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New Exhibitions in April

You may have noticed that it's the 250th anniversary of John Constable's birth this year, while JMW Turner was born 250 years ago last year and Thomas Gainsborough's 300th birthday falls in 2027. Put them all together and you get  Gainsborough, Turner and Constable: Inventing Landscape  at Gainsborough's House in Sudbury, Suffolk. This show, running from April 25 to October 11, explores the emergence of English landscape painting through three of its greatest exponents, and it features mostly rarely seen works from private collections -- including Turner's Abergavenny Bridge , which hasn't been on public display since 1799!  Meanwhile, the show that's just been on at Gainsborough's House --  Love & Landscape: Stanley Spencer in Suffolk  -- transfers to the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Berkshire, starting on April 4. On till November 1, the exhibition explores the pivotal role the time Spencer spent in Suffolk had on his career. You can read he...
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New Exhibitions in April

You may have noticed that it's the 250th anniversary of John Constable's birth this year, while JMW Turner was born 250 years ago last year and Thomas Gainsborough's 300th birthday falls in 2027. Put them all together and you get Gainsborough, Turner and Constable: Inventing Landscape at Gainsborough's House in Sudbury, Suffolk. This show, running from April 25 to October 11, explores the emergence of English landscape painting through three of its greatest exponents, and it features mostly rarely seen works from private collections -- including Turner's Abergavenny Bridge, which hasn't been on public display since 1799! 
Meanwhile, the show that's just been on at Gainsborough's House -- Love & Landscape: Stanley Spencer in Suffolk -- transfers to the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham, Berkshire, starting on April 4. On till November 1, the exhibition explores the pivotal role the time Spencer spent in Suffolk had on his career. You can read here what we thought of the show when we saw it in Sudbury. 

And continuing the East Anglian theme, let's head to Kettle's Yard in Cambridge for Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today. The exhibition features work by Vanessa Bell, Tirzah Garwood, Henri Rousseau, Edouard Vuillard and Christopher Wood, among many other familiar names. On from April 25 to September 6, and entry is free. 

Another country, another anniversary: Jan Steen, painter of unruly households and music-making, was born in 1626, so that means there's an exhibition to celebrate in his home town of Leiden (also, of course, the birthplace of Rembrandt). At Home with Jan Steen -- 400 Years of Merrymaking is on at the Lakenhal from April 2 to August 23, and it will offer a glimpse of everyday life in the 17th century through Steen's mix of humour, chaos and hidden messages. 

Now 40 miles east of Leiden in Utrecht, they took another approach to their art; influenced by Caravaggio, they delighted in Baroque drama and chiaroscuro. Gerard van Honthorst was one of the leading lights, and the Centraal Museum is presenting the first ever major retrospective devoted to him from April 25 to September 13. And they've called it Gerard van Honthorst -- Different to Rembrandt.
Two exhibitions to tell you about at the Louvre in Paris; the first, on from April 8 to July 20, is Martin Schongauer: The Beautiful Immortal. Schongauer, from Alsace, was one of the greatest painters and engravers in the Germanic world at the end of the Middle Ages, and this show will present a near-complete selection of his paintings, which reveal the influence of early Netherlandish art. Then, from April 15 to July 20, there's Michelangelo and Rodin: Living Bodies, comparing and contrasting the work of two sculptors centuries apart who broke new ground investing their works with an inner life. 
 
Elsewhere in the French capital, the Petit Palais is very good at bringing you exhibitions of very unfamiliar artists. From April 14 to September 6, they're highlighting Károly Ferenczy (1862-1917), a Hungarian who straddled genres and styles, in a show with nearly 140 works. 

Perhaps better known than Ferenczy is Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899), the Italian artist famed for his pastoral landscapes of the Alps, combining a Divisionist technique with Symbolist images. Giovanni Segantini: I Want to See My Mountains is on at the Musée Marmottan Monet from April 29 to August 16 and will feature about 60 works.  

Heading south, a chance to delve into the world of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec at the Caumont art centre in Aix-en-Provence. Toulouse-Lautrec: Creator of Icons brings together nearly 100 works -- painting and poster designs -- and is on from April 24 to October 4. For a taster, you can read about the big Toulouse-Lautrec retrospective we saw in Paris back in 2019. 
From Toulouse the artist to Toulouse the city, where at the Fondation Bemberg you can enjoy Joaquín Sorolla: Master of Light. On from April 30 to September 13, this show includes a large number of luminous Sorolla works from the museum devoted to the artist in Madrid, which is currently getting a makeover. Read here about the big Sorolla exhibition at the National Gallery in London a few years ago. 

You get searing heat and glaring sun from Sorolla, but up north in Rouen, you're stuck In the Rain: Painting, Living and Dreaming. This exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts has some 150 works, with Gustave Caillebotte and Gustave Courbet among the big names. April 11 to September 20. 

Perhaps you remember that Peggy Guggenheim, art collector extraordinaire, was living on the outskirts of Petersfield in Hampshire when she opened her first gallery in London in the late 1930s. The story of Guggenheim Jeune, which lasted only 18 months because of the outbreak of World War II but became a beacon for avant-garde art, is told in Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector at the Guggenheim Collection in Venice from April 25 to October 19. The show travels on to the Royal Academy in London in November and can also be seen at the Guggenheim Museum in New York next year.

Now there's nothing quite like an exhibition about an intriguing artist you've never heard of, and there's one coming up at the Landesmuseum in Hanover. It's about Philipp Klein, a self-taught painter from Mannheim in south-west Germany, who died in his mid-30s in 1907. Many of the 100 works in a show whose title is possibly best translated as Re-Emerged: Philipp Klein in the Circle of the Impressionists (link is in German) are from private collections and being shown in public for the first time. April 24 to October 25. 

Last chance to see....

It's full circle back to Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals, the huge anniversary exhibition at Tate Britain, which ends on April 12. It's now sold out, but you can still get in for one last look if you're a Tate member. 

Images

John Constable (1776-1837), Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, c. 1830s, Private collection
Gerard van Honthorst (1592-1656), Cavalier and a Woman Singing by Candlelight, 1624, Private collection, New York. © Photo: Christie's Images/Bridgeman Images
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), Jane Avril, 1899, Private collection. © Peter Schälchli
Philipp Klein (1871-1907), Lovis Corinth Bathing, 1899. © H. W. Fichter Kunsthandel, Frankfurt am Main
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