Category: Exhibitions
'Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt'
December 15 2016
Audio: NGA
A new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Drawings for Paintings in the Age of Rembrandt, has been drawing praise. There's a good podcast, above. More here.
First Cezanne portraits show
December 10 2016
Picture: Guardian
The first exhibition to look at Cezanne's portraits will be held in Paris, London, Washington. Paris goes first, at the Musée d’Orsay from 13 June-24 September 2017, then the NPG in London form 26 October-11 February 2018, and finally the National Gallery of Art in Washington from 25 March-1 July 2018. More here.
New Rubens drawing after Raphael on display
December 10 2016
Picture: Pheobus Foundation
A previously unknown drawing by Rubens after Raphael has gone on display for the first time in Belgium. The drawing (above) surfaced in a small auction house in Belgium earlier this year, and sold for €670,000 to the Phoebus foundation. I'm told the underbidder was the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Here's the Phoebus press release:
The pen-and-ink drawing with horsemen is a double-sided drawing. It is a study of Arab horsemen, which came under the management of The Phoebus Foundation in May of this year. Katharina Van Cauteren, curator of the exhibition and Chief of Staff of The Phoebus Foundation, explains why the work is so important. “This sketch is based on a scene by the Italian painter Raphael (1483-1520). However, Rubens isn’t making a copy. He breathes life into Raphael’s composition. Horses snort. Muscles are taut. A clever perspective draws the viewer into the story. This makes the drawing the first example of a brand new style: it is a forerunner of northern Baroque. With his entrepreneurial mind, Peter Paul Rubens was playing a new market here. His refreshing aesthetic was particularly to the taste of the public of his day. Rubens created an innovative visual language that conquered the world in no time”.
The drawing is on display in an exhibition organised by the Phoebus foundation in Ghent, called 'For God and Money: the Birth of Capitalism'. I went to see the show recently, and can highly recommend both it and Ghent. As regular readers will know, Belgium is my new favourite country. More on the show, which runs until 22nd January, here.
'Portrait of the Artist' at the Queen's Gallery
November 7 2016
Picture: BG
I went to the opening of the new 'Portrait of the Artist' exhibition at the Queen's Gallery in London. It's a wonderful show and well worth visiting. I'll be reviewing it in the Financial Times. Above is a self-portrait drawing by Rubens. Tickets and details here.
New Breughel the Younger discovered in Bath
November 7 2016
Picture: Guardian/Holburne Museum
A newly discovered work by Peter Breughel the Younger will go on display next year at the Holburne Museum in Bath. The Wedding Dance was found by the new director there, Jennifer Scott, whilst having a rummage around the museum's stores. It was thought to be a later copy. The Guardian reports:
A rollicking painting of peasants dancing in the open air at a boozy wedding immediately caught the eye of the new director of the Holburne Museum in Bath when she first toured the stores of her new kingdom. Her eye was keen: from under layers of grime and discoloured varnish, a previously unrecognised work by the 17th-century Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Younger has emerged.
Wedding Dance in the Open Air had previously been catalogued not even as a studio work but as a lowly later copy. It has now been accepted by experts as a genuine work by the master, and will form the centrepiece of an exhibition next year at the museum on the Brueghel dynasty of artists, the first in the UK.
“The more I looked at the panel, the better it seemed,” said Jennifer Scott, who was curator of the Royal Collection before taking over in Bath two years ago. “Even under the grime the detail and the colour seemed fantastic, far too good for a mere copy.
“It helped that I had so recently been working on the Dutch and Flemish paintings in the Royal Collection. He is a wonderful painter, whose reputation has steadily been on the rise – even a few years ago people would have said: ‘Oh, bad luck, the Younger not the Elder,’ but now everyone is genuinely excited to hear of a new discovery of his work.”
The attribution means the museum now has three paintings by the artist, more than in any other UK collection.
The picture will be featured in an exhibition on the Brueghel dynasty, which opens February 11th, until June 4th. I'll be giving a talk at some point during the exhibition, date to be confirmed.
The £1.4m doorstop
September 27 2016
Picture: BBC
A £1.4m marble bust which until recently was being used as a doorstop is to go on display at the Louvre. The bust is by the French sculptor Edme Bouchardon, and shows a Scottish MP, Sir John Gordon. It was made in 1728, and belongs to a Scottish local authority, Highland Council. They were bequeathed in the 1920s, but it became lost for decades, before being found on an industrial estate in 1998, propping open a door. Inevitably, the council tried to sell it. But hopefully its inclusion in a new Louvre exhibition dedicated to Bouchardon will help persuade them to keep this important piece of local heritage.
Update - Colin Harrison, Senior Curator of European Art at the Ashmolean museum, writes:
Good to read that the bust of Gordon of Invergordon will be included in the forthcoming Bouchardon exhibition. It was published in:
Malcolm Baker, Colin Harrison, Alastair Laing, 'Bouchardon's British Sitters: Sculptural Portraiture in Rome and the Classicising Bust around 1730', The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 142, No. 1173 (Dec., 2000), pp. 752-762,
which you can read on JSTOR, if you have it.
Unfortunately, we found no evidence as to who owns the bust. Certainly, the local authority cannot claim title until it produces proper proof - ' found in a municipal store' might very well mean that, as often happened, it was merely lent by the owner for safe-keeping, perhaps in the First World War or at some other point of crisis. That particular branch of the Gordon family died out in the eighteenth century, but they married into the Mackenzie Earls of Cromartie, whose descendants may well be the legitimate owners. In the absence of any documentation, the only sensible solution would be for the bust to be displayed in Inverness Museum, where it has been in storage for nearly twenty years.
Fascinating. Might any claimants now come forward?
Raphael goes to Moscow
September 19 2016
Picture: Uffizi
Eight paintings by Raphael from Italian museums, including the artist's self-portrait, have gone on display in Moscow's Pushkin museum. “Raphael. Image Poetry: Works from the Uffizi and Other Italian Museums” runs until December 11th. More here on Artinfo, and here (in Russian) on the Pushkin site. Quite a coup for the Pushkin museum.
'The mysterious landscapes of Hercules Segers'
September 19 2016
Picture: Rijksmuseum/New York Times
The Rijksmuseum has spent two years re-examining the oeuvre of the 17th Century Dutch landscape artist Hercules Segers, and has added a number of newly attributed works, reports the New York Times. The research has been done ahead of a new exhibition on Segers' life, which opens at the Rijksmuseum on October 7th till January 8th, when it will then travel to the Met in New York, where it opens on February 13th.
More on the Rijksmuseum's research and exhibition here.
Rembrandt pair at the Rijksmuseum
July 13 2016
Video: Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum has made a nice video about their new Rembrandt acquisition (made jointly with the Louvre) of the portraits of Marten and Oopjen Coppit. Meanwhile, in the New York Times, their former owner Eric de Rothschild has spoken of the process of selling them.
Cornelius Johnson exhibition
July 13 2016
Picture: Weiss Gallery
I've been meaning to mention an excellent exhibition on the work of Cornelius Johnson, Charles I's sometime court artist, at the Weiss Gallery in London. The show is on till 15th July, and there is a good catalogue published too - the front cover shows a newly identified self-portrait (above).
Selfies galore in Edinburgh
July 13 2016
Picture: Scottish National Portrait Gallery
A new self-portrait exhibition opens this week at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, including examples by Rembrandt and the Scottish artist John Byrne (above), of whom I'm a great fan. More here.
Leighton's 'Flaming June' returns to London
June 20 2016
Picture: Guardian/Museo de Arte de Ponce
In The Guardian, Maev Kennedy reports that Lord Leighton's masterpiece, Flaming June, is to return on loan to the studio where it was painted in London (now the Leighton House Museum). She also recounts the picture's extraordinary history after Leighton's death in 1896:
In the early 20th century, when Victorian art was already falling out of fashion, Samuel Courtauld, the millionaire collector and founder of the Courtauld Institute, called it “the most wonderful painting in existence”.
It was on loan to the Ashmolean in Oxford in the early 1900s, but vanished for decades before being rediscovered in the early 1960s, boxed in over a chimney in a house in Battersea. The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose own collecting helped revive serious interest in the art of the period, never forgave his grandmother for refusing to lend him £50 to buy it when he saw it soon afterwards in a shop on the Kings Road. “I will not have Victorian junk in my flat,” she told him.
The picture was bought by the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico in 1963.
Unknown Lucian Freud self-portrait
June 16 2016
Picture: Lucian Freud Archive
A previously unknown self-portrait by Lucian Freud (archive) has gone on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London. A new exhibition will explore the NPG's recently acquired Freud archive, which features a range of letters and sketches. More here at the NPG's website.
'Feminine Beauty' at the Bowes Museum
June 2 2016
Picture: Bowes Museum
A new exhibition at the Bowes Museum, 'English Rose - Feminine Beauty from Van Dyck to Sargent' opens on May 14th. The show is partly a response to their recent acquisition of a portrait of Olivia Porter by Van Dyck. More here.
Flemish drawings at the Scottish National Gallery
June 2 2016
Picture: NGS, Jacob Jordaens, 'Head of an Old Woman'
It's a bumper time for lovers of Flemish drawing at the moment - as I mentioned earlier, there's a show at the V&A on until November, and opening soon here in Edinburgh is 'Rubens & Company - Flemish drawings from the Scottish National Gallery'. Says the Gallery's website:
The Scottish National Gallery has a fine collection of Flemish paintings, including famous works by Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck. The Print Room houses some 35,000 works on paper which, due to their fragility and sensitivity to light, can only be displayed for short periods of time and are therefore little-known.*
Rubens & Company highlights an outstanding selection of the Gallery’s Flemish drawings of the seventeenth century. Masterpieces by Rubens, the towering figure of the Flemish Baroque, are shown alongside famous works by Jordaens and Van Dyck and accompanied by works by less prominent artists such as Jan Cossiers, Abraham van Diepenbeeck and Cornelis Schut, which have rarely, in some cases never, been displayed before. Many of them are preparatory drawings or studies which offer a fascinating insight into the function of drawings as well as studio practice. Rubens & Company celebrates these artists and invites our visitors to discover and enjoy their skill in the art of drawing.
The exhibition is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated catalogue, providing a lively panorama of Flemish draughtsmanship in the seventeenth century, its subjects and techniques.
The show opens 18th June, until 28th August. Come to Edinburgh!
*Note to the Scottish National Gallery - none of your drawings by Rubens and Van Dyck are illustrated on your website.
Gang jailed for disrupting art exhibitions
May 19 2016
Video: You Tube / Trollstation
Four Youtubers from South London have been jailed for between 16 and 20 weeks for taking part in a 'hoax' raid at Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery. The 'internet pranksters' as the Evening Standard described them, walked into two exhibitions at the galleries holding fake paintings and wearing tights over their heads. They then set off a portable alarm and rushed around shouting 'I've got the painting'. Visitors in the galleries can be seen in the video leaving in a sudden rush, or as the Standard says 'running away in panic'. Arrests were made shortly afterwards.
The four men pleaded guilty to causing 'fear and provocation of violence'. Commenting on the case, Detective Constable Anthony Parker, from the Met's Public Order Crime Team, said:
The actions of these five men was outrageous.
To go into busy public places wearing masks shouting and screaming at a time of heightened awareness of the terrorism threat facing the UK is deplorable.
The group terrified those visiting the galleries. It is only by pure chance that no one was injured or suffered serious health issues as they fled in what the judge described as a "stampede".
All five men now have a number of weeks in jail to consider just how unfunny their stunts actually were.
Is that why these men are now in jail, because their stunt wasn't funny enough? I'm no fan of the sort of silliness seen in the film above, but I'm also instinctively uneasy about both the jail sentence and the criminal conviction here. It's pretty obvious from the footage that it wasn't a real art theft. You can see one of the stunts from another angle here.
If these men had been environmentalists protesting against BP's sponsorship of the arts, or well-spoken art students from Central St Martin's making, say, a piece of live art 'exploring the divergent atmospheres of safety and insecurity in a gallery setting', I suspect they'd have been treated very differently.
What do you think?
Update - a reader writes:
It’s over the top to give them a custodial sentence…this is why fines and community service exist. However they should have not set off the alarm, that was irresponsible. Even in times of heightened terrorism people still have a sense of humour and as you correctly pointed out if it was students performing a bit of this or that the outcome would have been different I suspect. They should have claimed they were making a point about the EU Remain/Leave referendum and they would have got away with it!
Antoon arrives in Birmingham
May 19 2016
Picture: Birmingham Museums
The National Portrait Gallery's Van Dyck self-portrait has arrived in Birmingham for the latest leg of its national tour. It's been good to see Birmingham Museums make such a big deal of the arrival on social media, with pictures like the above. I think people really like this sort of behind-the-scenes information. It might even help make museums seem less formal and intimidating to those who find them so.
Some years ago I had the privilege of opening a crate similar to the above when the self-portrait was delivered from Sotheby's to the Philip Mould gallery in London, where I used to work.
The exhibition around the Van Dyck loan is called 'Turning to see', and is curated by the artist John Stezaker. It runs until 4th September, when, according to my Van Dyck tour t-shirt, the picture heads back to London.
Guffwatch - Turner prize edition.
May 13 2016
Picture: Tate
The Turner Prize shortlist has been unveiled. It's the usual yawn inducing stuff, the most notable of which is a sculpture of a man pulling his bottom apart (above).
But hurrah for Will Gompertz, the BBC's arts editor, for taking aim at the curatorial artspeak that accompanies the Turner Prize announcement:
Where do they go to learn to produce these texts laden with pseudo-academic speak? Does their dense, mangled prose reflect a lack of confidence in the artists whose status and work - the curators' might think - needs to be elevated by arcane, pompous language?
Or, perhaps, it is insecurity about their own place in the "snobby" artworld (as Laurie Anderson described it to me) that leads them to write such nonsense?
To be clear: The purpose of the Turner Prize is to provoke a conversation about contemporary art among the public. The stated role of the Tate is to "increase knowledge, understanding and appreciation of art".
Both objectives are undermined and poorly served by the incomprehensible "artspeak" used by the institution's curators. It is not clever and it is very off-putting.
Here, by way of example, is an explanation of Helen Marten's work: "Whilst their complex references might not be made immediately explicit to the viewer there is something alchemic in the way the materials collide, and ideas are often communicated through the obstinate wilfulness of the finished form.
"Marten's objects read almost as hieroglyphics, a visual system of communication that is expressive yet rooted in logic, which makes rational the combination of a pickle with an electrical circuit, or a pillar drill alongside a bowl of fish skins."
You get the point, I won't go on - and nor should the curators who wrote the texts, until they've been on a plain-speaking course or locked in a room with a collection of books by masters of writing about art such as Ruskin, Gombrich, Hughes and - for good measure - Bridget Riley.
AHN is not alone!
