Skip to main content

Opening and Closing in August

August is always one of the quietest months for new exhibitions, and this year is no different, but we do have one big event to alert you to, as well as two splendid shows that only have weeks to run.  The one major opening is  Gwen John: Strange Beauties  at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Running from August 1 to January 4, this is a comprehensive retrospective of the work of the woman perhaps now seen as Wales's most significant artist, born 150 years ago this year. Maybe a little too comprehensive, according to some of the reviews of the show when it was on at the National Museum in Cardiff. The exhibition goes on to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in February and then at the end of July next year to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. We saw a rather smaller Gwen John exhibition in Chichester in 2023.  Last chance to see.... Ending on August 23 is the exhibition at the Lakenhal in Leiden ...
Post a Comment

Subscribe to updates

Opening and Closing in August

Jean-François Millet -- one of the most influential artists of the 19th century with his depictions of toiling country folk -- is the subject of a free exhibition in just one room at London's National Gallery that opens on August 7. Millet: Life on the Land mainly features work from British museums, but has a star attraction in the shape of L’Angélus from the Musée d'Orsay. On until October 19. 
In eastern Germany, Chemnitz is one of this year's European capitals of culture, and one of the major exhibitions on their programme starts on August 10. Edvard Munch -- Angst in the Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz will recall, in part, a visit by Munch to Chemnitz 120 years ago. And, of course, there'll be a version of The Scream. Until November 2. 

On the other side of the country, a rather different offering at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn: an exhibition devoted to the German filmmaker Wim Wenders, creator of Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas, and marking his 80th birthday. W.I.M. -- The Art of Seeing runs from August 1 to January 11, and another version of the show will be on at the DFF Film Museum in Frankfurt from March. 

The American painter Lois Dodd has been going even longer than Wenders; she's still working at 98 and will have her first European retrospective at the Kunstmuseum in The Hague from August 30. You can see her observational pictures of her surroundings in Lois Dodd: Framing the Ephemeral until January 4. 

Last chance to see....

You only have until August 3 to catch perhaps the greatest of the old mistresses, Artemisia Gentileschi, at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris. It's a show full of Baroque drama, squeezed into a terribly cramped exhibition space. Last few tickets still available as this preview was published.  

Closing at the National Gallery in London on August 17 is José María Velasco: A View of Mexico, a chance to see this chronicler of the Mexican 19th-century landscape whose work is little-known here. Fascinating, if a little overpriced. 

The intimate paintings of Norway's greatest woman artist of the 19th century, Harriet Backer, have been on a European tour, and the last leg winds up at Kode in Bergen on August 24. We saw the show at the Musée d'Orsay last year.
An exhibition that's been immensely popular in London this year is Flowers -- Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea; so much so they brought it back for a second run that ends on August 31. There's a lot to enjoy; advance booking advisable. 

Images

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), L’Angélus, 1857-59, Musée d'Orsay, Paris. © Musée d'Orsay, Dist. Grand Palais Rmn/Patrice Schmidt
Lois Dodd (b. 1927), Sun in Hallway, 1978. © Lois Dodd, Courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York
Harriet Backer (1845-1932), Evening, Interior, 1896, Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design, Oslo. Photo: Nasjonalmuseet/Børre Høstland
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's On in 2026

Coming up in 2026: Lots more big exhibitions starring women artists, including Frida Kahlo, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and Gwen John , as well as a host of names from the 17th-century Low Countries. And women almost certainly embroidered the Bayeux Tapestry, a contender for this year's hottest ticket in London.   Here's a selection of shows that have caught our eye around Britain and Europe, in more or less chronological order; as ever, we make no claim to comprehensiveness, and our choice very much reflects our personal taste. January We'll start the year at the Fondation Beyeler on the outskirts of Basel, where they're devoting an exhibition to Paul Cezanne . Focusing on the artist's later years, the show will bring together some 80 oil paintings and watercolours. January 25 to May 25.  February Two leading British women artists feature in exhibitions opening this month, with the National Museum in Cardiff honouring the best-known female painter Wales has pr...
1 comment
Read more

An Englishman Abroad: John Frederick Lewis

The Victorians had a taste for the exotic. The chance to be transported, as if on a magic carpet, away from rainy, smoky Britain to the delights of the East. And so they were captivated by the pictures John Frederick Lewis made of Egypt. Drawings and paintings so full of detail, so full of local colour, they were seen by his contemporaries as "accurately and intimately true".  John Frederick Lewis: Facing Fame at the Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey traces the story of an English artist who not only travelled to the Orient, he was so wooed by it that he stayed in Cairo for a decade. And who, when he eventually returned to Britain, continued to paint Oriental-inspired scenes. "There was something un-English about him," John Ruskin said.  And here we are in Cairo's El Khan Khalil textile market. Full of colourful fabrics and carpets, turbanned extras, the obligatory sleeping dog and an Islamic arch. And in the foreground, a prosperous merchant himsel...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Highs and Lows of the Nahmad Collection

It's widely referred to as the world's most valuable private art collection : the one assembled over decades by the Nahmad brothers, dealers Ezra and David . Worth an estimated $3 billion or more, it's said to include hundreds of Picassos. Some 60 works from it are now on display at the Musée des impressionnismes in Giverny as  The Nahmad Collection: From Monet to Picasso . Intended, apparently, to demonstrate how art developed from the early 19th century through Impressionism and on to the start of the modern era, towards the liberation of colour and form, this is an exhibition that ends up coming across as somewhat incoherent. We're not really told much about the Nahmads or their collecting choices -- and as you search the Internet, things become slightly mysterious: Is Ezra alive or dead? The art, presumably, is supposed to speak for itself, but it's a rather eclectic, if not confusing, selection; some of the works are fantastic, some are distinctly ho-hum.  Let...
Post a Comment
Read more