Exhibitions
The 19th century Chinese craze for all things European
By the 1800s, the mechanical clock had become a status symbol for wealthy Chinese. The first arrived with Jesuit missionaries…
Exceptional career woman, unexceptional painter: Lavinia Fontana, at the National Gallery of Ireland, reviewed
Reviewing the Prado’s joint exhibition of Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana in the Art Newspaper three years ago, Brian Allen…
As seductive as Chagall: Sarah Sze’s The Waiting Room reviewed
Exiting Peckham Rye station, you’re not aware of it, but standing on the platform you can see a mansard roof…
The Georgian fashion revolution
Normally, when you look at portraits you feel obliged to focus on the sitter. But quite often you’re thinking, ‘Ooh,…
The quiet genius of Gwen John
In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the…
Hitching them together does neither any favours: Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian, at Tate Modern, reviewed
In July 1928, an unknown Swedish woman artist mounted a solo show of her revolutionary abstract paintings at the World…
Rossetti’s muse was a better painter than him: The Rossettis, at Tate Britain, reviewed
‘A queer fellow’ is how John Everett Millais described Dante Gabriel Rossetti after his death, ‘so dogmatic and so irritable…
Is milk racist?
I was tired when I went to see Milk at the Wellcome Collection, having been up for much of the…
Artists’ dogs win the rosettes: Portraits of Dogs – From Gainsborough to Hockney, at the Wallace Collection, reviewed
Walking on Hampstead Heath the December before Covid, I got caught up in a festive party of bichon frises dressed,…
Rich in masterpieces: After Impressionism – Inventing Modern Art, at the National Gallery, reviewed
Getting the words ‘impressionism’ and ‘modern art’ into one exhibition title is a stroke of marketing genius on the part…
Don’t miss the exquisite Native-American carvings at the Sainsbury Centre
It’s payback time: women, artists from ethnic minorities and non-western traditions are taking over the exhibition schedules. On the heels…
The exquisite pottery of Lucie Rie
Lucie Rie had no time for high-flown talk about the art of ceramics. ‘I like to make pots – but…
How two Dutchmen introduced marine art to Britain
In March 1675 the Keeper of His Majesty’s Lodgings at Greenwich received an order for ‘Three pairs of shutters for…
Thoroughly unsettling, never simplistic: Mike Nelson – Extinction Beckons, at the Hayward Gallery, reviewed
You enter through the gift shop. Mike Nelson has turned the Hayward Gallery upside down and back to front for…
Humanity, clarity and warmth: Alice Neel, at the Barbican Art Gallery, reviewed
If you want to be taken seriously as a contemporary painter, paint big. ‘Blotter’, the picture that won the 34-year-old…
The musical émigrés from Nazi-Europe who shaped postwar Britain
Halfway up the stairs to the Royal College of Music’s exhibition Music, Migration & Mobility is a map of NW3,…
Unmissable: Donatello – Sculpting the Renaissance, at the V&A, reviewed
‘Donatello is the real hero of Florentine sculpture’, so Antony Gormley has proclaimed (hugely though he admires Michelangelo). It’s hard…
The county that inspired a whole way of painting: Sussex Landscape, at Pallant House, reviewed
In a national vote on which county’s landscape best embodies Englishness, every county would presumably vote for itself. But when…
A crash course in all things Hispanic: RA’s Spain and the Hispanic World reviewed
‘Spain must be much more interesting than Liverpool,’ decided the 12-year-old Archer M. Huntington after buying a book on Spanish…
The grisliest images are the earliest: Bearing Witness? Violence and Trauma on Paper, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, reviewed
‘Graphic’ scenes of violence are now associated with film, but the word betrays an older ancestry. The first mass media…
Other artists’ still lifes may be showier, but none are as companionable as Giorgio Morandi’s
There are various staples of still life painting, some symbolic, some not. Skulls and musical instruments suggest the transience of…
Did this Lithuanian invent abstraction? M.K. Ciurlionis, at Dulwich Picture Gallery, reviewed
Trivia question: name a famous Lithuanian. Google came up with four I’d never heard of and one I had: Hannibal…
Brueghel’s peasant paintings were the D.C. Thomson comics of the 17th century
‘Psst! Someone’s coming!’ the skinny man with the ragged breeches and the bandaged jaw warns his fat companion out of…
Mesmerising and eye-opening: Courtauld Gallery’s Fuseli and the Modern Woman reviewed
It’s not until you see this exhibition of drawings by Henry Fuseli that you realise that most artists have really…
Does gender matter? Making Modernism, at the Royal Academy, reviewed
The catalogue to Making Modernism opens with an acknowledgment from the Royal Academy’s first female president, Rebecca Salter, that in…
