The Art Exhibitions Blog

This month's star turn in London has to be  James McNeill Whistler  at Tate Britain, apparently the first major retrospective in Europe in 30 years and featuring 150 works. There's no doubting Whistler's position as one of the most influential of late 19th-century painters; just how often have you seen other artists alluding to his portrayal of his mother, the  Arrangement in Grey and Black , in their work? On at the Tate from May 21 to September 27, and then at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from mid-October. For a taster, here's a reminder of a smaller Whistler show at the Royal Academy in 2022.  One of the greatest names in Spanish 17th-century art is Francisco de Zurbarán. We have to admit, many of his religious paintings leave us cold, but he's also known for his portraits and still lifes. The first major exhibition devoted to him in the UK takes place at the National Gallery from May 2 to August 23. Zurbarán  will have almost 50 paintings, including th...

There's been a recent flurry of exhibitions in London and elsewhere about the Russian revolution and Soviet art and design, but Russian art before 1900 isn't very well known in the West. So we seized the opportunity on a trip to Oslo this month to take in The Swan Princess at the Munch Museum, a show devoted to Russian art from 1880 to 1910 and mostly drawn from the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. It was a period when Nordic artists were looking to the past, to rural culture and to traditional myths and legends for inspiration. The Russians were doing something similar, many of them working from the artists' colony at Abramtsevo near Moscow. This show takes its title from one of the most famous artworks of the period. The Swan Princess by Mikhail Vrubel is drawn from a story by Pushkin, which was turned into an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, and here is the swan transforming magically into a beautiful princess. It's a swirl of whites and greys with highlights in pink, to...