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...
Summer's long gone now.... gone and just a memory Curling up in front of the fire with a good book, bingeing on a TV series box set or heading south is how you might normally try to get through the northern winter, but this year you could just go to Stockholm to dispel the chill. Yes, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, because there you can immerse yourself in the delights of the long summer days on display in To the Sea! The Beach as Borderland and Summer Dream at the Nationalmuseum. Really, those Scandinavian coastlines are so tempting: What could be more attractive than A Stroll on the Beach at Skagen, at the very northern tip of Denmark? Here are five ladies enjoying Skagen's almost endless strand and endless skies, as painted by Michael Ancher (husband of Anna ) in 1896. Luckily those hemlines were just off the ground, so as not to get dirty on the sand. This very wide-ranging exhibition in Stockholm explores the growth of seaside tourism in Europe an...