There are some familiar names and familiar paintings in Art Then! British Painting, Sculpture and Drawing, 1910-1960 at Southampton City Art Gallery, but it's the unfamiliar that makes it especially worth the trip to a venue you might not normally consider for an exhibition. This show provides an excellent overview of art trends in this country in the first half of the 20th century. And it's free! Southampton has a very good collection, but we often get the feeling that a lot of interesting works are in store behind closed doors. Pleasant surprises await when they finally see the light of the day, in this case in combination with a selection from the extensive Ingram Collection of modern British art. In all, there are more than 100 works by over 100 artists, demonstrating how the British reacted to the latest developments in art on the Continent. So let's start with a couple of hidden gems from the Southampton treasure trove, first of all a Landscape that really stoppe...
Do you sometimes find it's not so much the art itself as the stories behind it that make for a really enjoyable exhibition? It's certainly the case at Towner Eastbourne in A Life in Art: Lucy Wertheim, Patron, Collector, Gallerist and Reuniting the Twenties Group: From Barbara Hepworth to Victor Pasmore ; these two linked shows take us well beyond the paintings and sculpture to uncover fascinating personal histories and to shine a light on the mid 20th-century art scene in Britain. And, unless you're an absolute expert in the art of the period, you'll discover many talented artists who are very unfamiliar names. Who was Lucy Wertheim? Without formal art training but with a fair amount of money, she broke into the male-dominated British art scene and was a patron to many young artists, establishing her own gallery in London in 1930. She set up the Twenties Group -- artists in their 20s, as the name suggests -- whose work she tried to exhibit round the country, wit...