August is always one of the quietest months for new exhibitions, and this year is no different, but we do have one big event to alert you to, as well as two splendid shows that only have weeks to run. The one major opening is Gwen John: Strange Beauties at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Running from August 1 to January 4, this is a comprehensive retrospective of the work of the woman perhaps now seen as Wales's most significant artist, born 150 years ago this year. Maybe a little too comprehensive, according to some of the reviews of the show when it was on at the National Museum in Cardiff. The exhibition goes on to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in February and then at the end of July next year to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. We saw a rather smaller Gwen John exhibition in Chichester in 2023. Last chance to see.... Ending on August 23 is the exhibition at the Lakenhal in Leiden ...
If you were asked to name the influences on Vincent van Gogh, you'd undoubtedly mention Paul Gauguin, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and Japanese woodcuts and prints. But the novels of Charles Dickens and the foggy streets of Victorian London? Get along to the Van Gogh and Britain exhibition at Tate Britain and you will indeed find that the three years Vincent spent in England from 1873 had a big impact on his taste in art and the style and subject matter of his paintings and drawings, though maybe not quite as much as the curators seem to want you to think. Van Gogh developed those writhing brushstrokes and that hugely expressive use of colour in the south of France, not south of the Thames. Van Gogh was 20 when he arrived in London to work in an art dealer's office in Covent Garden, where he stayed for two years, crossing the river each day from lodgings in Stockwell and the Oval. He later tried to earn his living from teaching and preaching before leavin...