Martin Gayford

‘The Birth of Christ’, 1896, by Paul Gauguin

Why would a dissolute rebel like Paul Gauguin paint a nativity?

10 December 2015 3:00 pm

A young Polynesian woman lies outstretched on sheets of a soft lemon yellow. She is wrapped in deep blue cloth,…

In a class of their own

3 December 2015 3:00 pm

Painters and sculptors are highly averse to being labelled. So much so that it seems fairly certain that, if asked,…

‘Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman’ or ‘The Music Lesson’, 1662–5, by Vermeer

Artistic taste is inversely proportional to political nous

26 November 2015 3:00 pm

‘Wherever the British settle, wherever they colonize,’ observed the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘they carry and will ever carry trial…

‘May Day’, 1866, by Julia Margaret Cameron

Artificial life

19 November 2015 3:00 pm

One day Julia Margaret Cameron was showing John Ruskin a portfolio of her photographic portraits. The critic grew more and…

The man who made abstract art fly

12 November 2015 3:00 pm

One day, in October 1930, Alexander Calder visited the great abstract painter Piet Mondrian in his apartment in Paris. The…

M.C. Escher: limited, repetitive, but he deserves a place in art history

5 November 2015 3:00 pm

‘Surely,’ mused the Dutch artist M.C. Escher, ‘it is a bit absurd to draw a few lines and then claim:…

Repetitive but compelling: Giacometti at the National Portrait Gallery reviewed

22 October 2015 2:00 pm

One day in 1938 Alberto Giacometti saw a marvellous sight on his bedroom ceiling. It was ‘a thread like a…

With this Tate Britain exhibition, Frank Auerbach joins the masters

15 October 2015 2:00 pm

No sooner had I stepped into the private view of Frank Auerbach’s exhibition at Tate Britain than I bumped into…

Why did Goya’s sitters put up with his brutal honesty?

8 October 2015 2:00 pm

Sometimes, contrary to a widespread suspicion, critics do get it right. On 17 August, 1798 an anonymous contributor to the…

‘Dead Rabbit’, 1962, by Dennis Creffield

Now you see it, now you don’t

1 October 2015 1:00 pm

The artist, according to Walter Sickert, ‘is he who can take a piece of flint and wring out of it…

Detail from Gundestrup cauldron, 100 BC–AD 1

Melting pot

24 September 2015 1:00 pm

‘Celtic’ is a word heavily charged with meanings. It refers, among other phenomena, to a football club, a group of…

Detail from the great and strange Altar of the Holy Blood by Tilman Riemenschneider at the Jakobskirche, Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Lime light

2 April 2015 2:00 pm

In April 1501, about the time Michelangelo was returning from Rome to Florence to compete for the commission to carve…

Detail from the great and strange Altar of the Holy Blood by Tilman Riemenschneider at the Jakobskirche, Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Lime light

2 April 2015 2:00 pm

In April 1501, about the time Michelangelo was returning from Rome to Florence to compete for the commission to carve…