Painting

Why did this brilliant Irish artist fall off the radar?

28 October 2023 9:00 am

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

28 October 2023 9:00 am

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

How Philip Guston became a hero to a new generation of figurative painters

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Why do painters represent things? There was a time when the answers seemed obvious. Art glorified power, earthly and divine,…

Proof that Rubens really was a champion of the female sex: Rubens & Women, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery reviewed

14 October 2023 9:00 am

‘She is a princess endowed with all the virtues of sex; long experience has taught her how to govern these…

The splendour of Edinburgh’s new Scottish galleries

30 September 2023 9:00 am

Claudia Massie on the spectacular new galleries that showcase the best of Scottish art for the first time

Why is Frans Hals still not considered the equal of Rembrandt?

16 September 2023 9:00 am

Why is Frans Hals still not considered the equal of Rembrandt, asks Craig Raine

Lyrical and dreamlike: A World of Private Mystery – British Neo-Romantics, at the Fry Art Gallery, reviewed

9 September 2023 9:00 am

‘My daughter’s moving to Saffron Walden, away from all this,’ said the railway man at Stratford station, gesturing at the…

The greatest artist chronicler of our times: Grayson Perry, at the Edinburgh Art Festival, reviewed

2 September 2023 9:00 am

The busiest show in Edinburgh must be Grayson Perry: Smash Hits which, a month into its run, still has people…

An extraordinary woman: The Art of Lucy Kemp-Welch, at Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, reviewed

19 August 2023 9:00 am

In March 1913 two horse painters met at the Lyceum Club to discuss the establishment of a Society of Animal…

Move fast to snap up one of Elizabeth Blackadder’s sleek cats at the Scottish Gallery

29 July 2023 9:00 am

If there’s one thing the internet knows, it’s that cats sell. The Scottish painter Elizabeth Blackadder, who died in 2021…

Huge, impersonal canvases designed for the walls of billionaires: Tate Modern’s Capturing the Moment reviewed

22 July 2023 9:00 am

‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and…

Fascinating forgeries: Art and Artifice – Fakes from the Collection, at the Courtauld, reviewed

15 July 2023 9:00 am

In 1998 curators at the Courtauld Institute received an anonymous phone call informing them that 11 drawings in their collection…

Joshua Reynolds’s revival

1 July 2023 9:00 am

In front of the banner advertising the RA Summer Exhibition, the swagger statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) by Alfred…

The quiet genius of Gwen John

20 May 2023 9:00 am

In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the…

Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition?

22 October 2022 9:00 am

Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition? After years of exposure to his paintings of naked bodies posed like casualties…

There's much more to Winslow Homer than his dramatic seascapes

27 August 2022 9:00 am

Winslow Homer may be too all-American for British tastes but a forthcoming retrospective could change all that, says Laura Gascoigne

Guston is treated with contempt: Philip Guston Now reviewed

20 August 2022 9:00 am

Philip Guston is hard to dislike. The most damning critique levied against the canonical mid-century American painter is that he…

As cool and refreshing as a selection of sorbets: RA's Milton Avery show reviewed

30 July 2022 9:00 am

‘I like the way he puts on paint,’ Milton Avery said about Matisse in 1953, but that was as much…

A showstopper is at the heart of this winning show: Dulwich Gallery's Reframed – The Woman in the Window reviewed

23 July 2022 9:00 am

Themed exhibitions pegged to particular pictures in museum collections tend to be more interesting to the museum’s curators than to…

The women’s lips are pursed; the men’s are kissable: Glyn Philpot at Pallant House reviewed

25 June 2022 9:00 am

Of all the photos of artists in the studio, the one of Glyn Philpot being served a martini by his…

Nobody paints the sea like Emile Nolde

11 June 2022 9:00 am

In April, ten years after opening its gallery on the beach in Hastings, the Jerwood Foundation gifted the building to…

A brief introduction to Scottish art

28 May 2022 9:00 am

When Nikolaus Pevsner dedicated his 1955 Reith Lectures to ‘The Englishness of English Art’, he left out the Scots. The…

The jewel-bright, mesmerisingly detailed pictures by Raqib Shaw are a revelation

21 May 2022 9:00 am

Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…

Artist, actor, social justice warrior, serial killer: the many faces of Walter Sickert

14 May 2022 9:00 am

Artist, actor, social justice warrior, serial killer. Laura Gascoigne on the many faces of Walter Sickert