start the New Year in Edinburgh, with two of the biggest names in Pop Art.

Eduardo Paolozzi, perhaps the pioneer of the genre with his collages from the late 1940s, was born in the Scottish capital a century ago, and you can see a retrospective of his varied work from January 27 in National Galleries Scotland's Modern Two building. Paolozzi at 100 is on until April 21.

Meanwhile, in Edinburgh's Old Town, Dovecot Studios will be presenting an exhibition of Andy Warhol's colourful commercial textile designs, dating back to the 1950s, before he found fame in New York. Andy Warhol: The Textiles is on from January 26 to May 18, when it might just be warm enough for you to enjoy an ice-cream sundae, if your tastebuds have been tickled by Warhol's fabric.

Rembrandt's earliest known works from the time when he was starting out as a painter in Leiden are pictures depicting four of the senses, and they're brought together at the city's Lakenhal museum from January 20 to mark its 150th anniversary. Rembrandt's Four Senses -- His First Paintings are on show for 150 days until June 16. Be warned: They're not the Rembrandt you're familiar with.

Max Beckmann was one of many German artists whose work was branded degenerate by the Nazis. He fled to the Netherlands, hoping to make it to the US, but he was still in Holland when the Germans invaded. Universum Max Beckmann at the Kunstmuseum in The Hague will feature a cross-section of the painter's often crowded, challenging works, and it's on from January 27 to May 20.

For something a little lighter in tone, you might consider Fresh Air: Northern Impressionism at Museum Singer in Laren, near Hilversum. This show looks at how the influence of French Impressionism spread to the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, where the style was taken up by painters such as Jan Toorop, Max Liebermann, and Anna and Michael Ancher. Open from January 17 to May 5, and then moving on later in 2024 to the Museum Kunst der Westküste on the north-west German island of Föhr and later the Landesmuseum in Hanover.

And another Dutch-Danish encounter: The Joy of Everyday Life -- in the Netherlands and Denmark at the Nivaagaard Collection, north of Copenhagen. This exhibition, running from January 28 to June 16, brings together genre scenes from the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century and the great days of Danish painting in the 19th. There are more than 100 works in this show, with lots of loans from leading collections around the world, including that mystery man of Dutch art, Jacobus Vrel.

Last chance to see....

We had a great time at the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny in the celebration of floral art and design down the centuries called Flower Power. This show, taking in mythology, pottery, Impressionism, political art and a whole lot more, closes on January 7.

You have until January 14 to get to M Leuven to see the work of Dieric Bouts, perhaps the Flemish city's greatest painter and the creator of a number of remarkable altarpieces in the late 15th century. Fascinating art, even if the curators' approach is a bit bizarre.

There are some stupendous paintings in the Frans Hals exhibition at London's National Gallery, which closes on January 21, and the work of the Dutch Golden Age portraitist who so inspired the Impressionists is really worth seeing. We have to say, though, that the National Gallery show failed to provide much context, leaving the presentation strangely flat. They may well do a better job when the show tours to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where it opens on February 16, and later to the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

One of the most enjoyable exhibitions we've seen over the past 12 months was Turning Heads at the KMSKA in Antwerp, an exploration of the character studies that are such a feature of Dutch and Flemish art. It's also on until January 21, but it reopens at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin on February 24.

And if you're on the Atlantic seaboard of the US, January 28 is the final day for The Rossettis at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. We saw the show at Tate Britain several months ago, and despite some gorgeous paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, we found it something of a drag.

Images

Anna Ancher (1859-1935), Clear Moonlit Evening at Skagen Lighthouse, 1904, Museum Kunst der Westküste, Föhr
Anonymous (China), Pair of vases with "thousand flowers" decor, reign of Qianlong (1736-1795), Musée national des arts asiatiques, Paris
Jan Lievens (1607-1674), Man in Oriental Dress, c. 1629-31, Bildergalerie, Schloss Sanssouci, Potsdam

What's On in 2025

What will be the exhibition highlights of 2025 around Britain and Europe? At the end of the year, Tate Britain will be marking 250 years since the birth of JMW Turner and John Constable with a potential blockbuster. Meanwhile, the Swiss are making a big thing of the 100th anniversary of the death of Félix Vallotton (a real favourite of ours). Among women artists in the spotlight will be Anna Ancher, Ithell Colquhoun, Artemisia Gentileschi and Suzanne Valadon. Here's a selection of what's coming up, in more or less chronological order; as ever, we make no claim to comprehensiveness, and our choice very much reflects our personal taste. And in our search for the most interesting shows, we're visiting Ascona, Baden-Baden, Chemnitz and Winterthur, among other places. January We start off in Paris, at the Pompidou Centre; the 1970s inside-out building is showing its age and it'll be shut in the summer for a renovation programme scheduled to last until 2030. Bef...

Carrington: You've Met Leonora, Now Discover Dora

Carrington: She only wanted to be known by her surname, unwittingly posing a conundrum for art historians, curators and the wider world a century later. Because it's another somewhat later Carrington, the long-lived Surrealist and totally unrelated, who's recently become Britain's most expensive woman artist. But today we're at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester to see an exhibition not about Leonora but about Dora Carrington. She hated that name Dora -- so Victorian -- but with Leonora so much in the limelight (and the subject of a recent show at Newlands House in Petworth, just a few miles up the road), the curators at the Pallant didn't have much option, so they've had to call their retrospective Dora Carrington: Beyond Bloomsbury . Leonora was a bit of a rebel, as we found out in Petworth. Dora too. But we ought to respect her wish. Carrington, then, has been a bit neglected recently; this is the first show of her works in three decades. And while ther...

Very Rich Hours in Chantilly

It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the chance to see one of the greatest -- and most fragile -- works of European art before your very eyes. The illustrated manuscript known as the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry contains images that have shaped our view of the late Middle Ages, but it's normally kept under lock and key at the Château de Chantilly, north of Paris. It's only been exhibited twice in the past century. Now newly restored, the glowing pages of Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry are on show to the public for just a few months. "Approche, approche," the Duke of Berry's usher tells the visitors to the great man's table for the feast that will mark the start of the New Year. It's also your invitation to examine closely the illustration for January, one of the 12 months from the calendar in this Book of Hours -- a collection of prayers and other religious texts -- that form the centrepiece of this exhibition in Chantilly. It's su...

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