The Art Exhibitions Blog

Hawaii: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans at the British Museum in London examines the art and history of the islands in the Pacific, in an exhibition marking 200 years since their king and queen travelled to London to seek an alliance with Britain. Many of the 150 objects and artworks have never been seen in the UK before. On from January 15 to May 25. At the Courtauld Gallery, 10 little-known names will be showcased in A View of One's Own: Landscapes by British Women Artists, 1760-1860 . Fanny Blake, Harriet Lister and Amelia Long are some of those whose drawings and watercolours will be on display; some were recognised in their lifetimes, the work of others has only recently come to light. January 28 to May 20.  Her work was instantly recognisable and hugely popular. Beryl Cook: Pride and Joy  at The Box in Plymouth marks the centenary of the birth of a painter who celebrated everyday life but whose pictures were often regarded as mere kitsch by the art establishment. This show, r...

The fabrics swirl, billow, ripple and cling.... the colours are gorgeous, the atmosphere often dreamlike. It is a feast for the eyes.  We've come to see  Evelyn De Morgan: The Modern Painter in Victorian London at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the very heart of the City. It's a bit of a misnomer, that title, because De Morgan's work doesn't really convey much of an impression of modernity, certainly not in the sense of late 19th-century technological and scientific progress. The style is reminiscent in many ways of the Pre-Raphaelites from earlier in the Victorian era, and  Edward Burne-Jones  in particular.  But what was modern about Evelyn De Morgan was in fact the most obvious thing about her; she was a woman, in what was still a very male art world.   Before we get into De Morgan's history, let's start with a painting to give a flavour of her art, and it's one of the most spectacular in this exhibition: The Storm Spirits . Just pause for a moment t...

Pre-Raphaelite Sisters  doing it for themselves. That's the premise of the show at the National Portrait Gallery in London, an attempt to reclaim, to reassert the significance of the roles of women as models, wives, artists, muses in that most Victorian of art movements, one that's traditionally seen as being dominated by men with an abundance, nay, a profusion of facial hair. So a Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood to rival the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais? It's a neat conceit, isn't it, but it's not one that's really borne out by this rather uneven exhibition. Because some of the dozen women highlighted here were certainly quite impressive artists in their own right -- and there's a couple of surprise discoveries to be made as we go through -- but in some cases we're talking about women who were mainly active as models. And, err, muses. There's an apparently deliberate reluctance to tal...