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 ...
The mini skirt in the 60s, crinolines and corsets in the Victorian era, Tudor codpieces; fashion, clothing and how we dress has a lot to say about society, its values and the way people lived. In Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians at the Queen's Gallery in London, the curators give us an at times intimate insight into aspects of life under Georges I to IV, from 1714 to 1830. We also discover that fashion victims are nothing new, and who better to poke fun at those 18th-century foolish yet dedicated followers of fashion than the great Georgian caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson. Eagerly pursuing all the latest fads and trends, Rowlandson's somewhat portly gentleman is being manhandled by two tailors into a pair of the new tight-fitting soft-leather breeches that were all the rage among pleasure-seeking individuals in the mid-1780s. A contemporary account of the fitting process on the wall caption tells us that, like all the best satire, Rowlandson's was pretty close to...