Fog, tea and full English breakfasts: Monet and London, at the Courtauld, reviewed
For the maids on the top floors of the Savoy, everything was in turmoil. The 6th had been commandeered by…
The art inspired by the 1924 Paris Olympics was a very mixed bag
George Orwell took a dim view of competitive sport; he found the idea that ‘running, jumping and kicking a ball…
Inside the mind of Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh only got one major review in his career, and he was mystified by it. When the critic Albert…
Why has Leonora Carrington still not had a big exhibition?
‘It had nothing to endow it with the title of studio at all,’ was Edward James’s first impression of Leonora…
Porcelain-painting during the French revolution
People don’t accumulate stuff any more. When the late Victorian houses on our street change hands their interiors are stripped…
This British surrealist is a revelation
When the 15-year-old Maggi Hambling arrived at Benton End in Hadleigh, Suffolk – home of the East Anglian School of…
The tragic fate of Ukraine’s avant-garde
In a recent interview Oleksandr Syrskyi, the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, said that he spends his time off…
How a market town in Hampshire shaped Peggy Guggenheim
On 24 April 1937 Marguerite Guggenheim – known as Peggy – of Yew Tree Cottage, Hurst was booked by a…
The beauty of pollution
On the back of the British £20 note, J.M.W. Turner appears against the backdrop of his most iconic image. Voted…
The most original sea painter since Turner? Lowry
In 1958 an elderly gentleman staying at the Castle Hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed gave the receptionist a doodle he had made…
How Miss La La captured Degas’s imagination
‘Can you come Saturday morning to my studio, 19 bis rue Fontaine?’ Degas wrote to Edmond de Goncourt in 1879.…
The craft renaissance
As long ago as the 1960s, the poet Edward James was worried that traditional crafts were dying out. Having frittered…
Is there still life in British still life?
‘The tyrannical rule of nature morte is, at last, over,’ announced Paul Nash in the Listener in 1931. ‘Apples have…
Fascinating insight into the mind of Michelangelo
You’re pushing 60 and an important patron asks you to repeat an artistic feat you accomplished in your thirties. There’s…
How flabby our ideas of draughtsmanship have become
The term drawing is a broad umbrella, so in an exhibition of 120 works it helps to outline some distinctions.…
The tumultuous story behind Caravaggio’s last painting
For centuries no one knew who it was by or even what it was of. The picture that had hung…