landscapes
The genius of William Nicholson
Even if you think you don’t know William Nicholson, it’s a fair bet that you’ve come across his work. If…
Why was this fêted Mexican painter left out of the canon?
Think of a Mexican painting, and chances are you’ll conjure up an image of an eyebrow-knitted Frida Kahlo, or a…
Observing nature observed: the art of Caspar David Friedrich
Friedrich’s scenes may appear to depict nature unbound, but they are also famous for their Rückenfiguren in the foreground, the men and women with their backs to us, facing what we also see
The artist’s artist
Pity the poor curators of major exhibitions struggling to find fresh takes on famous masters. The curators of Tate Modern’s…
A frantic collector of views
‘It seems to me that I have to choose between 2 extremes of affection for nature… English, or Southern… The…
Force of nature
Philip Hensher describes how John Constable’s energy and imagination freed British art from the constraints of the past
By Giorgio
Martin Gayford on a radical Nativity that is the subject of one of the great whodunnits of art history
Wild at heart
On 13 July 1815, John Constable wrote to his fiancée, Maria Bicknell, about this and that. Interspersed with a discussion…
Fit for a king
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
When two become one
‘When pictures painted as companions are separated,’ John Constable wisely observed, ‘the purchaser of one, without being aware of it,…
Small wonder
John Constable’s paintings of a tiny corner of rural Suffolk teach us to see the beauty on our doorstep, says Martin Gayford
‘I think I’ve found a real paradise’
Martin Gayford talks to David Hockney about life in the Norman countryside under quarantine, how the iPad is better than paint and brush, and why he is not a communist
The artist more fond of flowers and vegetables than people – and who can blame him
I have occasionally mused that there is plenty of scope for a Tate East Anglia — a pendant on the…
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…
Magnetic north
The Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup has been unjustly overshadowed by Edvard Munch. But that is about to change, says Claudia Massie
Portrait or landscape?
One of the default settings of garden journalists is the adjective ‘painterly’ — applied to careful colour harmonies within a…
Bruegel’s Bethlehem
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
