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...
Frans Hals had 27 blacks in his paintbox, according to Vincent van Gogh. How many whites did James McNeill Whistler have in his? You can make your own judgement in Whistler's Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan at the Royal Academy in London. Jo, the red-headed Irishwoman who modelled for the paintings at the heart of this excellent exhibition, was also Whistler's lover (and distinctly different from Whistler's Mother ), and she was central to his early development as an artist. As you enter this show, this is the picture of Jo you can see in the distance through the doorway to your right: Symphony in White, No 1: The White Girl . Whistler started the painting in Paris late in 1861, posing Hiffernan for exhausting all-day sessions, and he submitted it to the Royal Academy's annual exhibition in London the following year. "Some stupid painters don't understand it at all," Hiffernan wrote, adding that Whistler thought that "praps the old duffers may...