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...

Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney  -- now that's a very good notion for an exhibition in dog-loving Britain. In reality, however.... The Wallace Collection in London has borrowed more than 50 works to put its idea into practice. Unfortunately, a good quarter of those are by Sir Edwin Landseer. So, if you really like twee, gooey, unsubtle 19th-century paintings of dogs pretending to be people or populating Queen Victoria's sitting room, you'll love it. Now, it's not as if Landseer -- creator of The Monarch of the Glen -- wasn't a highly skilled artist with a deep understanding of animal anatomy and behaviour. It's just that he produced loads of mawkish kitsch , presumably because that was what his sentimental Victorian patrons wanted. And there are a dozen of those Landseers here, coming at you round every corner .  But then there's also this Landseer:  A Saluki Dog .  The Saluki , prized by the hunters of the Middle East, with a long history (...

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...

Mickey Mouse and rococo frippery -- it's not an obvious connection. But a visit to  Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts  at the Wallace Collection in London shows just how much the classic cartoon films produced by the pioneer of movie animation were influenced by the art and design of 18th-century France.  Disney first went to France just after the end of World War I, as a Red Cross ambulance driver. Back in the US, he and his brother Roy founded their studio in 1923, and in 1935 the Disneys returned to France during a grand tour. A home movie early in this exhibition records the Disney family as tourists in Paris and Versailles, soaking up the architecture, and the decor. As a holiday memento, Walt took back to California more than 300 illustrated books to form the nucleus of a research library that's provided source material for Disney movies ever since.  The Wallace presents a selection of those films -- and a lot of preparatory artwork...

The highest-profile opening in London this January? It might well be Francis Bacon: Man and Beast at the Royal Academy. Starting on January 29, this exhibition will focus on Bacon's fascination with animals, featuring pictures in which the boundaries between humans and animals are constantly blurred. Spanning his entire career, the show will include a trio of bullfight paintings never before exhibited together. If your New Year's resolution is to go vegetarian, this one may be a bit on the fleshy side. Until April 17.  For something perhaps a bit less unsettling, head to Room 1 at the National Gallery to see Gainsborough's Blue Boy . Thomas Gainsborough's full-length canvas of a child was exhibited at the National for three weeks in 1922 before sailing across the Atlantic to the Huntington Library in California. It's a painting that's long had a hold on the imagination; it's been frequently referenced in Hollywood movies, and now it's being loaned out b...

Let's get straight to the point -- Frans Hals: The Male Portrait at the Wallace Collection in London is easily the most satisfying exhibition we've seen in a very long while, since before you-know-what.   This is not a big blockbuster show; there are just 13 paintings to admire, widely spaced, but the presentation and the thought that's gone into the indispensable audio commentary that accompanies the display make for a truly stunning gallery-going experience. A range of experts take you beyond the art on the canvas into a deeper appreciation of the history, the social attitudes and fashion of the Dutch Golden Age, and of Hals's influence on later painters. It was Vincent van Gogh who said that Hals had 27 blacks in his repertoire, and they're all here, though this is by no means a monochrome show. Hals and Rembrandt were the two greatest portraitists of 17th-century Holland, and while there have been plenty of exhibitions celebrating those portraits in recent year...

There are lots and lots of new exhibitions starting in September right across Europe. The big offering on our radar in London is at the Wallace Collection in the shape of Frans Hals: The Male Portrait . The Wallace's own  The Laughing Cavalier  will be joined by over a dozen of the Dutch painter's works from galleries in Britain, Europe and the US in the first ever show to focus on Hals's depictions of solo male sitters. On from September 22 to January 30.  One of the world's most recognisable artworks,  The Great Wave , by Katsushika Hokusai, will of course be part of an exhibition of work by this Japanese artist and printmaker starting on September 30 at the British Museum, but for once it's not the focus.  Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything , which is on until January 30, puts on display for the first time ever 103 drawings he made in the early 19th century for an encyclopedia that was never published. The works were recently acquired by the m...