The Art Exhibitions Blog

House more than a century old? In need of renovation? Perhaps a friendly acquaintance can look after some of those valuable pictures you have while the workmen are in.  It's the Frick Collection in New York that's having the makeover, and they've sent 10 of their Dutch Golden Age masterpieces back to Holland for a few months, paintings that have mostly been in America for over 100 years, since the industrialist Henry Clay Frick bought them for his stunning art collection. They're now on display at the Mauritshuis in The Hague in  Manhattan Masters: Rembrandt and Friends from the Frick NYC . Rembrandt and Friends? Yes indeed: Vermeer, Hals, Cuyp. This is a high-quality show, beautifully presented, and almost guaranteed to instil feelings of inner calm and satisfaction in the viewer. Frick may have been a ruthless entrepreneur (there's an interesting introductory film) but he was also an enthusiastic and ambitious collector, even if some of the supposed Rembrandts he...

October's another big month for new exhibitions, with Titian, Rembrandt and Goya among the artists on the agenda in mainland Europe. In London, though, the Royal Academy is staying British with a look at the final 12 years of the career of John Constable, from 1825 to 1837. Late Constable is characterised by expressive brushwork and features paintings and sketches of the British countryside and studies of the weather, in locations such as Hampstead Heath and Brighton seafront. On from October 30 to February 13.  At the National Gallery, Poussin and the Dance is intended to show the French painter in a new light, illustrating how he tackled the challenges of capturing movement and bodily expression. Running from October 9 to January 2, it includes not only the Wallace Collection's A Dance to the Music of Time  but also more than 20 paintings and drawings from public and private collections around Europe and the US. The show moves to the Getty Center in Los Angeles in Februar...

Let's face it: George IV was a womanising, dissipated, self-aggrandising spendthrift, with a taste for bling. And there's really nothing in George IV: Art & Spectacle at the Queen's Gallery in London to disabuse you of that received viewpoint. But the exhibition does succeed in its aim of demonstrating that George, as prince and king, hugely embellished Britain's royal art collection. And he definitely had an eye for a good painting, with a perhaps unexpected penchant for the understated sobriety of the Dutch Golden Age. It can't have been easy being heir to the throne for decades, with the thought at the back of your mind that you might never actually get there. An unsuccessful marriage, too, the butt of jokes and worse. Not too difficult for anyone today to imagine all that, but there were added constraints on an 18th-century Prince of Wales: no chance to lead the troops into battle, and no trips to interesting foreign parts. All far too dangerous. So whe...

The British have long had a liking for art from the Dutch Golden Age; many of the paintings that made their way across the North Sea are to be found not in museums and galleries but in country mansions. Prized Possessions: Dutch Masterpieces from National Trust Houses  offers a rare chance to see some of the best together in one place -- in a museum: the Holburne in Bath. It's a small but well-formed show that offers an all-too-brief overview of the remarkably productive 17th century in the Netherlands: landscape, cityscape, church interior, portrait, genre scenes, flower painting and of course a naval battle against the English. With a great cast list too: Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hooch and Aelbert Cuyp. The National Trust may not own a Vermeer, but it does have a number of paintings by de Hooch, his Delft contemporary. In the Holburne,  The Golf Players  from Polesden Lacey in Surrey is a classic example of his household scenes: the view through multiple...