The Art Exhibitions Blog

You've just been to one exhibition about Canaletto and Venice, and then a second one comes along straight away, a bit like delayed vaporettos on the Grand Canal.  Canaletto's Venice Revisited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich contrasted the painter's classic views of the lagoon city with the threat it faces today from rising sea levels and mass tourism, and  Canaletto and Melissa McGill: Performance and Panorama  at the Lightbox in Woking takes a similar tack. But if Greenwich's display of statistics about population decline and increasing flooding and an array of disposable plastic boots for tourists left us rather depressed, we found something surprisingly soothing and uplifting about the American artist Melissa McGill's attempt to alert us to the same problems.  Back in 2019, McGill created the Red Regatta project, which saw dozens of traditional Venetian sailing boats hoisted with sails she had hand-painted in varying shades of red traversing the ci...

It's a perfect day in Venice, that most picturesque of cities, most desired of travel destinations. Just look at those fluffy clouds in the sky. Not too hot, not too sunny. Scarcely more than a light breeze to stir the surface of the canals. Certainly no hint of a flood in the offing for this miracle of civilisation constructed in a lagoon in the Adriatic Sea.   Your gondola awaits. Climb aboard for an hour or so, for a trip around the sights. Your guide is none other than Canaletto, that master of the 18th-century painted cityscape and a man who has helped shape our vision of Venice right down to the present day. This is Canaletto's Venice Revisited , at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. There are 24 stops on this tour, 24 canvases by Canaletto. They've come to Greenwich from Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, where they normally hang in the dining room, but which is now undergoing restoration. This exhibition offers a rare chance to view all these paintings at eye le...

Hogarth and Europe : It's an intriguing-sounding exhibition at Tate Britain; the chance to see that great chronicler of 18th-century London life, William Hogarth, compared with his contemporaries in Paris, Venice and Amsterdam. Hogarth "was not alone," the Tate tells us on its website. "Across Europe, artists were creating vivid images of contemporary life and social commentary." So we went along in the expectation that we were going to see Hogarth's story-telling and insight reflected in similar scenes from across the continent.  Alas no. Somewhere between the conception and the execution, another idea seems to have taken hold. For one thing, few of the pictures on show here from French, Italian or Dutch artists are a patch on Hogarth, and they don't really live up to the billing of vivid social commentary. And there also appears to be a determined attempt to present Hogarth as an ingrained misogynist and racist, failing to live up to 21st-century value...

There are some stunning paintings to behold in Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace at the Queen's Gallery in London, particularly from the Dutch Golden Age. They've taken 65 works off the walls of the Picture Gallery next door in Buck House, which in normal times is only accessible to the public during the summer opening of the palace and is in any case currently being " reserviced ".  Instead of being hung in two rows, some above settees and fireplaces, the paintings are all at eye level for you to examine and admire close up. The curators invite you to linger and to consider what actually makes a masterpiece.  There's Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens, Van Dyck and Canaletto. Some great art from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries from one of the world's greatest art collections, so we'll talk about the paintings first. Later on, we'll tell you why, in spite of the masterpieces on show, we found it a somewhat underwhelming exhibition, given the high standard...

If you want a great view of London, there's always been one place to go: Greenwich Hill . Where else then, to depict the distant towers and spires of the City about a dozen years after the Great Fire of 1666 that razed so much of it, with a windmill on the heights of Highgate or Hampstead. These days, your eyes might be drawn more to the right, to the towers of Canary Wharf. This painting, attributed to the Dutch painter Johannes Vorsterman (or maybe Vorstermans ), is the opening image in The Architecture of London , a show at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the heart of the City that's sometimes quite fascinating, at other times a little bit on the dull side. This isn't really an exhibition full of great paintings, but it demonstrates both how London has changed down the years as well as how artists have interpreted one of the greatest cities in the world. That's not to say there aren't some big names. Such as the master of the cityscape himself, Canaletto, makin...