Painting
The arts in Britain are now joyless vestiges of their former selves
The modern obsession with politicising every art form seems guaranteed to put anyone off music, painting or literature for life
The singular vision of Quentin Bell
Every visitor to Charleston Farmhouse will know the work of Quentin Bell even if they don’t realise it. He made…
Why artists love Aphrodite
Aphrodite – talk about a difficult birth. Her father the Sky (Ouranos) had come to resent the fertility of his…
When will the art world acknowledge this master?
Watercolours can be fatal for your standing in the art world. ‘As soon as you say you paint in watercolour,’…
Finally, a proper, grown-up retrospective from the Tate
A month ago in Hampstead, a work of art stopped me in my tracks. The piece was a vast rectangular…
Should we take Beryl Cook more seriously?
The late Victoria Wood described Beryl Cook as ‘Rubens with jokes’. This was flattering for an artist whose fat, eye-shadowed…
The truth about modelling for a great artist
Artists’ models seldom get a chance to tell their side of the story. Yet one model, Anthony Rudolf, believes they…
Renoir was a master – let no one tell you otherwise
It was summer 1874 at Claude Monet’s house in Argenteuil on the Seine just outside Paris. Édouard Manet arrived from…
Artists vs the Odyssey
It’s a noble story of one man struggling against monstrous odds, valiantly captaining his crew while trying to avoid being…
The cult of Kahlo
A Max Beerbohm cartoon famously reduced Arthur Wing Pinero (author of that interesting play, The Second Mrs Tanqueray) to a…
This Lucian Freud belongs on the compost
From 1940, at Benton End, near Hadleigh in Suffolk, the artist Cedric Morris brought his eye to breeding irises. Eliminating…
The art of resurrecting forgotten artists
A retired priest in North Wales told me that after the war he had been asked by Billy Butlin to…
How Winston Churchill painted himself out of the darkness
At Chartwell, Sir Winston Churchill’s home of 42 years, now owned by the National Trust, lies his painting studio. Reached…
The genius of Zurbaran – and why he vanished
A pious Caravaggio JASPREET SINGH BOPARAI The Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran is sometimes thought of as a pious equivalent…
Tracey Emin at her most operatic
I feared this summing-up of Tracey Emin’s career might be self-congratulatory – biennale here, damehood there. But it’s Emin at…
A Tate show with dreamy, elusive power
One of the miracles of art history is how painting, so often written off, keeps on coming back. Right now…
The truth about artists’ optical aids
The first thing you see on entering this major new Viennese exhibition is not one of Canaletto and his nephew…
Defiantly creative to the end: the transgressive Dorothea Tanning
Born in Illinois in 1910 in the middle of a hurricane, the experimental Surrealist became the model of the fiercely independent artist
How sure are we that all the Michaelina Wautiers at the RA are by her?
Roll up, there’s a new old master in town. Or a new old mistress, if you prefer. Michaelina Wautier (1614-89)…
This Hockney show is disorientatingly enjoyable
When so much contemporary art is riven with obscurity and angst, it is disorientating, at first, to encounter something as…
Ovid puts today’s radicals to shame
It’s a crisp afternoon, and in a darkened room in central Amsterdam a woman is being smothered in snakes. Projected…
The art of ageing
More than 30 contemporary artists have contributed to the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition, which asks what it’s like to age…
Marvellous but repetitious: Gwen John – Strange Beauties reviewed
A pilgrimage to Cardiff Central, sorry, Caerdydd Canolog (according to the signage in the station, which also had my return…
How fantastic to see Hogarth’s largest paintings in their original glory
The long overlooked staircase by Hogarth at St Bartholomew’s Hospital has been cleaned and restored in a £9.5 million scheme.…
