The Art Exhibitions Blog

No one before had ever painted horses like George Stubbs. Not only did they look incredibly lifelike, he seemed able to capture their individual character -- a talent that ensured he could command extremely high prices for his work from wealthy and influential patrons.  There's now a rare chance to appreciate the only one of the painter's outstanding lifesize equine canvases still in private hands in a small free exhibition,  Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse , in Room 1 at the National Gallery in London. This is Scrub, eight times a race winner, who like the gallery's Whistlejacket belonged to one of those rich patrons, the Marquess of Rockingham, and he commissioned both pictures in about 1762.  Scrub, again like Whistlejacket, was depicted not just as a racehorse, under the control of a jockey or stable boy, but in a grand manner, intended to serve as the steed in an equine portrait of George III, who had recently come to the throne. Other specialist painters would be u...

She was a highly successful artist in 17th-century Brussels, creating the sort of paintings you might have seen from Rubens or Van Dyck, but then she vanished from art history. It's only very recently she's been rescued from obscurity, her pictures rightfully reattributed.  Michaelina Wautier  comes to the Royal Academy in London on March 27 from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, offering the first opportunity to encounter her work on a large scale. On till June 21.  And while we're on the theme of new discoveries, we've made quite a few at the Dulwich Picture Gallery down the years. The latest arrival there is a completely unknown name to us, from the Baltic:  Konrad Mägi  (1878-1925), described as a pioneer of Estonian modernism. More than 60 of his works are being shown in the UK for the first time in an exhibition that runs from March 24 to July 12.  No introduction is needed for David Hockney, and he's taking over the Serpentine Gallery on March ...

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney  -- now that's a very good notion for an exhibition in dog-loving Britain. In reality, however.... The Wallace Collection in London has borrowed more than 50 works to put its idea into practice. Unfortunately, a good quarter of those are by Sir Edwin Landseer. So, if you really like twee, gooey, unsubtle 19th-century paintings of dogs pretending to be people or populating Queen Victoria's sitting room, you'll love it. Now, it's not as if Landseer -- creator of The Monarch of the Glen -- wasn't a highly skilled artist with a deep understanding of animal anatomy and behaviour. It's just that he produced loads of mawkish kitsch , presumably because that was what his sentimental Victorian patrons wanted. And there are a dozen of those Landseers here, coming at you round every corner .  But then there's also this Landseer:  A Saluki Dog .  The Saluki , prized by the hunters of the Middle East, with a long history (...

August is normally a thin month for new exhibitions, but as more and more museums and galleries open up again to the public, August 2020 will be rather busier than normal. In London, the Royal Academy gives a new lease of life to one show that was interrupted by the coronavirus lockdown and celebrates the delayed start of another. The interrupted show looks at  Léon Spilliaert , an artist whose finest work stems from his years at home in Ostend at the start of the 20th century, wandering the Belgian port city at night, haunted by insomnia and stomach troubles. It was the last exhibition we reviewed before lockdown, and Spilliaert really couldn't be a better symbol for social distancing, pictured alone in his studio or capturing the eeriness of deserted streets or beaches. August 5 to September 20. Two days after the Spilliaert show restarts, the RA welcomes Gauguin and the Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Ordrupgaard Collection in Denmark, which is currently undergoing...

Here in England, you can visit a car showroom again from June 1, but if you're hoping to get out to see some art during the month, it looks like you'll need to be on the European mainland. Museums across the Netherlands are reopening at the start of June, and one exhibition we can thoroughly recommend is George Stubbs -- The Man, The Horse, The Obsession at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, which is being extended through to August 30. Find out how, in the 18th century, Stubbs was able to produce portraits of horses of unparalleled realism and get the chance to admire Whistlejacket , his most famous work and one of the jewels of London's National Gallery. We saw a bigger, broader version of this show last year at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes and loved it . Dutch museums will initially be operating at reduced capacity to allow for social distancing, and you need to book online tickets in advance to visit, specifying a timeslot for entry, though there's no need to we...

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...

Pablo Picasso kicks off the exhibition year in London, with Picasso and Paper  at the Royal Academy bringing together more than 300 works from an 80-year career. Drawing, printmaking, collage and even paper sculpture all feature in this show, running from January 25 to April 13. Just outside the capital, we've enjoyed a couple of shows recently at the Lightbox in Woking, and their new exhibition is David Hockney: Ways of Working . It will look at how one of Britain's most popular artists has explored the possibilities of a wide range of media over 60 years. January 25 to April 19. Edward Hopper  is the subject of the first big show of the year at the Fondation Beyeler, just outside Basel. It will focus on Hopper's landscapes and cityscapes, and it's been put together with the Whitney Museum in New York, which holds the largest collection of his works. January 26 to May 17. Also on in Switzerland, from January 24 to May 24: Canada and Impressionism at the Fonda...

George Stubbs was the greatest painter of animals in British art. There's probably not much doubt about that. Just how much effort he put into achieving that status is demonstrated in an excellent exhibition, George Stubbs: 'All Done from Nature' , in the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. We'll get back to Stubbs very shortly, but just in case you're thinking Milton Keynes is an odd place to go for a big art show, you'd be wrong, because the MK Gallery has recently been extended and boasts an impressively large exhibition space -- and an ambitious programme. This is the first big Stubbs overview in three decades, and the curators have assembled pictures from a wide range of lenders, the sort you tend not to pop into for a look at their paintings, like the Jockey Club and the Royal Veterinary College. Oh, and there's Whistlejacket , too, Stubbs's most famous, most impressive achievement. You can see Whistlejacket there on the back wall, released from h...