Truth is often stranger than fiction, isn't it? Head to the newly opened venue of Charleston in Lewes for Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story , an exhibition that relates a piece of art history that, you have to say, would make a good film. And here are the two principal characters: Dorothy, on the left, a talented graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art , and her fellow student, friend, lover, partner and collaborator Patricia, perhaps not quite so talented, but both passionate about art. The photograph seems to tell you a lot. Dorothy looks a little bit awkward and ill at ease, slightly frumpy, androgynous even. Patricia appears confident, glamorous, exuberant, perhaps a little.... possessive? But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. We need to establish the plot.... The rather retiring Hepworth and the outgoing, gregarious Preece became inseparable as students, and they planned to set up a studio together after graduation. In 1922, Preece took exam
In 2024, we'll be marking the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition and the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto. There'll be lots more shows focused on women artists. It's 250 years since the birth of the great German Romantic, Caspar David Friedrich, and Roy Lichtenstein was born 100 years ago. We've picked out some of the exhibitions coming up over the next 12 months that have caught our eye, and here they are, in more or less chronological order.
February
Let's start at Ordrupgaard on the outskirts of Copenhagen with Impressionism and Its Overlooked Women, described by the gallery as a "magnificent exhibition featuring works from across the world". The show focuses on five female artists, including Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Eva Gonzalès, as well as some of the models who featured in the most iconic Impressionist paintings. The exhibition is on in Denmark from February 9 to May 20, after which it transfers to the National Gallery of Ireland, though no dates for the Dublin showing have yet been announced.
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A year after Vermeer, it's another of the three greatest artists of the Dutch Golden Age, Frans Hals, who gets the major-exhibition treatment at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam from February 16 to June 9. Hals's lightning application of paint without any apparent underdrawing was a huge inspiration to the Impressionists more than two centuries later. We saw the National Gallery in London's version of this show, and while Hals's pictures were as stunning as ever, we found the presentation there oddly flat. This one moves on to Berlin later in the year.
If Surrealism has a spiritual home, it has to be Belgium. Imagine! at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels from February 21 to July 21 will be exploring dreams, the subconscious, and all those similar Surrealist preoccupations through the eyes of artists including Giorgio de Chirico, Jackson Pollock and Salvador Dalí. Versions of this show will be seen later at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, the Mapfré Foundation in Madrid and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Brussels exhibition will also take in the Symbolist movement in Belgium including artists such as Léon Spilliaert. Surreally, there's no mention of René Magritte....
One of the most enjoyable shows we saw in 2023 was Turning Heads at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. This exhibition, looking at how painters mainly in the Low Countries studied faces, both as preliminary sketches for group pictures and then for works of art in their own right, known as tronies, reopens at the National Gallery of Ireland on February 24. Rembrandt, Rubens and Vermeer all feature, until May 26. It's a good year for art-lovers in Dublin....
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We've heard fine reports of the exhibition at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid showcasing four centuries of Women Masters, and the photos we've seen look really interesting, so we're happy to record that it's travelling on to the Arp Museum in Remagen on the River Rhine, just south of Bonn. Maestras features more than 40 artists -- big names such as Artemisia Gentileschi and Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun as well as lesser-known ones -- from February 25 to June 16.
March
Big-name women artists don't come much bigger than Angelica Kauffman, and you can find out why at the Royal Academy in London from March 1 to June 30. Swiss-born Kauffman was one of Europe's most sought-after painters in the late 18th century, and she was a founding member of the RA to boot. The Academy had been due to host a Kauffman show in 2020, before Covid struck. We went to see it at the Kunstpalast in Dusseldorf and discovered the story of a ground-breaking international art superstar.
If you're talking Pop Art, you won't get far without mentioning Roy Lichtenstein's appropriation of the comic strip to create some of the most recognisable images of the 1960s. Roy Lichtenstein: A Centennial Exhibition at the Albertina in Vienna is intended as a sweeping retrospective with almost 100 paintings, graphic works and sculptures, including loans from across the US and Europe. It's on from March 8 to July 14.
On April 15, 1874, the first Impressionist exhibition got under way in Paris. On March 26, the Musée d'Orsay opens its doors on Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism. There will be around 130 works in this show, contrasting the startlingly original paintings created by Morisot, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne and their colleagues with the approved forms of art shown at the official Salon the same year. We suspect this one will be packed; it's on till July 14, Bastille Day. This show moves to the National Gallery of Art in Washington starting in early September.
If you had to name a preferred Impressionist motif, the cliffs of the Normandy coastline would be close to the top of the list. Impressionism and the Sea at the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny is part of this year's Normandie Impressionniste festival, taking place through the summer with exhibitions and events across the region. Monet, Courbet and Gauguin all feature in this show, which runs from March 29 to June 30.
April
Let's continue in France, as Paris prepares to host the 2024 Olympic Games. En Jeu! Artists and Sport (1870-1930) at the Musée Marmottan Monet will have more than 100 artworks from major European, American and Japanese collections looking back at the early history of modern organised sport. There are works by Monet, Degas and Caillebotte, as well as American painters such as Thomas Eakins and George Bellows. On from April 4 to September 1.
The first big Friedrich anniversary exhibition is already on at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, but April 19 sees the start of a retrospective at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, entitled Caspar David Friedrich: Infinite Landscapes. About 60 paintings and 50 drawings will be on show until August 4.
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It may be that what we've offered you so far has you hankering for something a bit more modern. Forget the Impressionists, then; what you want is Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider at Tate Modern in London. The German Expressionist movement didn't really get a lot of coverage in the National Gallery's otherwise excellent After Impressionism exhibition in 2023, but the Tate will be making up for that here with a show featuring more than 130 works, many from the collection of the Lenbachhaus in Munich (which is currently showing Turner paintings from the Tate). The Expressionists are on in London from April 25 to October 20.
May
Another anniversary we haven't mentioned yet: It's the bicentenary of Britain's National Gallery, and from May 10 a dozen of the museum's most famous paintings will be sent out across the UK for some guest appearances, in a programme entitled National Treasures. Diego Velázquez's Rokeby Venus heads to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford gets The Wilton Diptych, and John Constable's The Hay Wain will be on show at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
From May 16, Tate Britain will be showing more than 150 works created by Women Artists in Britain 1520-1920. The Tate says the show will dismantle stereotypes surrounding women artists in history, though surely those people who've been paying attention have realised those stereotypes have been quite comprehensively dismantled in the past few years. Kauffman and Laura Knight are among the biggest names here. The exhibition runs until October 13.
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July
Frans Hals: Master of the Moment is on at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin from July 12 to November 3 after transferring from Amsterdam.
August
The final major Friedrich show of the year takes place in Dresden, where he lived for more than 40 years. Caspar David Friedrich: Where It All Started will be shown at the Albertinum and the Kupferstich-Kabinett in the city from August 24 to January 5, 2025, with a focus on the local landscapes and the artists displayed in the Dresden collections that influenced him. Completists may also want to take in a series of smaller exhibitions throughout the year at the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald, Friedrich's home city on the Baltic Sea coast, though we're of the opinion that you can have too much of a good thing.
September
We've managed to get to autumn without mentioning Vincent van Gogh! That's because the National Gallery has been saving it all up for what it describes as a "once-in-a-century exhibition". They say you'll "be blown away" as they're "bringing together your most loved of van Gogh’s paintings from across the globe, some of which are rarely seen in public". Given the number of van Gogh shows we've seen over the years, it sounds a wee bit over-hyped, but judge for yourself: Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers will be on in London from September 14 to January 19, 2025.
The bold colours and strong lines of Michael Craig-Martin's paintings and sculptures make him one of the most recognisable and approachable of contemporary British artists. He's now in his 80s, and from September 21 the Royal Academy will be staging the largest ever exhibition of his work in the UK. Michael Craig-Martin will be on till December 10.
At the Fondation Beyeler, just outside Basel, Matisse -- Invitation to the Voyage starts on September 22. Conceived as a journey through Henri Matisse's life and work, in which travel played an important role, this is the first Matisse retrospective in the German-speaking world for nearly two decades. Around 80 works from major European and American museums and private collections will be on show until January 26, 2025.
At the Fondation Beyeler, just outside Basel, Matisse -- Invitation to the Voyage starts on September 22. Conceived as a journey through Henri Matisse's life and work, in which travel played an important role, this is the first Matisse retrospective in the German-speaking world for nearly two decades. Around 80 works from major European and American museums and private collections will be on show until January 26, 2025.
November
Our final selection for 2024 is Golden Times? Art and Society in Rembrandt's Amsterdam. Running from November 27 to March 23, 2025, this show at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt examines how Rembrandt and other Amsterdam painters captured the many faces of a booming city in the Dutch Golden Age, particularly in group portraits. Ferdinand Bol, Govert Flinck and Bartholomeus van der Helst are among the artists also featured..jpg)
Images
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), The Psyche Mirror, 1876, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, MadridCircle of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), The Man with the Golden Helmet, c. 1650, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, property of Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), Drowning Girl, 1963, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/Bildrecht, Vienna 2023. Photo: Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Woman at the Window, 1822, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Photo: Jörg P. Anders
Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807), Colour, 1778-80. © Royal Academy of Arts, London; Photographer: John Hammond
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Starry Night over the Rhône, 1888, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo © Musée d'Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt
Bartholomeus van der Helst (c. 1613-1670), Two Regents of the Spinhuis, 1650, Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam
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