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...
Snow over Scotland. In July. Alright, the real white stuff isn't actually lying on the Pentland Hills at the moment, but there's a taste of winter in store if you go along to see Victoria Crowe: 50 Years of Painting at Edinburgh City Art Centre. It's a retrospective of the work of an artist who's originally English, but who settled in Scotland many years ago, and whose most memorable works, for us, are her haunting winter landscapes, a subject she's returned to throughout her career. Winters are harsh in Scotland (let's face it, the summers can be pretty miserable too); the days are short, the trees are bare; there can be snow on the ground. It's Bruegel or Sohlberg . Crowe made her home in the Pentlands, not so far from the centre of Edinburgh, where she taught art, but when winter comes, the hills can feel remote. In Blue Snow, Fiery Trees , the wood is captured at twilight, the branches illuminated by the setting sun, the frozen landscape glowing b...