Painting
London’s best contemporary art show is in Penge
If you’ve been reading the more excitable pages of the arts press lately, you might be aware that the London…
Admirable in their awfulness – the siblings Gus and Gwen John
The self-styled Gypsy King and his reclusive sister seemed polar opposites – but both painters were selfish, obsessive monsters, according to Judith Mackrell
Why you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Cecil Beaton
‘Remember, Roy, white flowers are the only chic ones.’ So Cecil Beaton remarked to Roy Strong, possibly as a mild…
The gloriously impure world of Edward Burra
Every few years the shade of Edward Burra is treated to a Major Retrospective. The pattern is long established: Edward…
Fascinating royal clutter: The Edwardians, at The King’s Gallery, reviewed
The Royal Collection Trust has had a rummage in the attic and produced a fascinating show. Displayed in the palatial…
Museums: open up your vaults!
At any one time eighty per cent of the art owned by Britain’s many museums and public art galleries will…
Why is the National Portrait Gallery’s collection so poor?
The recent announcement that the National Portrait Gallery has purchased two works by Sonia Boyce and Hew Locke for its…
The two young women who blazed a trail for modernism in Ireland
In 1921, the sternly abstract cubist Albert Gleizes opened the door of his Parisian apartment to two young women in…
If ‘wokeness’ is over, can someone please tell the Fitzwilliam Museum?
Optimists believe that the tide of ‘wokeness’ is now ebbing. If so, the message has not yet reached Cambridge, whose…
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…
The art of sexual innuendo
Paula Rego’s 2021 retrospective at Tate Britain demonstrated that, among art critics, ambiguity is still highly prized as a measure…
‘The possibilities of paint are never-ending’: Sir Frank Bowling interviewed
‘I’m full of excitement waiting for this to dry out,’ Sir Frank Bowling exclaims. We are sitting in his studio,…
The greatest paintings are always full of important unimportant things
Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, at the Courtauld, consists of a selection of 25 absorbing paintings…
The true birthplace of the Renaissance
The baby reaches out to touch his mother’s scarf: he studies her face intently, and she focuses entirely on him.…
The plain-speaking bloke from Warrington who painted only for himself
Born in 1932, Eric Tucker created his art not for exhibition or in pursuit of fame but simply because he felt compelled to do so
‘Innovation is not enough’: meet visionary English painter Roger Wagner
In the side chapel of the church of St Giles’, at the northern apex of the historic Oxford thoroughfare, hangs…
The rediscovery of the art of Simone de Beauvoir’s sister
An exhibition of the art of Hélène de Beauvoir (1910-2001), sister of the great Simone, opened in a private gallery…
Was Brazil the real birthplace of modernism?
A paradox of art history: to understand the artists of the past, it helps to study how, and where, they…
The otherworldly artist who made his name at The Spectator
There is something otherworldly about Rory McEwen’s paintings of plants, leaves and fruit. They are indisputably beautiful, often breathtakingly so,…
Tirzah Garwood just isn’t as good as her husband Eric Ravilious
Tirzah Garwood, wife of the more famous Eric Ravilious, is having a well-deserved moment in the sun, benefiting from this…
We’ve got Francis Bacon all wrong
You have to hand it to the curators of this excellent survey of Francis Bacon’s portraits. Not only have they…
How a single year in Florence changed art forever
The story goes that one day early in the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci was strolling through Florence with a…
The triumph of surrealism
When Max Ernst was asked by an American artist to define surrealism at a New York gathering of exiles in…
Fog, tea and full English breakfasts: Monet and London, at the Courtauld, reviewed
For the maids on the top floors of the Savoy, everything was in turmoil. The 6th had been commandeered by…
The art inspired by the 1924 Paris Olympics was a very mixed bag
George Orwell took a dim view of competitive sport; he found the idea that ‘running, jumping and kicking a ball…
