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Showing posts with the label Leighton House

Opening and Closing in August

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 ...

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Opening and Closing in March

Impressionism shook up the world of art, but that was nothing compared to what followed. After Impressionism at the National Gallery in London, starting on March 25, aims to take us through the revolutionary period from around 1880 to the start of World War I, on to Expressionism, Cubism and Abstraction, with Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Klimt, Kokoschka, Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky and Rodin; among more than 100 works, including loans from around Europe and the US, there'll also be unfamiliar artists like Broncia Koller-Pinell. Until August 13. However, if you're not quite ready for the Post-Impressionists just yet, how about the leading woman Impressionist, who's coming to Dulwich Picture Gallery on March 31?  Berthe Morisot: Shaping Impressionism  will include more than 30 of her works, nine of them from the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, as well as looking at how she drew inspiration from 18th-century paintings by the likes of Fragonard, Watteau, Gainsborough and Reyno...

Lord Leighton Will See You Again Now

No need to slink in surreptitiously through the separate models' entrance; come right up to the brand new main front door; they've done a splendid job refurbishing the Leighton House Museum in west London, the old home and studio of Frederic, Lord Leighton, one of the giants of the Victorian art scene.  One of the giants? That's an understatement. He was president of the Royal Academy for 18 years, and his house in Holland Park was like no other artist's residence in London, with its extraordinary Arab Hall, inspired by the interiors and gardens of North Africa and the Middle East, as the sumptuous pièce de résistance.  The house reopens to the public on October 15, and we were most impressed with the results of the four-year renovation at a preview for the press; we can remember visiting several times over the past two decades and finding the visitor facilities a little on the poky and drab side. The modern extension is in harmony with the house and the new entrance ha...