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Showing posts from July, 2024

Van Dyck: International Portraitist Extraordinaire

Why did King Charles I bring Anthony van Dyck to London as his court painter in 1632? Well, van Dyck could make you look magnificent, every inch a monarch. He'd portrayed the ruling elite in all their sumptuous finery in Rome, Genoa, Brussels and The Hague, and the results were stunning. Van Dyck has the reputation of being the best portraitist in Europe in the early 17th century, and if you want to know why, make an effort to get to the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa to see  Van Dyck, the European , a superlative exhibition about a superlative painter.  This is what Charles was paying van Dyck's high prices for: that impression of regal might (and no expense spared on the fashionable outfits or coiffure either). The figures of the King and his Queen, Henrietta Maria, are about lifesize and feel incredibly real, even four centuries later.  Of course, just in case you didn't recognise His Royal Highness, there's his golden crown, sceptre and orb on the table behind him. Though ...
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Opening and Closing in August

Let's start off this month with Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look at the National Gallery in London. This free one-room show, running from August 8, brings together two David Hockney paintings with a picture from the gallery, Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ , that is depicted in both works. On until October 27. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford's new exhibition is Money Talks: Art, Society & Power , starting on August 9. This show aims to look at art on currency, and currency in art, bringing together notes and coins from history as well as work by artists from Rembrandt to Andy Warhol and Grayson Perry. It runs until January 5.  Starting on August 24 is the last of the major exhibitions around Germany marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of Caspar David Friedrich . This one is on at the Albertinum and the Royal Palace in Dresden, where Friedrich lived and worked for more than 40 years. Caspar David Friedrich: Where It All Started is on until January 5...
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Rebel, Rebel

Leonora Carrington was always a rebel. The potted biography at the start of  Leonora Carrington: Rebel Visionary at Newlands House Gallery in Petworth tells how she was "asked to leave" not just one but two convent boarding schools and then ran off at the age of 20 with the much older Surrealist painter Max Ernst.  She was still rebelling in her 90s, but as so often happens, the rebels see themselves vindicated, even if only posthumously. A Carrington painting made in 1945, Les Distractions de Dagobert , sold for $28.5 million earlier this year, the highest amount ever paid for a work by a female British artist. Now, to be honest, we've never been huge fans of the paintings of Carrington, probably Britain's leading Surrealist, finding them a bit ethereal and wispy. But this show in West Sussex has a strong focus on her late work, particularly sculpture, and these creations, merging influences from myriad religions, mythologies and cultures, prove to have real heft. W...
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Prydie -- Back Home a Century On

Nicholson's a big name in the history of British art. Our 1970s copy of the Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists gives half a page (a comparatively long entry) to Sir William and his eldest son Ben, "the best-known British abstract painter". There's no mention, though, of Mabel Pryde Nicholson, William's wife and Ben's mother. She was a painter too. But she hasn't had an exhibition devoted to her since shortly after her death more than a century ago. Now, for a short time only, you can see Prydie: The Life and Art of Mabel Pryde Nicholson 1871-1918 , back at the Nicholsons' old family home, The Grange in Rottingdean, on the outskirts of Brighton.  This is a show strong on family portraits (definitely the most striking of Mabel's works on display are those of her own family), with tantalising hints at sometimes quite complex paintings by her whose whereabouts are unknown. All this is woven in with the complicated and colourful story of the Nichols...
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Petersfield, Cradle of Modern Art

New York, Paris, Venice, Petersfield? Yes, Petersfield. In Hampshire. These are places Peggy Guggenheim made her home. And the American socialite and collector -- whose name is almost synonymous with modern art -- must have liked the town because she lived in the area for five years in the 1930s.  If World War II hadn't intervened, would the self-proclaimed "art addict" have ever moved to Venice to exhibit her collection there in the museum that bears her name on the Grand Canal? And, as this photo shows, to soak up the sunshine and the Dolce Vita. This little-known episode is the subject of  Peggy Guggenheim: Petersfield to Palazzo  at Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery. It's the 25th anniversary this year of this fairly modest local museum, and they've pulled out the stops to tell the story of perhaps the most glamorous resident of the local area and how she began building her art collection during her time there. The curators have even been able to borrow a few...
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