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 ...
You can go to any number of exhibitions of late 19th-century Western artists -- Whistler , van Gogh , Vuillard to name just three -- and see how their work was significantly influenced by Japanese prints, which presented a radically different way of looking at things from a country that had just opened up to the outside world. But don't imagine that the traffic was only one-way. Japanese artists came West, and you can see some of the results of the fusion in Yoshida: Three Generations of Japanese Printmaking at Dulwich Picture Gallery in south-east London. The story starts in 1900, when Hiroshi Yoshida and a fellow Japanese artist were in London during a lengthy tour of America and Europe. The first time they attempted to visit the Dulwich gallery, on May 24, a policeman told them it didn't exist. They finally made it at their third attempt five days later, though Hiroshi had to leave his camera at the entrance, and their names are recorded in the visitor'...