impressionism
Impressionism is 150 years old – this is the anniversary show to see
The time that elapsed between the fall of the Paris Commune and the opening of the first proper impressionist exhibition…
Why did this brilliant Irish artist fall off the radar?
Sir John Lavery has always had a place in Irish affections. His depiction of his wife, Hazel, as the mythical…
The force of nature that drove Claude Monet
A compulsion to paint en plein air would remain with the great Impressionist for life, as well as a questing need to find new ways to express what he saw and felt
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…
The genius of Cezanne
Pity the poor curators of major exhibitions struggling to find fresh takes on famous masters. The curators of Tate Modern’s…
How good is he? Pissarro: Father of Impressionism, at the Ashmolean Museum, reviewed
Two markers: ‘Cottages at Auvers-sur-Oise’ (c.1873) is a sweet especial rural scene of faintly slovenly thatched cottages with, at its…
The supreme pictures of the Courtauld finally have a home of equal magnificence
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
We're wrong to think the impressionists were chocolate boxy
One Sunday evening in the autumn of 1888 Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin went for a walk. They headed…
Strange, sinister and very Belgian: Léon Spilliaert at the Royal Academy reviewed
The strange and faintly sinister works of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert have been compared — not unreasonably — to…
A great example of how Radio 4 is using new technologies to enhance audio
‘It’s too familiar, too obvious,’ says Cathy FitzGerald at the beginning of her new interactive series for Radio 4, Moving…
Was Pierre Bonnard any good?
An attendant at an art gallery in France once apprehended a little old vandal, or so the story goes. He…
No one can beat Mary Cassatt at painting mothers and children
A lady licking an envelope. An intimate thing. It might be only the bill from the coal-man she’s paying, but…
The public are quite right to love Monet
Think of the work of Claude Monet and water lilies come to mind, so do reflections in rippling rivers, and…
London calling
Madame Monet was bored. Wouldn’t you have been? Exiled to London in the bad, cold winter of 1870–71. In rented…
August Auguste
In 1959 the formidable interviewer John Freeman took the Face to Face crew to the 81-year-old Augustus John’s studio. The…
I spy
Where was Degas standing as he sketched his ‘Laundresses’ (c.1882–4)? Did he watch the two women from behind sheets hanging…
The link between herbaceous borders and the avant-garde
Philip Larkin once remarked that Art Tatum, a jazz musician given to ornate, multi-noted flourishes on the keyboard, reminded him…
Eugene Delacroix foresaw the future of society not just art
Delacroix’s frigid self-control concealed an emotional volcano. Martin Gayford explores the paradoxes that define the apostle of modernism
Welcome to Japan’s best kept cultural secret: an art island with an underground museum
In his introductory remarks to the Afro–Eurasian Eclipse, one of his later suites for jazz orchestra, Duke Ellington remarked —…
Inventing Impressionism at the National Gallery reviewed: a mixed bag of sometimes magnificent paintings
When it was suggested that a huge exhibition of Impressionist paintings should be held in London, Claude Monet had his…
2015 in exhibitions - painting still rules
The art on show over the coming year demonstrates that we still live in an age of mighty painters, says Martin Gayford
