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Men Behaving Badly; Women and Children Too

When we visit the Netherlands or come across the Dutch abroad, we always feel they know how to relax and enjoy life. Visit Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden and you'll see in their latest exhibition that this joie de vivre has a long tradition. The gallery is looking back 400 years to the birth in the city of Jan Steen, who frequently painted his countrymen having a good time. And yes, on occasion, perhaps just a little bit too much of a good time.  In this show,  At Home with Jan Steen -- 400 Years of Merrymaking , you will discover why the Dutch use the expression "a Jan Steen household" for a home where, well, things are maybe just a bit too free and easy. This is the painting that sums it up: What a jolly time everyone is having in The Merry Family . To the accompaniment of music, they are indeed making merry: singing, drinking and smoking. All are taking part; the old, the young, and even a baby wielding a spoon. The baby's not partaking of the alcohol or tobacco, adm...
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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. 
Heading north to Copenhagen now, for a show at the SMK, Denmark's national gallery, with the rather convoluted title Against All Odds -- Historical Women and New Algorithms. This exhibition, on from August 31 to December 8, looks at 24 women artists from 1870 to 1910 who left the Nordic countries to pursue their ambitions elsewhere in Europe. The Finn Helene Schjerfbeck is among the best known. And if you're attracted by that show, you'll also want to take the short stroll across the park to the Hirschsprung Collection for Women Visualising the Modern: Danish Art 1880-1910. That one is open from August 28 to January 12. 

Last chance to see....

You have until August 26 to get to Rottingdean, on the eastern edge of Brighton, for Prydie: The Life and Art of Mabel Pryde Nicholson 1871-1918. It's the first exhibition in over a century of the work of the wife of William Nicholson and the father of Ben Nicholson, in their former home, and entry is free. 
The new football season is just starting, but September 1 is the final day of Football: Designing the Beautiful Game at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. We saw the original version of the show at London's Design Museum in 2022. 

Images

David Hockney (born 1937), My Parents, 1977, Tate. © David Hockney; Photo: Tate, London
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, around 1817, Hamburger Kunsthalle. © SHK/Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk; Photo: Elke Walford
Mabel Pryde Nicholson (1871-1918), The Grange, c. 1911, Scottish National Gallery

 

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