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 ...
We've all done it on a wet weekend, haven't we? Gorged ourselves on a box set, watching one episode after another after another, combining gluttony and indulgence, just two of the vices that the great storyteller of the Georgian age, William Hogarth, was able to illustrate so memorably, along with all their consequences. Hogarth was the master of the 18th-century equivalent of the box set, the moral tale told in a series of paintings or engravings, and in London this autumn you get the chance to enjoy the art equivalent of that Netflix or iPlayer binge. Go along to Sir John Soane's Museum to see, for the first time ever, all of Hogarth's series of pictures together on show in one place. Debauchery, infidelity, addiction, insanity, political chicanery: Hogarth: Place and Progress has got the lot. And, astonishingly at a time when exhibitions in London are getting more and more expensive, this opportunity to get this close up to the defining works of one of Britain...